How iPods Took Over the World 360
An anonymous reader writes "The Observer has a piece today about the iPod's ascension to dominance of the mp3 player market. The author argues that it's largely the result of clever business tactics and the iTunes music store." From the article: "The second thing about the iPod: it puts you, not them, in control. Basically, the record labels are devotees of the Henry Ford business model: 'You can have any music you want so long as it's what I want to give you.' But using the cyberspace jukebox, you're no longer at their mercy. You don't have to pay for the four filler tracks on every album. You don't have to buy albums at all. You can put country next to classical, punk next to jazz, Barry Manilow next to Placido Domingo (wait, that's a joke)."
No, that's the iTMS. (Score:5, Informative)
I do not even care that there's this store, where admittedly you can buy music that's not easily reproducible. The store has nothing to do with the iPod; it was made after I bought my iPod, and hasn't influenced my decision to buy one (I think the US store had already been established at that time, though).
Re:I don't like Ipods (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How it took over? (Score:2, Informative)
No special drivers are need for Windows or Mac. The iPod works just like every other removable USB storage device.
Re:I think he's wrong (Score:2, Informative)
Well, you could transfer files using "cp *.mp3
Still, Amarok is blows away the iTunes interface for Linux.
Re:iPod's marketing is so clever, (Score:3, Informative)
The people who can't be bothered to figure that out are probably so rich that they don't really care where the music comes from anyway, and aren't bothered by the fact that they'll have to repurchase it if they wanted to switch MP3 player brands.
Regular people rip their CDs. That was the original motto on iTunes, long before the iTMS: "Rip, Mix, Burn."
Re:I think he's wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Hope that helps.
Re:iPod's marketing is so clever, (Score:4, Informative)
Then why the fuck are you ranting about the iTunes Music Store?
Of course, that's assuming some other mechanism isn't in the pipeline to circumvent [burning to CD and ripping].
This is a virtual impossibility. They cannot enforce a system where you can't rip a standard CD without extreme effort, such as making a law that even *this* Congress won't pass.
And if it ever *did* happen, you'd still have be able to do it with your existing hardware and software long before it became impossible, which brings us to:
Oh, and the music you're writing to a CD to rip back to mp3s?
it started out inferior in quality... with compression.
Inferior to what? I knew when I bought it what format it was in. It's inferior to CD, superior to tape. If I really need a song in full CD quality, I won't buy a tape, or from iTunes, I'll buy a CD. As of yet, I haven't had a need to.
it will lose quality as it gets passed up the chain and back down -- you will have to make some "quality" decisions about what level mp3 you need to retain even the quality left in the track.
Or rip to lossless if you *really* care about the minimal amount of quality loss you'd get in most cases with AAC or MP3.
Oh yeah, you're going to have to re-enter the track, album, and artist info, that gets lost in the process.
No, it doesn't. When your burn a CD, iTunes remembers the track info for that CD, even if it's a mixed CD.
The burn-rip scenario you bring up is an emergency escape protocol to engage in *only* if for some reason you need to escape from iTunes DRM. Presumably, you're comfortable with the current terms if you've already bought more than a couple of songs, so this really only comes into play if Apple alters the terms of FairPlay in an unacceptable way, or you've decided to go into full-(hippie||libertarian)-mode with Linux or BSD.
In other words, *WORST CASE*, you have to burn and re-rip and decide whether to go lossless or take some most likely imperceptible quality loss, so no matter how much fear-mongering your wish to inject into the discussion, Apple has placed a bottom-limit on the "evil" you can attribute to their DRM. As an iTunes Music Store customer, I fully understand the possibility, but not the probability, what I may have to go through to 'liberate' my music, but as it stands, my music is freely usable enough as it is.
one of the most egregious betrayals by the music industry is the CDDB
Which has *what* to do with Apple? In fact, Apple corrects this so-called "betrayal" by using the CDDB to put your track names into your ripped music since the record labels have only exceptionally rarely put them on their CDs (which Apple does not create or sell, and thus has no responsibility for). Apple has gone even further, and done what the music industry has failed to do with CDs, and put the track information into the music that they actually *do* sell on the iTunes Music Store.
The music industry is pretty bad, and Apple has had to make some compromises in order to play with them (as we all must do when we deal with them, generally via buying CDs or listening to the radio), but Apple has actually done the commendable thing and given us a truly fair deal--a deal that has, built in, an emergency escape option. Do you expect the music industry would have done that on their own? Apple's not perfect, but all-in-all, they're pretty damn good.
I'm holding out hope I can continue to find unadulterated CDs, unencumbered (and high quality) mp3s and players that will play them all interchangeably and headache free.
Unadulterated CDs work just fine with iPods and iTunes. In fact, even adulterated ones (which have nothing whatsoever to do with Apple, iTunes (player or store) or the iPod) work just fine in iTunes on the Mac.
Harder is better? (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, the iPod is not as full-featured as some other players, but I think the fact that they're harder to use automatically removes them from the "better" category. Ease of use is a feature, too, even for geeks like us.
Re:How it took over? (Score:4, Informative)
If they are harder to use or their knobs are too small, they cannot be better. A better player would be easier to use with perfectly sized knobs.
In 2001, the iPod was far and above the best mp3 player out there.
By 2004 Creative Labs had caught up; they had released their Zen Micro to compete with the iPod mini, they had a minimal 5 element UI, they had finally adopted fast USB2, and they came in several colors.
What happened in the intervening 3 years?
Apple released a Windows compatible iPod, they had released a Windows compatible iTunes, they had released ever smaller iPods, the even smaller and thinner iPod mini (January of 2004, nine months before the Creative Zen Micro), and they had been continuously bumping the capacity and slowly reducing the price of the iPods.
So it doesn't seem surprising at all that, in the course of three years, that Apple would dominate if they kept releasing better and smaller and cheaper iPods. Fast forward to 2006 and it seems if anyone else wants to topple Apple then it might very well take three full years of concerted effort to topple them.
As per my "facts", you don't have to take my word for it, please look it up. Creative Labs took several years to catch up with 1.8" drives and 1" drives, colors, good UI, and good form factor.
Re:iPod's marketing is so clever, (Score:3, Informative)
Re:iPod's marketing is so clever, (Score:2, Informative)
Gotta love the FUD.