One piece of MacWorld-related big news that doesn’t involve Steve Jobs’ health: The iTunes Store is apparently going to embrace the idea of dynamic pricing (no more 99-cents-per-song standard) and ditch digital-rights management in the near future. According to Peter Kafka, the pricing for songs will be tiered between 79 cents, 99 cents, and $1.29. No word on whether Amazon’s practice of engaging in loss-leading deep discounts will be copied by iTunes, although the price-slashing they’ve engaged in up to this point, and the fact that unlike Amazon they’re not trying to take marketshare away from an already-established competitor, would make me think that not many $1.99 albums are in the offing. But hey, I’m ready to be surprised! MORE »
Posts Tagged ‘Steve Jobs’
the new model
iTunes Store To Remove DRM, Futz Around With Pricing: Do You Care?
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Oh, Techwriterpaws
It’s always so cute when tech types get in a lather about one of their pet causes–here, it’s Greg Sandoval at CNet penning an open letter to Steve Jobs begging him to drop DRM on the files in the iTunes Store, which to his mind looks “a little shabby” these days because of Apple’s copy-protection scheme Fairplay–without thinking rationally about why they may be getting a zero instead of a coveted one. (I tried to put the analogy in binary terms so they’d get it.) To wit: MORE »
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Behold: The Pliesroll, Brought To You By Some Bored Guy On The Internet
This morning while doing my YouTube rounds, I found a clip claiming to have as its audio bed a high-quality version of Kanye West’s Tears For Fears homage “Coldest Winter,” so I–hoping to hear the song without all that peaking and radio static that nearly ruined last week’s leak somewhere around listen No. 10–clicked. But instead of “Coldest Winter, however, we’re treated to a video that fuses together a photo of Steve Jobs holding a pitcher of Kool-Aid, paparazzo shots of The Game and Snoop Dogg, and gunshot sounds in a way that’s seemingly inspired by both Paperrad and ransom notes. MORE »
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The Big Apple Announcement: They’re No. 1!
Since I couldn’t make it up to San Francisco to see whatever Steve Jobs wants to dole out to his music-listening public in person (mostly because I wasn’t invited), here’s an open thread in which we can comment on the revelations let loose by Steve Jobs at today’s “Apple: Let’s Rock” event. MORE »
100 and single
Hey, Let’s Write a Song Called “Steve Jobs Is Dreamy”
Ed. note: Chris “dennisobell” Molanphy, our resident chart guru, looks at the upward, downward, and lack of movement on this week’s Billboard charts:
“Is this Feist again?” my friends asked at the Super Bowl party I attended last Sunday, as Apple’s latest product-porn ad popped onto the plasma.
“No, no,” I said, confidently. “Apple doesn’t re-use acts in these ads. I think this is Regina Spektor.”
Oops.
I pride myself on being able to nail a song in one or two listens, but I think I can be forgiven for botching that call. The fact is, no one in America had heard of Yael Naïm before her perky, warbly “New Soul” became the soundtrack to the first MacBook Air commercial. But that’s all changed, now that “New Soul” is the top-selling song on iTunes. In fact, in her first week on the Hot 100, the indie-label-backed Israeli native pulls off something that took Feist about a month: Reaching the chart’s Top 10. MORE »
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Steve Jobs Not Subscribing To Labels’ iTunes Demands
Negotiations between iTunes and the four major labels are looming, and there’s been a fair amount of talk about the majors’ desire to shift iTunes to a subscription model similar to Napster, Urge, and other also-ran music-selling sites. But yesterday, Jobs told a reporter that he was pretty lukewarm on the idea–and he even used the f-word while doing so:
“Never say never, but customers don’t seem to be interested in it,” Jobs told Reuters in an interview after Apple reported blow-out quarterly results. “The subscription model has failed so far.”
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Behind The Scenes At The iTunes Store: It’s About As Nerdy As You’d Imagine
Today’s Wall Street Journal looks at what it takes for artists to get some lovin’ from the iTunes store. It’s a lengthy piece, so here’s our quick cheat sheet: MORE »
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Steve Jobs’ Music-Industry Rant Might Be Winning Hearts, Minds Of Record Execs
When Steve Jobs squawks, people listen: Earlier this week, the Apple honcho posted a lengthy missive about the need to make all digital music files unprotected, arguing that the major labels have to make their music as accessible as they can in order to combat piracy (reading the polite-but-firm… MORE »
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RIAA Not Willing To Give Up On The DRM Dream
Steve Jobs’ anti-digital rights management screed from earlier this week has elicited a response from the Recording Industry Association of America, who, having already shown off their lousy math skills, are now putting their not-so-great reading comprehension on display: Apple’s offer to license… MORE »
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New Apple Deal Will Allow Steve Jobs And Paul McCartney To Finally Make A Few Bucks
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple (the company in charge of the Beatles’ catalog) and Apple (the computer company that can’t seem to make a decent battery) have settled their trademark dispute: Under a new deal that replaces one reached in 1991, Apple will own… MORE »
