The problem isn’t downloading, it’s making sure the artists get paid. The EFF has produced a swell silent short to illustrate the point (and to solicitate your support).
Speaking of making sure the artist gets paid… iTunes for Windows is out (Apple’s homepage read “Hell Froze Over” and introduced “The best Windows app ever”).
At work I use an OS X (primary) and Win2K machines side by side. Installed the Win version of iTunes and was impressed at how the two mirrored each other pretty much feature-for-feature. The Rendezvous sharing is awesome – enable music sharing on the Mac and the Win machine sees and plays the entire library and all playlists.
Of course the only reason Apple does this is the runaway financial success of the iTunes Music Store, which is now available to a vastly larger audience. For a while, the sexy integration of iPod and iTunes was the draw so compelling people would supposedly quit Windows for the Mac. Then it was the draw of the amazing music store. Suddenly the strategy changes – people aren’t going to come to church, so why not bring the collection plate to their doorsteps?
Believe it or not, but Schiller mentioned in an interview recently that iTMS isn’t “making them any money.” It seems that they are just breaking even paying for the support/hardware costs.
So why keep iTMS around? Because it helps sell iPods. Lots of iPods. Lots of profitable iPods. During Steve’s iTunes presentation this week he mentioned that they are selling iPods at an average rate of 2 iPods per minute! Currently, the iPod holds 70% market share of portable digital music players. wow.
The iPod is classic Apple– it’s -hardware-, it’s premium price (and consequently very profitable), it really does work better than any of its competitors, the software ‘just works’. I’m certain that the day that digital music becomes a commodity is the day that Jobs & Co. start backing out.
On the other hand, in a recent interview (http://www.msnbc.com/news/982147.asp) Jobs said that he’d love to make an $100 iPod – they just don’t know how to do it right now.
Anyone got pointers to how I’d move my iTunes music collection (both purchased from iTMS and ripped/encoded from CDs) from the Windows version to a Mac ? I’m pretty set on a Mac as my next machine, but wondered if I should wait on iTMS until then or go ahead now…
David, it should be a drag and drop affair. The only hitch might be if you have three machines authorized to play your purchased music, you’ll have to deauthorize one of them.