Thu, 09 Oct 2008 Apple iTunes faces battle of Britain

Ken Sutton said on Thu, 09 Oct 2008

"Apple iTunes faces battle of Britain"

Same old, same old. Every time some new media store appears the web tries to drum up the drama. Once a company has a foothold like Apple has with iTunes, it is all but impossible to dislodge their prominece. Witness Amazon and online bookselling, eBay and online auctions, MTV and music, YouTube, etc etc. Unless some entity can come up with an entirely new business model (not just another version), that ship has sailed.

SimonA said on Thu, 09 Oct 2008

That's me off iTunes then, been waiting for Play to do this for ages. The cost of audio books on iTunes is criminal at times.

Jason said on Thu, 09 Oct 2008

Apart from the range of music, for me to use a download service on a regular basis I need to be able to buy an album at a lesser price than the CD, it needs to be free of DRM, and needs to be better quality than iTunes offers. Play seem to be offering those things.

I am suspicious of the 'from 65p' wording though. Is it going to be just the top 100 songs at this price or will this be standard?

kyussmondo said on Thu, 09 Oct 2008

What I do not understand is why the labels have such a dislike towards iTunes. iTunes is huge and must contribute quite a bit to their annual turnover, but keeps going to all these other music providers offering their music DRM-free and cheaper. Apple asks for DRM-free and the labels won't have it. Surely the labels are just shooting themselves in the foot.

People in the US are saying that Amazon MP3 is good. Wish we got it over here though!! Play.com's offering looks good. It will be interesting to see how good it is. It looks too good to be true, so it probably will be unless the labels are really looking to stick it to Apple.

Greendave said on Thu, 09 Oct 2008

So, I am expected to go searching around the web to find new music services that will want me to register and flood me with junk emails and need my credit card details again just to save a few pence on a track that I will then have to import to iTunes to get it onto my iPod. I don't think so.

What is wrong with the record labels? Why don't they understand that piracy is their competition, not iTunes. They should be supporting iTunes until legal downloading becomes the norm. Offer a system that makes it worth paying for the download - ease of use, value added (art/data), guaranteed quality, works with Genius (which is aptly named) and create a bigger legal download market before trying to stifle and compete with iTunes. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

spyinthesky said on Thu, 09 Oct 2008

And in what way is MP3 higher quality than the MP4 available on iTunes? A higher MP3 bitrate in no way equates to better quality unless it is a much bigger file. So what is the bitrate they are offering one wonders to substantiate suh misleading claims.

Dave said on Thu, 09 Oct 2008

At last hopefully more people will get away from itunes. Itunes users get ripped off for so many reasons.

Antony said on Thu, 09 Oct 2008

The point about iTunes is that it is a media library which excellently organises your music, as well as providing downloads. No other service sems to offer such a feature, and so they will fail. No one in their right minds wants to tramp around the file system to find the music they want.

Annie said on Thu, 09 Oct 2008

"What I do not understand is why the labels have such a dislike towards iTunes." - I think the fact that it is DRM, low quality & almost locked into the awful sounding iPod.

On Windows the installer program also tries to install Safari everytime you update and installs all sorts of Apple software without choice.

Sean said on Thu, 09 Oct 2008

Antony, many people would prefer to use a different media player/library than itunes. Winamp and songbird specifically come to mind for me.

Reginald W said on Fri, 10 Oct 2008

Record labels are about maintaining control and keeping track of all the records and songs sold. The record co’s control the accounting, and fudge the numbers, add expenses, put the same expense onto multiple bands and it appear as the bands cost more to manage than they bring in revenue.
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Music societies get revenue and distribute it among the record co’s. The revenue is split up in ways that the artist doesn't get their due amounts.
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Apple can tell an artist they sold an exact number of songs and the artist can calculate almost to the penny what they should receive. The records co’s HATE the fact they can't fudge the accounting.
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What I can't wait for is the anti-competitive lawsuits against the record labels for allowing anyone else to sell DRM free music while keeping Apple from doing so. Short term, the record co’s "win" by trying to put down Apple-cutting off your nose to spite your face. Long term, they lose big time being sued to the point of nonexistance, IMHO.

Reginald W said on Fri, 10 Oct 2008

@Dave
I use iTunes to manage my imported CD's, download podcasts and watch free TV vodcasts. I have yet to buy one item through the iTunes Store.
Since you have so many ways that iTunes is a rip off, I'd like to hear how everyone is being ripped off. Please tell us all the ways we get ripped off. I'd like to know.

GN said on Fri, 10 Oct 2008

Annie said - I think the fact that it is DRM, low quality & almost locked into the awful sounding iPod.

Er... actually the record labels themselves require Apple to use DRM on iTunes, Apple also wants to sell higher quality downloads ala iTunes Plus from EMI but again the other record labels won't let them and as for being locked into the iPod - well that's DRM again and I repeat that's the record labels' fault NOT Apple's.

So what "kyussmondo" said was correct.

Also you say:

On Windows the installer program also tries to install Safari everytime you update and installs all sorts of Apple software without choice.
> it did at one time and it was wrong so Apple stopped doing it and this is no longer the case - please don't spread misinformation

Mick said on Fri, 10 Oct 2008

"On Windows the installer program also tries to install Safari everytime you update and installs all sorts of Apple software without choice.
> it did at one time and it was wrong so Apple stopped doing it and this is no longer the case - please don't spread misinformation"

You are wrong. It still defaults to installing Safari and always installs MobileMe, which is not in the EULA and so is malware.

Dave said on Fri, 10 Oct 2008

All the major labels but Apple recently joined together to get rid of DRM - Apple decided it did not want to take part. Apple's DRM locks iTunes to the iPod's.

iTunes audio books are often £10 more than audible.co.uk, they have lower bit rates and and audible.co.uk are DRM free.