freeform goodness

• You don’t own any music. We own it all, regardless what you may think you’ve paid for. At best, you’re rented our content. Any conversion of this content to another format requires us to ding your credit card.
• Every time you play, hum, or think about music, we get to ding your credit card.
• If we could figure out a way to rig a taxicab-style meter onto every device you own that is capable of emitting a sound, we’d do it. In a heartbeat. It would, of course, be pre-authorized to ding your credit card.
• The revenue sharing structure between our industry and the musicians who create the music will be dictated by us. We will take whatever share of the proceeds we feel we deserve.
• We reserve the right to change the rules, in our favor, at any time. We’ve retained the services of your (quite affordable) legislature for this purpose.

:: Dave Walker 13:04 (EST/EDT) [+]

:: [/entertainment/music/itmsvalueessay]
:: tags: itmsvalueessay

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• Every recording ever made.
  • No “regional” restrictions on access. Whether the music was recorded in the U.S.A., the U.K., Germany, Japan, or Senegal, the customer wants to be able to have it on the same terms.
  • There’s no such thing as “out of print”. Any recording who’s copyright has not explicitly been renewed is irrevocably part of the public domain.
• Perfect audio quality.
  • Given current restrictions of storage space, bandwidth, and portable player capacity, the highest possible quality that is practical, in a format that is playable on all hardware, on all operating systems, and on all consumer electronics equipment.
• Free.
  • If not free, as much of customer’s payment as possible directed to the people (songwiters, performers, direct production staff, etc.) who actually made the recording. As little as possible diverted along the distribution chain to middlemen, lawyers, and multinational cartels.
  • Prices should reflect the reality that a downloaded file is less flexible, at present, than the same music on physical media.
• Instantaneous downloads
• No Corrupted Files
  • No bad encodings, arbitrarily truncated songs, skips, etc.
  • Copious, accurate metadata
• Absolutely no restrictions on what can be done with downloaded files
  • Unrestricted hardcopies (physical CDs)
    • Once a recording has been paid for in one format, it should be available at nominal (i.e. cost of production plus reasonable overhead) cost in other formats (physical and virtual.)
• Terms of purchase cannot be arbitrarily changed by one party. Once purchased by a customer, the rights the customer has cannot be reduced.

:: Dave Walker 13:02 (EST/EDT) [+]

:: [/entertainment/music/itmsvalueessay]
:: tags: itmsvalueessay

:: Comments (2)

A reader (hi Dad!) asked me to talk about the value proposition of the iTunes Music Store. It’s actually a really good question, and one that deserves a longer-than-usual sort of answer. Perhaps the easiest way to talk about the value of the iTMS is to look at what it could be, as opposed to what it actually is.

I’ve decided to tackle this question in four parts. The first part will be a look at what the ultimate music store would look like, from a customer point-of-view. The second will be a look at what the ultimate music store would look like, from a recording industry point of view. The third will be a look at how well each of these groups is served by the iTMS. The fourth will be a more general summary of the iTMS in its current state.

:: Dave Walker 12:17 (EST/EDT) [+]

:: [/entertainment/music/itmsvalueessay]
:: tags: itmsvalueessay

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