Shun
BBC NEWS | Technology | iPod fans ‘shunning iTunes store’
I am one of the shunners. I have about 500 tracks on my iPod nano and precisely one was bought from the iTunes store, and that was purchased for a specific practical reason but never used.
It slightly irks me that the article describes music ripped from CDs as ‘free’. The music has been bought and paid for, and ripping it to my iPod is covered by fair use.
So far as I am concerned, alowing me to listen to my CD collection whilst on the move is what an iPod is for. The iTunes music store is a great place to hear previews of music I might want to buy on CD, but relatively low sound-quality tracks without artwork, covered by annoying and pointless DRM at a cost often similar to buying the CD from Fopp doesn’t add up to a compelling product so far as I am concerned.
(I also have my reservations about buying CDs from the major record labels, but that’s another blogpost).
It concerns me when I see stories in the media announcing the imminent death of the CD (and physical media in general). Many decades of common and copyright law are being superceded by idiotically unreasonable license agreements. It may be that as time passes music and video buying habits will in fact shift more stongly towards file downloading, and travesties like Amazon Unbox will become more widespread.
I can only hope that the current fasionable combination of greed and stupidity amongst the players in this little drama is more a sign of an immature and ill-informed market as opposed to the beginning of a new digital distopia, where our culture is entirely owned and commoditised and controlled by some of the least appealing human beings on the planet.
My advice? Shun early. Shun often.
Posted in Music
September 20th, 2006 at 2:29 am
hi there, dropped by!
I somewhat concur with you. It’s sad that people hanker for ripped Mp3s in lieu of original CD copies, but I guess people will still go for what’s FREE… the value of originality is somewhat desecrated.
that’s sad news for artists and music companies.
September 20th, 2006 at 5:58 am
I think that the outlook for the music industry is good provided they embrace the possibilities opened up by the move to Internet.
At the moment, it seems that most illegal downloads are usually not a replacement for an actual purchase of music. (People who only want free stuff are not a valuable demographic to lose as customers). Also, sometimes hearing the download will actually prompt a CD purchase.
There is still a lot of money sloshing about in the music business. They have to do some thinking and some investment. It’s not like they are the only industry having to adapt to new technologies. I really believe they can end up making more money and releasing more music than before.