Apple iCloud and iTunes Match

During this spring, a number of online music services have been launched which all are intended to provide a cloud-based music experience - Store music in the cloud and access it from everywhere. Amazon, Google and today Apple have launched (or are about to) different versions of such services.

While Google and Amazon have failed to get license agreements with major labels and publishers, Apple has indeed signed some agreements: During the last couple of days it has been announced that the split will be 58% labels, 12% publishers and 30% Apple (at least for major rights holders). But what kind of revenues will they actually share? The basic iCloud service which will allow you to access your iTunes purchases from any device for free so that is not where the revs are coming from. Rather it seems as the only music related revenues will be generated from a feature Apple has labelled iTunes Match. iTunes Match scans your music library and identifies a copy of your songs stored in the Apple iTunes catalogue. When this procedure is completed you can legally access your songs from any iOS device. The service is priced at US$25 per year.

So the music people have purchased already via iTunes will be available in the cloud for no additional cost (isn't that generous) and the songs they have downloaded from Pirate Bay will suddenly get a stamp of approval and considered legal for US$25 per year. The question is how this will affect the way people acquire new music  - will this convince them to purchase songs from iTunes or will they continue downloading illegally from other sources and regularly run the iTunes Match to establish the legal copies on their iCloud accounts.

Without having seen the service it does sound rather cumbersome - at least if you compare to other cloud-based music services which does not use users illegal music files as their point of departure. I promise I'm not a Spotify evangelist but compare the two and iTunes Match seems inapt and a bit pathetic.

Google and the Music biz - Small dog meets big dog

Apparently (according to Billboard), the time has finally arrived for the launch of Google Music. What seems to be a fairly basic cloud-based locker service will be launched as a beta today May 10. Well, at least for the selected few in the US who will be invited. It is fascinating to see how the difficulties for the music industry and the “tech” industry (what is that btw?...) to get along seem to continue. Spotify has tried for years to get the agreements in place for a US launch but have failed miserably. When you have Google size clout (and Amazon btw who launch a similar music locker service a while ago) there are other paths for getting your service up and running even when the contracts aren’t in place. You simply give the music business the finger and start the service anyway which is what both Google and Amazon have done. Maybe this is how true change is instigated. Individual consumers as well as a range of organisations (without Google’s legal muscles) have already reshaped the industry during the last decade through their obedience and breaking of various laws and agreements. What will happen when the Google’s and the Amazon’s do the same thing (no, it’s not really the same thing, but more or less)?

Once my neighbour had a small ugly dog with a dubious pedigree. This cocky little mongrel threatened everyone and everything that dared to take a step into their yard. The dog’s problem was that it wasn’t really aware of its actual size and was equally aggressive towards dogs of all sizes. His luck lasted for many years, but as you might imagine, it all ended quite abruptly on a lovely day in May, when a man and his Rottweiler strolled past my neighbour’s house.

Even if the music industry won’t end in the same way as my neighbour’s dog, it will probably seem less frightening for smaller stray dogs (e.g. Spotify) to make the shortcut across the music industry yard.

Yesterday was Thursday, today it is Friday, tomorrow is Saturday, and Sunday comes afterward

Deep-minded lyrics such as in the title of this post must be the reason why Rebecca Black's song "Friday" has been able to get 34m YouTube views, get into the iTunes US single chart (no.44 as we speak) and Rebecca herself has been invited to Jay Leno. Apparently her mother paid Ark Music Factory $2000 for the recording and the video - I wonder if she expected it to be such a good investment!

Besides the joy dear Rebecca brings to the world, what makes this interesting? Well, I would like to argue that this is yet an example of how the creative industries have been turned up-side-down. As it becomes increasingly difficult to make money based on the sales of music (or some other kind of information) to an audience, it becomes increasingly interesting to make money from aspiring talents who dream of getting into the limelight. Sure the music industry has always been based on exploiting wannabe performers, but it hasn't been the primary basis for the the entire industry. And while we are pretty far from such a situation it looks as if the industry is moving towards that situation. Ark Music Factory may not get any industry cred for the work they do, but apparently they know how to make a buck. Rather than trying to sell songs to people who already have free and full access to all the music they want, they charge mothers for making recording of their talentless daughters. And look, once in a while the outcome turns out so incredibly bad it actually becomes a hit. The music industry continues to deliver lots of fuuuun, fun-fun-fun...

Do not miss the Bob Dylan version. Hilarious.

NYTimes presents the details of its paywall

Several online news sites have tried to set up their pay-wall during the last couple of months. Times in the UK, le Monde, the Economist, FT, and many other less prominent sites have tried to figure the right way to price and structure their offering. Perhaps the most interesting model for doing this is the metered models used by for instance The Economist and Financial Times. The metered model allows non-subscribers to access a limited number of content units during a certain time period, e.g. a month.

Today, the first(?) general newspaper gives the metered model a shot. NYTimes launches their model in Canada in order to "fine-tune" their model before global launch. Finally (if some numbers will be able to escape from the NYT fort on 8th av) we might be able to see how the general public responds to this model. Will it work, or will NYT lose 90% of their online readers?

This will be a time of experiments and most likely it won't stop with the tests in Canada, but the tweaking will continue for a long time forward. Exiting exiting... What do you think?

http://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions


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