tankt » iPod

What else has the iPod killed?

Scott Truitt — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 06:00:18 +0000

On the subject of the dominance of Apple’s iPod and iTunes strategy versus the decay of the music industry, Bob Lefsetz saidbest:

A 45 held two tracks. An LP forty minutes. A CD seventy minutes. An iPod? DAYS WORTH! So, the ART FORM was challenged. How long should an album BE? Should there even BE any albums? Stunningly, both labels and artists are still debating this, still clinging to the album format when consumers only care about ONE THING! That the music be GOOD! They want a LOT of good music, and NONE bad.

I would also add that they want it NOW, with new stuff released often and in endless supply. But most of all, whatever it is, they want it FREE.

btw, I’ll have some more thoughts to add on this very subject in the next day or two. It’s really big, and I couldn’t be more proud of it. I can’t wait to share it with you.

They woke up one day and realized that Apple has an 80% share of digital downloads

Scott Truitt — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 02:30:26 +0000

On the fact that Apple, with its iPod and iTunes Music Store, has so thoroughly pwned the music industry, Fake Steve Jobs saidbest:

Ironically the mistake the major labels made was the same one that IBM made when it gave the DOS franchise to Microsoft nearly 30 years ago. They were faced with a new market that they didn’t understand. They had a piece of work that they couldn’t do on their own or didn’t want to do on their own and they didn’t view it as critical or important, so they outsourced it to a partner. The partner turned that seemingly unimportant work into a way to accrue power and create a monopoly and control the industry. Today in the music business we’re about where IBM and Microsoft were in 1989, when IBM finally got hit with the clue stick and realized what Microsoft was doing.

Is it me or is this the very same blueprint Apple is following with the iPhone and AT&T?

I don’t know why I thought I could resist it

Scott Truitt — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 07:45:40 +0000

All it takes is one commercial for the Apple iPhone and I’m right back where I started: salivating at the idea of owning it, and fretting at the thought of having to justify $600 for a phone. Damn you, Apple. Then again, this is no ordinary phone…

I absolutely love the way Apple features San Francisco so prominently, and of course the new Google Maps treatment is astonishingly beautiful. For more eye candy, see the other two commercials at Apple (they’re in high res too).

I promised myself I wouldn’t be swayed by the coming onslaught of media coverage (two articles in the New York Times alone tonight) nor weakened by the Steve Jobs (FSJ or RSJ!) reality distortion field, but there’s no point in pretending otherwise. We all know that I will be standing in line on June 29th to buy an iPhone, just as I did on November 10, 2001 to buy the first iPod, though this time I sincerely doubt I will be standing alone.

I can’t wait. Much more soon.