Report vilifies iPod, blames Apple for holding back music industry

I love the ITMS, but I use it selectively...mostly because I already have much of the music I couldn't live without. Either because I had the original CDs - or back from my college days, using the original Napster. I think the problem that BusinessWeek and many in the recording industry are overlooking is the "QUALITY" of the music being produced. I am so thankful that I don't have to download the filler songs on an album, when I can download only the ones I want. $10 for the 10 songs you want, rather than $50 for the 5 albums containing the same 10 songs. I would like to see more quantitative data from these sources before they say downloading music is not working.

I bought a handful of CDs a year before iTunes came along. I mostly just bought the new releases of people I already knew I liked. But after iTunes, I am buying new music right and left. I've probably bought more in the last 2.5 years from iTunes than I did in the previous 10 years. Yeah, Apple's really holding the music industry back.

Apple CREATED the download music industry. Period. I dread the day it is opened and contaminated with the likes of trailer-park Microsoft. Not on my iPod.

I think it's the RIAA that's holding back the record industry, demanding that Apple charge higher prices form some songs. 99 cents a good price point that's relatively affordable. But the $1.29 that the record labels want Apple to charge on more popular songs shows hor greedy they are. I'd say the iPod and iTunes actually helped to promote legal downloads. I blame Napster for the decline.

What Jeff said. Sequential growth is flat through comparing Q3 to Q4 through 11/27 because of other dynamics going on in customers wallets. A better compare would be year to year growth. I'm sure sales are up big time vs. a year ago. We need to wait until the quarter ends before jumping to conclusions Businessweek. And the Napster/Real blaming iPod and Apple for all their woes is very tired. The iPod changed the game in terms of MP3 players. iTMS changed the game in terms of legit downloads. Don't blame the competition because your product sucks. I think it says a lot of the product and the music store, that the Microsoft juggernaut hasn't made a dent in Apple share. None of the MP3 player hardware is getting near the cool points that iPod has. And I'm still not sold on the subscription model for music. The subscription model for video? That makes more sense. If iPod and iTMS wasn't around, the market would be a fraction of the size it is today. Napster would still be whining because, at the end of the day, it has an unsustainable business model.

Maybe it's because Napster and everyone else are using a closed Windows Media format, not Apple. Any one of them can sell music on MP3s, but only idiots buy WMA.

I'm not bored with it!

This article is similar to several other recent articles that always imply that iPod is a closed system. It is FUD. There are several ways of getting content for the iPod other than the iTMS. Note that some of Sony's Digital Music Players are much more restrictive of content format than the iPod, but Gorog did not complain about Sony. DRM is the issue that is holding the music business back, as the first comment noted.

Perhaps sales could be down (by less than half a percent) leading up to the holidays because music lovers are holding off purchases until after Christmas in hopes that they will be receiving their favorite CD and/or gift card. Just a thought...

My school pays for us to have access to eMusic. I download their non-DRMed content and play it in iTunes and on my iPods. Works great. These other companies need to get with the program and realize that Apple is not the bad guy here.