The answer to
this question is a “No” and or a “Yes”. The long life of iPod and iTunes is promising.
The company continues to invest heavily on apps that aim to combine the best features of disparate apps, offering a mix of
unlimited streaming, live radio and social hubs. While we cannot browse Apple Music’s
library today, in comparison with its rival, the Spotify, Apple offers over 30
million songs, and will probably match just about anything you can currently
get on iTunes. If this trend continues uninterrupted, it will amount to a
similarly massive library to that of Spotify. To opinionate, Apple should not
allow iTunes songs to play on non-iPod MP3 players because sticking to the way
it is places Apple music at a niche.
A review of the
music industry conditions would help answer this snagging question. The
industry conditions that led to the revolution of audio distribution were the
development of algorithm. the trends from 1998–2003,”
International Data Corporation” set the stage for heavy share holder investment
in music production. While these musical inventions where happening in the
United States, the development of algorithm by Fraunhofer IIS of Germany
ignited the distribution, and the storage of a better auditable quality. Logic
was the growing popularity of the file format and the risks of the development
of competing formats similar to that of codec.
On a second note,
the MP3 format were becoming widely popular by users sharing their music
online, and software companies were also beginning to release many variants of MP3 encoders,
also, Hardware manufacturers where capitalizing on this new trend and several
hardware MP3 players began appearing on the market.
The third
condition of the music revolutionary was the fact that consumers wanted to
share files over the internet and with the invention of algorithm, software and
hardware makers were now able to tap into the collection of royalties for the
use of their products.
The fourth
dimension of revolutionary came with innovation. Fraunhofer continued to
innovate and introduce the mp3pro format and started to work on the Advanced
Audio Coding (AAC) format with Dolby that Apple would later use. It is reported
that, by 1996, mp3s could be found worldwide and had won the battle of dominant
design in compressed audio format. This analogy also helped explain why the
same music stores created by the labels fail to attract massive subscribers. They
failed because the technology of internet was already on the rise, consumers
were looking for opportunities to share, edit, and create music within the
realm of small space to the wider audience. The Economist point out that
“Phonographs were going to kill sheet music, the rise of radio threatened to
undermine sales of phonograph discs, video recorders were going o wipe out the
film industry, and cassette recorders spelt doom for the music business.
This claim
however, was found to be unfounded by some. The new technologies expanded the
markets in unprecedented ways. Much of the online music trading was worrying
the record label; prices on the traditional labels were forcing buyers for an
alternative online. The only thing
that the record labels could have done different was to invest more money in
the compressed music technology. They would have come up with a new business
model that is price sensitive, online, cost effective, and functions as
perceived by the market. Another area of improvement would be to refocus on
market awareness, new product creation and file share market penetration.
In
contrast, the
iTunes Music Store offered audio in two file formats namely, the Advanced Audio
Coding (AAC) and modified MP3s. With Apple’s Fairplay DRM, song files could be
loaded on up to five computers only, and could not be played on non- iPod MP3
players. In addition, the files could not be e-mailed or distributed over the
Web, and files are “hidden” on the iPod through a subdirectory structure that
made it difficult to copy songs from a friend’s iPod. All of these features
helped to prevent users from mass-distributing songs to others, helping to ease
the minds of record companies. The success of iTunes was fueled by a number of
factors. The company has a “cool” image that is attractive to the recording
industry and users alike. The company also used the familiar MP3 format,
offered an attractive price tag for online music, and its licensing agreements
with all five major labels enabled it to offer a one-stop source for customers.
In addition, the FairPlay DRM is not as restrictive as other competing formats.
On this format,
musicians would give away their copyright privileges through Creative Common
because music marketing and promotion is expensive and new musicians could not
afford to market and distribute their music on their own. Many independent
musicians welcomed the advent of MP3 and digital distribution as tools to
promote their music. Lesser-known artists now had the opportunity to give some,
or all, of their music away as an inexpensive marketing and promotion tool. Creative
Commons allows musicians to easily make it known that their music is available
for downloading and distribution without the risk of infringement suits.
Independent artists, authors, software developers, and musicians can digitally
“sign away” certain copyright privileges.
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