Dear UMG: YOU ARE ON THIN ICE.
July 2nd, 2007
The Universal Music Group of Vivendi, the world’s biggest music corporation, last week notified Apple that it will not renew its annual contract to sell music through iTunes […] Instead, Universal said that it would market music to Apple at will, a move that could allow Universal to remove its songs from the iTunes service on short notice if the two sides do not agree on pricing or other terms in the future.
Much has been said about the general state of affairs between Apple and the music labels (who needs whom, who’s exploiting whom, the impact of iTunes on the various bottom lines, etc.), so I’ll skip all that and put this very plainly.
Here, in order of increasing cost to me (annoyance + time + money), are the ways in which I am prepared to acquire new music:
- Purchase from iTunes.
- Other methods of acquisition. (Sharing disks with friends, or in rare circumstances, p2p file sharing.)
- Buy a physical CD.
Something for you to think about, Universal.
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2 Responses to “Dear UMG: YOU ARE ON THIN ICE.”
Hmm.
I have yet to buy anything through iTMS. That’s partly because, when I buy a CD, I have a high-reliability data backup already in hand. Some of those CDs I’ve owned for twenty years. I’ve had little enough joy with maintaining computer data through even one change of computer hardware that I’m extremely reluctant to start spending money — perhaps lots of money — on something that will require me to develop much more reliable data warehousing behavior.
Plus, of course, there’s the whole DRM problem. Will I be able to play the tunes on my next computer? On my next five computers? In my car?
comment posted at 4:30 pm on 02 Jul 2007
I agree with ctate here: I’d much rather have a CD I can rip into whatever format I want — or a universal format like mp3 — than any of this DRM stuff. The few tracks I have from iTMS were instantly stripped of DRM.
comment posted at 4:42 pm on 02 Jul 2007