

ITunes Will Soon Be Obsolete  - schlichtm
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2012/06/when-itunes-becomes-obsolete.html

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bcrescimanno
What's always fascinated me about this "universal love" that services like
Rdio and Spotify are receiving is what an incredible dichotomy that is with
the first generation of streaming music services (the "paid" Napster,
MusicMatch, etc). Those services were almost as universally reviled as Spotify
is currently lauded.

The truly unfortunate thing, for my listening habits at least, is that finding
what I want on Spotify is always a crap shoot. They may have it and they may
not. What I end up doing at the moment is paying $10 / mo for Spotify premium
(primarily because I hate their ads and genuinely prefer the higher audio
quality on my home stereo system). and end up supplementing with another $10 /
mo in iTunes bills to buy the songs that aren't available on Spotify.

While I do enjoy the "instant gratification" of Spotify and the ability to get
an "all-in-one" package, people's expectations and habits around music
consumption are fundamentally different than other forms of media in that
music is primarily a passive experience with reading or watching television /
film content are both very active experiences. I don't think a precipitous
drop-off is coming to the downloading world until those habits change--or
until Spotify and it's ilk can cater to them (e.g. full library available
offline easily, larger catalogue coverage, etc.)

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freshbreakfast
The passive/active experience angle is an interesting way to look at it. I
wrote the blog post, but obviously I'm a music lover who usually consumes in a
very proactive way, always looking for new music. But I still think the
passive experience type of listener is actually more likely to fall for the
subscription/cloud model, in that it's so much more convenient than
downloading. The 10 or so seconds it takes to actually download the song and
sync into iTunes is going to be more and more unacceptable for the younger and
younger kids.

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bcrescimanno
I'm with you in terms of listening, actually (at least partially; I have a
large stereo at home on which I do actively listen to a lot of music; but I
also have background music while I work during the day). That's why I find the
subscription model a bit limiting currently.

I see your point about the more passive listeners leaning more towards the
subscription model. My argument has long been that for a more passive
experience, you need more complete library coverage because the expectation is
that you can "get anything" pumped into your ears in that passive mode. I
contrast it with Netflix where the forced active nature of the viewing means
that the catalog need not have full coverage--so long as it has enough
coverage to keep you actively engaged when you choose to use the service. That
thinking (at least for me personally) has been why I've long avoided streaming
music services but use Netflix streaming regularly.

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freshbreakfast
Agreed. The catalogue thing is annoying. But I do remember it took a while for
iTunes to have a complete catalogue as well. I feel like eventually though
that problem should self-correct for subscription based model over time, as it
increasingly becomes the de-facto medium to consume music. Either way, I
suppose we'll find out the answer in a few years ;-)

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chrischen
Streaming is different from the purchasing model of itunes. Consider Netflix.
It will probably never have new releases first and subscription music services
will likely go that way, if not already there.

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bcrescimanno
My argument is that model is sustainable for film and television content but
not for music content. It's simply impossible to consume the same quantity (in
terms of unique pieces of content) of 2 hour movie content (or even 45 minute
television content) as 3-4 minute music content. It takes a much larger, and
much broader catalogue given the difference in rate of consumption.

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simba-hiiipower
"...the selling and downloading of song files is a vestigial consumer behavior
leftover from the physical media era. Consumers are still transitioning out of
the idea of 'owning' their music, and downloads happened to be that natural
and convenient next step in the 'digital' age. But the clouds are forming, and
the storm is bound to rain (apologies for the blatant metaphor). Between
Youtube, blogs and Spotify, you can already find just about any song you could
possibly want to hear. Anecdotally I hear more and more kids who can’t be
bothered to download anymore - the gratification is so much more instant on
YouTube. Increasingly, the main value of buying or pirating an MP3 these days
is that it’s a mode of cataloguing a personal music library (and sloppy one at
that). Even this distinction is eroding under the increasing maturation of
cloud music."

People have been saying this for years and it hasn’t happened and I still
don’t see it happening anytime soon. I think this type of analysis is flawed
on multiple levels, but in particular in how it looks at consumers as a whole.

Looking at the industry post-2000, the way I see it is people tend to fall
into one of two buckets as music ‘downloaders’: (1) people who tend to
discover and consume music passively (i.e. hear a song on the radio, download
the single for repeat enjoyment), and (2) people who actively discover and
consume music (i.e. discover a new artist, download their album to hear more).

Regarding bucket (1), I’d say the post is pretty spot-on. These consumers, who
I’d easily say make up the majority in the market, are switching towards
platforms that deemphasize ownership, and thus render ‘sales’ from iTunes and
the like obsolete. But these people never really wanted to ‘own’ the content
in the first place; I agree with the post that, for them, ownership was just
the more natural and convenient option to consumption.

But for bucket (2), I don’t see this type of transition occurring. These
people weren’t just downloading content as a means to enjoy it; the process of
discovering, downloading, building-out a collection, and being able to play-
back from an exact catalogue of music you like is all part of the experience.
For these consumers one of the values of a platform is the ability to get all
the music they want and enjoy it exactly as they chose. These consumers may
not be as numerous as those in bucket (1), but putting aside the means of
download (i.e. iTunes sales may be mostly singles downloaded by bucket (1),
but I’d guess a larger portion of total digital music downloads across the web
come from bucket (2) with torrents and the like included), they represent the
majority of the digital music market. And 'platforms' like Pandora, Spotify,
YouTube (if you can even consider it as adequate at all in this context), and
others will never replace the ability to build a personal collection.

iTunes may become obsolete soon enough as the less intensive consumers switch
to such platforms as described, and the whole system of managing a collection
may move to the cloud as well, but I don’t see the act of downloading and
maintaining a personal music collection in general going anywhere.

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freshbreakfast
Hey I wrote the blog post, and I'm firmly in bucket 2. I frikkin love music.
If it was up to me, we'd all go back to vinyl bumping through wide cones set
in heavy oak. I just don't think we define the market because we're so in the
minority. As sad as it might be, I think convenience wins over quality
everytime, so bucket 1 will define the market. I'm not trying to define the
market, I'm just trying to predict it... so it is what it is.

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simba-hiiipower
"If it was up to me, we'd all go back to vinyl bumping through wide cones set
in heavy oak" Hell yeah!

And I totally understand that, all I’m saying (and this is based on my general
understanding of the market and no hard data at all, so take it as you will),
but there’s a lot of people like you and me out there, and the market will
exist, and can thrive serving us. And looking at things from the perspective
of current digital music sales ignores the bulk of these people. If anything,
a focus towards developing a model that serves people like us will only go
towards expanding the market for music ‘sales’ (i.e. converting would-be
pirated downloads to sales).

And without going too far-off on a tangent, I’d also argue that the market in
many ways depends on the minority of high-volume consumers functioning as the
‘early adaptors’ who discover music and popularize it for the masses. This
market, in my opinion, will always be a fairly strong force and will always be
served in some fashion that involves ownership (whether that be legal or
otherwise).

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zainny
Am I the only one out there who listens to a lot of their music almost
exclusively through YouTube?

There is a lot to dislike about YouTube and how it handles music, but when it
comes to _instantly_ finding music that I want and without no restrictions on
playback, YouTube works wonderfully well (at least, for me)

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meej
YouTube is definitely my first stop when I want to check out some new-to-me
music that my friends have been raving about. It's my new, on-demand version
of MTV.

I dislike what often happens if I add something to a playlist for future
listening, however -- videos disappear, for a multitude of reasons. I have
several genre-specific playlists I've curated that require regular maintenance
because of this, and I can't always find alternatives for stuff that's gone
offline. It's frustrating.

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josefresco
Darnit ...and I came here hoping to read an article trashing iTunes _the
software_ not the _iTunes as representative of the entire digital download
business_.

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chaostheory
yeah I feel that the title needs to be more specific as well.

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freshbreakfast
Freshbreakfast here, my real name is Bryan Kim and I wrote this post. I want
to thank my fellow hacker news'ers for the mind-blowing discussion in this
here comments. Like literally mind-blowing stuff, I'm still Q-tipping the grey
matter out of my ear holes. Definitely stealing a lot of these points for my
next post :)

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oinksoft
Good. Maybe then I can have my music player/library that's just a
player/library, like the original iTunes.

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sukuriant
VLC? Winamp?

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oinksoft
Sadly neither is anything like the original iTunes. It really wasn't very
different from iTunes now: Imagine iTunes without any references to a store,
apps, movies, etc., completely focused on importing, burning, listening to,
and organizing music.

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Terretta
Notice the emerging "Synchronization" category? Apple (and Amazon and Google)
thinks iTunes as we used to use it may become obsolete too.

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yojimbo311
Precisely. iTunes has grown to be many things, but Apple isn't going to sit on
it's hands and do nothing to address emerging trends. They have stubbornly
rejected the subscription model in Music for years (even this post supports
that general consumer behavior justified that position), but a subscription
model isn't the only way to address the emerging consumption trends and
improve on convenience. If it is I can't believe that iTunes Music would
ignore the model if general consumer behavior shifted in favor of it.

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stcredzero
A cloud hosting model subsidized by hardware sales would have many advantages.

For one thing, it would feel "free." People wouldn't be explicitly paying for
the privilege of listening to music they already own. They'd be implicitly
paying for super-convenient hosting and access from everywhere.

In effect, it would be almost the same thing, but the spin on the two models
is vastly different. It could be entirely hidden for someone who buys a new
Macbook every two years with AppleCare.

Come to think of it, maybe it would be a good idea to sell such hosting
included as a part of AppleCare. Cloud hosting of user media data could well
reduce the warranty related costs for Apple.

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kevingao1
interesting to me to see the parallels between music and books. seems that
music has always been a bit ahead on the innovation curve for a variety of
reasons and we're just getting to the itunes for books (eg, kindle), now...

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batista
> _All this is not to say that the music industry as a whole is doomed. My
> ultimate point is that when recorded content becomes un-productized, it ups
> the viability of other types of direct-to-fan products._

No, it means the music industry as a whole is doomed, period.

The other BS "experience" selling "direct-to-fan" he describes a few
paragraphs later, is not the music industry.

In fact, for the most part it is less artistic than the music industry (which
was mostly all about the money), and less about the music. It is mostly
musicians reduced to making parlor tricks and selling merchandise, concepts,
videos, nice boxes, etc, that is anything that music to their audience, to
make up for lost music sales.

Musicians are not there to sell "experiences" in general: they are there to
sell musical experiences. That's their art. Now that music does not make that
much money, they will have to sell other crap and treat music as a byproduct.

Aside from all the pretty boxsets, concepts, t-shirts, dolls, interactive apps
etc, the only "experience product" that retains the direct and primary link to
music as art, is live shows.

And for some musicians even those are not to their taste, they'd rather just
record and sell songs (remember how Beatles lost interest and stopped doing
them? Or how lots of electronic, avant guarde etc genres do not make much
sense live anyway, nor their creators want to perform as much as your local
pub band / metal geezers want it?)

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jamesbritt
_Musicians are not there to sell "experiences" in general: they are there to
sell musical experiences. That's their art._

In his book "A Year with Swollen Appendices" Brian Eno has an essay that makes
a good case for the role of music in pop music and pop culture.

Basically (and I wish there was a link this someplace) he argues that in
popular music people are in fact selling an experience, a lifestyle, a way for
people to self-identify. It isn't a matter of here's the music and then
everything around it (i.e. all the packaging) is secondary, but that in many
(maybe most) cases the packaging is really what matters; the music is somewhat
incidental to the whole product.

I don't want to get into a No True Scotsman debate, but there are plenty of
musicians whose art, while ostensibly musical, is not strictly limited to the
music. Their art is in the entire packaging, presentation, and communal
environment created.

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mturmon
Thanks for the pointer, I spent the last 30 minutes reading the book.

You may know this already, but this is in the essay called "Culture" which
starts on page 317 of the book you mention. The preview on Amazon includes
this passage, which is on page 318. The other essays there are worthwhile if
you're into Eno -- a lot are in the preview.

[http://www.amazon.com/Year-With-Swollen-Appendices-
Brian/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Year-With-Swollen-Appendices-
Brian/dp/0571179959/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339099875&sr=1-2)

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jamesbritt
Google found me links to Amazon, but it never occurred to me that there might
be a preview that happened to have exactly what I was talking about. Very
cool. Thanks.

For folks who have not read or heard of this book, it starts out like a more-
or-less normal diary, but soon becomes a set of observations on working,
creating, dealing with people, making art and music, and a bunch of other
stuff. The second part of the the book, the appendices, are a set of
interesting essays, fleshing out many of the things he touches on in his diary
entries.

Even if you're not a fan of his music he has some provocative ideas.

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jeffehobbs
"Will Soon Be"? How about "Has Been" and "For Years".

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wmeredith
On what planet? They've been the number 1 music retailer in the world (and
still are) since 2008.

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freshbreakfast
On early adopter planet? Which you can say is the "3-5 years in the future"
planet? ;-)

