Apple stepping up pressure on music labels to snub Amazon | Hacker News Reader

Apple stepping up pressure on music labels to snub Amazon

arstechnica.com

37 pointscageface43 comments

It looks like every day that passes, Apple is trying to really demonstrate they're the new Microsoft.

And every day that passes I hate apple more and more..

"We're the largest mobile device company in the world. Larger than Sony, bigger than Samsung. And by revenue... even bigger than Nokia." - Steve Jobs when introducing the iPad.

It looks like they are satisfied with what they've done, now they're just counting their chips. They are one of the big boys, the fat cats. Apple, as we used to know it, is dead.

Essentially they can no longer really grow by just innovation and competing better in other people's space, so they've gone 180 and are now trying to block everyone else from innovating and competing better than them.

apple is still a small part of the smartphone market.

Could you relate that claim to the submission at hand?

Leveraging a dominant market position to stifle competitors perhaps?

Or to give an example, lets say Sears has been given a week of exclusivity for new Lego products and in exchange Sears will feature that product in a prominent display in stores (or online, whatever). In response, Walmart, the biggest distributor of Lego products in this scenario, threatens to stop selling Lego products if Lego doesn't break off the deal with Sears.

Or something along those lines...

Tech companies pushing to the top in an economy filled with unscrupulous companies, only to end up becoming what they were fighting. It seems so cyclical from this simplified view.

Steve Jobs is just going senile

Maybe I just remember it differently because at the time I was using Linux and always looking for ways to deal with everyone else who used Office and/or Exchange, but IMO the "New Apple == Old Microsoft" comparison is way off base.

Apple is easy to avoid, trivial even, you can buy one of many other music players, buy other phones and use other media managers. You don't need to use any Apple product unless you opt-in to their system (buying a device) and even if you do opt-in, if you buy DRM-free tracks (which Apple pushed for, btw) you can leave iTunes any time you want if you buy a non-Apple device (the only exception being video which is still DRM-laden AFAIK).

Old Microsoft was impossible to avoid because government and businesses opted you in, and you couldn't opt-out no matter how hard you tried if you wanted to interact with those systems. Word documents were difficult or impossible to reverse engineer and MS did what it could to prevent any advancement in that area, and Exchange was nearly impossible to interface with (it's still problematic) if you weren't using Outlook.

I mean, it's not like government and businesses are using iTunes and thereby forcing people to buy Apple products to interact with the corporate iTunes system (as was the case with old Microsoft, Exchange and Office).

Besides, Apple is certainly behaving badly, granted, but in this case they aren't even pressuring the labels to stop doing business with Amazon, they're pressuring them to stop giving Amazon a day of exclusivity. The Old Microsoft way was to threaten to cut off vendors just for competing, not for giving a competitor an advantage.

they're pressuring them to stop giving Amazon a day of exclusivity

Moreover they aren't even threatening to stop selling their product (as Amazon did with Macmillan's books), but to "[withdraw] marketing support for certain releases featured as Daily Deals". i.e. "If you use their promotion, you won't get ours." The idea that the labels don't like this is not surprising, because the labels love getting favors from everybody. What is surprising is that so many comments here seem to be in favor of the labels' interests.

> The Old Microsoft way was to threaten to cut off vendors just for competing, not for giving a competitor an advantage.

What specific incident(s) are you referring to? The closest thing I can think of is threatening to witholding volume discounts based on vendor behavior. As I understand it this practice is only illegal because the dominant market position of Windows and Office makes MS (retroactively) a monopoly. If a small startup did the same thing that would be fine both legally and (IMO) morally. I don't know of any cases where a vendor was threatened with not being able to sell Windows or Office (i.e., "cut off"), however.

I'm not referencing anything specific, so I could very well be wrong with that example.

How did apple and Microsoft ridiculously complexify file management. Why is it so hard to add and delete files ? Why do I have to sync with special software? Why can't the damn thing (zune or ipod) be the disk that it is? All about locking in control.

Is this the way most users of these devices feel? I don't get that impression at all. I'd go so far as to say that I bet MP3 players would be significantly less popular today if they all required file management via Explorer/Finder.

Are users really that incompetent? With all the millions of copies of Microsoft word, photoshop, winamp, etc that require knowledge of files and folders can the concept be that inscrutable to everyone? I mean, most people who are under the age of 50 these days are more likely than not to grasp the concept of a file, I'd bet.

There is a significant difference between understanding something intellectually and understanding it in such a way that it becomes intuitive or second-nature. That the task of getting the content from one place to another can be done reliably with practically no user intervention is a boon for people who don't find operating a computer intrinsically rewarding, and one of the key reasons the iPod was and is so successful among those people.

Being a HN reader, you probably have enough experience with computers that the cognitive load of tasks like file management is basically zero. But for most people, even many people who use computers on a daily basis, the cognitive load involved in managing a library of thousands of files is much higher than that of simply plugging something in. Unless they have a particular motivation to favor the former, the latter is always going to be more appealing.

I've seen a lot of people not understanding the save dialog in Microsoft Word and just saving the file at the default location of the save dialog... So, yes, I do think a lot of people are not very competent with computers.

It has nothing to do with competence for many users. I'm perfectly competent with computers and have all of my files organized just the way I want them. As part of that, I use iTunes because it acts as a good "database-style" front-end to my music and all of the operations I want to do with my songs/collections thereof. Manually organizing files in a hierarchical folder structure isn't the end-all be-all of productivity. I can't imagine what I'd gain from manually organizing all my music and I'd lose a lot of functionality.

The party line is this: Because that was too hard for consumers. For the technically inclined, keeping track of mp3's has been relatively simple. For everyone else it is hard. Songs get skewed across the file system, and some people simply do not understand the process of attaching a USB device and dragging songs onto it.

iTunes and Zune make it much easier for the average consumer to manage a library of music.

> iTunes and Zune make it much easier for the average consumer to manage a library of music.

Tell that to my dad and sister who deleted their whole collection of mp3s thanks to "iTunes making it much easier".

Playlists and metadata are just a better abstraction than a hierarchy of directories and files for music. Why should anyone care where the data is stored when they just want to hear a playlist?

Of course, control is the reason Apple/MS don't also allow access to the filesystem on these devices.

Playlists and metadata aren't a better abstraction for me. When I delete a song, I want it gone. Period. I don't want to be synchronized to your buggy client code. If I attach my player to a Linux box, dammit, why can't I just move files and podcasts back and forth like any computerized device with storage and a sane design can? Why? Sansa may be an also-ran in this game but dammit, you could do those things.

sync != copy

The latter gives you control, the former "just works" (usually).

So let's see here. Being a monopoly in music distribution and telling suppliers where else they can sell their stuff. Hello, anti-trust!

Being a monopoly in music distribution

What definition of monopoly leads you to that conclusion?

If you are large enough to determine the entire music industry you are a monopoly.

Microsoft gets all sorts of crap for windows being a monopoly yet there is still mac and linux that anyone can change to. Yet they are still considered a monopoly.

By that definition apple is a monopoly.

Microsoft hasn't been a monopoly for, what, a decade?

In 2006 Apple controlled 88% of online music distribution, so they are clearly a monopoly in online music distribution.

In 2008 Apple became overall #1 in music distribution, beating Wal-Mart, so they have a chance at monopolizing the retail music distribution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Store#Market_share

Sherman's act declares a felony any credible attempt at monopolization, other than by merit ("superior skill" defense).

2006 was before Amazon's download store even launched.

The iTunes Music Store launched on April 28, 2003.

I see now that when Jobs said that the "Don't be evil" mantra is bullshit, he meant pretty much that.

Apparently, not being evil is bullshit.

Dude. Wrong person(s)/company.

What is it with Jobs lately? Having a near-death experience and then deciding to be more of an asshole must be the true embodiment of "Think Different".

Edit: Perhaps he actually died last year and they got him to the pet cemetery before the stock went down.

If this were a movie, Apple would be the greedy figure that eventually gets left behind by every who believed in him when he winds up with a gun pointed at his best friend's head.

Just to be factual. Apple is not asking anyone to snub Amazon. They, according to a single anonymous source, are no longer providing promotional support to releases that give a competitor an exclusive period and then grant the iTunes store the right to sell their material after the best selling day is over.

Sounds reasonable to me. I wouldn't allocate my best marketing spots to weakened releases either.

Wonder how much of this will happen once Jobs retires.

I can tell you how much - look at Microsoft in 1990s.

If there is an opportunity to make a lot of money by abusing the antitrust law, the money will be made and distributed via bonuses to the sociopaths. The sociopaths will infiltrate the company, any company, as soon as they smell blood in the water. The law moves too slowly to impede them.

Bezos (lowering costs for consumers) vs Jobs (fleecing consumers) - I know who i'm rooting for

It sounds like you like one, and not the other, and are making up summaries to fit.

No, because jobs has been around longer and pirates of silicon valley movie, i actually like jobs more. However, from an intellectual standpoint i think bezos is the better man for consumers.

I see where you're coming from, but I think you're overlooking a few things.

Apple basically showed the labels that selling music online was "good", they pressured the labels to drop DRM and regularly pressure the content owners (music and video) to lower prices.

Basically everything great about Amazon MP3 (prices and lack of DRM) is there not because Bezos insisted on it, but because the labels are eager to (re)gain the upper hand against Apple.

Besides, Apple is objecting to Amazon getting a day of exclusivity in return for featuring new releases, I don't see how that benefits anyone other the label and Amazon.

Not that I approve of Apple's tactics here, just saying that painting Bezos as the good guy is not exactly correct and while Jobs has freakish control issues, he has historically focused on providing the best experience (in his eyes) for consumers.

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