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Comment by bane | Hacker News Reader

> Because it's antithetical to their business model. Simple as that.

I agree. Their model is built around locking consumers into this artificial and, these days, complete unnecessary workflow.

The next model Apple will have to go to is simple, the competitors are already there: iTunes on the web, cloud stream to your iDevice. But even then this will only work so long as iTunes continues to offer exclusive content that you can't get elsewhere, and that's also rapidly diminshing . As a content provider would you like to be locked into one platform or show up on as many as possible?

> iTunes invented modern online music distribution.

So? Their model is now, quite frankly and charitably, old fashioned. The only current purpose of which these days is to try and keep people from fleeing to other, better, platforms.

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> The only current purpose of which these days is to try and keep people from fleeing to other, better, platforms.

I can't refute this claim any more than you can back it up, so lets not waste our fingers on an argument about it. I agree with everything else you said, though.

Honest question though, and not meant to be argumentative (you already know my thinking on it). What does iTunes do for consumers that the other competing methods (online storefront, stream cloud to device, etc.) don't?

I'd imagine its for these couple reasons.

1.) None of the iPod's except the touch have WiFi or any internet connectivity. Can't stream cloud to device if theres no connection.

2.) Infrastructure. Consider for a second that albums routinely push 100+MB, and think about pushing that over 3G/LTE. Telcos will make a fuss, etc. Yeah you can force downloading only over WiFi, but then again whats the point? iTunes already has WiFi sync, and to most people that would be the exact same thing.

3.) iTunes is already there and most people already have it installed. If you don't like it, you can also use the online store on the phone.

What it starts boiling down to, is Apple is going to spend x-y million dollars building an online marketplace for some people who don't want to install iTunes.

What does an online storefront do for consumers that iTunes doesn't?

Provide a great experience.

Trying to explain to my parents how to get a music file from their browser downloads folder into iTunes would be challenging to say the least. However saying just click this button to Buy and it will be in your Recently Added playlist is much easier.

Perhaps it's a matter of taste but I was thinking yesterday that the iTunes app reminds of the old dial-in AOL.

What iTunes does is provide music from multiple publishers which you can buy with one click at which point the media is loaded onto all your players without requiring you to jump through hoops such as manually syncing file systems.

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