“Damn The Beatles” Says One Digital Music Exec
In response to the recent Hypebot headline "The 6 Top Bands Still Not On iTunes", a digital music executive sent this note:
"Damn the Beatles. Two weeks ago maybe, just maybe, the headline would have been 'The 6 Top Bands Missing From Digital'. People were just starting to think that maybe there was some digital music other than iTunes.
Then with one exclusive deal (after saying the would never do an exclusive deal), The Beatles set the whole industry perception back to DRM days when no one considered digital music anything other than iTunes. Fuck The Beatles. This is bad for the whole business." (more…)
"Maybe not as bad as when The Beatles convinced every band they needed to write all their own songs, but definitely a key step in keeping a hardware manufacturer in a monopoly position in the music biz. Fuck The Beatles."
This is why I have utter faith that music industry executives will be able to right their ships and sail authoritatively into the future.
What about iTunes circa 90% share of digital music sales was less of a monopoly 2 weeks ago exactly? I’m pretty sure iTunes has established by this point they didn’t need a short exclusive deal with The Beatles to be firmly in control of digital music sales.
I don’t know where this person is employed, but I hope to not work with them or the company that finds them useful. And if I already do work with them, I hope to not find out their identity, so I can continue to be nice to them.
The Beatles aka Paul Macartney and the record company has the right to distribute to whoever, wherever, whenever don’t they?
People use iTunes because those same people use iPhones and/or iPods. Apple was able to dominate the MP3 player sector and whoever does that will drive. Their customers to their model for supplying music for a fee. People tend to forget that people in general are extremely busy and lazy for that matter, and want the easiest solution to getting what they want. If you can give that same service better (in most cases) then you’ll have a juggernaut of a business. A perfect example is Facebook. Facebook took what Myspace and other social networking sites were doing and just did it better and easier. Now look at the result. We do unfortunately live in a world though, that money (especially big money) helps play a deciding factor in controlling market share.
~ Chancius
http://www.chancius.com
Anyone who believes what this “music executive” said is in essence, an uninformed douche bag. Get your facts straight. First of all, The Beatles never said they didn’t want to be on iTunes. Secondly, people convinced themselves to write their own music on their own, The Beatles were not trying to convince others to do the same. All they said was do what you want. The “digital music executive” quoted in this piece is being highly opinionated, but is ultimately seeing the issue from a perspective I’m not familiar with and doesn’t make sense. Saying “Fuck The Beatles”, makes me want to say “Fuck you digital music executive”.
If a digital music exec did make that statement, I suspect he/she is struggling with the unnamed service, and I can see why. This person is a whiner. There is not a digital music aggregation service available today that gives the user what they want. DRM-free tracks, no subscriptions, resonable prices, easy download method and a reasonably priced replacement/warranty package (hard drives fail, CDs break). Here’s a Kleenex — dry your eyes and get about just what it is they pay you to do. Notice I said Kleenex when I meant tissue. For better or worse Itunes is the equivalent of Kleenex in the digital music arena. Build a better site and it won’t matter.
It looks suspiciously like the only purpose for this Apple Corps / Apple Computers deal is that EMI needs to be saved by The Beatles one more time.