Brilliant Steve Jobs interview
Rolling Stone did this fantastic interview with Steve Jobs about the iPod, iTunes, and the future of the music industry. It is awesome. I think Jobs is a visionary and his ideas about music and why iTunes is successful are spot on. I know we have had discussions like this before, that ended without any real resolution. Well, Jobs resolves most of it, so you really should read this.
Not to rain on your Apple parade but have you seen this – I have no idea if its true or not (hence why its nots a regular post here) but it did make me think twice about dropping the $500 on the 40giger – I will defintely do more research.
The link should be:
http://www.ipodsdirtysecret.com/
I think Chris is sleeping with Steve Jobs.
Mitchell, that is a pretty interesting. Have you tried calling Apple with a similar scenario?
There was one great point in a NYTimes article about the iPod and iTunes, made by a music exec. If the better iPods allow you to store up to 10,000 songs, obviously the expectation can’t be that people are going to fill these things by paying a dollar a song. Sure, they’ll rip existing cd’s from their collections, but you’re still talking about a pretty big incentive to pirate. And the memory space is only going to increase.
yeah, and the http://www.ipodsdirtysecret.com story is simply not true: you can replace the battery for $50 from third parties or $99 from apple.
many people can replace the battery by themself (chris: just be careful with that hammer when you want to open your ipod) – bloody rumors…
To quickly address both points:
1. The iPod dirty secret thing is total bullshit. The guy basically made an ass of himself. Not only are there 3rd party replacement batteries for $50 – $75, (where you have to open your iPod and do it yourself), but you can send it to Apple and they’ll put in a new battery for $99. In addition, Apple now offers Applecare warranties for iPods for about $69 that include battery replacement.
2. Rob, I remember that Times article about how much it would cost someone to fill the iPod at .99 a song. Good article. I think the point of why Steve Jobs is spot on in this interview is that he basically says – of course some people are going to steal. You can’t avoid it. The only way to compete with the theft is to compete with the experience – offer something compelling and cost-efficient. Yeah, of course people are going to rip their own CDs. They should, Apple wants them to, the RIAA doesn’t care, and iTunes makes it really easy to do.
Where the future really took shape for me was the idea of Apple signing artists directly, and of labels squashing the advances. The idea of the straightforward 50/50 profit sharing model with artists should be very appealing, as you should be very well-aware (you own a company that does it)…
Another really insightful point was Jobs’ understanding that they may have lost a generation of mindshare, that the current generation of kids were “ruined” by Napster and Gnutella. He really is thinking about long-term solutions as opposed to everyone one else who can’t think past Q4.
crazyapplerumors.com had also something about iPods.