DrJones
12-09-2003, 10:38 AM
link (http://www.rollingstone.com/features/featuregen.asp?pid=2529)
It's an interview with Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) about the recording industry. For those who don't know the background, Apple (who makes computers) has made a lot of money off the music industry (itunes and ipod), while the music industry hasn't. People always said RIAA was pretty stupid, and they didn't know much about how to run a business... well this guy does, and he has profited from it.
Because of their technological innocence, I would say. When we first went to talk to these record companies -- about eighteen months ago -- we said, "None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.s here who know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content."
Of course, music theft is nothing new. There have been bootlegs for years.
Of course. What's new is this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property, called the Internet -- and no one's gonna shut down the Internet.
And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. The way we expressed it to them was: You only have to pick one lock to open every door.
At first, they kicked us out. But we kept going back again and again. The first record company to really understand this stuff was Warner. Next was Universal. Then we started making headway. And the reason we did, I think, is because we made predictions. And we were right. We told them the music sub******ion services they were pushing were going to fail. MusicNet was gonna fail, Pressplay was gonna fail. Here's why: People don't want to buy their music as a sub******ion. They bought 45s, then they bought LPs, they bought cassettes, they bought 8-tracks, then they bought CDs. They're going to want to buy downloads.
They didn't see it that way. There were people running around -- business-development people -- who kept pointing to AOL as the great model for this and saying, "No, we want that -- we want a sub******ion business."
Slowly but surely, as these things didn't pan out, we started to gain some credibility with these folks.
It's a good read for those interested. Helps show you just how ignorant the music industry really is....
It's an interview with Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) about the recording industry. For those who don't know the background, Apple (who makes computers) has made a lot of money off the music industry (itunes and ipod), while the music industry hasn't. People always said RIAA was pretty stupid, and they didn't know much about how to run a business... well this guy does, and he has profited from it.
Because of their technological innocence, I would say. When we first went to talk to these record companies -- about eighteen months ago -- we said, "None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.s here who know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content."
Of course, music theft is nothing new. There have been bootlegs for years.
Of course. What's new is this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property, called the Internet -- and no one's gonna shut down the Internet.
And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. The way we expressed it to them was: You only have to pick one lock to open every door.
At first, they kicked us out. But we kept going back again and again. The first record company to really understand this stuff was Warner. Next was Universal. Then we started making headway. And the reason we did, I think, is because we made predictions. And we were right. We told them the music sub******ion services they were pushing were going to fail. MusicNet was gonna fail, Pressplay was gonna fail. Here's why: People don't want to buy their music as a sub******ion. They bought 45s, then they bought LPs, they bought cassettes, they bought 8-tracks, then they bought CDs. They're going to want to buy downloads.
They didn't see it that way. There were people running around -- business-development people -- who kept pointing to AOL as the great model for this and saying, "No, we want that -- we want a sub******ion business."
Slowly but surely, as these things didn't pan out, we started to gain some credibility with these folks.
It's a good read for those interested. Helps show you just how ignorant the music industry really is....