Universal and the rest of the good ol' record boys in Hollywood have been raking in the bucks by s******* over desperate artists and picking the pockets of hormone-addled teenagers for decades. Now they want us to feel sorry for them because someone finally put the thumbscrews onto them for a change? I think not.

Apple has along history of creating markets from nothing only to see them wrested away by others. Let's face it, the people who run Microsoft and the people who run the music companies are not stupid. The online music market Apple innovated from nothing is quite a prize to be had. Cool, calculating intellects are look with greed upon Apple's creation. And they will have it if they can.

I didn't hear the studios asking Sony for a cut of Walkman, radio, or TV sales. It is the same thing. The products work hand in hand to sell each other. People wouldn't buy music if you couldn't listen to it. Universal plays no part in the product of iPods, so it should get any money on the sale.

apple is as smart as the competitors, probably smarter. and i think they've learned their lessons, and are at least a step or two ahead. most of the markets they lost, they lost in their first 10 years. they are now stronger for it. creating a market is hard enough, but to recreate it after you're all but dead and gone is quite remarkable.

and yes, universal's next version of napster will fail.

Boy, Doug Morris sounds like the angry OLD f*** that he really is. I just read the issue heading into work and man, was I fuming. Here is someone who is angry because he got "tricked" into a deal with Apple because "music people aren't technologists". Because of this shameful disgusting trick by Jobs & Co., now he is ganging up with the IP mafia to band together with Microsoft (who pays them $1 plus royalties) to sucker Jobs back. Wow, talk about a blinded horse. His ego is getting in the way.

He then blames the iPod "only" for tons of stolen IP and wants to DRM everything which has proven to piss people off. Those "fat margins" he speaks off from the CD era is what he wants to bring back - sadly, he alienated an entire customer base who now views the IP milita as nothing more than greedy bloodsuckers. They want a lot from Apple - like iPod royalties -- but what did the music business ever give back to anyone?

Doug -- before you wage war on Apple, don't lose sight of the people who buy from you. You should retire because it seems you still don't get technology.

No, they've run their business down to the ground with formulaic music and forced inclusion of so so songs bundled with some hit songs on a cd for $17.99. That caused people to download music illegally.

iTunes stopped that by creating something that people ACTUALLY WANT TO PAY FOR, when they can get the content for free.

Now they are getting greedy again, they see the success, and think they can do it themselves. What a short attention span these idiots have...

...if the record labels want money from each iPod sold, the easiest way for that to happen is to invest heavily in AAPL stock.

Even with the recent "blowout" of the Zune 30G, methinks that hundred or so grand of income pales in comparison to the gains in AAPL.

Everything you need to know about what happened to the buggy whip manufacturers about a hundred years ago, is right there in the interview with Universal Music honcho Morris.

The music industry is so accustomed to a business model where they are putting artists over a barrel, putting music buyers over a barrel, putting EVERYONE over a barrel, that they can't conceive of any other way of operating.

If a DVD of a film costs $15-$20, why the h*** should I pay $18 for a CD of music, with only one or two or at most three tracks that I really want to hear?

Which takes more money and effort, a film or a music CD?

These guys are dinosaurs and they are perpetually five to ten years behind the curve, which these days is like being 50 years behind.

that interview really is pathetic. Is it any wonder Napster and then iTunes stole their lunch?

Not to mention, the RIAA has pissed off a generation of music buyers (people under 30) with their heavy-handed anti-piracy legal tactics. They've made everyone feel justified in P2P piracy with their legal bullying. Plus their inability to come up with an easy way to buy music online is what allowed P2P to get a foothold in the first place.

read the comments attached to this New Yorker column about the Wired article. There are several comments in there from people with lots of experience in the music business. Every single one of these commenters can give you insight into the depth of the cluelessness at the record labels.

oops forgot the freakin' link

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2007/11/universal_music_ceo_doug_morris.html

goes unpunished. Jobs showed the music industry how to do successful digital music sales online, and now they hate him for it.

if it was up to Universal, downloads would cost $3 a song or you would be forced to buy 3 songs at a pop or something stupid like that. IOW if Jobs/Apple didn't control iTunes, the music industry would have figured out how to run it into the ground by now.

is not a proprietary Audio format_

The DRM scheme used on Apple's earlier files is proprietary_

AAC - 10 years old_

MP3 - 16 years old_

AAC was developed as a more advanced progression and replacement for the older MP3 format_ AAC takes advantage of MPEG4 specifications_

Apple only made the AAC format "famous" or popular because it adopted the format in line with the success of the iTMS_

While I understand your sentiments, I think some of that is misplaced. The labels make more than .65 per song on iTunes purchases. In order to get this, they need to give apple the digital version of the song once. That's it. If the song sells 100,000 copies on iTunes, they get $65,000 for that song, at the cost of essentially nothing.

Apple, meanwhile, needs to develop and maintain the iTunes Music Store (easier than it may other wise be because it's WebObjects, but not even close to trivial) and they need to maintain the servers, do all of the promotion for it, etc. They get .34 per song.

Apple's main benefit is that it encourages the sale of iPods, but that depends largely on how well they do building and maintaining the store. Until the ITMS, iPods were cool, but not at all a significant player. They exploded with success because of the ITMS. Thus, Apple is providing something of value, and is getting huge success because of it.

The labels, by contrast, provide virtually nothing to the equation, except promotion and clout to deliver cds to brick and mortar stores. If ITMS is selling 22% of the music in the US this year, the labels are scared sh*tless, because the musicians (the ultimate producers of the value) will be more inclined to make their own arrangements with ITMS, and not even bother to sign with a label to begin with. The labels, in that situation, will simply die.

We're not there yet, but that seems to be what they're afraid of. So they're trying to make Apple as this Villain, simply because Apple is providing a valued service that they seem less and less capable of providing.