[Update 5] AppleInsider’s report today on a new Rogers wireless $20 unlimited on-device browsing package called the $20 Communicate Value Pack got me super excited about finally having a data plan worthy of my iPhone:
Canadian wireless carrier Rogers Communications, often criticized for its exorbitant data rates, has just introduced a $20 per month unlimited data plan that could knock out one more barrier to an official iPhone launch in Canada.
The Toronto, Ontario-based carrier said customers could start adopting the new plan, dubbed the $20 Communicate Value Pack, beginning today. In addition to unlimited on-device mobile browsing, it also offers 2500 standard outgoing text messages, 1000 outgoing picture or video messages, call display and voicemail.
I immediately called Rogers to find out more about the package and sign up if it was true. I was connected with a sales rep who seemed adamant that the unlimited browsing was limited to a 3 month promotion period, afterwhich it was limited to 5MB of data. So I jumped on Rogers website and found the plan listed exactly as AppleInsider had reported here and here. I took the following screenshots, just to prove it, in case the website changes:
I pointed this out to the customer service rep, and she seemed to disagree on what the website actually said, continuing to argue that the unlimited browsing was for the promotion period only, no matter how hard I tried to convince her that the website didn’t mention that at all. So I asked to speak with a supervisor. After a good five minutes on hold, the supervisor finally came on and after she was sure where I was coming from, she put me on hold for another five to ten minutes before coming back, apologized sincerely and explained that it was an error on the Rogers.com website. The plan is only a 5MB data plan, with unlimited browsing for only the first 3 months. Apparently I raised a serious shitstorm over at Rogers HQ, because she said they were working to have the error corrected on the website, and thanked me for bringing it to their attention.
Needless to say, I was quite disappointed, but pleasantly surprised when she then offered to credit my current $10/10MB data plan AND give me unlimited data for the next 6 months. I guess I couldn’t argue with that deal. I would have rather been able to pay $20/month for unlimited data forever, but 6 months of unlimited data for free is a pretty good consolation prize. I guess I was so pleasantly surprised because for once Rogers actually offered to try and make me happy without me having to get mad or threaten to cancel my service. If I’m really lucky, Rogers will actually start offering an unlimited data plan for $20/month by the time my 6 month freebie expires. 
If any of you actually manage to get the $20 plan as was advertised above, or a sweet payout like I got, please post your experience in the comments below or discuss it in the Art Of Geek forums!
Update 1 - 2/6/2008, 2:35 pm: Well, if the plan posting on Rogers website is a mistake, they’re taking their sweet ass time correcting it. I’m starting to doubt the information provided by the rogers reps I spoke to, but I would caution anyone adding this plan to their iPhone to be extra careful that you have them confirm that it will work with an iPhone, and make a note of the person’s name and the date and time of your call to Rogers in case they try to bill you additional charges. The fine print listed on the first page I link to above states the following:
* Plan includes unlimited on-device mobile browsing only. Plan is available on select phones only (PDAs such as Blackberry or Windows Mobile devices, PC cards and non-Rogers certified devices are not eligible). Data usage incurred on ineligible devices, incurred while tethering (using device as wireless modem for laptop) or incurred using non-Rogers (3rd party) applications downloaded to your device will be subject to pay-per-use charges of 5 cents/KB.
That sounds a lot like Rogers might very well be able to get out of honoring the “unlimited on-device browsing” for iPhone customers by claiming that it’s not one of the ’select phones’, or is classified as a PDA, or is ‘a non-Rogers certified’ device. I have to say though, if they do want to play hardball, they’re going to have a bit of a legal issue if their customer service reps aren’t explaining this to customers and the fine print is missing from the 2nd link I posted detailing what’s included in the plan.
Update 2 - 2/11/2008, 4:05 pm: The news has finally been picked up by the mainstream media. CBC.ca posted this article earlier today:
Rogers ‘unlimited’ cellphone plans draw fire.
Update 3 - 2/11/2008, 4:25 pm: Ars Technica is covering the story as well:
Rogers Unlimited data plan not so unlimited after all. Do you think if they get enough bad publicity over this that they might do something about it? Yeah, I know, wishful thinking. This is Rogers we’re talking about…
Update 4 - 2/12/2008, 6:20 pm: The Register, a little late to the party, has also picked up this story:
Rogers wraps ‘unlimited’ mobile browsing in small print
Update 5 - 3/7/2008, 1:30 pm: Well, I just got screwed. Just got my Rogers bill, and they have switched me to the $20 Communicate Value Pack, even though I had explicitly told them I didn’t want my plan to change. Now I’m being told they can’t put things back the way they were because the $10 Mobile Internet Plan no longer exists. They still can’t give me a straight answer about the iPhone and the $20 Communicate Value Pack or $7 Unlimited on-device mobile browsing. So in 6 months when my unlimited data runs out, I’m probably going to have to either take a cut in data usage, or start paying more than I used to, maybe even for less data than I was getting before. The Data representative told me they only have $30/8MB or $60/30MB plans available now. This is progress?!?
February 5th, 2008
Today’s announcement by Apple & EMI about plans to offer EMI’s music catalogue in higher bitrate, DRM-free versions on the iTunes Store for $1.29 per song is huge. I don’t think it’s quite sunk in yet to the majority of people in the industry, or the web, just how huge it is. It’s pretty much a given that the rest of the music labels will be forced to follow EMI’s lead and open up their catalogues to high-quality DRM-less music downloads as well. Not only because they’ll bow to the competitive pressure from EMI’s soon-to-be success, but because they’re too greedy to pass up the opportunity to boost digital revenues by an extra 30% almost overnight. So it’s only a matter of time before all music sold through iTunes is offered in higher-quality 256kbps Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format, completely free of digital rights management.
There seems to be a big misconception about the AAC format. Many people seem to think it’s an Apple owned format, but that is incorrect. AAC is an open standard, and was developed by Dolby, Fraunhofer, AT&T, Sony and Nokia to replace MP3; it was declared a standard by the MPEG group back in 1997. Apple chose AAC for it’s iTunes Store because it was the logical industry standard format for their needs. It offers better quality audio at smaller file sizes and supports features like 5.1 surround sound and DRM. Apple’s DRM solution is called FairPlay, and is used to encrypt the AAC file so it’s playback can be limited to authorized devices. Remove FairPlay and you’re left with an open, industry-standard music file which will never, and can never, be controlled by Apple or any other single company. AAC has already gaining widespread support in the consumer electronics industry – even Microsoft’s Zune can play DRM-free AAC audio files.
Microsoft’s Windows Media Audio (WMA) format, in contrast, is a proprietary format. Only companies and devices that license it from Microsoft can use it. It was created so people would require Microsoft’s products in order to play back their music and by extension, make Microsoft lots of money. But in order to convince third party music sellers and device makers to support WMA, they needed to offer value. That value came in the form of a digital rights management system that could be licensed, saving everyone from having to make their own DRM system, the way Apple did. The record labels wouldn’t allow their music catalog to be sold digitally without some form of copy protection, fearing it would contribute to online piracy. So company after company came knocking on Microsoft’s door seeking to license their WMA/DRM solution, later branded “PlaysForSure”, in order to get a slice of the music download action. The record labels were set to hand Microsoft it’s music monopoly.
Apple no doubt saw the risk of letting Microsoft take over the digital music market. They were already seeing what Microsoft’s domination in the web browser and office suite markets was doing to lock people into the Windows OS. To combat the WMA threat, Apple at first decided to try promoting the MP3 format by releasing iTunes in early 2001 and the iPod, later that year for the Macintosh – both of which were promoted as “MP3 players”. But it was Apple’s decision to take iTunes and the iPod to the Windows platform a year later that was the trojan horse that would eventually lead to the death of WMA. In 2003, Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, later renamed the iTunes Store, and cemented their position as the leader in digital media, bringing AAC along for the ride. The rest is, as they say, history.
Once iTunes goes completely DRM free, competing stores will be forced to go DRM free as well, in order to compete. They’ll also jump at the chance to finally be able to sell music to iPod owners, something they’ve been begging for ever since the iTunes/iPod duo took over the market. But there’s one little thing–the iPod doesn’t play WMA formatted music. So one by one, Microsoft’s former media partners, no doubt still smarting from being locked out of Microsoft’s Zune party, will start selling DRM-free music in AAC format. Why? Because WMA, and even MP3, require royalty payments to use. AAC does not. There’s no point whatsoever in continuing to sell WMA formatted music, if you aren’t using Microsoft’s DRM copy protection.
So as the whole world adopts industry standard audio formats over the coming years, where does that leave Microsoft and their closed, proprietary WMA audio format? Dead in the water. Microsoft will be forced to adopt AAC for their Zune Marketplace, otherwise they’ll lock themselves out of all the consumer devices that are developed to support AAC, but won’t support WMA. Not to mention, even Zune owners won’t want to buy WMA formatted music for fear of not being compatible with future device purchases. WMA has lost it’s value proposition and will die a slow death along with Microsoft’s aspirations of obtaining a music format monopoly. It’s a great day for music lovers as well as the consumer electronics and music industries, and no doubt will be seen as the day Microsoft lost the music format war.
April 2nd, 2007
Those of us who have been lucky enough to get our hands on a Playstation 3 here in Canada will probably agree that there isn’t exactly a huge selection of content for the next-gen console yet. Like most people, I don’t have a huge amount of time to spend playing games, so this hasn’t been a problem for me, and I’m fully aware that the situation will get better as time goes on. March seems to be the month the floodgates will open on game releases, no doubt to coincide with the console’s March 23 European launch. It’s given me time to finish the games I already have before my attention is distracted by newer, shinier things.
So yesterday’s release of flOw was a welcome addition to the console’s catalog. This seemingly simple casual game is unlikely to keep me away from other retail Blu-Ray titles that are waiting to be finished, but I was excited to get home from work and give it a try. I had heard little about the game ahead of time, in fact I think my first real exposure to came from the online Flash version I heard about on Digg or Slashdot. The game intrigued me, as it really was nothing I had seem/played before. I purchased and downloaded the game last night from the Playstation Store, priced at $8.99 here in Canada ($7.99 in the US). I’m not sure why we continue to pay some of the cheapest prices in the world for digital online media, but I’m not complaining. Sure it’s no “at par” pricing like iTunes 99¢ downloads, but we are still getting better than market exchange rate!
So I played the game for about a half hour, maybe 45 minutes. It’s kind of hard to say because you really can lose track of time in this game. The basic premise is you are a water-born organism that has to eat other organisms in order to grow and evolve. It’s basic gameplay seems to be somewhat of a cross between the classic video games Snake and Joust, in that you have to eat to grow and evolve, but the other creatures you are trying to eat, are trying to eat you too, so you have to try to approach them from angles that will allow you to eat them without exposing your body to their mouth. Everything you eat, changes your body so you are constantly evolving based on what you eat.
The game takes place in a body of liquid, which I’m going to assume is water. Each level takes you deeper in the body of water, and you can vaguely make out what organisms exist in the next deeper level ‘behind’ you on the screen, which adds to the feeling of immersion. The ‘levels’ are relatively short, but there is no waiting between them, and you can easily move deeper and shallower through levels at will by eating the appropriate shaped and coloured floating cells. Red with inward pointing arrows to descend deeper, and blue with outward pointing arrows to ascend to the previous level.
I almost have no clue about how many levels I passed in the 30-45 minutes I played because there is no indicator about what level you’re on. Not only are the levels not indicated in any way shape or fashion, but there’s no score and no menu either! The game’s interface is completely devoid of any information whatsoever. When you launch the game from the PS3’s XMB interface, after viewing the customary bevy of brand logos that adorn the startup of every game, and a screen that describes the controls, you just start playing. No need to press the start button, or navigate any options. In fact, there are NO options. There’s nothing to configure whatsoever. The same screen that describes the controls also mentions that a second player can join in at any time, but I didn’t have a chance to try the multiplayer option out, so I’ll have to revisit this aspect of the game in a followup posting.
The refreshing surprise about the game when I first started playing is it’s controls. It uses the Sixaxis motion control completely for movement. You simply tilt the controller in the direction you want to travel, and your organism responds instantly. This game really showcases just how accurate and sensitive the motion sensor is in the Sixaxis controller. It took a bit of practice to realize that I had to use very subtle movements in order to have accurate control in the game, and after a bit of practice, I quickly got the hang of it. I have to say this method of control seems so utterly intuitive for this type of game, and I applaud Sony for releasing a game that truly takes advantage of this feature, rather than most PS3 games that add motion control as an afterthought. In fact the only other inputs you will use on the controller in playing the game is to press any button to speed your creature up in some fashion (this will vary based on what state of evolution your creature is in) and the Start button to pause/unpause the game. That’s it. This game’s control is as simple as it gets.
One other indicator that is missing from the screen, is how many lives you have left. Because you don’t die in this game! When predators eat parts of your body, you simply de-evolve into a simpler organism, which makes you a smaller target and insures you can still defeat the bigger stronger creatures you are up against–creatures that you will no doubt eventually become, once you’ve evolved far enough. The bigger and more evolved you become, the more ‘hits’ you can take before being devolved to something much smaller. So the trick to survival is to keep eating and learn the movement and tactics of each new enemy organism so you can get better at defeating them. Not having to worry about dying in this game really adds to the relaxed and enjoyable game-play. The words “game over” do not exist in this game whatsoever.
When you’re tired of playing, you simply exit the game as any other, and your progress up till a certain point is saved, to continue at a later time. There appear to be specific save points, which aren’t identified in the game, so there is the potential that you will lose some of your progress when you quit and come back. From what I can tell from my limited time playing, the save point appears to be when you pass a major milestone your evolution. When I finally quit the game, and quickly went back in to see where it continued from, I had lost a good few minutes worth of gaming, but nothing that I can’t get back the next time I play. I’m wondering if maybe had I paused the game before quitting, whether it would have saved my progress a little further. I’ll experiment on this next time I play.
flOw’s graphics are simple yet beautiful at the same time. The game supports both 720p and 1080i/p, so everything is very crisp and clear on modern TVs. The graphics are an interesting mix of 2D objects interacting in 3D space, much like looking at micro-organisms through a microscope. The game is very conservative with it’s use of colour, focusing more on shape and physics. Everything moves in a very natural and life-like manner, and everything seems to affect the movement of everything else in the way one would expect objects to affect the flow of the water around them. It’s probably a very complex physics engine, but it’s not apparent to the player. Everything just seems to move naturally, which I think is one heck of an achievement, from a developers perspective.
So is the game any fun to play? Yes, but not in ways that one might be used to. There’s no bright colours, annoying sound effects and fast-paced action that are usually associated with most addictive, repetitive, casual games such as Tetris. Playing this game doesn’t feel like work the way that playing Tetris does. It seems designed for longer average play time, with difficulty increasing at a slower pace and the subtle background music and natural freeflowing movement intended to relax, rather than stress. It’s really an anti-video game, in almost every way I can think of. From the relaxed atmosphere, slow difficulty progression and simple and intuitive controls to the utter lack of progress indicators, lives, menus and options, it really feels like the developers set out to create a game that has as little in common with traditional video games as possible, and succeeded.
flOw is a uniquely addictive game that one will play just for the sake of playing, as opposed to trying to beat the high score or attain a certain level. I can’t even imagine how people will discuss their progress in flOw with friends, given the lack of any clear progress indicators such as score or level names/numbers or any language at all. If flOw is the anti-video game, then maybe it isn’t meant to be discussed at all. Maybe it’s enjoyment should just be experienced and then forgotten about, which makes it the perfect game for people who don’t want to think about their games.
February 23rd, 2007
Last Friday, The Register, one of my regular reads posted an article by frequent contributor Andrew Orlowski titled The iPod’s Achilles Heel? It’s er… Reader’s Digest. I took objection to so many of the points Mr. Orlowski made, that I set out to write a rebuttal here on Art Of Geek.
The article in question brings up quite a few points, most of which are wrong, misleading or inaccurate. It attempts to identify the one major weakness the iPod has (it’s Achilles heel, to use a mythological metaphor), and make a point about how the Microsoft Zune or eMusic (or maybe both) have a chance to gain traction in the market by taking advantage of this weakness. Orlowski sums this weakness up at the beginning of the article as such:
â€But someone at Microsoft thinks they’ve found what may be the Achilles heel of Apple’s end-to-end music delivery system, of which the iPod is simply the best known part.
And it’s all about how you acquire music.â€
Sounds good so far. I read on expecting to find some yet undiscovered digital music strategy, or maybe an in-depth explanation of how the Zune’s Wi-Fi music sharing feature would be more than a gimmick and help Microsoft take some major market share back from Apple. Instead, what Mr. Orlowski presents is old news regurgitated in a not so new way. I got the impression of Mr. Orlowski as someone who has joined the party extremely late and proceeded to tell stories or jokes that everyone has already heard. Unfortunately for him, he gets the stories wrong, and ruins the punch-lines of the jokes.
The inaccuracies start right from the beginning, where he is wrong on two points:
“The iTunes store has been vital to the iPod’s success, which in turn has been the engine behind Apple’s recent growth. iTunes dominates the legal download market in the same way the iPod dominates the MP3 player business. It’s hard to remember now that for the first year of its life the iPod was a flop. But once Apple introduced iTunes for Windows, the mass market perception of the device changed from one of expensive luxury to convenience item.â€
First off, the iTunes Store has NOT been vital to the iPod’s success, it’s the other way around, the iPod has been vital to the iTunes Store’s success. The vast majority of people do not buy an iPod so they can use the iTunes store. They buy one to listen to their own existing library of music, either ripped from CDs or acquired through file-sharing services. It’s only after one installs iTunes that they will begin to discover the iTunes store. It’s iTunes, the software, which has been vital to the iPod’s success, ensuring a streamlined consumer-friendly interface and simple, reliable syncing with the iPod. Orlowski even debunks this inaccuracy later in the same article with this statement:
“The average iPod owner has done little more than dabble with Apple’s store, figures show, carrying an average of 21 iTunes-purchased songs. Extrapolate those numbers to the wider market and you’d have figures suggesting the public has suddenly stopped acquiring music. That clearly isn’t true - they’re simply getting it from other channels: physical and illegal-digital.â€
So which is it Andrew? Is the iTunes Store vital to the iPod’s success or is it just something that the average iPod owner simply dabbles with? It clearly can’t be both.
Furthermore, describing the iPod as a flop in it’s first year is complete hogwash. Compared to where it is now, it might be construed as such, but considering the iPod was first launched as a Macintosh only device, it was a roaring success, which explains why Apple even considered releasing a version for Windows. In fact, Apple sold over 1 million iPods before releasing the Windows version in October, 2003, and nearly three-quarter million in it’s first year. Only in Orlowski’s world can selling that many of something to a market that was only around 2% of the whole be considered a flop.
The article continues with a description of what the author believes the key factor in the iPod’s success was: the convenience factor of not having to burn CDs. Describing Apple’s original Rip, Mix and Burn campaign and how with the iPod it became simply Rip and Mix. An accurate account in my opinion, but he fumbles badly with this lie:
“Of course the cost of this convenience is pretty high - and is still born by the punter eventually - but the consumer perception of ease and convenience had to be there for the iPod to be a success.â€
Of course the author is referring to the price of the iPod in his reference to the cost being pretty high. Andrew Orlowski either doesn’t get paid very well by The Register for his articles, or he’s been hiding under a rock for the last few years of the iPod’s success. The iPod shuffle launched in January 2005 for as little at $99 US, and the entry price dropped to $69 US in February 2006. The 2nd generation iPod shuffle, which ships next month costs just $79 US.
The dementia and misinformation continues:
“Today, if you can get music industry types to agree on anything - and don’t forget the jostling between indies and majors, between publishers and recording rights holders puts any flame war in the shade - it’s that the iTunes Store isn’t the future of music. And after more than three years, this is a consensus that’s based not on wishful thinking, but empirical evidence.
Principally this is because iTunes doesn’t make money for anyone except Apple. In itself, the iTunes Store barely breaks even - but it fuels the much more lucrative downstream bit of the delivery system. iTunes sales remain vanishingly small as a proportion of the music business, but most importantly of all, iTunes doesn’t generate money for anyone except Apple. Broadband providers, PC manufacturers, insurance companies, and the battery-replacement services have all profited in some way from the iPod’s success - but no one in the music value chain. Steve Jobs doesn’t even leave crumbs on the table.â€
Interesting. Orlowski is obviously ignoring the fact that Apple’s iTunes Store sells 88% of all legal online music and that it is the number 5 retailer of ALL music (including physical media sales) in the US, up from number 10 just 10 short months ago. Apple said they are on track to unseat the #4 position holder, Amazon.com, in 1H2007. Back when they were only the number ten reseller, they were expected to account for 3.5% of all music sales in the US. Now that they are the number 5 reseller, where does that put them?
But the big lie from that last quote is his assertion that iTunes doesn’t generate money for anyone except Apple. A statement that seems perplexing given that in the very same paragraph, Orlowski states that the iTunes Store barely breaks even. It’s already been public knowledge for a long time that of the 99¢ Apple charges for an individual track on the iTunes store, 65¢ goes to the music label, 25¢ is distribution costs, leaving 10¢ for Apple, which gets eaten up by credit card fees and their own R&D and infrastructure costs. Of the 65¢ the record label gets, the artist apparently gets 10¢, which leaves the label with 55¢. So it seams that contrary to the BS that Orlowski would have his readers believe, the artists make as much as Apple does, and the labels make about 5 times as much, while assuming none of the financial risks of the sales model, or any of the distribution costs.
Orlowski goes on to try to minimize the impact that the iTunes store has had by using misleading statistics, and throws in another lie to boot:
“The average iPod owner has done little more than dabble with Apple’s store, figures show, carrying an average of 21 iTunes-purchased songs. Extrapolate those numbers to the wider market and you’d have figures suggesting the public has suddenly stopped acquiring music. That clearly isn’t true - they’re simply getting it from other channels: physical and illegal-digital.
So in business terms, the iTunes Store is a deceptive chimera. Pakman has a joke he likes to illustrate it.
“The iTunes Music Store [ITMS] buyer buys 25 songs in the first year, 15 in the second year, and in the third year, the battery has died, so you have to go out and buy a new iPod,” he says.â€
In journalistic terms, Orlowski’s article is the deceptive chimera. Dividing the number of iTunes Store songs by the total number of iPods holds no value whatsoever. First off, what percentage of iPods ever sold are no longer in use? Second, what percentage of iPod users actually buy music from iTunes? The more accurate calculation would be to divide the number of iTunes Store sales with the number of customers who have actually purchased music from the service. That would provide a more accurate benchmark and indicator of how the average iTunes customer uses the service. As for the “joke” regarding having to replace the iPod’s battery after 2 years, this is baseless. Of the three iPods I have owned, my first being an original 1st generation iPod purchased in December 2001 whose battery is still going strong and is used regularly by my brother. My second, a 3rd generation 40GB model bought in spring 2003, is still going strong as well and is in regular use today, three and a half years later. Orlowski’s joke reference also completely misses the fact that the batteries in most iPods can be replaced, either by Apple, third party resellers or the end-user themselves. A fact he himself alluded to in the previous quote, but has conveniently forgotten just 3 paragraphs later in his article.
But this isn’t the first time Andrew Orlowski has spread this misinformation about the iPod’s battery and iTunes store sales. I found an article dated March 2, 2006 titled iTunes’ long march to market share in which he attributed the exact same joke about iTunes Store sales and the iPod’s battery to Aydin Caginalp, partner at the law firm Partner, Alston & Bird:
“There are 21 songs bought from iTunes Music Store on the average iPod.”
But surely, you’ll point out, momentum is growing?
And here’s the third statistic to remember, which comes courtesy of Aydin Caginalp. He’s a partner at the law firm Partner, Alston & Bird, and he specializes in entertainment law. Here is the reality behind the figure of 21 songs per iPod:
“The iTunes Music Store [ITMS] buyer buys 25 songs in the first year, 15 in the second year, and in the third year, the battery has died, so you have to go out and buy a new iPod.â€
It became apparent at that moment that Andrew Orlowski’s latest article is simply a regurgitation of his previous eMusic article into a new one about the Microsoft Zune.
The article goes on about music subscription services, and how “every company wants to be in subscriptions businessâ€, but ignores the fact that the majority of consumers don’t want anything to do with them. Napster’s ongoing financial difficulties is evidence of this. That doesn’t stop Orlowski from trumpeting the success of eMusic, a company that has taken the far distant number two online sales position, despite the fact that eMusic isn’t a true subscription music plan. A quick read of eMusic’s about page reveals that the subscription only allows you to sample the music. Customers have to pay extra if they want to own the music. With Apple’s iTunes Store, you can sample all of the music they sell for free, and only pay when you decide to purchase it. Of course, it seams ridiculous to compare eMusic to iTunes, given that eMusic doesn’t sell music from ANY of the major labels, and iTunes primarily sells music from the majors, but that doesn’t stop Orlowski:
“From the labels point of view, eMusic is simply great for business. While it costs eMusic much more to run its store than Apple - because it’s offers much more than an “airport kiosk” looking to attract impulse hit-buyers - it’s more profitable. eMusic employs over a hundred people providing editorial content, and it works very hard on expert-generated and user-generated recommendations. But the value for labels is greater, because the eMusic store exposes material people woudn’t otherwise see. (In his desire to make the “Long Tail” a one-shape-fits-all buzzword/religious cult, author Chris Anderson wrongly lumps iTunes and eMusic together as examples of “Long Tail”, although one is, and one emphatically isn’t). eMusic fuels the value chain.â€
Of course he fails to identify the REAL reason eMusic and other subscription services are better for business: because they are worse for the consumer. They require the consumer to pay up front for music they might not even listen to. eMusic’s monthly subscription fee is $9.99 for a maximum of 40 purchased tracks, $14.99 for 65 tracks or $19.99 for 90 tracks. That’s in addition to the cost of each purchased track, which starts at 25¢ each. So with the entry level subscription, each track brings in a minimum of 50¢ in revenue, less than half of what an iTunes purchase does. Assuming the same distribution costs of iTunes, 25¢, that leaves just 25¢ per track to be shared between eMusic, the label and the artist. That’s about a third of what is available from iTunes. Better for business and the artist indeed. Of course, the equation isn’t even valid, because eMusic will never get the major labels on board at those prices, and iTunes sells indie music and older back catalogue music for the same 99¢ per track, so the artists and labels make much more money on each iTunes track than with eMusic.
The author goes on to repeat the iPod battery lie and adds a long-debunked iTunes Store fallicy with this tidbit:
“What Apple has, then, is a subscription scheme for buying hardware - each device rapidly expires, and there is only one supplier providing a repeat purchase that’s compatible with your iTunes Store purchases. What the music business wants is a subscription scheme for buying music. Somewhere, in the middle they may one day meet.â€
We’ve already identified the first part as being misleading a few paragraphs up, so I won’t bother going into it again. The assertion that Apple is the only supplier that provides devices to listen to iTunes Store purchases on, is so ridiculously false, I can’t believe Orlowski even thinks he can get away with it. How he can completely miss that iTunes purchases can play in iTunes, which runs on any personal computer that runs Windows XP or Mac OS X, as well as the iTunes equipped mobile phones made by Motorola, is a complete mystery to me. Of course, if he could miss those most obvious of iTunes Store uses, it’s understandable that he would miss the simple fact that each and every iTunes purchase can be burned to audio CD an unlimited number of times and played on any consumer CD player on the market. For shame Mr. Orlowski, for shame.
Andrew Orlowski is so out of touch with the realities of the digital music market, that he has convinced himself, and attempts to convince his readers, that subscription music services are in huge demand:
“(Unless … they agree they’d shift more respective units under a flat fee. With a universal subscription, we suspect, Apple couldn’t build iPods fast enough to meet demand, and would begin to rival GM in size. It has the best digital music player, bar none.)â€
With numerous music subscription services on the market for years, and none of them denting iTunes sales, there is absolutely nothing to support his suspicion that people want to pay a monthly subscription for music. Period. In fact, the opposite is true. Subscription consumers should take note, since they lose 100% of their investment if the company ever goes under, since the only way to listen to your subscription music is to keep paying the provider to maintain your subscription’s status.
So where’s the Microsoft Zune angle to this article? It finally materializes in the last two paragraphs:
“Where does Zune offer Microsoft some hope? Surely not in the Soviet-style industrial design - and surely not from gimmicks such as disappearing, time-bombed songs. Or the fact it brings another incompatible DRM scheme to the public. And while it may do more than the iPod, unless it does the basics very well or better, it’ll suffer the same fate as Microsoft’s phones. Which also do lots of things, none of them particularly well, and which only gadget-heads want to be seen with.
But where Microsoft can gain some rare good-will from the music business is by nudging the public to a subscription model. Not something in the company’s DNA, you may say, but there are plenty who want to see Apple nudged there too.â€
Orlowski finally gets something right, summing up the shortcomings of the Zune quite succinctly in that first paragraph, although I feel mentioning the fate of Microsoft’s phones without mentioning PlaysForSure or MTV’s URGE seems nonsensical to me. It becomes even more silly in that last paragraph where he makes it sound like the Zune is the first device/business model to ever push subscription services.
Ignoring Microsoft’s widely adopted PlaysForSure or the Microsoft/MTV URGE alliance shows a real lack of familiarity with the goings on in the portable mp3 player and online music market. Andrew Orlowski seems to have either never heard of, or conveniently forgotten, that Napster, Real Rhapsody and Microsoft have been peddling music subscriptions to the masses for a couple of years already with little success. He also fails to provide any insight whatsoever about why Zune and Zune Marketplace will be any different.
All of the above raises real questions about why The Register wastes their time posting the poorly researched ranting of Mr. Orlowski. Doing so does nothing but damage The Register’s credibility. I would suggest Andrew Orlowski spend a bit of time researching his topics better, otherwise stick with writing about topics he is knowledgeable about as it’s obvious he has no clue about the online digital music market, Apple, iPods or the iTunes Store. Pretending to have one doesn’t help his reputation as a columnist and does a disservice to his readers. I suspect Mr. Orlowski is one of the reasons why el Reg doesn’t have a reader feedback system. In the meantime, he will remain one of The Register’s weakest writers.
September 17th, 2006
c|net news has posted an article discussing the likelihood that Windows Vista will have a negative impact on the performance of the Internet due to it’s adoption of the IPv6 protocol.
“If you adopt Vista, your DNS traffic is going to double,” Mockapetris said in an interview. With many DNS servers already running close to capacity, this can have serious consequences, he said. “You’re going to see brownouts. All of a sudden, it is going to be mud season on the Internet, where things will just be kind of slow and gooey.”
Others quoted in the article disagree, citing DNS’s robustness, and predicting that Vista will have little to no impact at all.
IPv6 is an upgrade to the current IPv4 internet address standard, which allows for far more addresses–crucial in this day and age where everything from cell phones to handheld video games will be connected to the internet. In all fairness to Microsoft, IPv6 is not a new technology standard. It’s been around for years, and is necessary for the continued adoption and growth of the Internet. Mac OS X has had IPv6 support for years now (since version 10.2 Jaguar, released in 2002), and no one has complained about it.
The Internet is not a static product. It’s like a living, breathing organism, always evolving, growing and repairing itself. Sure, there may be some DNS servers that are close to being maxed out, but they will be upgrades if/when the need arises. Not to mention that Windows Vista isn’t not going to take the market by storm. If Windows XP’s adoption rate is anything to go by, it’s going to take years for even a quarter of the Windows installations to be upgraded to Windows Vista. That gives the Internet a lot of time to react. If DNS servers start failing due to increased adoption of Vista, that won’t be Microsoft’s fault, it’ll be the fault of server owners who didn’t properly monitor their equipment and failed to be pro-active in adding additional capacity.
As for Microsoft, I applaud their decision to finally include IPv6 support in Windows Vista (assuming it doesn’t get cut like many other cool features). My question is, what took them so long?
September 7th, 2006