Wily Steve Jobs Wins Again
Amazon.com's announcement yesterday of its DRM-free MP3 store is an amazing victory for that wily fox, Steve Jobs. Jeff Bezos has thrown the weight of the Amazon franchise behind DRM-free digital music distribution, securing the future of the iPod franchise.
Apple sells hardware. Software is strictly a way to move the iron (or the plastic, composites and silicon). To sell iPods, Jobs discovered, he needed to fix the fragmented MP3 song distribution system. Thus he begat iTunes, which is really two things: a music store, and software that organizes your electronic music.
As soon as the iPod/iTunes team dominated the market, Jobs issued his famous "DRM Sucks" missive, in which he blamed the evil music companies for forcing him to sell DRM-restricted music. Why? Because once iPod, propelled by iTunes, became synonymous with "portable music player" and had market dominance, its growth needed a robust market for songs. The more songs available in more ways, the more iPods (and other Apple music-playing gadgets like the iPhone) would sell. DRM gets in the way of music purchases which gets in the way of iPod purchases. That is why Jobs declared that DRM is evil.
So now Apple sells DRM-restricted songs for 99 cents, DRM-free songs for $1.29, and Amazon offers DRM free songs for 89 cents. Watch as prices continue to drop and volumes rise. No one knows better than Amazon how to pump online sales volume.
And notice that the graphics on the Amazon Mp3 store beta site are loaded with iPods.
What about the future of iTunes? I don't think Jobs really cares that much, but the iTunes software will remain the iPod user's music organizer of choice and the iTunes store will evolve to help shape the market for music to Apple's liking. And video...
Yes, next is the Jobs attack on the video market, which has just really begun. The video content producers would do well to get over DRM now. Copy protection has never succeeded in the marketplace. Get over it.
Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman
Technorati: Business Strategy, Strategic Planning, Apple, Amazon
Apple sells hardware. Software is strictly a way to move the iron (or the plastic, composites and silicon). To sell iPods, Jobs discovered, he needed to fix the fragmented MP3 song distribution system. Thus he begat iTunes, which is really two things: a music store, and software that organizes your electronic music.
As soon as the iPod/iTunes team dominated the market, Jobs issued his famous "DRM Sucks" missive, in which he blamed the evil music companies for forcing him to sell DRM-restricted music. Why? Because once iPod, propelled by iTunes, became synonymous with "portable music player" and had market dominance, its growth needed a robust market for songs. The more songs available in more ways, the more iPods (and other Apple music-playing gadgets like the iPhone) would sell. DRM gets in the way of music purchases which gets in the way of iPod purchases. That is why Jobs declared that DRM is evil.
So now Apple sells DRM-restricted songs for 99 cents, DRM-free songs for $1.29, and Amazon offers DRM free songs for 89 cents. Watch as prices continue to drop and volumes rise. No one knows better than Amazon how to pump online sales volume.
And notice that the graphics on the Amazon Mp3 store beta site are loaded with iPods.
What about the future of iTunes? I don't think Jobs really cares that much, but the iTunes software will remain the iPod user's music organizer of choice and the iTunes store will evolve to help shape the market for music to Apple's liking. And video...
Yes, next is the Jobs attack on the video market, which has just really begun. The video content producers would do well to get over DRM now. Copy protection has never succeeded in the marketplace. Get over it.
Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman
Technorati: Business Strategy, Strategic Planning, Apple, Amazon
Labels: Amazon, Apple, Business Strategy, Strategic Planning
posted by Phil Bookman at 11:25 AM
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