The power of digital music: iPod and iTunes Music Store - by Eddy Lee
From Mod Mania
Contents |
Introduction
iPod is the most popular portable digital music player, which leads the technology of playing and recording. On the other hand, Apple Inc. has introduced the iTunes Music Store to sell songs thought the Internet. Therefore, it attracts people to use. In the tram we always see passengers using iPods. In the classroom, more than 50% of students have an iPod. However, some students have had more than 1 iPod. Also, many companies are increasing their profit caused by producing accessories for iPod. In addition, almost every car has a connection to plug the iPod into their car audio. The iPod has become an icon of digital music player, since Apple has sold over 100 million iPods. This essay describes about the history of music playing and recording technology, the power of the iPod, online distribution and illegal file sharing.
A history of music playing and recording technology
From the first of the gramophone to iPod, the technology of recording and playing music has continually evolved. In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the first recording of a human voice using his tinfoil cylinder phonograph. However, the capacity of recording was only a couple of minutes. A year later, Edison introduced an improved phonograph using a battery-powered motor and wax cylinders. In the early 1890s, the improvement in sound recording and music storing continued at a rapid pace, with more durable discs and cylinders being produced with less surface noise and longer playing times. In 1963, the first compact audiocassette was released.
In 1979, Sony introduced the ‘Walkman’, which was a pocket-sized audio cassette player with headphones. Paul du Gay stated that ‘Sony Walkman’ occupies an important position and people chose it because it is a typical cultural artifact and medium of modern culture. Also, ‘Sony Walkman’ was an icon of music player at that time and it still produced today. After 5 years, the first digital audio compact discs and compact disc players hit the market in Japan and then later has speeded around the globe although this is not an immediate hit. After that, compact discs and cassettes remain the dominant formats.
The MP3 has been rapidly spread out through the Internet from 1998, which was invented by a group of German scientists. This is a format that compresses and stores digital audio, allows users to take files from the Internet and transfer them to multiple types of software and players. Also, Napster was introduced, which was a peer-to-peer file-sharing program. Users can share and seek songs, which they want. However, it was disappeared in a short time caused by piracy lawsuits. Despite of Napster shut down, MP3 still has becomes popular. Therefore, Apple observed the market of MP3 player has a good opportunity. Thus, in October 2001, they launched the first generation of the iPod, which was a portable digital audio player.
The power of ‘iPod’
Since iPod was first introduction on the market in October 2001, the white, 5.6-ounce portable digital music player has become to the icon of MP3 player that few other branded technological devices, with the possible exception of ‘Sony Walkman’, has previously attained. The iPods sales figures, about 10 million units sold in the first three and a half years of production. After that, the number of total iPod sales rapidly increased to over 100 million within three years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ipod_sales.svg). These figures indicated that iPod has yet to show its full market potential on a global scale, was something more significant than just a fad. Thus, iPod seemed to become a popular culture and increased a revolutionary impact, which has changed both the consumer and the digital music market. Therefore, the word ‘iPod’ was totally replacing ‘Walkman’ as a catchall term for ‘portable audio player’. Another significant changing was the gender of consumer electronics. In February 2004, when Apple has introduced the iPod Mini, a smaller version and providing different colors, then nearly as many woman as men purchased it. Therefore, these changing indicated that iPod has extended to a larger demographic space. According to Dylan Jones, ‘By April 2002 Apple’s iPod had 51 percent of the digital music player market, with the remaining 49 percent being split with the Rio, RCA Lycra, iRiver, and Digital Way (digital music players you never, ever wanted to be seen with). By 2008 there will be 18 million digital players in the world, and more than 10 million of those will be iPods.’
Purchasing of music through the Internet
iPod become an icon of portable audio player, another reason is iTunes, which is a digital media player application. iTunes was originally developed by Jeff Robbin and Bill Kincaid as a MP3 player application called SoundJam, and released by Casady & Greene in 1999. After that, it was purchased by Apple in 2000, given a new user interface and the ability to burn CDs, and released as the first version of iTunes. Originally, iTunes just supported in Apple computer. In October 2003, iTunes 4.1 was released and Apple added support for Microsoft's Windows. Therefore, iTunes became one of the most popular digital media player applications. iTunes allows users organize their music into playlists within one or more libraries, edit file information, transfer the music from CD to your iPod, copy files to a digital audio player, purchase music and videos through its built-in music store, download podcasts, backup songs onto a CD or DVD, create a audio CD, run a visualizer to display graphical effects in time to the music, and encode music into a number of different audio formats.
As the same year, iTunes Music Store has opened. It is an online business run by Apple, which sells music and media files that are accessed through its iTunes application. iTunes Music Store allows the user to purchase songs and transfer them easily to the iPod through iTunes. Since Apple was able to obtain the cooperation of the ‘Big Five’ music companies --- BMG, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal and Warner, the iTunes Music Store featured over 200,000 songs at its introduction, all of which could be previewed by iTunes. From that time, Apple totally entered to the digital music market. In the first two years, 200 million songs are sold by iTunes Music Store. According to the announcement from Apple in January 9, 2007, ‘more than two billion songs, 50 million television episodes and over 1.3 million feature-length films have been purchased and downloaded from the iTunes Store making it the world’s most popular online music, TV and movie store.’ and ‘Apple is also spearheading the digital music revolution with its iPod portable music players and iTunes online store.’ (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/01/09itunes.html)
Although Apple has attaches the digital right management (DRM) system into their music files to protect the copyright of their songs, which are purchased from iTunes Music Store. However, music sharing and illegal downloading are critical problem about the online distribution.
Music sharing through the network
iTunes users only share their music through the local network, because Apple believes that online sharing can affect their business and destroy the music industry. Therefore, iTunes users only can share their music by Rendezvous, which is a zero-configuration network protocol, supports publishing (the act of sharing) and discovery (the act of finding) across a subnetwork. A subnetwork is a small division of a computer network to run on both the Macintosh and PC platforms through router and communicate directly with each other. Users can automatically see any shared music on the same network. They do not have to take any explicit network connection action. In contrast, iTunes does not support music sharing over the Internet. In iTunes, music files only save on their host computer. Another users want to share the music only depending on steaming. Also, anyone might not be listening when host computer shuts down iTunes.
Music sharing through the Internet The music industry was changed forever in 1998, when Shawn Fanning, a teenage computer student, launched a file-sharing network application called ‘Napster’ (his nickname). This application allows anyone with an Internet-connected computer to share MP3 files without copyright. In June 2000 the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) got a temporary injunction to shut Napster down. Therefore, it was finally closed down in July 2001 by succumbing to the enormous legal onslaught. After nearly two years in November 2003, Napster has re-launched as a legal subscription service. At the same time, the RIAA sued more than 5000 file sharers, and its tactics clearly succeed. After that, the number of people illegally downloading music files in United States sharply has decreased from 20 million to 11 million between May 2003 and August 2003. On the other hand, there was a rise in the number of people using the legal download sites, such as iTunes Music Store. According to the statistics from the RIAA, in January 2004 there were only 15,000 legal downloads a week in the U.K.. However, there were up to 160,000 by September. As the result, over 6 percent of music industry revenues were coming from legal downloads by January 2005.
Although legal downloads begin to become popular, illegal file sharing still is critical problem. For instance, Apple has sold about 10 million iPods in January 2005. Meanwhile, about 200 million songs have been sold by iTunes music Store. Thus, the average of every iPod user might have about 20 songs on it purchased from the iTunes Music Store. However, 40G version iPod stores around 10,000 songs. Where do the 9,980 songs from? It could be the backup copies of legitimately purchased CDs or it possibly illegally download from file sharing or other sources from the Internet, such as newsgroups, websites and FTP sites. In the article ‘Thoughts On Music’, Steve Jobs is the CEO from Apple, who mentioned that, ‘DRM system haven’t worked, because the music company still sell their music by CDs, which contain completely unprotected music. Therefore, user can easily to upload the songs to the Internet, and then any user can illegally share and download to their computer or other digital music player.’ (http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/) As the result, iTunes Music Store still does not give any profit to Apple despite of it being the most popular online music retail service.
Conclusion
From the begining of the gramophone to iPod, listening to music has been not only for leisure. Therefore, people continually have innovated the technology of playing and recording sound. Since the first digital audio compact disc was released, music has totally entered the digital era. Unfortunately, more advance technology has produced more problems. In addition, the high speed Internet connection has lead to the problems becoming more critical. Although the Internet can provide a strong and large platform for independent artists and labels to promote their song, illegal file sharing is devouring the profit of record company and affecting the digital music industry. For instance, in spite of Apple leading the digital music revolution, and getting a huge of profit from selling iPod, online distribution does not give any profit to Apple.
Bibliographies
Book
du Gay Paul, Hall Stuart, Janes Linda, Mackay Hugh and Negus Keith. Doing Cultural Studies The Story of the Sony Walkman. London: Sage Publications Ltd, 1997
Gordon Steven. The Future Of The Music Business. San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2005
Jones Dylan. iPod, Therefore I am. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005
Kusek David and Leonhard Gerd. The Future Of Music. Boston: Berklee Press, 2005
Vogel Harold L. Entertainment Industry Economics Sixth Edition. Cambridge: The Press Syndicate Of The University Of Cambridge, 2004
Wang Wallance. Steal This File Sharing Book. San Francisco: No Starch Press, Inc., 2004
Internet sources
iPod - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [updated 16 May 2007] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod, [accessed 16 May 2007]
iTunes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [updated 16 May 2007] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes, [accessed 16 May 2007]
ITunes Store - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [updated 17 May 2007] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Store, [accessed 17 May 2007]
