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September 27, 2006

itunes_store

Time for Apple to think different about music

Posted Sep. 27, ’06, 8:31 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | iTunes » iTunes Store

The Man in the White SuitIf you ever get a chance, go check out the classic Alec Guinness movie The Man in the White Suit It’s about an inventor who comes up with a cloth that never gets dirty and the garment industry that tries to suppress his ingenuity. It’s not only a great film, but it’s one that speaks to the controversy of technological developments in general and perhaps Apple’s iTunes Store specifically.

I like the iTunes Store, I really do. But at the moment, it seems to me to be nothing more than an electronic equivalent of a brick-and-mortar store. You browse through titles, pick the one you want, hand over your cash, and then you’re free to enjoy your media. But isn’t it time that it stop merely mimicking the stores we’ve had since time immemorial and start venturing into things that only an electronic, internet-based store can do?

Case in point: the freedom of your media. I first started thinking about this a while ago, but a couple of recent incidents helped me to crystalize my ideas. One was Gabe of Penny Arcade complaining that he couldn’t sync songs that he’d purchased from iTunes on two separate computers with the same account. While iTunes 7 introduced a feature that lets you transfer purchases from one machine to another, it only works in one direction—you can only sync an iPod with one computer at a time.

Then Wil Wheaton ran into a problem where he was upgrading to iTunes 7, and he lost a bunch of his purchased music. Apple let him redownload his songs, and before you cry out that this reeks of the velvet rope of celebrity, I’ll point out that this has verifiably been Apple’s policy for a while now.

This raises a simple question for me: why not allow people to redownload their music? As many times as they want? Let’s go deeper.

I honestly can’t figure out why Apple wouldn’t allow this. They can hardly be worried about piracy—by Apple’s scheme, you can only play your music in an authorized copy of iTunes, so end users are still limited to the five authorized computers that they’ve always had. It’s not as if you can download another copy and give it to your friend. Besides, if you own one copy of a digital song file, you can make as many copies as you want anyway.

Is it a technological concern? The only thing I can see Apple losing here is the money it costs them for bandwidth. Redownloading songs could conceivably spike traffic to the iTunes store. It’s not an insignificant factor, but consider these two points: 1) given the amount of bandwidth Apple’s already paying for, I can’t imagine that this would be a significant additional drain and 2) it’s not as if people are going to be redownloading their music constantly. See my point above: namely, that there’s no benefit to people abusing the system; they already have a digital copy of the file that’s locked to their computer which they can copy as many times as they want. Perhaps there will be some novelty in redownloading your music, but it ought to wear off fairly quick.

There are two arguments I often see in regards to Apple allowing people to redownload their music. 1) It’s not Apple’s responsibility to provide you with a backup of their music. You’ve paid for a license to the song, if you lose it, that’s your fault. And, the corollary: 2) it’s not as if you can walk into a record store and say “oh, I lost my CDs, can I just go take new copies of all them for free?” The first argument is valid, but not really applicable, and the second is merely ridiculous.

No, it’s not Apple’s responsibility to backup your music in any way, shape, or form. You have the ability to do that and you should certainly do so. That said, why not allow it? Sure, it’s not their responsibility, but they’re already hosting all the music files, and they have a complete record of everything you’ve ever purchased. More to the point, they already have a facility for allowing you to do this (once). It may not be their responsibility, but wouldn’t it be a great feature? When you own your content, they could say, you own your content.

As for the second argument: clearly, no music store is going to let you go in and take new copies of your lost CDs for free. But Apple’s not a brick-and-mortar store. Letting people come in and take CDs for free would put a music store out of business pretty quick, because each of those CDs costs them money. But digital music allows for infinite perfect copies, so the only thing it costs Apple is the price of the bandwidth, which, as we’ve established above, is probably negligible. It’s comparing apples and oranges.

All of this leads to the natural conclusion that it’s not really Apple who doesn’t want you to do this: it’s the record companies. They stand to make the most if you lose all your music, because you then have to go and rebuy all your lost tracks for $0.99 a pop. They’re the ones who are going to lose out if you can always just replenish your music for free. But the record companies are clutching a business model that’s quickly sinking under them. When people do start backing up their music—say, when Apple’s Time Machine comes out in 10.5—people won’t have to download their music multiple times. Ever. Until, of course, they start releasing them in higher quality codecs. While this is probably scary for the record labels, they need to deal with it. It’s coming. Meanwhile, they should embrace the strengths of digital downloads instead of shying away from them and, most of all, they should focus on making music people want to buy instead of deriving trick to make them spend their money on something they don’t really want.


7 Comments

lipbalm said:

Here here! Please let me re-download my music and allow me to download already purchaced music to my authorized machines.

September 27, 2006 10:03 AM
Adam said:

This has driven me nuts since i first got my ipod.

It's never made sense to me that i can't re download my songs. I have to use a cd to make a back up.

I mean, the reason i started downloading music was so i didn't have cds everywhere.

September 27, 2006 10:32 AM
Strongblade! said:

I don't really have a problem with the whole not downloading (I do back up my stuff so it's just not a big issue for me) but one thing I am having problems with is autorization management. When I had to reinstall my OS due to a dying HD, I was able to load my music on and authorize without a problem, however, the authorization is now saying I have used up to 4 computers. Odd, since I have... 2. One which was brand new and due to a screen defect, was replaced by the store (The music was not de-authorized before I returned it. I had forgotten). The laptop, which was reinstalled a slightly higher version of the OS is being seen a yet another authorized computer. How can I de-authorize these non-existstant systems? I have yet to find a way.

September 27, 2006 1:57 PM
Pat Nakajima Author Profile Page said:

It seems to me that Apple's policy of not letting us re-download at will is not due to a fear of record company retribution. It might not even be a fear of 8th graders playing around, downloading the same Fall Out Boy single ad nauseam.

It could just possibly be a classic "Because we've always done it this way" case of corporate inertia. Whenever a business behaves irrationally, baseless tradition is usually involved.

Also, to strongblade, I was about to agree with you until I checked Apple's website. Apparently, there is now (as of Sept 12) a way to deauthorize all of your computers:

If you find you have reached 5 authorizations due to system upgrades, you can reset your authorization count by clicking Deauthorize All in the Account Information screen.

Note: You may only use this feature once per year. The Deauthorize All button will not appear if you have fewer than 5 authorized computers or if you have used this option within the last 12 months.

The doc is here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93014

Hope this helps.

September 27, 2006 2:26 PM
Dan Frakes Author Profile Page said:

"given the amount of bandwidth Apple’s already paying for, I can’t imagine that this would be a significant additional drain"

Bandwidth isn't cheap, even if you're Apple -- especially when you're talking about the potential for millions of additional downloads. Keep in mind that the cost (to Apple) of the original download is built into the price of each track you purchase. Additional downloads aren't accounted for, so they would amount to a direct increase in operating costs. I think this is a significant factor in Apple's current policy.

September 27, 2006 3:57 PM
Strongblade! said:

Thanks Pat. I feel better knowing there is an easy way to do it...

Of course, I'd rather just have a way to deauthorize the defunct ones, since I'll have to re-authorize my active ones, but I guess it's better than 'Sorry, you've reached your limit. Tough luck!'.

:D

September 27, 2006 4:08 PM
RTOlson Author Profile Page said:

I can see strengths to the argument, but what happens if Apple makes an improvement to the content in the store? I would love to redownload the season finale of "Battlestar Galactica" at the higher resolution and bit rate than the version I initially downloaded. Should Apple offer that for free? How would it keep track?

September 27, 2006 5:44 PM

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