recording industry

Bill Gates on iTunes in 2003: “Jobs Has Us Flat-Footed Again”

John Paczkowski in News on February 11, 2010 at 8:06 am PT

The Comes vs. Microsoft antitrust case is proving to be a gold mine for embarrassing company communiques. First there was former Windows chief Jim Allchin’s 2004 “I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft” email exchange with CEO Steve Ballmer. Now comes news of another exchange from 2003 in which Allchin, Bill Gates and a handful of other Microsoft execs react to the the debut of Apple’s iTunes music store.

iTunes 69-Cent Bargain Bin to Debut April 7

John Paczkowski in News on March 26, 2009 at 12:00 pm PT

April 7. That’s when the 99-cent-per-song rate that iTunes first set in 2003 will finally end, says the LA Times. On that day–and not April 1 as Apple originally claimed–the company will introduce a new tiered-pricing plan that will see it peddling songs for 69 cents, 99 cents, and $1.29, according to popularity.

1982 Called. It Wants Its Digital Music Distribution Model Back

John Paczkowski in News on September 22, 2008 at 8:29 am PT

Overall CD sales are plummeting after eight years of unflagging erosion. Digital music sales now account for 15 percent of recording industry’s revenues worldwide and 30 percent in the United States, according to recent data from The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. And those numbers are climbing faster than ever. Consider: This past June, Apple said it has sold some five billion songs on its iTunes Store. Clearly, physical media are giving way to the Internet as a means of music distribution. What better time, then, to reinvent the music industry’s business model for physical media, as SanDisk hopes to do with its new microSD memory card album format?

Recording Industry Business Model Discovered in Satirical Newspaper

John Paczkowski in News on June 24, 2008 at 3:39 pm PT

Talk about life imitating The Onion … Apparently the recording industry’s institutional memory is about as solid as its crumbling business model. As recently as 2007 it was paying radio stations to play its music. Today, it’s accusing them of pirating it.