Labels Step Up Anti-iTunes Rhetoric, Drama Continues[转载]
九月 30, 2005 – 7:41 am |Tags: No Tags
Major labels fell out of love with the iTunes Music Store a long time ago. Now it seems that a divorce could be in the works. "Very few buy digital downloads," said industry barrister Kenneth Hertz, partner at Goldring Hertz and Lichtenstein, during a recent CTIA panel in San Francisco. And if re-negotiations become too unfavorable, Hertz warned: "The industry can say ‘Okay, we’ll cut [Steve Jobs] off’." That follows a chorus of comments from other executives, including David Ring, a senior vice president at eLabs, the digital strategies division of Universal Music. "99-cents has been a good business model so far, but pricing is going to fluctuate," Ring predicted recently at a Digital Hollywood panel in Santa Monica, CA.
The record industry has steadily pressuring Jobs to move beyond his uniform pricing structure. But the chess match with Steve Jobs could be a tricky one, and a major label fallout would probably have little long-term impact on Apple. In the absence of a major label catalog, Apple could easy don the cap of the indie music store, a move that would actually help to improve the company’s egalitarian image. Meanwhile, sales of the iPod would probably be unaffected, as most use the devices to playback ripped or illegally downloaded tracks.
