Universal Music and iTunes not looking like a long-term relationship
Now confirmed by Universal themselves, it looking like Universal music, home to artists like Eminem and Sting, isn’t interested in renewing any kind of long-term contract with Apple and iTunes. Instead, they’ll seek a much shorter contract…perhaps even less than a year. Apple is definitely balking at that idea, and Universal could pull its entire library at the end of the current contract, and make unavailable their entire line-up. Better get downloading!
They probably want to try their own e-selling and will eventually fail and then crawl back to apple or get bought out by another company that will eventually go with Apple.
Here’s to Universal pulling their music and video content out of iTunes and with that their Sr. Execs losing their jobs. They need iTunes as much if not more than iTunes needs them.
Universal should also review their own utube like site that is know for violating copyrighted material, sit down, shut or go home.
The big question is.. will the songs already downloaded stop working because of the contract being terminated? I don’t know if the license for the music continues if the contract with the music company stops.
no, the music does not stop working. there’s no part of the drm that is constantly checking the contract staus of iTunes.
I agree with ppcmd, they need itunes more that itunes needs them. did they not see the itunes rank in music sales story? they just dont want to get locked into another long term deal.
ppcmd, how about asking them to see how their dailty traffic stacks up against utube now? They thought that they would just go start their own and it would do well, smart move.
My feeling is that this is yet another money grab attempt. This is Universal’s way of re-negotiating a better deal w/ apple. “Give us x percent more of the sales, or we’ll pull out.” When the term of the contract is up, they threaten to pull out again for an even larger cut.
Business as usual…
What Universal really wants is to raise the 0.99 cent per DRM infected song price. This has been a major sticking point between Universal and Apple for a while now.
Its not as if these scum buckets aren’t also gouging the artists as well. Now they want to skim even more profit from the consumer.
This is how it will begin….is everyone ready for an Apple Label? That’s what’s got these guys shaking….by locking into longterm contracts, Apple is free to work on the plan to remove the middle man from the distribution channel and land the acts themselves….a new genre of artists..
Too funny. Why exactly does everyone think that Apple controls things? I am sure this is in response to Apple’s recent DRM decisions.
Apple took over the market with the ipod. However, when they negotiated all these contracts, they had a DRM strat in place. Now that Apple wants to remove DRM, it comes as no surprise the clueless record company execs are pulling support.
I would expect more support pulled. These morons dont understand the market or the market dynamics. Apple created this market, but I am confident you’ll see some changes.
Anyone ever seen a product called ‘Sound Jam’ by a company called Cassady and Greene. Apple bought them and gee, I wonder where that program fit into all this….sigh….lol.
Steve Jobs deserves to be crowned the king of marketing hype. And given credit for lobotomizing countless millions into see the world from his warped perspective.