{"id":286,"date":"2003-11-03T23:23:14","date_gmt":"2003-11-04T06:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=286"},"modified":"2003-11-03T23:23:14","modified_gmt":"2003-11-04T06:23:14","slug":"why-itunes-will-win-the-music-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2003\/11\/why-itunes-will-win-the-music-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"Why iTunes will win the music wars"},"content":{"rendered":"

My apartment building complex is wired like a university dorm; every single one of the 100 odd apartments is on a 10 Mbit LAN network, connected to a Bredbandsbolaget backboneThat’s 10Mb downloading and<\/em> uploading<\/span>. On this network, iTunes<\/a> applications find each other effortlessly. I share my entire music library by default and have set the application to look for shared music, and I regularly have several other people’s music pop up in my application. Sometimes people use my music. With this kind of bandwidth, it’s a seamless background transactionBy “sharing” I really mean streaming music off somebody’s harddrive, without copying it.<\/span>.<\/p>\n

For a few glorious weeks in May, a new version of iTunes allowed music sharing across the public internet, though doing so usually usurped the available bandwidth. Braying by music companies quickly put an end to that, though sharing is still allowed within the local network, the intention being that home computers can share music amongst themselves.<\/p>\n

Intention or no, college dorm networks (and my apartment building) behave in exactly the same way, except that the sharing is done between people who likely have never met. All this is done legally. It’s why Stanford University students seem to be taking a shine<\/a> to iTunes. Napster 2<\/a> can’t share. MusicMatch<\/a> can’t either. And sharing benefits from the network effect, making iTunes a more and more compelling choice for each new user.<\/p>\n

How does Apple get away with it? The iTunes music store’s digital rights management scheme allows those songs it sells to be used by up to three computers simultaneously, but these computers need to be authorized, a non-trivial process. Other music is sharable without restriction, however. This way Apple gets to protect its business, as well as that of the record companies.<\/p>\n

Campus dorms and techsavvy Stockholmers are exactly the kind of trendsetters who will tip the balance in favor of iTunes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My apartment building complex is wired like a university dorm; every single one of the 100 odd apartments is on a 10 Mbit LAN network, connected to a Bredbandsbolaget backboneThat’s 10Mb downloading and uploading. On this network, iTunes applications find … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-technology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7eNhC-4C","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}