May 1, 2003

Four Tracks Per Second

Apple's iTunes Music Store sold 275,000 downloaded songs in its first 18 hours of operations. That's four songs per second. So as Michael Malone of ABC News points out, this suggests that Steve Jobs has done more than create a legal means of distributing "untethered" music online, he's also rung the death knell of the recording industry.

Steve Jobs is a killer. The Apple II, after all, wiped out both the minicomputer and computer terminal industries. And the Macintosh, once it was armed with desktop publishing software, gutted the printing profession. . . . If ever there was an industry ripe for plucking it is the music industry. It is the Ottoman Empire of American business.

How has the music industry responded to the threat from MP3 and digital distrubution, now estimated at 10 percent of its revenues? Like all dying industries: with more of the same, plus armies of lawyers. They're dinosaurs who just don't realize that the comet has already struck. They're walking extinctions.

 Posted by glenn

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