iTunes and Online Music Buying

iTunes is fantastic.  It's also a total rip-off.  Last night it all became obvious to me when I, for the first time, made a rather innocent, typical consumer goof.  I accidentally bought something I didn't want.

Now really, it's my mistake.  I wanted ELP's Brain Salad Surgery, which iTunes doesn't have.  Instead, they have something called "Then and Now".  After sampling a track or two they sounded like the original tracks.  After purchase, I discovered that they really are a collection of live performances that are (to me at least) far inferior to the original recorded performances.  So much so, that I will probably never listen to them.

iTunes refund policy?  All sales final.

Now, If I had bought this at my local record store, I could do the following:

1. I could take it back and my local record store would give me my money back, especially if I had my original receipt and the disc was in like-new condition.
2. I could hold onto it until somebody I know turned up and I said: "Hey, do you want this ELP album?"  They would smile and say "thanks!" and greater friendship may result.
3. I could give it as a gift.
4. I could take it to a used record store and trade it.

At iTunes, I paid just about as much as I would have for a real CD.  Maybe more even.  And...

1. I cannot return it.  In fact, Apple's customer service policy front-line with respect to refunds is practically "We do not offer customer service.  Fuck you."
2. I cannot give it to anybody else.  The DRM'd files play only on my computer, and unless I authorized somebody else to play ALL my music, I cannot allow anybody who is not a family member access to the ELP album I just bought.
3. I cannot give it as a gift in any way possible.
4. There is no way I can trade it for something.

So, the score?  My record store gets four points.  iTunes zero.

By the way, I also use eMusic.  Because eMusic uses a trust model and ships MP3's, I at least have the ability to give my purchases as a gift.  Of course, the emusic selection isn't as good.  But, as an online music vendor, they clearly provide more value, and at a better price.

Now really, I love the online music buying experience.  But, Apple is really selling us crap and charging us a premium.  Ten years from now, when everyone looks hard at their iTunes DRM files, it will be more obvious.  For now, Apple wins.  Customers lose.

Comments

[Greg Bledsoe]

Thank you.

What I've been trying to tell everyone is that even though iTunes has the best offering *as yet*, the value proposition does not offer what buying the physical CD does at virtually the same price exactly because of the restrictions you cite. *All* of my fair use rights are infringed. If I buy the CD, I can cut them to an unrestricted .ogg or .mp3 at the quality I choose, and play them anywhere on anything.

And $1.99 an episode for low resolution and poor quality? Puh-leeze! I can get them on DVD at the end of the season for about the same price at full quality, and still cut them to any format I want. Not to mention I could always, were I so inclined and not wanting to wait, download them from a p2p network in HD format and either cut it to a DVD, or play it through an HD TV connection from a good graphics card.

But we are supposed to lap up overpriced, low quality, restricted offerings?

The real shift to online distribution won't happen until the media companies figure out what is still migrating from the psyches of the most tech savvy consumers to the rest of the world: DRM sucks, offers us nothing, drastically reduces the value of the offering, and is easily circumvented anyway.

We don't want it, we don't need it, and ultimately the marketplace will reject it.

[yikes]

I still buy CDs as well, though I've never listened to most of them in a CD player -- I encode to MP3 as soon as I get the annoying keep-it-closed sticker off. I have read good things about eMusic.com, but their catalog appears pretty small even compared to my local independent record store. But that's also part of the point, in that I like supporting my local independent record store too. I get DRM-free music with a 'free' hard copy backup (the CD it came on) and get to interact with music lovers of all kinds, from snobs to evangelists of any given genre, in person. Plus, several of the female employees are foxy.

BTW, I'd love to see the last 2 posts in the Microsoft series; moreover I'd love to see Microsoft take your advice. Like many users, I'm MS @work and Ubuntu @home, and the only problems I ever have with Dapper are due to drivers (codecs were an issue for a while back when I first started on Warty, but that was mostly my own n00b problem). Scoble made a decent point in a recent post about the fonts in Gnome/KDE, and this is exactly the kind of thing MS would be really good at solving with its own presentation layer on top of the kernel. I like your line of reasoning a lot, it just probably makes too much sense to ever actually happen.

[andrew]

i love emusic. i recently discovered it when i was acting as dj for a friends birthday party. the theme was 80's night. unfortunatley, there was very little 80's type music, but i then looked for stuff of my own interests, mostly new electronica and rock, and they had a nice lineup. theres a bit of a tradeoff ther, but the value there is awesome. besides, itunes doesnt have a lot of stuff that id like them to have. slimy bastards.