I Have Seen the Future of Music and its Name is iTunes

Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 00:59:10 -0400
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
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Apple's new online music-buying system is everything Napster promised
to be -- cheap, easy and, best of all, legal.
By Farhad Manjoo
April 29, 2003 | Hunter S. Thompson never actually said that "the
music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic
hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs."
The quip, from Thompson's 1988 "Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame
and Degradation in the '80s," was in fact meant to describe the TV
business.
But in a post-Napster world, one in which both musicians and music
lovers have come to harbor a deep animosity toward record labels, the
Thompson misquote has taken on the patina of truth -- which is why, in
his introduction of a new online music-buying service on Monday in San
Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs elicited a rousing response by
flashing the quote up on the giant video screen behind him. Probably
the only folks in the room who weren't applauding were the industry
executives in attendance, but they, too, might have been OK with Jobs'
insults. Indeed, the execs ought to have been pleased with Apple's
geek-chic CEO: That's because Jobs is being nice enough to save the
music business from itself.
The music service Jobs unveiled is a delight. Called the iTunes Music
Store, the service -- it's available only on Apple machines for now
but will be ready for Windows "by the end of the year" -- is fully
integrated into the company's jukebox software. Users can search for
songs to purchase in the same way they'd look for songs they already
have on their machines. The system is foolproof: You type in a name, a
song comes up, and you press a button to buy it. That's it. You're in
the hole for 99 cents for each song you download ($10 for each album),
but you see none of the transaction details; all the purchases are
"one-click." And here's the stunning thing: Once you've bought a song,
you own it. You can do (pretty much) whatever you want to do with the
songs you download, including burning them to CDs, transferring them
to iPods, or sending them to other Macs.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/04/29/itunes/