Comments on: Can anyone stop the dominance of iTunes?

By: Jay Tyler

Jay Tyler — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 09:00:01 +0000

Let’s not forget that Apple is not in favour of DRM and the CEO has publicly spoken on multiple occasions of the desire to move to all DRM-free downloads. It’s the labels that have and are continuing to prevent this from happening.

By: Louise Grove

Louise Grove — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:03:40 +0000

Relationship marketing is another factor, iTunes keep you updated with changes, recommend songs, podcasts and shows etc that they think you will like and the new genius feature creates a personlised playlist of your music, iTunes will continue to rule the roost in this market as long as no other company offer more P

By: Pat St-Arnaud

Pat St-Arnaud — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 14:26:49 +0000

Beyond the iPod/iTune integration, success can also be explained by the sheer ease of use, whereas other online retailers of music have this strange belief that clients are ready to jump throgh hoops to have the priviledge to give them their money.

Find a song, video, podcast or movie – click – there it is. Even my technologically-challenged mother handles it without hesitation while her microwave oven still flashes 12:00 from the last power failure.

My experience is that many competitors who complain about Apple products also pay little attention to details in their product design: They expect you to adapt to them, to quirks and inefficiencies. And Apple has always been a great leader in design.

So until someone comes up with a more intuitive interface, an easier way to do what you want to do without pondering how to do it for minutes or hours, I am confident that iTune will lead the market.

By: Jase

Jase — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 18:50:34 +0000

Well, it’s not all about music; there’s video, podcasts to name but two.

They (iTunes) sell those very competitively; for example, got Wanted, Iron Man and Kung Fu Panda all cheaper than if I’d gone to the shops or even bought these online.

Also there are podcasts – some of which are the best around. Take the French one (the French Ecole, http://www.frenchecole.com). Excellent podcasts, clear and concise, with the website even better as they have pdf files that you can download the courseware.

Simple, iTunes gives a lot others don’t; just need to tweak it a bit Apple!

By: scoops

scoops — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:11:54 +0000

“Can anyone stop the dominence of iTunes?” Answer, yeah why not, it’s rubbish. I needs updating every 5 minutes, sucks the life out of a windows box, uses a proprietary format, and isn’t very cheap.

By: Dane Aubrun

Dane Aubrun — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 12:53:04 +0000

Suppose this doesn’t concern me too much. I would never get a player that locked me into one supplier or one label. From what I’ve heard via my son, the ipod sound is pretty awful, fine for pop dross in a noisy environment but not for serious listening.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 02:37:04 +0000

You may want to check out getsongbird.com. They offer a cross-platform, opensource alternative that plays Apple’s proprietary music files.

By: McDave

McDave — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 01:51:38 +0000

Wise words but what’s with selling stuff in MP3? That format’s older than many of the people buying it!

Ideally iTunes would sell the other 70% of it’s catalog in DRM-free AAC then again, as long as iPods are the best-selling players, the DRM’s only a hypothetical problem.

Let’s hope the other music labels realise there is no real market outside of iTunes and let Apple make the switch as EMI have.

McD