Steve Jobs a music visionary? Judge for yourself
After reading Steve Jobs' 2003 interview with Rolling Stone, it's easy to see why one label boss called him the smartest man in music.
(Credit: Rolling Stone)Steve Jobs is a Bob Dylan fan because the folk singer is, in the words of Apple's CEO, a "clear thinker."
Jobs' own lucid and careful contemplation of the music industry is apparent in a 2003 interview he gave to Rolling Stone magazine's Jeff Goodell. My colleague Tom Krazit pointed me to the story after stumbling on to it recently. We were bowled over by the preciseness of Jobs' assessment of what the future held for digital rights management, music subscription services, the four largest recording companies, and Apple. The interview in retrospect is a fascinating read.
Jobs correctly predicted that attempts by the major labels to find a technological solution to piracy would fail. When it came to subscription music services, he said the public would reject them. He foresaw a day when iTunes would sell 1 billion tracks a year--a bold statement, considering that at the time, iTunes had only sold 20 million songs.
One can sense from Jobs' comments that he was ready to pounce on a music sector that five years ago possessed precious little tech savvy. He described leaders at the top labels as technologically innocent.
Also by 2003, Jobs had concluded that Apple was ready to move beyond computers. He suggested that his company's talent at melding innovative hardware and software designs could help it build winning consumer products.
Jobs warned that competitors would find it difficult to duplicate the success of Apple's iTunes music service, then just 8 months old. Yeah, that's another thing that's striking about the interview. In every word, there's a fierce confidence.
At one point, Goodell asks Jobs if he wrung his hands over the decision to bring iTunes to Windows. The tech legend responded, "I don't know what hand-wringing is."
One has to remember that the music industry was vastly different in 2003. Most of the public had never heard of a download and overwhelmingly preferred CDs. Piracy was rampant, and no legal digital-music service had caught on with consumers. The major recording companies were betting big on subscription services and copy protection software. Nobody knew for certain if a digital-music store would work. Wal-Mart Stores was the largest music retailer offline, and Amazon.com dominated in music sales online.
Here are some highlights from the interview:
Jobs on whether the iPod could become more important to Apple than the Mac.
Apple has a core set of talents, and those talents are: we do, I think, very good hardware design; we do very good industrial design; and we write very good system and application software. And we're really good at packaging that all together into a product.We're the only people left in the computer industry (who) do that. And we're really the only people in the consumer electronics industry (who) go deep in software in consumer products. So those talents can be used to make personal computers, and they can also be used to make things like iPods.
On major music labels
When the Internet came along, and Napster came along, they didn't know what to make of it. A lot of these folks didn't use computers--weren't on e-mail; didn't really know what Napster was for a few years. They were pretty doggone slow to react. Matter of fact, they still haven't really reacted, in many ways.On iTunes
We've created this music store, which I think is nontrivial to copy. I mean, to say that Microsoft can just decide to copy it, and copy it in six months--that's a big statement. It may not be so easy.A defense of copyright
If copyright dies, if patents die, if the protection of intellectual property is eroded, then people will stop investing. That hurts everyone. People need to have the incentive that if they invest and succeed, they can make a fair profit. Otherwise, they'll stop investing. But on another level entirely, it's just wrong to steal. Or, let's put it another way: it is corrosive to one's character to steal. We want to provide a legal alternative.
You know how it turned out. Apple's iTunes surpassed Wal-Mart to become the largest music retailer in the land. Jobs proved prophetic about the difficulty in competing with iTunes. Apple's music service trounced those of Sony, Microsoft, and every other competing site. Amazon's digital music store has yet to show it can dent iTunes' 75 percent market share.
Most of the top subscription services are either shuttered, have changed their business models, or hover near irrelevance.
As for Jobs' predictions on iTunes' song sales, it took the service three years to sell 1 billion songs. Last June, Apple topped the 5 billion mark and earlier this month announced that it had reached 6 billion.
Is Apple selling a billion songs every six months?
The major labels have given up on DRM but not as fast as Jobs may have thought. The music industry is moving away from suing individuals for copyright violations and has enlisted the help of Internet Service Providers to help thwart illegal file sharing. The music industry is focused more now on competing with piracy in the marketplace. Rio Caraeff, Universal Music Group's digital chief, told me recently that his label's approach now is to try to win over file sharers by providing easy and inexpensive ways to acquire music.
And Jobs' assessment that Apple had the kind of talent to produce consumer devices that could replace the Mac as the company's most important product...well, let's talk iPhone. In an October story, CNET News' Krazit wrote that an internal assessment at Apple--using supplemental metrics--determined that the iPhone represents 39 percent of company revenue, while the Mac accounts for 30 percent.
Jobs' foresight likely has a lot to do with why Doug Morris, chairman and CEO of top label Universal Music Group, called him the smartest man in music.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 
Jobs, like Gates, is a software visionary. The world revolves around their products.
Leave the music accolades to the real musicians.
I agree: He's a music BUSINESS visionary - not a music visionary. They can be very very different.
Doesn't matter if U R a U2 or buskin' for change out side the local coffee house...
If U think any different U aren't a musician U R a hobbyist...
[Editor's note: Personal attack deleted]
Doesn't matter if U R a U2 or buskin' for change out side the local coffee house...
If U think any different U aren't a musician U R a hobbyist...
WRONG. Ask yourself, would you stop playing music if it didn't pay. Then you'll know if you are a musician.
@ biggstuu: Another one (basing themselves on facts/numbers, not on arguments/assumptions) would argue that Gates' vision regarding the most important market allowed him to create an operating system that is used in almost 90 % of all computers in the world today, while Jobs' didn't allow him to have even 10 % of that market today. I have read The Road Ahead by Gates and I didn't see any laughable prognostications, unless you consider predicting the Internet would become the Holy Grail of computing (this was in 1996, I remind you) and IE would beat Netscape Navigator (at the time with 70-90 % of the market) "laughable prognostications" (maybe you can do better), and that comment of yours becomes even more laughable if one remembers Apple's / Jobs' predictions about Mac success (a product with less than 10 % of the market, may I remind you).
@ battmail: You just got owned...
@ckurowic
'Anyone can write like Shakespeare dude. Its called the iambic pentameter....and it was never that good.'
Dude, your schooling must have sucked
With ev'ry opportunity chucked.
Far beyond your wit and wisdom
Captive mind, barred in prison
Like a frightened rude-born child
You will forever remain so styled.
Apple is only in trouble if they quit loving what they do and instead start looking at the numbers as what they are all about. If Job's instilled the love of what they do into the Apple culture Apple will be viable for some time.
http://www.playboy.com/magazine/interview_archive/steven-jobs/steven-jobs-2.html
And that the threat is a good thing, because a lot of those tracks are filler. I understand the concept, but it is rarely carried out well. If the choice I have to get the one song I like from that album is to buy the entire album or go without the song then I will go without it. If there is enough decent tunes in the album to make the purchase cost effective then I will buy the whole shebang.
The days of paying $14.95 for a CD with one or two good songs and a bunch of filler is gone. And the days of having to sell your soul to a recording company are also gone. Many artists already accept that and they are taking advantage of the new dynamic.
The music industry will survive and thrive, but it may not include any members of today's RIAA if they continue to hang on to their antiquated business model.
If a song is awesome at 128kbps, then I would happily buy it again in 256kbps. Yes, it would be worth buying twice. If the song is crap or has no staying power, then the worst I would have wasted is 99 cents.
There are very, very few albums that are built to be cohesive. This was true even in the days when CD's were king and mp3s hadn't been invented yet. I can count on one hand the number of bands or artists in the last 20 years who have put out albums that actually required an album to appreciate... and I would have fingers to spare.
Most artists use albums as a container to hold a pile of songs for sale, and nothing more. We're not talking about folks like Queensryche (Operation Mindcrime), or Dream Theater (Six degrees of Inner Turbulence) who actually tell a story across several songs to make a coherent whole. We're talking about the typical manufactured and overly-marketed bands who slap together enough songs to get 60 minutes' playtime (if you're lucky) on a disk.
There are good bands (e.g Tool) who take the time to work an album into something coherent even if the songs do not relate with each other story-wise, but this is also too damned rare to worry about. In those cases, I can go assemble my own damned album instead of having albums force-fed to me.
I see very little negatives in the emergence of itunes. It's pro-consumer almost across the board now that DRM is evaporating and downloads are available at higher bitrates. Bravo to Steve.
Then again, it is a small list compared to all the Pop and Rap crap you hear on the radio. Do people actually listen to that garbage?
Well a number of people listen to Rap, often while driving their autos. In fact they play it so loud that others have no choice but to listen to it, sometimes from quite a distance, usually with the special effects of their own windows rattling.
Jobs is not a music visionary. He's a visionary of the modern business model of music distribution. He controls a huge percentage of the market, so his visions are self-fulfilling at this point.
People enjoyed having the software and hardware pairing and it was a good, trendy device. I think the Touch is the best device out now for small apps and music. I haven't used Itunes because of the DRM issue, but glad to know that's been removed as well.
Techie types (me included) constantly forget that the general public wants an appliance-like experience. Oddly, this is especially true in their view of computers. The ease of use of Itunes went a long way towards having consumers accept ipods.
Never underestimate one-click vs drag and drop. One click tells you what to do with a big red crayon. Drag and drop implies that you know the architecture of files. BIG DIFFERENCE to grandma.
In my case, I will wait for the day they take away the lock-in on Apple Lossless and truly open the doors to digital music, for mp3's are a hazy reflection of the music originally recorded and I will not pay for a weak facsimile.
True. Go watch reruns of 'Star Trek the Next Generation' a late 80's sci-fi show, they were already using common computer jargon such as 'download' and 'interface' as common day language for the TV audience.
He made some brilliant business decisions during this time... like using the Mac's low market share to his advantage. Many companies wanted to offer a digital music store (like what would become the iTunes store), but the record labels would not license their content to anyone, so they couldn't do it. Steve Jobs convinced the labels to experiment with digital music sales on the Mac because there was a low risk given the Mac's small market. If you recall, the iTunes store (as well as the iPod itself) was only available on Mac first.
So, it wasn't that Jobs had ideas that no one else had, but he was the only one who was able to execute on those ideas and create a successful business out of them. You have to give him credit for that. Well played!
Really, your comment just makes you look like the fanboy.
I hope you didn't go to USC. If you did you're beating up on a fellow Trojan. Worse than that, you are slamming me before you've done any homework. Below are a few clips where I'm critical of Apple, Jobs and even Steve Wozniak. I've said this many times before. I feel no loyalty to any company.
As silly as this sounds, I still believe that if I just report good information and try to make relevant observations you guys will read me. Steve Jobs' predictions stand on their own. If you don't agree that he did a fine job assessing the future, competitors and his company you are welcome to your opinion. All I ask is don't throw around wild accusations without giving me the courtesy of doing a little checking first.
All the best. GS
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-9989823-93.html?tag=mncol
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10103484-93.html?tag=mncol
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10036785-93.html?tag=mncol
Huh? The concept album was a product of the 60s and came into its own in the 70s. It was supported when FM radio began to migrate away from elevator music. Sgt Pepper's was considered the first concept album. Pink Floyd picked it up from them, and then in the early seventies, groups like Yes and artists like Rick Wakeman pushed it further. It became so sappy that the dance hits of disco became the alternative and even then, were strung together to make long album play preferable to singles.
I don't consider Jobs that much a visionary. He is a smart ruthless businessman who puts Apple first ahead of the market, the content and the consumer. And that is a good way to push product.
As to what he says in the interview, it is dead on. Sadly it is iTunes that has become the new Mr Big and it took less than five years for all of the bad parts of the industry, the middle men, to reemerge based on Apple's own policies for who can and can't sell on iTunes. It has become the new M-TV and while MTV once ruled the market as 'the only radio that matters', it plunged into irrelevance by handing the music creatives into the hands of the New York fashion industry. We'll see if iTunes makes similar missteps.
"Album" means a collection (in this case of music). Given the length and structure, where a piece of music morphs to elicit a change in emotional response by the listener over the course of a lengthy piece (or pieces) often ending by recalling the starting point; you could argue that the concept album goes back at least as far as to any given classical work of music, opera, or maybe even Gregorian Chant, maybe even earlier than that. In fact, you could argue that elements of a classical orchestra were part of the vehicle that helped make Sgt. Pepper possible as a "concept album" in the first place.
I might also point out that you can find more impressive predictions about technology as it exists today (and probably as it will come to be) by Roddenberry, Asimov, Heinlien, Clarke, Verne etc. I'm guessing most of us who visit a site like this are geeky enough to be aware of how well Star Trek predicted much of our technology. Many of Job's points in the article are hardly original. I'd be willing to bet he'd be the first to make that point himself.
And all those business employees are just thrilled that IT has forced the Windows solution on them. Just because some IT KGB control freak who only knows Windows because that's what he got his certification in, forces Windows on his company does not make it the superior solution.
It was true then, but not now. Yes, he is a visionary, but he is also flexible and knows times change.
Sheesh. FYI, the Apple II, a color-capable machine was highly successful in business when the Macintosh was released.
But yes, they should also offer FLAC and 24/48 WAVE.
I get where yr coming from !
as a semi-audiophile I too hate the fact that
itunes music quality isn't up there with lossless and Cds
But most people aren't audiophiles they just want something
thats easy to use to use and works !
Ipod+Itunes does just that
Apple always aims there products at the average joe
cause most people aren't technically inclined
Any difference in audio quality you think you are hearing between CD, lossless and 256 KB AAC is in your head. The loss of information is below the biological threshold of human detection, which is a fancy way of saying it is physically impossible to detect.
iTunes is a great way to have as much music, in a variety of forms, delivered to you in a variety of ways, organized in almost anyway you want, and completely portable. For that, Jobs and Apple deserve kudos, at least for developing the most successful version of that to date. I don't, however, think that make Jobs the modern version of the Oracle of Delphi and Nostradamus rolled into one.
"Most of the public had never heard of a download and overwhelmingly preferred CDs. Piracy was rampant, and no legal digital-music service had caught on with consumers."
Well, which one was it? How can most of the public not know about about downloading (never heard of a download and prefer CDs) AND piracy be rampant?
How can both be true?
- by yacahuma January 30, 2009 11:34 AM PST
- l solution to piracy would fail,
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He should know. I think he about gave up on locking the iphone.