In
September,
Steve Jobs unveiled the latest attempt to add value to the digital music download, and to distract people from the
Web's vast stores of free and illegal content. The
iTunes LP adds photos, lyrics, liner notes, and other bonus content, and offer material not found on file-sharing networks -- all to lure customers into buying full albums instead of individual songs. It's been six months, though, and there are only 29 iTunes LPs available. And almost half of those were available at launch.
So why did Apple's supposedly revolutionary format fail? Well,
GigaOM points to a number of different factors, one of which is price. And we don't mean the price for consumers. The initial batch of LPs were subsidized by Apple,
according to one person who worked on the project, at a cost of up to $60,000 apiece. Then, there's the fact that the format seemed better suited for tablet devices, like the recently announced but still unavailable
iPad. Artists have also begun opting to package bonus materials as apps for the
iPhone and
iPod touch, which offer a level of interactivity not afforded by the iTunes LP format.
Read more →
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For over two months, music bloggers and journalists have been plagued by an intricate, creepy and riveting mystery: the identity of the mysterious and macabre iamamiwhoami. In December, a 55-second clip of a hyper-saturated, eerie (Scandinavian?) forest appeared on YouTube, ...
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