99¢ ringtones: no.
3G Nano: yes.
160 GB iPod Classic: yes; my new external hd.
iPod Touch: meh; I've already got an iphone that does all this.
iTunes Wifi: Yes, Yes, You Fuckers, Yes!
$399 iPhone: Great move. And no, I'm not sorry I bought mine on day one.
And then there's the news from Starbucks:
"When you get near a Starbucks location, you’ll get a Starbucks icon in iTunes Store. You can buy songs that are playing over the Starbucks music selection, and you can even look at the last 10 songs that’s been played and buy the songs there."
Gay. Can I pay more and make it not do that?
Also, I was hoping for some news on Universal and/or NBC Universal. Have you seen Wal-Mart's music store lately? What about Rhapsody's? They're quite good, and loaded with new releases from Universal. But, Universal's only got a six month deal with each of those places (plus a handful of others) and there's no telling what may happen come January. My guess is that they did deals with everyone other than Apple to try to pressure Cupertino.
In my opinion, the current Apple/Universal dustup is among the most important things happening in business right now, and not just because it might affect whether or not you can buy tunes from 50 Cent or whatever TV shows NBC airs these days (I wouldn't know) from iTunes. It's important because it's going to affect how much you're going to pay for media going forward, it's going to affect distribution, the rights you have, everything. The big media companies aren't used to being out of control, and that's where they are right now. So they're trying to seize it back from Apple. It's the same strategy that leads them to sue YouTube. Control. They want it.
But here's the thing: distribution has changed. Permanently. Nobody has totally figured it out yet, but the days of record stores and radio stations are over. Look, neither Apple nor Google are exactly mom and pop shops. I don't see any reason to inherently favor one giant corporation over another. But in this case, those companies are better serving your interests. Universal and their ilk want to roll back the clock. For your sake; hope they don't.
