Miramax CEO: Digital Monopolies A Bigger Threat Than Piracy

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Quote of the day is brought to you by the CEO of Miramax, the MIPCOM conference and the letter A.

Miramax CEO Mike Lang and Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos gave a keynote talk at the MIPCOM conference. The two discussed the challenges they face in the continuously changing digital world. Both agreed that piracy is not much of an issue as long as you give consumers what they want. Digital monopolies, such as Apple’s dominance in the music industry, are a far bigger threat.
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Um, people can buy unrestricted MP3's and run them fine on their iPod's. If people choose to buy from Apple, how is that Apple's fault?

Hell, Amazon is even cheaper and has better files :)
 
TechLarry said:
Um, people can buy unrestricted MP3's and run them fine on their iPod's. If people choose to buy from Apple, how is that Apple's fault?

Hell, Amazon is even cheaper and has better files :)
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What are you using to move those third party MP3s to your iPod/Phone/Pad? Itunes?

The fact of the matter is that the majority are tech-cavemen. They want the songs in one place and accessed by one program, they either do not understand of do not want to mess with getting the third party MP3's show in their precious iTunes.

While I think that this is shifting somewhat with non Apple smartphones becoming popular and more users purchasing songs from Amazon (which better is some aspects), the statement in the article is valid, Apple does have dominance in the music downloading market, not necessarily because the service is better, but because for most you "have" to use iTunes to synch with your iPod so most will get their music from there also.

Being a Monopoly may be a stretch.
 
did i just read some common sense from a CEO? I though a requirement from CEO's was to not have common sense?
 
maybe if they didnt wait until the last minute to get into internet sales they could have prevented others from dominating the market
 
hesho said:
did i just read some common sense from a CEO? I though a requirement from CEO's was to not have common sense?
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That only applies to CEOs of the financial sector, new start-ups and a few technology companies(Read eBay's former and HP's current Meg Whitman). Primarily those running banks are prime targets. Some CEOs know what they are doing and their company generally shows it via their rapid success: See Netflix, Facebook and other organizations that quickly corner a market or create a new market that formerly did not exist.

TechLarry said:
Um, people can buy unrestricted MP3's and run them fine on their iPod's. If people choose to buy from Apple, how is that Apple's fault?

Hell, Amazon is even cheaper and has better files :)
Click to expand...

That's not really the concern. Its more of a monopoly thing where if every person in the US things that the proper place to go to buy music is iTunes on their iComputer to transfer to their iPad, iPod and iPhone that plugs into their iCarDeck for their ride to work, what happens if your music isn't on iTunes? You wouldn't get any sales from those people using iTunes. If iTunes became the source of say 98% of all music sales, your chances of being successful in the music business becomes zlitch unless you are part of the iTunes system.

In that case, you'd need to agree to whatever terms Apple sets. Oh what's that, Apple is raising their prices? They now get 75% of all gross revenue from mp3 sales instead of 50%? Tough luck, use iTunes or your music doesn't sell at all. What's that? Next week its 80%. Well, they had to make more money to satisfy the shareholders. Oh, Next week it's 85%? Still have to use them; nowhere else to sell music. Its a monopoly.

Similarly, what if you want to be part of the iTunes system and they won't allow you? What if you are an independent musician whose just starting that doesn't have a label let and apply only signs agreements with large labels? What if your music has lyrics about voting for Obama is against Apple's pro-republician stance and they refuse your music on that basis (content censoring)? What if you feel dubstep is music and they feel anything made after and not in the style of Johnny Cash's music is not music (more content censoring)?

You can potentially see the end of creativity in the music industry, independent artists and profit for the musician all in one place with a monopoly. Fortunately, there will always be places like amazon.com, spotkfy, youtube, myspace even and other places to get music for those of us with mild technical skills.

Those without technical skills stuck with iPhones/iPods, there will only be iTunes.
 
WBurchnall said:
Some CEOs know what they are doing and their company generally shows it via their rapid success: See Netflix, Facebook and other organizations that quickly corner a market or create a new market that formerly did not exist.
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Netflix? Guess you've been in a cave the last few months.........
 
Similar arguments are made about Windows. But the first thing you'll here is "You don't have to use Windows". Which is true.

You don't have to use iTunes either. There are alternatives that work quite well.

There may be a perspective out there that you have to use iTunes, but you don't really.

The only real issue I have is with the use of the word Monopoly. Dominance does not have to mean Monopoly. It can simply mean people prefer the product.

But, I'm with ya bud. I too wish the iPod/iPad/iPhone were a bit more open as far as their interfacing :)

I friggin' HATE iTunes, which is sad because until the iTunes store came along, and it was in basically the same shape as it was when Apple bought it from Cassady & Green, it was the best media player on the market by far.



zacrobmer said:
What are you using to move those third party MP3s to your iPod/Phone/Pad? Itunes?

The fact of the matter is that the majority are tech-cavemen. They want the songs in one place and accessed by one program, they either do not understand of do not want to mess with getting the third party MP3's show in their precious iTunes.

While I think that this is shifting somewhat with non Apple smartphones becoming popular and more users purchasing songs from Amazon (which better is some aspects), the statement in the article is valid, Apple does have dominance in the music downloading market, not necessarily because the service is better, but because for most you "have" to use iTunes to synch with your iPod so most will get their music from there also.

Being a Monopoly may be a stretch.
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This coming from anyone at <AVGN voice> Miram-ASS! </AVGN voice> is a laugh.
 
Even if you own Apple devices you don't have to use iTunes to sync music... And as other companies continue to gain smartphone market share and the dedicated MP3 player becomes less essential then iTunes' relevance will shrink. Still though, as it stands today they practically own the online music selling business, and they're smart enough to know that dominance is being threatened from both sides (non-Apple hardware and freemium online steaming services), hence iCloud.

I'm not sure if Apple would be devastated by a market share loss w/iTunes anyway. Most of their revenue still comes from hardware sales does it not? The music and app stores were always means to an end (selling devices at a large premium), even though both of those had farther reaching implications than most Apple products. Those two models will probably play a larger role in Job's legacy than any physical product, imo.
 
you can rail against netflix all you want in this area... but if you are not at least including the content providers as being at least equal if not more than equally to blame for what happened then you really dont quite understand what happened.


by all means, netflix could have handled it better.. but it was far from a simple money grab on their part.
 
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