[jamn]

Playing the devil's advocate here.

I have bought more than a couple of CDs from CD Baby and thanks to them I've been able to connect with more than a couple of wonderful artists.

However, from Apple's perspective, it must have seemed like CD Baby was simply trying to make a profit simply by guaranteeing access to the Apple Store, and therefore Apple decided not to move forward in order to protect its brand.

[Lazlo_Nibble]

Except that Apple didn't decide not to move forward -- Sivers assumed that Apple had decided not to move forward, based on an offhand reference by Jobs in a keynote.

[sivers]

Exactly. I think most of this timing was circumstance, not causal.

Maybe they were just busy dealing with the bigger labels first, and put a positive public spin on their delay.

I was hanging on his every word, since we were hearing nothing else from them. So his keynote seemed to be a decision. Instead, it was just an important lesson on spin and circumstance.

[trotsky]

I was working in the industry at a sub model service when itunes was being built, and at an indie distributor when he made that speech - I remember it well.

Negotiating with the majors for content and pricing and access was worst hard-ball negotiations I've ever seen and schizophrenic at that. One of their big fears of course was enabling a market that would erode their competitive advantage in distribution and allow smaller players to sell music in ways indistinguishable from their own.

I have no direct inside knowledge, but I'd bet big you were just on the ass end of a power play that otherwise had little to do with CD Baby. Your catalog was a huge stick that could have been wielded in many ways in those fights. The contract that arrived the next day had an NDA, so suddenly you weren't able to disclose the terms of any deal you might have right?

As an aside, congratulations for sticking with your model and your principles and surviving that whole decade. It wasn't easy at all to make it in that market, my resume is just a bunch of smoldering craters from that period.

[9oliYQjP]

Apple has become so successful that people start attributing amazing strategies to them that are really accidental. I've emailed a high up Apple executive about something before and not heard a thing only to get a reply to my email 9 months later while he was on a flight and had time to kill. From what I heard, dealing with all of the legal mess around the major labels (e.g., contract upon contract numbering dozens to get a single album onto iTMS) was a huge part of the 2003-2004 era work at Apple. It bogged down executives and even programmers who had to constantly revise code to accommodate legal requirements.

It could be that Steve Jobs was somehow being manipulative and singling out CD Baby. Or it could just have been that the company was bogged down. You said yourself that hundreds of others were at that original meeting. That's like herding cats. In fact, the entire iTunes Music Store was an exercise in herding thousands of cats. I still have a hard time believing it got done.

Regardless, it's still a good tale. You never know, right?

[mcantor]

The whole fiasco could have been avoided if someone had simply gotten back to you, though.

[josefresco]

Amazing how a company with 500K tracks wasn't assigned a rep inside Apple. Has this changed?

[writetoalok]

>I was hanging on his every word, since we were hearing nothing else from them.

That's interesting. I wonder if you or anyone else had raised a question about this at the presentation. Communication is a key aspect of partnership. And if there is little communication, or terms on communication SLAs, then there is plentiful scope for ill partnership.

Reading your notes about the presentation on Slashdot, it appears that Apple had thought very carefully and prepared extensively about the iTunes business model. I am pretty sure they must have had something about this aspect as well. Its pretty surprising that no one else on the other side raised anything about it.

[adrianbye]

i disagree.

i think because you walked away in a classy way you demonstrated power and that brought them back to the table.

[johnmw]

So what is it to 'protect ones brand'?

I would suggest that one of the most important ways to protect your brand is not to be evil. I believe Microsoft failed at this (it is why I switched away from using their products). Apple is now currently failing here at an even greater degree (I currently own a Macbook and an iPhone, but I believe these will be my last Apple products).

It is one thing for a company to want the best experience for its users. But blocking musicians from their fans is not the way to go about this, no matter how small the musician or fan. You can still have a great store for the general populace, and still allow everyone else to access and share the data they want.

The data must flow.

[netcan]

That makes sense. What is more confusing is how Apple seems to expect everyone to understand the Apple way of doing things without being told.

[barrkel]

It's not confusing; it's just passive-aggressive. Textbook passive-aggressive.

[netcan]

Passive aggressive behaviour is confusing.

[alttab]

and is psychologically designed to be so.

[baddox]

Also note that this means that from Apple's perspective, music isn't "worth" being on iTunes unless they already have a deal with a "respectable" record label, "respectable" of course being up to Apple.