[jasode]

>A month later, Steve Jobs did a special worldwide simulcast keynote speech about iTunes. People had been criticizing iTunes for having less music than the competition. They had 400,000 songs while Rhapsody and Napster had over 2 million songs. (Over 500,000 of those were from CD Baby.)

>Four minutes in, he said something that made my pounding heart sink to my burning stomach:

>“This number could have easily been much higher, if we wanted to let in every song. But we realize that record companies do a great service. They edit! Did you know that if you and I record a song, for $40 we can pay a few of the services to get it on their site, through some intermediaries? We can be on Rhapsody and all these other guys for $40? Well we don’t want to let that stuff on our site! So we’ve had to edit it. And these are 400,000 quality songs.”

In 2003, there were 2 special events with Steve Jobs keynotes about iTunes and he's referring to the 2nd one on October 16, 2003 (deep link to that quote) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvCJ613HORA&t=9m00s

(For trivia reference, the first one was April 28, 2003 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF9o46zK5Jo)

>Whoa! Wow. Steve Jobs just dissed me hard! I’m the only one charging $40. That was me he’s referring to!

The author Derek Sivers left a lot of details out but here's how I interpret the situation ...

As prerequisite background, you can categorize "record labels" into 2 groups:

(1) the record label pays the artist for music via "advances", paying upfront recording costs, marketing etc. These are the traditional record labels like Warner, Universal, Sony, Motown, etc that "develop" the artist by making financial bets and losing money on most of the signed roster but making a profit a tiny number.

(2) the artists pay the "record label" -- where these entities are mostly used as a "distribution" intermediary. CD Baby and Tunecore would be typical examples.

Now look at the convoluted process with physical CDs that Apple forced CDBaby and other independents to use:

>The Apple guys said, “Sorry, you need to use this software; there is no other way.”

>Ugh. That means we have to pull each one of those CDs off of the shelf again, stick it in a Mac, then cut-and-paste every song title into that Mac software. But so be it. If that’s what Apple needs, OK.

That is basically a form of "proof-of-work". Apple didn't necessarily want everything from CD Baby. Instead, they just wanted the stuff CD Baby thought was worthwhile enough to expend time & effort to mess around with physical CDs.

The big labels didn't have to do that because they already did a form of "proof-of-work" via paying in advance for artists.

The issue is that Derek didn't "read between the lines" to understand what Steve Jobs and the convoluted upload process was trying to accomplish. I suppose business people could just speak plainly so they don't get mixed messages but sometimes they don't.

[sublinear]

I think it's more likely that the iTunes software was just immature at that point.

What you're describing is a nice side effect of that for Apple, but the reality is they're not going to do the bitch work of importing all those songs from a hodge podge of whatever formats they're given. They didn't have a better tool available at that time to make their catalog consistent.

It's very believable that Apple felt enough urgency to rush this phase.

[skywal_l]

You forgot an important quote: “We want the iTunes Music Store to have every piece of music ever recorded. Even if it’s discontinued or not selling much, we want it all.”

It seems pretty unambiguous to me.

[jasode]

>It seems pretty unambiguous to me.

It's ambiguous and a contradiction because I think it's just an example of Steve Jobs saying one thing but his actual actions say something else.

In his "full persuasion mode" (as Derek puts it), he says he "wants all their music" to make the indies feel good ... but forcing them do the physical CD ripping and entering metadata is really the final authority on what he really wanted at the time.

He didn't make the big labels jump through hoops like that. He signed Sony just a few weeks before the iTunes Store went live in April 2003 with 200,000 songs. Sony and all the previous big labels just did digital uploads of their catalog instead of ripping CDs like cavemen. For the 2nd-phase rollout of iTunes Store in October 2003 with 400,000 songs, Apple could have had CD Baby and other small indies use the same effortless transfer process as the Big Labels but for whatever reason, Steve Jobs treated them differently.

So... "If Steve supposedly wants _all_ our music, why is he making us manually load CDs?!?" ... well... maybe you can't take everything Steve says at face value? Likewise, charging $40-entrance-to-iTunes breaks another "unwritten rule" that Steve disapproved of. Same as the "unwritten NDA" Steve never had anyone sign or agree to.

[sublinear]

Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

I can't think of anything dumber than all the tedious work forced upon people by "the telephone game" and a lack of oversight. That's intrinsic to any office.

They had a capability and then immediately demanded it be used as soon as possible. No deeper thinking is required.

There was very little incentive to force the moves you're claiming Apple intended to. You've got it backwards. This is exactly how Jobs' "reality distortion field" actually worked. People would overthink every time he was wrong or flat out didn't give a shit. His overrated status compelled people to make things so, and you're falling for it like they did.

> Sony and all the previous big labels just did digital uploads of their catalog instead of ripping CDs like cavemen. For the 2nd-phase rollout of iTunes Store in October 2003 with 400,000 songs, Apple could have had CD Baby and other small indies use the same effortless transfer process as the Big Labels but for whatever reason, Steve Jobs treated them differently.

Did you ever consider that it was "effortless" for the big labels because they invented the formats iTunes used along with all the guidelines for how uploads should work? Why wouldn't iTunes take their lead instead of the other way around? The goal is to get this shit out the door now and make money. The big label archives already had things in the right formats and properly audited to be consistent, or they had the means for a quicker turnaround if they didn't. Of course it would be massively easier for everyone except the indie labels.

[steve1977]

This. I'm pretty sure the major labels were not at this meeting and it was only indies.

[hk1337]

> I suppose business people could just speak plainly so they don't get mixed messages but sometimes they don't.

When you’re putting out a message to a large amount of people, no matter how much time and effort you spend trying to get the words just right so everyone understands, there’s always going to someone that misunderstands it and gets offended.

[shye]

You're conflating labels and distributors: for the majors, they are often different department of the same corporations, but they're not the same thing.

[ghusto]

That's a lot of unpaid mental gymnastics you're doing there to excuse Apple of their trademark shitty behaviour, and it _still_ doesn't negate the very black and white statement: “We want the iTunes Music Store to have every piece of music ever recorded. Even if it’s discontinued or not selling much, we want it all.”

[dundercoder]

I’m a moonlit musician and this makes a lot of sense to me.