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'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.
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.
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.