Assuming that Apple's fixed costs for the web interface (such as bandwidth and tech maintenance) are close to negligable, its only other costs have to be licensing and royalties costs, right? If that's true (and I'm not sure if it is), then the record companies and tv studios are the limiting factor stifling iTunes's viability. I'm more likely to assume that the big conglomerates are overcharging iTunes (even given their considerable costs - at least on the tv studio side, because major record labels inflate their costs to the public) than I am to write off downloaded media as a potential entertainment market.

Hell Gus. You are making me look like a moderate by comparison. You want to eliminate middlemen/middlepersons?

So you want to buy your food directly from farmers? No supermarkets, not even a little country store? Buy nails from the nail factors, lightbulbs from the lightbulb factory?

Hell itunes let you cut out most middle people if you choose. As an artist you can place your stuff directly on itunes and let people buy it directly, and end up with a whole lot higher percent of the growth than if you went through a label. Of course you have to do your own marketing, your own publicity, your own a million things. And lots of luck with trying most of those without the economies of scale a label has when doing marketing, publicity and such. But some people have managed; I seem to remember having heard indendent porn producers were having the most luck with making money from direct-to-ipod sales.

I think Gus make mean something more sensible than we are assuming. It is just that he needs to sit down a type a reasonably long screed outlinging his premises and how the alternative he envisions would work. I suspect he is trying to convey in sound bites something that does not lend itself well to sound bites.

Okay. I cop to the sound-bite thing.

Studios. They finance stuff. Distributors do not. iPod is a distributor.

iPod is a machine.

iPod is people!

People!

There's a point at which one stop shopping is a detriment to the creators and consumers. But since iTunes can make my friend's album almost as accessible as the latest Madonna--and I don't see that as bad. If I had to find his studio, if the responsibility to provide a stable, etc platform for sales instead of being able to leverage iTunes or Amazon, they'd sell fewer copies.

How does that help the band?

Frankly, I had a small problem parsing that.

Heh. iTunes makes it easy for me to buy my friend's small label album. Just as easy as if I were buying the new Madonna. Without iTunes or Amazon, they'd be much harder to find.

If iTunes makes reaching an audience easier for the little guy, on what do you base your disapproval?

If iTunes makes reaching an audience easier for the little guy...

Do they? It would be important, if they did. Find your small-label friend, using terms particular to the content.

I base my disapproval on this: iPod does not give a frack about the content.

And DirectTV does?