RESPONSES TO THE APPLE / LALA PIECE YESTERDAY

While reading through the comments of my Apple / LaLa post yesterday, I was shocked. Shocked at the amount of ignorance and misinformation that’s floating around out there, and that our readership is so easily gullible by said inaccuracies. Though I never do this, today I feel inclined to directly address a number of comments and dispel some of the idiocy that took place on this site yesterday.

• builtforsin says: “Anyone with lack of internet access 100% of the time, and if you have an Iphone like me, this is already a bad start….” Presumably there’s also be a download option, where you have access to a certain number of tracks locally (on your device or hard drive) if there is no Internet available. and “I guess if you only used Apple manufactured devices that would be great, but Apple doesn’t play nice with hardware not purchased from Apple.” I can’t speak to this issue as I use a Mac, but my PC-using friends don’t complain about iTunes/iPod on their PCs. I’m sure iPhone campatibility will only get better, especially if this type of service necessitates it.
• Tim says: “Digital still doesn’t have the same fidelity as a CD, unless you use wav files, which are huge and would eat memory.” True. But as Internet connections get better so will audio quality. No one is trying to scheme you with crappy audio… it’s just a bandwidth issue. Honestly, while I was initially a skeptic too and subscribed to the “audio quality” argument, it’s really hard to notice the difference between a 192 AAC and a full WAV/AIFF rip.
• Viking-Shredder: “I don’t know man. I’m still a fan of actually owning a physical copy of the music. Just something about having the physical copy makes me feel safer than confiding in computer files.” Also, you must like riding a horse and buggy because it’s “safer.”
  

• groverXIII says: “Come on… how much music are we going to miss out on with this? I don’t use iTunes, so I don’t know how extensive their metal library is, but I’d imagine there are a lot of obscure bands that aren’t in there.” Plenty of commenters already said this, but it’s worth reiterating: any band at all can add their music to iTunes through a fairly simply submission process. It costs nothing to add music, and iTunes take a % of all sales as their fee (while a physical distributor would mark up the product from the getgo then charge you back cost plus extra fees for anything that doesn’t sell).
  
• Dr. Schwine-hoot says: “I really dont see ( at least anytime soon) physical copies going away. LP’s have been on the rise also over the last few yrs too. Yes the record sales may be a little down, but i think metal, especially is benefitting from this the most. Almost every big name and even semi- big in name in the metal community has charted on the BB top 200. Hell suffocation and Nile charted this yr! People still want the real thing, me included.” Sorry dude, but physical CDs are on the way out. LPs (vinyl) have experienced a modest rise but it’s only a very small portion of the overall pie and likely to remain so. The convenience of digital cannot be trumped. Your argument about metal on the Billboard Chart is moot because every genre has been affected in the same way (lower sales).
• Scourge441 says: “If you pay for digital music, you’re an idiot.” You, sir, have a great point. This is precisely the problem. The labels have hung on to their antiquated model of pay-per-album or pay-per-track while better alternatives exist. But, on the other hand, if there were option available like this speculated Apple streaming service that offered ANY SONG, any time, for a very low price, say $10/month, wouldn’t you subscribe just out of convenience so you didn’t have to deal with the hassle of searching for and downloading files? If the service is priced right, people will buy onto it.
• Magne Gunvald Karlsen says: “I would never buy anything from Apple. Sure, their computers are descent, but the Ipod.. You pay a lot of money for a product that is shite. The sound is crappy, Uhh… you know you can buy literally ANY other kind of earphones and headphones to use with your iPod and that the unit has an adjustable EQ, right? and don’t even get me started on Itunes. When I want to put music on my Iaudio (which beats the shit out of Ipod, when it comes to the sound + I can play Flac) I just plug it in my usb and it comes up as an extra harddrive. I don’t have to put my music in the Itunes library to be able to transfer it. Uhh… once again, you know the iPod just shows up in iTunes and you can play music directly from it without transferring… right? So in short, you hate these products because you don’t know how to use them. Genius.
  

So, in conclusion, you’re all idiots.

Sincerely,
Vince Neilstein