College oriented social network Facebook announced a Back to School partnership with iTunes today that could have been an interesting teachable moment about buying music online through legal means. Instead the deal will offer millions of “samplers,” preselected playlists of 25 songs per genre, given to Facebook users for free. What’s the lesson here? That the iTunes music store is a highly controlled environment that provides an inferior user experience compared to P2P networks. Twenty five free songs of your choice would have made a much cooler promotion. Even that would have been pretty unimaginative.
Here’s a link to launch the Alternative sampler in the iTunes music store.
Ten million “samplers” will be given away over the next ten weeks, so that’s the equivalent of $247,500,000 worth of downloads at full price. But of course music downloads are in reality almost free, so they aren’t spending much money on it. Facebook and iTunes have had a long running relationship prior to this promotion and few new customers are likely to be introduced to the iTunes Music Store for the first time as a result of it. The theory may be that students will discover new bands through the promotion and will then buy more songs from those artists. It seems more likely to me that a large number of those students will take their free songs from iTunes and then download entire albums via the P2P networks they learn about from their school mates.
The problem is that “free and legal” is not a sufficient value add when it comes to a youth demographic. Imagine if the promotion did something like this instead: instead of an anonymously compiled mix tape of random songs, each week Facebook users could download for free 25 songs compiled by a notable expert in that week’s genre. Perhaps that expert could even do a live streaming conversation midweek talking about why they chose the songs they did and answering listener questions moderated by an interviewer. Now that would be interesting. I’m sure there are a world of possibilities here and the promotion as it stands just seems lazy and boring.
Facebook has a huge userbase - 8.3 million users, the company says, with half logging in daily. I talked to an online video service exec last week who told me that the MPAA people know that everyone laughs at their anti-piracy messages at the movies. Apparently the same can’t be said about the big boys in the music world. What a lost opportunity. I’m all for online music services making money, but they are going to have to come up with something other than scarcity as their business model and patronizing moves like this are just stupid. Even cola company promotions at the convenience store let you choose what to spend your free downloads on, how much less cool could a partnership get than this?
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Except have you ever found one of these “indie college bands” using a P2P. No, you can only find what’s popular on P2P. The selection sucks and it is so inconvinient… Not to mention illegal.
Marshall, I agree with you when you say users are more likely to go ahead and download the full album of a p2p service. Many people do that, they go onto itunes, listen to the previews, and then use a p2p service to download the songs or whole album if they like it for free rather than paying for them.
Joshink, I just followed the link above to the Alternative sampler, did a quick search and found that at least the first four bands on this promo have hundreds of search results in Limewire.
joshink has it exactly right. The majority of music on the sampler is music you wouldn’t be able to find on a p2p network (some you can). Also you got the facts wrong. iTunes and facebook aren’t just giving away 25 songs. They are giving away 25 songs every Monday according to the facebook group. Here is the 25 songs on the sample this week as well as a screenshot of the Apple facebook group.
facebook group
1. The Kill
30 Seconds to Mars
2. Elevate Myself
Grandaddy
3. Honesty
Cartel
4. Consolation Prizes
Phoenix
5. Fraud in the ’80s
Mates of State
6. Take Off Your Clothes
Morningwood
7. Blackout
Amusement Parks on Fire
8. Out Here All Night
Damone
9. Sway
The Perishers
10. Bonnie Brae
The Twilight Singers
11. Hair
The Early November
12. Boston
Augustana
13. Flavor
Girls In Hawaii
14. Open Book
The Rakes
15. Midnight
Novatone
16. Wild Garden
Magneta Lane
17. Calm
Maritime
18. Je Ne Te Connais Pas
Prototype
19. Cloud Watch
Lol Hammond
20. Landslide
Chris Stills
21. Light Pollution
Dirty on Purpose
22. Creation Lake
The Movie
23. Poison
My American Heart
24. Fly Me Away
Goldfrapp
25. Wish I Was a Punk Rocker
Sandi Thom
Nevermind missed the 10 weeks part. Sorry.
Plus dude, those bands and most of those songs are all on the P2P network I just searched.
We are going to break digg, so check out the blog and see if you want to be part of Webreakdigg.
Okay, let me get this straight. Facebook users can download 25 free songs from iTunes each week for ten weeks, however, that’s a lame deal because those tunes are pre-selected and, besides, they are available illegally and free on P2P networks? You say, “Twenty five free songs of your choice would have made a much cooler promotion. Even that would have been pretty unimaginative.” Why stop there? I think 50 free songs a week of your choice of music without the iTunes DRM would have made a much cooler promotion. Geez, 100 free songs a day would have been even more cool. Why stop there? Why not suggest this is a clear signal that Apple is running scared from the Microsoft Zume — that it’s a conspiracy to get students to jam their iTunes/iPods full of Apple DRM’d music so that when Microsoft “pays” the licensing fees for converting all those tunes to the Zune DRM, they’ll have to pay through the nose. Bottomline: It’s ludicrous to suggest this is anything but a sweet deal for Facebook users.
Rex, I think you may be on to something with that Zune conspiracy angle. Lol. I still think you’re wrong, fwiw. “Free and legal” music doesn’t seem like something college kids these days are going to get too excited about. The impression I get is that very few college kids care about respecting music copyrights and I don’t think this is a sweet deal for them at all. These two companies could have done something really creative and compelling instead of something so unexciting. Free music is not a meaningful “gift” anymore and I don’t think legality is a quality in high demand in the college music scene these days.
Useless and the horridly ugly adverts take away from the great Facebook layout. One thing I do like is that they link to a facebook “group” (ie paid sponsor group) and not just to apple.com.
What’s the lesson? There is no lesson. It’s not Apple’s job to create lessons.
Apple’s job is to reach a prime demographic during a critical purchase period. So free music at Facebook, during the “back to school” purchase period, is simple good marketing. Or “Marketing 1.0″ as it is sometimes called.
And of course, how about a new iPod to go with that free music? Because this promotion is not about iTunes, it’s not about all that jibberjabber you mentioned, it’s about iPods! Selling more iPods! Duhh…
I’m always surprised to learn how many college students (i take classes) pay for music through the iTunes store. I think you’re neglecting the dubious nature of P2P on collegiate networks and the ubiquity of Facebook within the demographic.
The real news here is that a connection is being drawn between iTunes and Facebook, two applications entrenched with students today. Smart business move? The stock will reflect it.
So I gave my girlfriend a 25tunes code last week. She hadn’t used iTunes even though she had a powerbook.
In a week she has bought more than 3 albums.
Probably Apple trusts people to fall in love with their software once anyone touches it.
Compare to Sony’s musicstore promotions. I’ve been seeing free codes all over the web. I don’t think many people got hooked on.
Gah. It’s marketing, and very nice one at that. They could have spent the money on banner ads an facebook. Instead, they chose to give those people free songs. And that’s a reason to complain.
Sure, you can find most of the stuff on iTunes for free on P2P if you decide to invest some time. You’ll end up with a few broken Mp3s and a few good ones. You could also decide that your time isn’t worth as much and simply click once to download the songs from iTunes. Some people will do the former, some will do the latter. However, giving songs away for free in order to get those who will pirate songs to download from iTunes must be the stupidest thing I’ve heard in a long time. Apple isn’t some web2.0 company which lives on investments. Apple lives on selling things to customers which want to buy these things.
Ok, point taken: Apple is not a 2.0 company. But Facebook is and I would have liked to see something more innovative come out of this partnership. It’s a dissapointment from an innovation perspective, but I can imagine that’s not an issue so long as it’s good enough from a bottom line perspective. Whatever.
If you ask me I feel that the offer is very generous.
As you mentioned the retail price of these songs a la carte is valued at close to $250M. In a perfect world you would be able to choose your 25 songs but lets think for a reason why they may have decided to do a bundle like this.
They may have negotiated special deals with the labels and both sides are chipping in and not taking the full percent of their take home on this. As a result label A said include songs from this band…and this band etc. We want to get that out there and see if it helps convert to full album sales etc.
I see this as a positive not a negative promo. I am sure students that are taking advantage of this promo are saying wow thats cool I get $25 worth of music for free.
When the chef brings you over desert for free do you complain and say I don’t like what you brought over can I have something else
“What’s the lesson here? That the iTunes music store is a highly controlled environment that provides an inferior user experience compared to P2P networks.”
I know blog posts are prone to hyperbole given their brevity and journalistic style, but come on dude. Apple is setting the songs for this promotion to a specific list for marketing reasons, not due to some limitation of the iTunes Music Store. Look at how the Pepsi/Gap iTunes promotions worked.
Comparing the “user experience” of a P2P network to iTunes is ludicrous. One is legal, the other is not. One is incredibly simple to search, find, and purchase a whole album with guaranteed quality, the other requires a painfully long period of searching, downloading, verifying, etc.
I think this is being completely over-analyzed:
Why would apple give away a free song every week? To popularize the given artist of course!
Why would Apple give away 25 free songs every week? To popularize 25 given artists of course!
Secondly, adding an author to the mix adds a potential for bias, which probably isn’t a good idea. Declaring an author would be like saying “John Smith thinks you should like this song.” It puts the consumer and the producer on different heirarchical levels, which in the “friendly” trend of web 2.0 would not be model behavior.
Maybe I’m just impatient, but I also agree strongly with what rfruit said above.
“iTunes music store is a highly controlled environment that provides an inferior user experience compared to P2P networks”
Marshall, you’ve GOT to be kidding me - the iTunes Music Store has an inferior user experience to P2P networks? Cost-wise P2P wins over the IMS no doubt (but, uh, it’s illegal), but you cannot say that the user experience is better. The iTunes Music Store is a gorgeous interface to searching, browsing, and previewing music, one that the P2P interfaces cannot come even close to.
Put it this way: the iTunes Music Store user experience is like shopping at Tiffany’s, with carefully thought-out display, lighting, and personal assistants to help you find exactly what you want. P2P networks “user experience” are like breaking into Tiffany’s on a Tuesday night with a flashlight, shoving a necklace you saw someone wearing the other day in your pockets, and getting out of there before the police show up
Nice analogy. It’s been awhile since I’ve taken a thumpin’ this clear in comments. Points made above will be duly considered.
The main reason why it’s 25 pre-selected songs, not 25 “pick-your-own” songs?
Giving away a download is *not* free to Apple. They have to pay the record companies their share (estimated to be around $0.70 a download). Presumably with this deal, the record companies are giving the tracks at a discounted/free rate (like the free CD samplers you get from records stores).
And hey! If college kids download all this DRMed music, then buy a Zune, (according to rumours) Microsoft will have to buy out all these tracks! Double bonus to Apple!
The future of digital music is in the subscription model not pay-per-item as we see now. There will be some sort of digital tracking (using presumably water-marking technologies) but DRM will not work in the long term. Tracking can and will prevail. The enforcement will just be as difficult but becuase of pervasive connectivity, enforcement on a per country basis will be lots easier than it is today.
College kids when they start working will be dealt the “reality check” card with their first employer. A bit like laws governing minors today. The law is the law, like it or not, one has to obey or face the consequences.
Using emule and soulseek you can find just about any song, no matter how obscure. Sure you might have to wait a couple of days for it to download if there is a big queue. Last time I checked itunes it didn’t have half the stuff I wanted. Also I refuse to pay for DRM encumbered files that will only play on apple software/hardware, I have an ipod at the moment, but I might chose to buy an Iriver for my next mp3 player, rendering all the files useless. When Coca-cola were doing their music give away, I didn’t bother using any of my tokens.
Heh, you can find ANYTHING online if you look hard enough. I have found ridiculously obscure albums through the internet, stuff you’d NEVER find on iTunes. When I do pay money for an Album I go for a physical CD. Why? No DRM, and you can do whatever you like with it, plus it’s a better deal. Why pay the same price for a downloaded song as a physical disk? The download costs next to nothing to distribute so why does it cost the same? And no, iTunes don’t make a killing off this, and neither do the artists. So where does all the pure profit go? To the people who least deserve it of course! God damn record companies.
hi
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