[John Bailey]

Originally Posted by kamm

Ummm since when "iTunes moment" has achieved anything especially as long as format goes?

I think you misunderstood my use of "the iTunes moment".

I mean an outlet (possibly Amazon for the book selling world) Who got too big for the people trying to sell their wares, so they responded by letting anybody sell their stuff.

In the music world, once iTunes was seen as a threat to their way of doing business, a single outlet that was perceived to have enough clout to dictate to the labels. Or at least enough visibility to do so. So it had to go.

How did the music industry finally deal with iTunes? They dropped the previously market fragmenting DRM practises, opened up the market to all comers, and have been selling to the public in a way that gives those of us who don't have an Apple product the option to buy unrestricted high bit rate digital downloads.

FYI iTunes was never been anything more intended than a quasi-monopoly distrib platform for Apple, nobody else.

I know. It's a sales incentive for Apple products.

Also iTunes did not drop DRM until very recently and still charges extra, even if you already own the track -a typical cheap, Apple-like money-grabbing trick.

Yep. Right after Amazon started selling higher quality MP3 files, along with many other smaller more local outlets. Personally, I buy my digital downloads from 7 digital here in the UK.

OT: I often wonder how on Earth Apple mananged to brainwash so many people to think they have invented so many thing when, in fact, they did not jack&^%$... it's beyond me.

Couldn't agree more. I'm a PC home builder, a Linux user, and I look for good sound quality as the number one aspect of a PMP. Couldn't be further from Apple's demographic.

Anyway, my point is that iTunes or Apple had nothing to do with formats (other than screwing up everything by introducing its own crap) and even less with dropping DRM (plenty of other stores offered DRM-free music for years now, sometimes even for free.)

No argument there.