Apple’s My iTunes: They Make Money Off Your Back and Don’t Even Say Thank You
Apple’s got a new way to earn a few pennies from you, and they’re going to try and tell you how cool it is. My iTunes, is, says Apple, “giving you an effortless way to keep your friends up-to-date with your favorite music, TV shows, movies, and more.” All you need to do is set up a My iTunes widget on your web site, providing a feed of “your top reviews, favorite artists, and new music, movies, and TV shows from the iTunes Store with anyone who visits your site.” Naturally, the widget has links to the iTunes Store, so Apple can sell the music, movies and TV shows you like. But this isn’t an affiliate program; Apple doesn’t thank you, even for a few percent of what you sell for them.
You may be familiar with affiliate programs: people put links on their web sites for books, CDs, DVDs or other items, and these links, to retailers such as Amazon.com, contain the user’s affiliate ID. I use Amazon links on my site, as you’ve probably seen, and I have affiliate accounts with Amazon in the US, UK and France. In exchange for driving traffic to Amazon, I get a cut of sales: given the low amount my links sell, I get about 6% of sales. But you don’t pay any extra, so it’s a win-win situation.
The difference with Apple’s My iTunes is that they want to convince you that it’s cool to sell stuff for them and not even get a thank you. You can, of course, sign up to Apple’s iTunes Store affiliate program, but the My iTunes widget won’t contain your affiliate ID; this widget is automatically generated by Apple’s server, showing music you’ve purchased or reviews you’ve written. Apple just looks at your history on the iTunes Store and builds the widget from that.Let’s say you’re a fan of indie rock, and you want to support your favorite bands. You could do so with My iTunes, but neither you nor the bands will make a cent (over and above the paltry royalties the band gets from their iTunes sales). But if you could link directly to a band’s web site, not only would the band get more publicity, but they might sell more. Many bands sell directly, or, at least, have their own affiliate accounts with iTunes or other online vendors. In fact, in many cases, bands make more from these commissions than they do from royalties. Go figure.
This just looks like another way Apple is selling sugar water and trying to make users think it’s cool. Sure, they want to make money; that’s their role as a company in a capitalist world. But at least they should give a few cents back to the users who drive sales for them, like most other online vendors do. Come on, Apple, treat the people who have made your company what it is with a bit more respect.
Posted: 8/10/2007 by kirk | Filed under: Apple & Mac OS X | 6 Comments »
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Hogwash! With the widget, Apple provides you a service or functionality you
didn’t have before. You can either buy it or not. And the way you buy it is… You
got it!
I like that, "service or functionality". :-) You’ve drunk the kool-aid!
As I said before, "Hogwash." In business, when you provide customers with a
service they didn’t have before it is customary to charge for it in some way. Now,
if you don’t like the cost, don’t buy it. It’s quite simple. No need for all this
controversy you’re trying to stir up.
I don’t see how this is a service, to simply supply a list of music which is, in
reality, an ad. I could make a list of music on my web site; it would also include
music that I didn’t buy from the iTunes Store (note that this widget cannot
accept customization – it’s only what you’ve bought from the store, and you
can’t choose what it displays).
So, no, it’s not a service; it’s an ad.
Actually, it is BOTH a service and an ad. The very fact that it does something you
may
have chosen or wished to do on your own indicates that it is a service. Limited
in some ways perhaps; but in other ways it is more than what most people
would easily accomplish on their own.
No-one’s making you use it, Kirk, and no-one’s taking away the other options you’ve described. Given that’s the case, it’s hard to see this as some sinister empire on the march to destroy bands. Furthermore, ITMS distributes what, 80% of the cost back to the bands’ record label. That’s why ITMS wasn’t making money for so long, you know. What the record label does with it is Not, and I repeat NOT, Apple’s problem. You want to talk about royalties? Get the record labels on the horn.