Anthony Agius

I Love The iTunes Store - But...

I'm a filthy stinking pirate. I download gigabytes upon gigabytes of TV shows, movies and music. I have a 30TB file server (yes, I really do) that holds it all and lets me share it with my friends.

I am a media whore. I want to watch everything, listen to everything. BitTorrent, Usenet, file sharing forums all let me dive right in to the flowing river of delicious content and rub my body all over it's digital goodness. Mmmm.

Without this sort of access to the stuff I crave, being limited by what is portioned out to me on commercial TV, or what is sold in a store, I would be a very different person. All those songs I listen to, all those things I watch, make up part of who I am. That's how important this stuff is to me - it makes up part of my core being.

It probably sounds like I'm just a cheapskate who likes to infringe on intellectual property, but that's not true. I really do want to support, as much as I financially can, the creators of the media I so lovingly enjoy. Unfortunately, backwards and old-fashioned media companies, won't let me do it on my terms and because of that, are literally missing out on money.

The iTunes store is as close as it gets for what I want right now. It's easy to use, has the least intrusive DRM and of course, works on all my Macs and iPods and iPhones. But it's far from perfect. There are five things, that I think the media companies should do that will end 90% of the piracy of their content and in turn, stop them all from dying out, and for us to rely on dickheads on YouTube being our main source of entertainment.

Step 1 - I'm Australian, Speak English and Have Money!
I live in Australia and because of this, media companies think I'm a retarded gimp with a finger up my arse who doesn't notice it when there's only season 1 and 5 of The Wire up on the iTunes store, or that an album is available on the US store, but not on the AU store.

I might be able to understand if I was in a non-English speaking company and content had to be regionalised - but Australians don't need US content translated or modified.

For music, there should really be a single iTunes store. All the content from all over the world is available to purchase in your local currency. Sure, keep on promoting what you're promoting, but if I want to give you money for some unheard Japanese act, why won't you let me?! Instead, I turn to BitTorrent, where it exists and with no region restrictions.

For movies, there is this wonderful technology called subtitles. I am not afraid of them. In fact, I prefer them versus overdubbing with shitty voice acting. If there's a movie from overseas, that's hasn't got English audio - slap on some subtitles and sell it to me.

For TV shows, just because it hasn't aired here who cares? I want to give you money, directly, to watch the shows the networks don't pick up. If it's yet to air here, I don't care again, I want to give you money to watch it ASAP. If it's a show in the UK, that might only make sense to those in the UK, I don't care! If I want to watch it, I want to watch it and I want to give you my money to do so.

The Internet doesn't have country boundaries. What is known in the US, or UK doesn't just stay there, it's spread instantly around the world. The media you're serving up locally, is available globally, you just have to click the button to let me watch or listen to it. Do that and I bet there will be large amounts of money from people overseas that you didn't' even have to market to, or tailor it for. Instead of an audience of 400 million, it's 6 billion! (or however many people use the Internet these days).

Step 2 - Keep Your Margins, But Reduce the Pricing
When I say reducing pricing, I don't mind slash it to be virtually free. I'm just saying, don't charge me $16.99 for an album, when I can go to a retail store, pick up the same album for less. You don't have to physically make the CD, or the cover, or print the liner notes. You don't have the store them in a warehouse, or deliver them to the store either. Sure, bandwidth ain't free, but damn, it's gotta be cents vs. dollars for the creation of a physical album.

Same goes for a DVD/Blu-Ray. The DVD contains a 2nd disc of extras, is higher quality, still has to be manufactured and shipped, yet is still the same price, or less, than a digital download which is of inferior quality and has no special features at all.

So when you go to decide the pricing on the latest digital downloads, don't go "ok, the RRP of the CD is this much, that's what we will charge" - instead it should be "ok, the bandwidth & support is this much and the usual margin we make on an album is this much - let's charge that".

I also really, really want a subscription based service. Sure, buying everything is fine and it works for a lot of people, but not me. I want to keep paying for the rest of my life. I'm never going to ease up on listening to music or watching TV or movies. If I could have on-demand access to a large library of media, I'd happy pay $200+ for it. Shit, Foxtel is close to $150 for all the channels and a PVR in HD. $200 would be a bargain for every TV shows, movie or album ever made, on demand. Offer it in packages, just like Foxtel, so people can choose what they want to spend. Or don't even make people subscribe. Have out-right purchases *and* subscriptions. That way everyone gets what they want. Even chuck in (optional) ads if it means the price can be lowered to rope more people in. People are cheapskates remember.

Step 3 - Bump Up The Quality
With audio, this isn't really an issue. Me and some other nerds would like Apple Lossless as an option, but 256K AAC is fine. It'd be nice to have surround sound albums though. You haven't lived until you've hear Brothers in Arms in 5.1!

Video however, leaves a lot to be desired. I can get *awesome* quality rips of movies and TV shows, which have been encoded by dudes in their bedrooms. The trailers Apple puts up on the QuickTime site look amazing. Yet I go to download a movie off iTunes and well, it looks shit compared to a BluRay or sometimes, even a DVD.

With such high ownership of 720p+ TV's - it's time to concentrate on the output quality of the content being produced. Sure, the file size will be bigger, but that leads me to the next step.

Step 4 - Bandwidth & Storage
All this media puts a drain on our crappy download quotas here in Australia. iiNet are doing well by being able to claim that all purchases via the iTunes store don't count towards your quota. I'd like to see more ISPs do this. When you're streaming 4-8GB movies every now and then, plus your regular TV, that 20GB limit disappears quickly. That said, I'm also in favour of a "user-pays" ISP, that charges a base service provider fee with no included data, then charges you for bandwidth in the range of cents per gigabyte. Like how you pay for water, gas or electricity. That's a whole other debate though..

You know that 30TB server I have? I don't really like it. I'd much prefer it if all my content was hosted in a proper datacenter, by someone that knows what they're doing. I can then just access it whenever I want over the Internet, knowing whatever I have purchased is there for me, on demand.

Right now, if I delete a song from my iTunes library, that I purchased off iTunes and didn't back up. It's gone. What the fuck is up with that? Why don't they let me re-download it? It hasn't even got DRM on it. Let me re-download it whenever I want! The file is already sitting there on a server, just let me download it. That is the biggest benefit of digital - unlimited copies with no quality loss.

Step 5 - Depth of Content
I want to see everything. Dump your archives on the Internet. Someone out there wants to pay for it. Give it to them! Imagine all the TV shows the ABC has that are not online. All this original Australian output that no-one is seeing because it's not (and rightfully so) on free to air TV, could have a revival by being placed online and able to purchase at a reasonable price. Right now, it's all rotting away in some store room, earning sweet fuck all. Put it on the Internet, sell it and bam - cash flow. Even if not for the cash, at least for the purposes of history!

All the record companies have the same issue. Artist back catalogs that are sitting in warehouses, not available for record stores to order. Digitise it, put it online, sell it and you'll earn money. But movies are probably the worst of the lot. So many films literally rotting away that should be digitised and put online so that people can watch them and studios be paid.

This is ultimately, my biggest issue with legit downloading - the stuff I wanna see or hear just isn't available online (I even find this issue with illegal sources).

Imagine this:

You fire up your AppleTV. Go to the iTunes store. Select a TV show you want to watch. Every TV show, ever made, anywhere in the world, is available. There's recommendations for you based on what you've enjoyed before. There's stupidly fine grained tagging, categories, synopsises, cover art, trailers & samples, favourites and lists and bookmarks and friends recommendations. You pick the show you want to see and it starts playing, in glorious 1080p HD with 5.1 sound, as good as Blu-Ray streamed over the Internet, without worrying about bandwidth as your ISP doesn't meter iTunes store content and you have QoS on your router so other internet activities aren't impacted.

On your Mac, you load iTunes and want to put some more music on your iPhone. Go into the iTunes store and there's every album, ever made. Available in Apple Lossless, 256k AAC or 128k HE-AAC. Just select what music you want, copy it on your iPod and away you go.

That is what I want. I want to be able to stop this crazy hunting and searching and downloading. I want to be 100% sure that the content I'm watching is what the creators intended us to see and that it's correctly meta-tagged and in the best quality available. I want to be able to access it anywhere, at any time - without needing to invest in massive hard drives to back it all up myself. I want stuff that is made in Sweden, or Germany, or Japan, or Hong Kong.

There's boatloads of money in this for everyone - people don't mind paying for entertainment. Some don't and never will, that's always been the case (VHS and cassette tape bootlegs anyone?), but if you build something so impressive people will use it. You just have to give them a reason to.