steve jobs in rs

Interesting interview with Steve Jobs about Apple's new role in the music industry.

At first, they kicked us out. But we kept going back again and again. The first record company to really understand this stuff was Warner. Next was Universal. Then we started making headway. And the reason we did, I think, is because we made predictions. And we were right. We told them the music subscription services they were pushing were going to fail. MusicNet was gonna fail, Pressplay was gonna fail. Here's why: People don't want to buy their music as a subscription. They bought 45s, then they bought LPs, they bought cassettes, they bought 8-tracks, then they bought CDs. They're going to want to buy downloads.
They didn't see it that way. There were people running around -- business-development people -- who kept pointing to AOL as the great model for this and saying, "No, we want that -- we want a subscription business."
Slowly but surely, as these things didn't pan out, we started to gain some credibility with these folks.

I'm reminded of the P-A statement about marketing/sales types: "...to these people, the phrase 'recurring revenue stream' sounds exactly the same as 'Anna Kournikova naked.'"

He seems stunningly realistic about Apple's position in the computing world, and how dominant Windows has become. It's funny though, a number of hardcore PC users (I can't really call them Windows fans) are learning a new appreciation for Apple's intelligent design through using iTunes to manage their music. And yes, I wish those lawyer-happy fuckwits at Apple Records would leave Apple, Inc. alone. (via popdex)