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By Derek Sivers<\/a>\n
In May 2003, Apple<\/a> invited me to their headquarters to discuss getting CD Baby's catalog into the iTunes<\/a> Music Store.
\n
\niTunes had just launched two weeks before, with only some music from the major labels.
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\nMany of us in the music biz - especially those who had seen companies like eMusic use this exact same model for years without much success - were not sure this idea was going to work.
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\nI flew to Cupertino, California, thinking I'd be meeting with one of Apple<\/a>'s marketing or tech people.
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\nWhen I arrived, I found out that about a hundred people from small record labels and distributors had also been invited.
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\nWe all went into a little presentation room, not knowing what to expect.
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Then out came Steve Jobs<\/a>. Whoa! Wow.
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\nHe was in full persuasive presentation mode - trying to convince all of us to give Apple our entire catalog of music, talking about iTunes' success so far, and all the reasons we should work with Apple.
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\nHe made a point of saying, \"We want the iTunes Music Store to have every piece of music ever recorded. Even if it's discontinued or not selling much, we want it all.\"
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\nThis was huge to me, because until 2003, independent musicians were always denied access to the big outlets. For Apple to sell all music, not just music from artists who had signed their rights away to a corporation - this was amazing!
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\nThen the Apple guys showed us the software we'd all have to use to send them each album. It required us to put the audio CD into a Mac CD-ROM drive; type in all of the album info, the song titles, and the artist's bio; click Encode for it to rip; and click Upload when done.
\n
I raised my hand and asked if it was required that we use their software. They said yes<\/a>. I asked again, saying we had more than a hundred thousand albums, already ripped, with all of the info carefully entered by the artists themselves, ready to send to Apple's servers with their exact specifications.
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\nThe Apple guys said, \"Sorry, you need to use this software; there is no other way.\"
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\nUgh. That meant we'd have to pull each one of those CDs off of the shelf again, stick it in a Mac, and cut and paste every song title into that Mac software. But so be it. If that's what Apple needed, OK.
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\nI flew home that night, posted my meeting notes on my website, e-mailed all of my clients to announce the news, and went to sleep. When I woke, I had furious e-mails and voice mails from my contact at Apple: \"What the hell are you doing? That meeting was confidential! Take those notes off your site immediately! Our legal department is furious!\"
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\nThere had been no mention of confidentiality at the meeting and no agreement to sign. But I removed my notes from my site immediately, to be nice. All was well, or so I thought.
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\nApple emailed us the iTunes Music Store contract. We immediately signed it and returned it the same day. I started building the system to deliver everyone's music to iTunes.
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\nI decided we'd have to charge $40 for this service to cover our bandwidth and the payroll costs of pulling each CD out of the warehouse, entering all the info, digitizing and uploading the music, and putting the CD back in the warehouse.
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\nFive thousand musicians signed up in advance, each paying $40. That $200,000 helped pay for the extra equipment and people needed to make this happen.
\n
Within two weeks, we got contacted by Rhapsody, Yahoo<\/a>! Music, Napster, eMusic, and more, each saying they wanted our entire catalog.
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\nYes! Awesome!
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\nMaybe you can't appreciate this now, but the summer of 2003 was the biggest turning point that independent music has ever had. Until that point, almost no big business would sell independent music.
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\nWith iTunes saying they wanted everything, and then their competitors needing to keep up, we were in! Since the summer of 2003, all musicians everywhere have been able to sell all their music in almost every outlet online. Do you realize how amazing that is?
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\nBut there was one problem.
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\niTunes wasn't getting back to us. Yahoo!, Rhapsody, Napster, and the rest were all up and running. But iTunes wasn't returning our signed contract. Was it because I had posted my meeting notes? Had I pissed off Steve Jobs?
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\nNobody at Apple would say anything. It had been months. My musicians were getting impatient and angry. I gave optimistic apologies, but I was starting to get worried, too.
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\nA month later, Steve Jobs did a special worldwide simulcast keynote speech about iTunes.
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\nPeople had been criticizing iTunes for having less music than the competition. They had 400,000 songs, while Rhapsody and Napster had more than 2 million songs. (More than 500,000 of those were from CD Baby.)
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\nFour minutes in, he said something that made my heart sink to my stomach:
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\n\"This number could have easily been much higher, if we wanted to let in every song. But we realize record companies do a great service. They edit! Did you know that if you and I record a song, for $40 we can pay a few of the services to get it on their site, through some intermediaries? We can be on Rhapsody and all these other guys for $40? Well, we don't want to let that stuff on our site! So we've had to edit it. And these are 400,000 quality songs.\" Whoa! Wow. Steve Jobs had just dissed me hard! I was the only one charging $40. That was me he was referring to!
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\nOK. That's that. Steve changed his mind. No independents on iTunes. You heard the man.
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\nI hated the position this put me in. Ever since I started my company in 1998, I had been offering excellent service. I could make promises and keep them because I was in full control.
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\nNow, for the first time, I had promised something that was out of my control.
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\nSo it was time to do the right thing, no matter how much it hurt. I decided to refund everybody's $40, with my deepest apologies. With five thousand musicians signed up, that meant I was refunding $200,000. Since we couldn't promise anything, I couldn't charge money in good conscience. I removed all mention of iTunes from my site. I removed the $40 cost.
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\nI decided to make digital distribution a free service from that point on. I changed the language to say we couldn't promise anything. I emailed everyone to let them know what had happened.
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\nThe very next day, I got our signed contract back from Apple, along with upload instructions.
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\nUnbelievable. I asked, \"Why now?\" but got no answer.
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\nWe started encoding and uploading immediately. I quietly added iTunes back to the list of companies on our site.
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\nBut I never again promised a customer that I could do something that was beyond my full control.\n\n<\/body>","next_sibling":[{"msid":49116788,"title":"A $3 billion tech company with no outside investors is planning a big IPO","entity_type":"ARTICLE","link":"\/news\/industry\/a-3-billion-tech-company-with-no-outside-investors-is-planning-a-big-ipo\/49116788","category_name":null,"category_name_seo":"industry"}],"related_content":[],"msid":49117502,"entity_type":"ARTICLE","title":"The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote speech","synopsis":"Maybe you can't appreciate this now, but the summer of 2003 was the biggest turning point that independent music has ever had.","titleseo":"industry\/the-day-steve-jobs-dissed-me-in-a-keynote-speech","status":"ACTIVE","authors":[],"Alttitle":{"minfo":""},"artag":"Business Insider","artdate":"2015-09-26 18:52:53","lastupd":"2015-09-26 18:55:07","breadcrumbTags":["industry","international","Yahoo","Steve Jobs","Apple","YES","itunes","Derek Sivers"],"secinfo":{"seolocation":"industry\/the-day-steve-jobs-dissed-me-in-a-keynote-speech"}}" data-authors="[" "]" data-category-name="Industry" data-category_id="18" data-date="2015-09-26" data-index="article_1">
通过Derek Sivers
2003年5月,苹果邀请我去他们的总部,讨论了CD婴儿的目录中iTunes音乐商店。
iTunes刚刚推出前两周,只有一些大唱片公司的音乐。
我们中的许多人在音乐业务——尤其是那些见过eMusic等公司多年来使用这个相同的模型没有成功——不确定这个想法去工作。
我飞到加州库比蒂诺市,思考我将会见之一苹果市场营销或技术人员。
当我到达时,我发现大约有一百人从小型唱片公司和经销商也被邀请。
我们都走进房间有点表示,不知道会发生什么。
然后出来史蒂夫•乔布斯。哇!哇。
他满有说服力的演讲模式,试图说服我们所有人给苹果我们整个目录的音乐,谈论iTunes的成功到目前为止,所有的原因我们应该与苹果合作。
他强调说,“我们希望每段音乐的iTunes音乐商店。即使是停止或不出售,我们想要的一切。”
这对我来说是巨大的,因为直到2003年,独立音乐家总是拒绝进入大媒体。苹果出售所有的音乐,不仅仅是音乐艺术家签署了他们的权利去一家公司——这是惊人的!
然后苹果的人给我们的软件我们都必须使用发送每个专辑。它要求我们把音频CD Mac CD - rom驱动器;输入所有的专辑信息,歌名,和艺术家的生物;点击它把编码;完成后单击上传。
我举起了我的手,问如果是要求我们使用他们的软件。他们说是的。我又问了一遍,说我们有超过十万的专辑,已经扯掉,所有输入的信息仔细艺术家本身,准备发送给苹果的服务器与他们确切的规格。
苹果的家伙说,“对不起,你需要使用这个软件;没有其他方法。”
啊。这意味着我们必须把每个cd的架子上,把它贴在Mac,剪切和粘贴每首歌的标题到Mac软件。但也在所不惜。如果这就是苹果需要。
我飞回家的那天晚上,在我的网站上发布我的会议笔记,电子邮件宣布这个消息时,我所有的客户,然后就睡下了。乐动扑克当我醒来时,我愤怒的电子邮件和语音邮件从我的联系在苹果:“你到底在做什么?会议是秘密!立即把那些笔记从你的网站!我们的法律部门是愤怒!”
在会议上没有提到保密协议签署。但是我立即从我的网站删除我的笔记,很好。一切都很好,所以我想。
苹果iTunes音乐商店的合同发邮件给我们。我们立即签署并返回相同的一天。我开始构建系统将每个人的iTunes的音乐。
我决定我们必须收取40美元这个服务覆盖我们的带宽和工资成本的每个CD的仓库,进入所有的信息,数字化和上传音乐,把CD回仓库。
五千名音乐家提前报名,每个支付40美元。帮助支付了200000美元的额外的设备和人需要来实现这一点。
在两周内,我们有联系到Rhapsody,雅虎!音乐,Napster, eMusic等等,每一个都说他们想要我们整个目录。
是的!太棒了!
也许你现在不能欣赏,但是2003年的夏天是最大的转折点,独立音乐。在那之前,几乎没有大企业将出售独立音乐。
iTunes说他们想要的一切,然后他们的竞争对手需要跟上,我们都在!自2003年夏天以来,各处的音乐家都能够出售他们所有的音乐几乎在每一个出口在线。你知道那是多么神奇的吗?
但是有一个问题。
iTunes不回到美国。雅虎Rhapsody, Napster,其余都是启动和运行。但iTunes不返回我们签署合同。因为我在我的会议笔记吗?我生气乔布斯吗?
在苹果,没人会说什么。个月。我的音乐家越来越不耐烦,生气。我给乐观的道歉,但我开始担心。
一个月后,史蒂夫•乔布斯(Steve Jobs)做了一个特殊的全球转播对iTunes主旨演讲。
人被批评iTunes音乐低于竞争对手。他们有400000首歌曲,而Rhapsody和Napster有超过200万首歌曲。(超过500000人从CD婴儿)。
四分钟,他说了什么让我的心沉入我的胃:
”可以很容易地将这个数字要高得多,如果我们想要让每首歌。但我们意识到唱片公司做一个伟大的服务。他们编辑!你知道吗,如果你和我记录一首歌,40美元我们可以支付的服务在他们的网站上,通过一些中介机构吗?我们可以在Rhapsody和所有其他家伙40美元呢?我们不想让这些东西在我们的网站!所以我们不得不编辑它。这些是400000质量歌曲。”哇!哇。 Steve Jobs had just dissed me hard! I was the only one charging $40. That was me he was referring to!
好的。就是这样。史蒂夫改变了主意。iTunes上没有独立。你听说过那个人。
我讨厌这个让我的位置。自从1998年我开始我的公司,我一直提供优质的服务。我可以做出承诺,让他们因为我是在完全控制。
现在,第一次,我曾承诺是我情不自禁。
所以是时候做正确的事,不管有多少伤害。我决定退还所有人的40美元,我最深的歉意。与五千名音乐家签约,这意味着我是再融资200000美元。因为我们不能保证什么,我在良心不能收费。我从我的网站删除了所有提及iTunes。我删除了40美元的成本。
我决定做数字发行免费服务从那时起。我改变了语言说我们不能保证什么。我给每个人都发了邮件,让他们知道发生了什么事。
第二天,我得到了从苹果公司签署合同,以及上传指令。
难以置信。我问,“为什么是现在?”,但没有回答。
我们开始编码和立即上传。我悄悄地添加iTunes回到公司在我们的网站的列表。
但我再也没有向客户承诺,我可以做一些我无法完全控制。
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