It's fairly big news in the Cult of Mac that Apple computer settled its lawsuit with Apple records, and now the two companies can play nice. This is especially good news for Beatles fans, who really want to buy Beatles tunes from the iTunes Music Store.
What I didn't even know until this morning, though, is even more exciting: the settlement clears the way for Apple to sell pre-loaded iPods.
When iTunes 7 let me transfer my purchased music from my iPod to an authorized machine, I wondered if this was with the intention of putting iTunes Music Store kiosks in Apple stores, where customers can buy music, load it onto their iPod at the store, take it home, and back it up on an authorized machine -- it makes sense to me, and could be very profitable for Apple, which doesn't make money on the songs but the hardware, and it could also be good for artists who want to Long Tail their way into a larger audience.Who cares?
Well, the iPod could become the new CD, especially if Apple starts offering cheap shuffle iPods pre-loaded with hot new albums or artists' catalogs. Imagine a whole range of inexpensive, special-edition iPods branded with popular bands containing a new album, or their whole catalogs.
Flash-memory drives are now so cheap, software companies are starting to use them to ship software. H&R Block, for example, is selling the latest version of its tax-preparation software on a flash drive for $40 -- the same price as the CD version. How much would it cost Apple to add a few music chips and some cheap earbuds?
So set aside for a moment all of the concerns and complaints (all of them legitimate, by the way,) that we all have about restrictive DRM, and just think about what this means for the basic technology: entire catalogs of music can theoretically be bought at one time, on a music player, even in a lossless format that the casual listener doesn't care about. Indie artists could load up some kind of promo iPod with their music, and get it into Apple stores right next to big label acts. Just think of what Rhino could do if they made limited edition iPods loaded up with some of their brilliant compilations, like Left Side of the Dial, where the iPod looks like something iconic from the 80s. I'd totally buy that.
We've already seen the beginning of the iPod as fashion accessory, but making limited edition iPods loaded up with specific types of music (a Dr. Demento collection iPod? A Christmas music iPod? A Guitar Hero iPod?) could take Apple into an entirely new market space.
