iTMS, Therefore iAm.

I love music, but I cannot agree that the record companies to raise the price of purchased music in Internet.

When I heard the record companies, like Sony, Warner, BMG, etc, want to pronounce to raise the price of iTunes Music Store (See the image above in its original context on the page: Apple.), I am so surprised. Why? The Store let the people to buy the songs of copyright they really like in a low and single price everyone can afford to in easy way and abstain them from downloading it from P2P (Peer-to-Peer). I think this kind of standard mode is a very successful commercial case for selling music in this time the consumers used to download with their will with no paid.

The record companies want to be "price discrimination" in iTunes Music Store; it means sales of identical music product are transacted at different price from the record companies. They like to identify the music from popular and unpopular ones, in the other hand, separate the purchasing rate, and label them into different price. In my opinion, it is unfair for all consumers. If we know the principal market, we will understand that it must be the inauguration to squeeze all the consumers. By Price discrimination, the capitalist will earn all money from consumers. Steve Jobs (See the image at right in its original context on the page: Newsweek.), the CEO of Apple computer, said that it would be greed. I cannot agree it any more.

Firstly, one piece of album will cost 400 NTD (About 10 USD), in other words, 40 NTD (About .99 USD) per song in average. But this quality of music files is much better than the MP3 or AAC file format we download by Internet. For example, an album puts about 700MB in one piece of CD, 70MB per song in average; but in iTunes Music Store, we get about 3MB or 4MB per song, we get a compressional file format and it is not the same as origin. The quality will affect the presentation of music beyond all doubt. In other words, if we buy one song by Internet, it must be lower than the price in real market; but it not exists nowadays.

However, the record companies sell their songs by Internet can depress the some cost of shipping, it can reflect on the price. So, by this logic, we found that the companies would earn much money by the way selling their product by Internet music store. I do not think it is a good idea to adjust the purchased price.

The record companies want to apply the principles of traditional commercial way to the digital world, cause they start to obtain the power of triumph of iTunes Music Store to control the situation. Then, they want to change the mode of the market.

Under this trend, all that we can do is to re-hold the technique of P2P to share the music without copyright. I think it is not a right way, but it will be the power of all consumers. For any consumer, the P2P is the only way to against the capital as well as record companies. Not means destroy, but have the chance to let record company to know the voice of all consumers. It is a chance for all weaken consumers to face and fight for their right.

I believe that if the consumers have chance to make the choice to buy the music product they really like, they will choose the safe way, in other words, the product with copyright.
It is time for the record companies and consumers to do the right choice together, to bulid a win-win situation.

Skype, the next Internet stock bubble?

Sep. 12, 2005, when eBay announced that it plans to acquire Skype by paying $1.3
billion in cash and $1.3 billion in stock. It also has performance incentives in the deal that would make a later payout of up to $1.5 billion by 2008 or 2009 if financial targets were met, giving the deal a total value of up to $4.1 billion. (The image above in its original context on the page: skype.)

It would be interesting to see what eBay' stock does when the markets open. Then again with plenty of market advertise surrounding VoIP (Voice-over-Internet protocol), we can make sure the stock trader and insiders will probably be heavily pushing their clients to buy eBay at the opening bell. “VoIP is hot right now. You can't lose!”

Although I had some information about that Skype (See the image at left in its original context on the page: skype.) always try to seek a buyer for their company early before 2005, when it really happens, I still felt surprised very much. Indubitably, in my opinion, VoIP is the next killer application (commonly shortened to killer app); but it might become the next Internet stock bubble, too.

After some meeting with people majored in this area, I started to have a clearer imagination of this kind of economic mode. Firstly, the technology of VoIP is not complex; almost company would have the chance to develop this kind of technique. For example, Seednet, an ISP (Internet Service Provider) of Taiwan, cooperated with National Taiwan University to give “Wagaly Talk” (See the image at right in its original context on the page: Seednet.) to the world. It means that every company can have a foot in the dish.

At second, as we thought, the fact that Skype would be so hot based on the development of broadband. But, it will be hard to replace the traditional telephone service by this kind of peer-to-peer voice transmission at all right now. The stress of telephone application must be reliable, such as the ability for someone to dial your cell phone number that will then ring your wired or wireless phone instead. In this sumption, the cooperation between the traditional network providers and software developers have to be very closed to abstain from any accident to keep the service stable. But the software providers to offer the high-speed and dynamic control functions that are necessary to support the deployment of VoIP are underfinanced. In this case, all that we can count on is the traditional network provider, like AT&T, which has the capacity to deal with the real network. I guess they just wait to have the advanced technology of VoIP or to buy a software company directly to come upon the stage. In my mind, nowadays, the software of peer-to-peer voice transmission, like Skype, just similar to a “toy” not coup de grace.

According to studies by British Telecom and Deloitte and Touche between 50-60% of companies will be using VoIP by mid-2007, allowing them to drastically reduce their telephone bills. In the future, the application of VoIP will be a trend for voice communication. But the only target we have to watch out is how the traditional network providers plan and draw the map of it.

The image above in its original context on the page: skype.