Conference napalm::commusic_v1

1845.0. "Rhythm 'n' Views - Freff's Column in MACUSER Magazine" by DFLAT::DICKSON (Plan data flows first) Mon Jan 09 1989 10:19

Freff, author of a regular column in KEYBOARD, now also writes a column for
MACUSER magazine titled "Rhythm 'n' Views".  The column in the January 1989
issue is about what Apple will have to do to be succesful in the music
business.  It contains a few statements that I thought would be interesting to
discuss here.

	"Music swims in a sea of perceived time;  the music *business*,
	like all businesses, swims in a sea of perceived money."

	His ballpark size of world-wide music business is 50 billion dollars.

	Annual expenditures by Americans and American companies on
	instruments and recording gear is 6 billion dollars.

	Sam Ash is a full Apple dealership.

	According to Joel Chadabe, of Intelligent Music, music will ultimately
	be a bigger market than desktop publishing.  "There are a lot more
	people who sing in the shower than will ever need to publish a
	newsletter."

I thought of all the people within large corporations who use desktop
publishing these days, for internal newsletters, training materials, and
presentations.  Then I thought, "is the next big wave to do your own music for
these presentations?"  The mind boggles.  Along with a Photography and an Art
department, would Digital have a Music department wherein a staff of crack
jingle and new-age background composers would crank out audio tracks for your
next product-announcement slide-show? 

	Music is a single worldwide market.

He says that other businesses are not so homogeneous, having various national
ways of doing things.  Apparantly not so in music.

	Apple Europe positions the Mac entirely as a business machine.
	And the markup over USA prices is outlandish.  People make a profit
	by buying Macs *retail* in the USA, shipping them to Europe, paying
	import fees, replacing power supplies, and *still* selling them
	at less than the official Apple price.

Seems to me this used to be true for parts of DEC, no?

	The Mac has 17 percent of the computers-in-music pie.  IBM and its
	clones have 22 percent.  Various Atari machines have 30 percent.
	But in Europe, Atari leads Apple 40-to-1.
 
No doubt due to the price gouging noted above.

	To sell software in Europe, a developer *must* make it available
	for the Atari.  Having done that, they can also sell it to American
	Atari owners, which discourages Americans from buying Macs.  (If
	the same software runs both places, why buy the more expensive
	machine?)

I wonder if there is any parallel between this phenomenon and what goes
on with Unix.

	"[Apple's corporate arrogance] leaves them ill prepared to deal with
	their real competition in the music market, an economic force just
	now emerging from the wings.  It's big, it's been in the music
	business for 100 years, it's Japanese, and the Apple Music Marketing
	Group is definitely David to its Goliath (maybe even David without
	a sling).  In one word: Yamaha."

    re Freff.. that jerk got me off Keyboard Mag, now I'll stop reading
    MacUser..
    
    karl

>	Apple Europe positions the Mac entirely as a business machine.
>	And the markup over USA prices is outlandish.  People make a profit
>	by buying Macs *retail* in the USA, shipping them to Europe, paying
>	import fees, replacing power supplies, and *still* selling them
>	at less than the official Apple price.

	You do  not  have to import your Macs from the USA, there
	are  companies  doing it for you.  To give you an idea of
	the  difference  in  USA to UK price a Colour Mac II with
	45M  disk list for �6200 in the U.K.  or from an importer
	�4100.

	And you  do  not  have  to  change the power supply.  Its
	rated from 100V to 250V.

		BArry