DISQUS

If I understand this correctly, this is awesome for those without an in-home Setanta subscription.

Newcastle is off to the Have-A-Coke-And-A-Smile league.

Man...now I GOTTA watch a few Celtics games this year.

Gejius, I respect your opinion but I gotta side with Coolfer on this one. Yes, iTunes has shifted over to "conglomerate" status and that ticks people off. Yes, the "free music" movement has legs because "free" is cheaper than $.99. And yes, indie artists now have more power and control over their sales than any other time in recent memory.

But it's the last paragraph of this post that has a point that's missed on many MANY people: that "The strength of Apple and the iPod" is strong. It was Diamond that brought the mp3 player to public conscious, it was Napster demonstrated the power of file sharing to all of us, and it was a ton of other guyss tried to sell music online. But it was only Apple that put all of those three characteristics under one roof, making it easier for the average run-of-the-mill consumer to hop on the portable music bandwagon. That Apple converged these various digital music elements and made the whole thing easy, therefore attractive, to the average consumer is Coolfer's underlying point. Web 2.0 technology may do it in the future, but it would be in the VERY distant future and not the coming months. Out-of-the-gate successes that change how we do things (like iTunes and Napster) simply don't happen everyday.

iTunes might have a Walmart feel, but remember how many people shop at Walmart on a daily basis and don't wast time thinking about how cluttered and incomplete it is.

The Michael Bull thing is a BIG deal!!! I remember when he was just a sales guy at Caroline.