Myth 5: The iTunes Collapse Myth
Myth 5: The iTunes Collapse Myth
Earlier this month, Andrew Orlowski of the Register, already credited with myth number one, launched a new attack on Apple's music sales through iTunes. He announced that the service had "experienced a collapse in sales revenues this year," basing the statement on numbers pulled from a Forrester Research study.
The Fallout
Orlowski's remarks were positioned as a news story, and syndicated thorough the online news world and in blogs. 
The motive was clear in a follow up article, where Orlowski described his vision of a socialist paradise where the RIAA is given taxation powers and music becomes communal property paid for by a corporate bureaucracy.
The iTunes Monoploy Myth is seemingly at odds with the iTunes Collapse Myth, but both still managed to coexist, particularly after the Monopoly Myth was reinvented under a new name: the iTunes Vendor Lock In Myth.
In other words, consumers have no choice but iTunes, but are choosing not to buy anything from Apple, resulting in the logical conundrum of a monopoly supported by a lack of sales. At the same time, Apple purportedly has the market all tied up because customers can't use the iTunes songs they aren't buying on rival devices they also aren't buying. Again, a puzzle.
They are all locked up inside a collapsing iTunes... that is abandoned but somehow still manages to enwrap the entire market. It all sounds very scary and very confusing.
The Myth, Unwoven
A followup article, The iTunes Vendor Lock In Myth, explained the paradox of Bill Gates, the worlds leading DRM proponent, trash talking DRM to an audience of DRM foes while at the same time handing them all free devices designed to destroy fair use rights and propagate the world’s most abusive DRM system for music: Janus.
Hiding the Damages
After Orlowski's iTunes attack was blown open as more sensationalist FUD, Orlowski blamed Forrester Research for not standing behind its data, despite the fact that he had twisted the data to suggest ideas he was aware it did not support.
The story that iTunes sales had collapsed was further buried as the next speculative and sensationalist version of the cycle arrived: by Christmas, the new iTunes panic story was that the iTunes Store had fallen apart after a traffic surge caused by iTunes gift card redemption.
That story, based on anecdotal experiences, was announced days after the actual problem had passed. Perhaps the real monopoly iTunes holds is a lock on high pitched, conflicting, and irresponsible news reports.
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Saturday, December 30, 2006
