Apple PING. No Indie Musicians?? WTF?

[sventvkg]

FAIL. I guess it won't be in my sphere of consciousness.

[blue2blue]

Velvet rope, baby.

 

 

 

I'm already a (consumer) member there. It's pretty pointless and, at least yesterday, took 15 to 45 seconds for any database interactions to go through -- updating your profile, selecting songs to display on your profile page if, like me, you've never bought anything through the iTunes store.*

 

 

In fact, the only reason I installed iTunes on my old laptop is because Apple forces you to use an iTunes account in order to get a podcast listed in their supposedly influential podcast directory.

 

I joined Ping, OTOH, because I felt, as a web dev guy, I wanted to see what Apple could bring to the Web 2.0/social networking thing.

 

And what I found was: not much at all.

 

It may not be entirely fair to jump up and down over performance issues in the first 4 days of a new site's operation -- but the fact that they have no protection against spam bots, which reportedly overran the site, apparently a not at all insignificant portion of the 2 million new users that Apple says signed up in the first 4 days.

 

(It should be noted that Apple was 'smart' enough to roll out Ping simultaneous with a well-trumpeted update to the iTunes software -- smart because it presumably bought them a big slug of new users in on more or less with a click, but not so smart because Apple did not have anything close to a full-featured social site in Ping and because they could not keep their servers running in a reasonable manner. Today's users will not long put up with half-minute waits for simple page updates and such.)

 

 

*I bought Quicktime Pro from Apple and I think I learned my lesson on that one, pretty good. When, not that long after I bought it, they sent out a notice saying it had a major, extremely serious security problem and we should all update, I looked for security patches, used to the way the clueless giant of Redmond does things, actually fixing the software they sell you even long after it's sold. Silly me. No fix for Quicktime Pro 6.5x. So I figure, OK, I guess I'm supposed to upgrade to 7.x. I look for the upgrade price/discount. There is none.

 

I buy 6.51, it has a design flaw that makes it a huge security risk -- so bad Apple actually sends out an email not to use the software -- and then they expect me to turn around an pay full retail price for my 'upgrade'? That has got to be the most laughable thing I've heard in a long time.

 

I fell like I've learned my lesson about buying from Apple. It's highly unlikely to ever happen again. And I can get the same 256 kbps non-DRM-crippled mp3 quality, that iTunes sells at a premium, cheaper through Amazon or some other online vendors.

[sventvkg]

That paradigm is dying.

[blue2blue]

 

That paradigm is dying.

 

 

So... your saying their paradigms ain't worth twenty cents?

[elsongs]

I dunno. It'll be only a matter of time before Ping is overrun by wack-ass rappers and lame-ass indie rock bands that just barely learned their 4th chord spamming people to listen to their tunes.

[blue2blue]

 

I dunno. It'll be only a matter of time before Ping is overrun by wack-ass rappers and lame-ass indie rock bands that just barely learned their 4th chord spamming people to listen to their tunes.

Some things will always be.

 

 

____________________________

 

 

 

A musician/blogger who had seen one of my comments on a third online magazine blog column sent word about info he'd managed to get out of Apple on getting an indie act into Ping:

 

How An Independent Musician Might Get A Profile On Ping

 

... from his Waist Deep in the Media Swamp blog.

 

Elsewhere he directed his readers' attention to this post on TuneCore's blog about Amazon's own efforts at supporting indie musicians: http://blog.tunecore.com/2010/08/letter-from-amazon-artist-central.html

[Gus Lozada]

 

A musician/blogger who had seen one of my comments on a third online magazine blog column sent word about info he'd managed to get out of Apple on getting an indie act into Ping: How An Independent Musician Might Get A Profile On Ping

 

 

I just loved the answer from the artist he's trying to get into PING:

 

 

Ya brilliant {censored}

[Jeff da Weasel]

A musician/blogger who had seen one of my comments on a third online magazine blog column sent word about info he'd managed to get out of Apple on getting an indie act into Ping

 

That's really good stuff. Thanks for that.

 

I've already started bitching to ReverbNation about this. It would seem that they, CD Baby and Tunecore are all going to be in the process, but (as one would expect being indie and all) will be very low priority compared to the majors. I'm patient, though.

[blue2blue]

That's really good stuff. Thanks for that. I've already started bitching to ReverbNation about this. It would seem that they, CD Baby and Tunecore are all going to be in the process, but (as one would expect being indie and all) will be very low priority compared to the majors. I'm patient, though.

Thanks to Waist Deep in the Media Swamp for sending me a link to the info!