eDonkey Dead…Bad News for Apple?

P2Pnet is reporting that eDonkey has reached a $30 million dollar settlement with the recording industry and will be shutting down their service. So far eDonkey, BearShare, i2Hub, WinMX, iMex and Grokster are dead (with Kazaa defecting) while the surviving P2P networks/clients include LimeWire (with a pending lawsuit), Warez P2P, Morpheus, Soulseek, and Blubster. The recording industry is celebrating another victory.

But there is another less obvious casualty in the P2P wars and that’s Apple Computer. Why?

Apple just announced a new 80 gig iPod today that can hold 20,000 tracks. But the average number of tracks sold through the iTunes music store per iPod is just a few dozen, not even close to the 20,000 tracks the current generation of devices can hold. At least if you believe Rob Glaser. Regardless, it seems unlikely that consumers will be willing to pay $1 per track to fill their shiny new iPods. Apple may be pinning its hopes on video downloads, but it will be increasingly difficult to convince music centric iPod users to buy larger and larger devices if the recording industry is successful in killing P2P downloading.

File under: be careful what you wish for…

 

Apple Announcements

OK, today was the latest hypefest from Apple Computer.

Announced were downloadable movies from iTunes, a new interactive television device (iTV), new iPod with better battery life which now is actually long enough to play a movie (but not more than one!), new iPod Nano and Shuffle as well. Personally I don’t get all the hype over downloadable movies. Why wouldn’t I just rent the DVD through Netflix? DVDs are still better quality than iTunes movies as I understand it. And portable DVD players have bigger screens, better battery life, and are cheaper than the iPod. I don’t travel enough these days to justify buying either one actually.

The most interesting announcement for me personally was the gapless playback from iPods, something which has IMO rendered all existing digital music players almost unusable since I mostly listen to DJ mixes. The tiny Shuffle is impressive. How long before I can get one built into an earring?

The 80 gB iPod is approaching the point were most people won’t ever own enough music to fill the device. Especially not at $1 a track. The thing can hold 20,000 tracks. Does anyone actually think consumers will spend $20,000 to fill a $350 iPod? I certainly don’t. Where’s the subscription service Apple? This is more than most users of illegal P2P services whom I have talked with have in their collections.

Notably absent was any announcement of an “iPhone” or related device. Hmm.