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Comment by Hyena | Hacker News Reader

I never understood how the music industry survived the period between Napster and iTunes when not a single song was sold.

Any way, the article is wrong. Jobs contribution here was to persuade record companies to let people download music. People were already buying content.

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The article even says that people bought far more music than was predicted. He didn't have to convince consumers at all. It was the record companies that were the only holdout.

Is that not precisely what I said?

You said the article was wrong, then said that. Implying it was a correction.

The response said "The article said this ...".

So yes, but no.

The demographics of people who spend the most on iTunes don't match the teenagers who were trading free files. Jobs persuaded record labels to offer their songs for sale to people who always pay for content (ie re-buying millions of Beatles tracks when they finally arrived on iTunes last year).

I think this is because a lot of the file swappers were actually pretty broke. Teenagers don't all simply hemorrhage cash from every poor, only some do. The rest were burning CDs for friends and later downloading off Napster.

The "persuade record companies" is also a valid point and contribution. IMHO, this persuasion has convinced other content producers to trust Apple in their walled garden model. Also as a user I can say that I have paid loads more for content (music, iOS apps, and Mac apps) via the Apple platform, than I did with Windows and Android. Casualty or causality?

"IMHO, this persuasion has convinced other content producers to trust Apple in their walled garden model."

How so?

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