Topic research; from an audience point of view...

Apple inc’s article “Thoughts on music” claims that by the end of 2006, customers had purchased a total of 90 million iPods and 2 billion songs from the iTunes store, meaning on average, 22 songs were purchased from the iTunes store for each iPod that’s ever been sold. This column also calculated that Today’s most popular iPod holds 1000 songs, and that research tells us therefore, that the average iPod is nearly full. This means that 22 out of 1000 songs (under 3% of the music on the average iPod), is purchased from the iTunes store and thus protected with DRM. The remaining 97% of the music however is unprotected and playable on any player that can play the open formats.
This from the audience’s point of view is ideal as this allows them to share their music files with anyone they choose, and the persons they choose to share this file with, can gain a copy of the music file and upload it into their music library on a computer and transfer it onto their music player. However from Apple’s point of view, this decreases opportunity sales of their music and could affect the success rate of their iTunes store. This also shows mistreatment of their software as ideally the average iPod would be filled 100% with iTunes and formats agreed for compatibility by Apple with their software. This kind of feedback shows Apple that their software is compromising with formats that have been manipulated and distributed in a different way (either by a rivaling company or illegally).

The iPhone took its shape from the band Nine Inch Nails. Reznor (a band member) was experimenting with his mobile phone backstage before a gig and noticed some fans queuing to get in were uploading pictures of the scene. He decided to post a message to the fans on the same network the fans were uploading pictures to and told them “We're backstage! And that freaked them out," A quote from Reznor. "But that got the wheels turning and we thought, 'How can we develop that?”

An opinion from David Rowan, editor of Wired UK magazine, of the App store: "With the amount of downloads they've had since the App Store launched last July, it must be one of the fastest rising businesses since the launch of the internet," He also spoke on to outline benefits of the application: "What's good about the App Store is that there's quite a low barrier to entry, so many of these programmers actually have day jobs and are just working on these apps in their spare time." This therefore shows how comfortably Apple App’s appears to settle into the everyday lives of their audience. This also shows an element of inspiration as their audience are developing App’s in their spare time, shaping them to how they will benefit them as the consumer of the product in their everyday lifestyle, therefore applying the software that Apple have provided to them, the consumer, and the consumers are using a way of feedback of the service in a way that it improves the service for them, and Apple will develop an understanding of their audience’s needs and desires whilst making a profit as a business from this. As individuals, users of the Apple App service can download the software, create their own application, and for a one-off fee of $99 (£68). They can go on to register as a developer with Apple, and conclusively have it stocked in the App Store. If they do decide to charge for their application, they can set the price, and keep 70% of what profit the App generates, with the remaining 30% going to Apple of course. Most of the Apps are either free to download or are a nominal price such as 49p. It has recently been reported in a newspaper article that more than 25,000 of them have been created - often by individuals working from home - and they have been downloaded more than 800 million times from the online iPhone App Store.
Before the digital age was introduced, it was complete Albums that dominated the music industry, for the 35 years prior to the introduction of the digital age. Nevertheless, from the eye of the audience is that on any album there will always be favoured tracks and less favoured tracks. Until now, consumers had to buy all of the tracks in one as a form of package deal, whether it was an LP, a cassette or a CD they were purchasing.
With the introduction of the digital age, consumers have had the option to pick and choose the songs they want as individual tracks in their own right, and current buying trends suggests that this way is genuinely preferred by the audience of today. In 2004, more than 140 million individual songs were purchased and downloaded legally, while only 5.5million albums were purchased electronically. This type of purchasing pattern has influenced Apple into distributing its music by exploiting the digital age to create iTunes. Individual tracks are made available to acquire for a set price of 99p in most cases, yet there is still the option to buy the whole CD. This exploits the digital age as iTunes are electronic formats, and once the iTunes software has been downloaded, they are made available to the audience. Another way Apple are using the digital age in this way is that they are also making use of the online age to transfer payments made to them online for iTunes.