Venter

The Business of Apple Itunes 8 Genius

On Saturday September 13, 2008, around sometime in the evening I received the offer to update my Itunes version. I did so with no hesitation because I have heard it coming for a while on Blogs such as Kevin Rose’s from Digg.

My first impressions of the new Itunes 8:

The interface was basically the same with some new features. When selecting the music tab on the left hand side I noticed that it brought me to the albums view. I thought this was actually pretty neat to emphasize the album cover art.

Next, I noticed the new addition that Apple employees must have been hard at work with for months ( Genius ). Basically what it does is recommend music to buy to the user based upon the current music they are playing.

iTunes 8 genius

You ask me, are you not writing about business anymore?

Then I would reply to you that you are wrong, this posts intent was to give you a paradigm shift how the business at Apple is conducted.

Business perspective:

Apple’s primary motive for the Genius program is to their increase bottom line like any other for-profit company, so that in turn can increase shareholder happiness. So were the profits lagging at Apple, you make the judgment call?

I think they noticed that the average users love to pirate there music, and wanted to change the industry to help the user to purchase songs they liked for only $0.99 each? Not to raise an ethical decision for the user, but were the exes right in implementing there resources all to the new Genius program in an attempt to downplay pirating? Will this change the way we view the industry of music distribution in the future.

Overall, users and Apple both win from this new program Genius because it suggest music to users that they might not have heard about and decide to buy it for a minimal fee. Feel free to express your thoughts on the business implications of Apple’s new Itunes 8 Genius Implementation.