Will iTunes 10 Bring 10 Companies Down?

Endangered? What about cable TV providers? People pay 5 to eight bucks for a first-run on-demand HD movie. Not anymore.

I thought this was going to be something interesting. Turns out I was wrong. The title states 10 Companies, and then you start talking about individual products that a company makes. If Apple TV beats out Google TV I highly doubt Google is going to fail in the search market. Then you compare iTunes to Amazon which I would like to remind you is a shopping site that offers much much more than music. So in general this is an utterly useless article.

You make a good point, but I'm not going to change the headline over semantics. Most of the companies we talked about in this article only have one product (and the company's brand lives or dies by that one product). When we pit Amazon against Apple in this article, obviously we are only talking about music and TV show downloads and rentals, as a portion of their business. But, thanks, as always, for reading.

Rachel Rosmarin
Editor, Tom's Guide

I must disagree with the zune going out of business! 10/10 possibility? I know it hasnt picked up much but have you ever even personally tested it? The zune is made for true music fans who dont care for many apps, and the apps that are on there are enough to keep me happy. The zune software is a joy to navigate and enjoy a sea of artists along with pictures and bio. Its small slim and heavy duty. If windows sticks with the zune basics then windows phone 7 will be amazing and place it back in competition, not saying it will dominate just add to options. Lets not forget that windows is synchronizing xbox, zune services, windows 7 pc, and the wp7 all in one shot, you really think apple has anything on that? I dont hate apple but all they got is the old buy every wack song for overprice cost model, and a too late to the game social networking for artists. itouch is cool and will sell but I dont see this as a game changer for apple, what the hell is apple tv? why the hell do I want to give up my netflix for that crap? shame on you for slamming zune! lol

Agreed. Zune will disappear however, thats for sure, but only the same way that the Gameboy disappeared in the face of the DS, WP7 will cannibalise the Zune market. Why upgrade your Zune with another Zune when there is another MS device that gives you Zune, XBL and a smartphone. Nothing to do with Apple though.

I think one unfortunate looser could be Last.FM, which does (and does very well) almost exactly what Ping proposes to do. Last.fm's one current weakness is its support of non-pc devices. iPod's are the best supported portable player, but even that isn't great.

MySpace still exist?

Very true, unless microsoft upgrades the stand alone zune which is not looking like its gonna happen, but if they do it will exist as the itouch exists in light of the iphone. However even the itouch is suffering alot in sales due to the iphone, it will be interesting to see what happens in the following quarters.

Last.fm is indeed in its last days

yeah myspace is where i keep all my friends who always seem to ask me to check out their website cams! lol

wtf?
The author should atleast get his demographics right.

Seriosuly. Facebook claims 500 million users. There are only 310million Americans, and I am one who does NOT use Facebook. I'm guessing at least half of Facebook's users are not Americans. Maybe they meant english-speaking-centric. I don't believe there are many chinese or indian users. But then again, are the chinese or indians going to like the same music as americans. Hell, for that matter, does iTunes offer region-specific music sales?

I really can't imagine people are going to turn to their music store for social networking. I've never downloaded iTunes because when everything had DRM, I never had a iPod (so why download music I couldn't play on my phone?). Now thats its the worlds largest bloatware, I'm even less interested in it. I really don't think Ping is going to be a starter for Apple. People install iTunes because they HAVE to in order to put music on their iPod. I don't think anyone WANTS to install iTunes.

This is totally correct, and a point we should've made in the article. Thanks!

I agree, the Zune will disappear only because of its integration into WP7. I love my ZuneHD and never have regreted ditching the iPod touch for it. I am looking forward to a WP7 device.

Good to see the new writers posting in their own articles thread policy in action. Will bring up the quality of the articles because the writers will have to stand by their pieces. Keep leading by example Rachel.

Hellwig makes a good point. I'm not sure WHICH companies offer region specific products for the Indian and Chinese markets, but whoever does is making a mint (or should be).

Another pointless article likely written by an Apple fan that really says absolutely nothing. Apple makes some great products yes...but to say it's taking 10 companies down in the title really made me want to see what was happening but then I actually read it...I should have known better.

"Apple can take over a market just be entering it." And this article made me want to go to sleep just be reading it.

Apple TV software is not nearly functional as Boxee. Boxee Box is coming soon.

In general I find this article to be poorly written and riddled with mis-information.

iTunes for PC has always been second rate at best. The music store is great, but the software runs like a dog. I saw it described somewhere as "a virus with an interface", which I think is spot on. Despite the hype that Apple generate I don't foresee many people ditching their other social networking tools for iTunes.

Some of the figures being thrown around about social networks are not accurate. Many Facebook accounts are businesses or efforts/movements/groups.

Non-US social networks include Bebo, Orkut and Hi5, which have good localized language support. There are several in Asia that support their language. Others will spring up in time. Localization is everything and will see local sites grow in time. MySpace and Facebook are American sites that have picked up international users, but they are English-centric and have a hard enough time serving the U.S. audience, let alone a global one.

I gave Last.fm and Pandora a chance, but I've never been fond of any browser-based streaming site, to be honest. I prefer ShoutCast for WinAMP's versatility. And WinAMP doesn't crash/freeze/lock up anywhere near as much as Firefox.

I must agree. People who truly love music know that there are better alternatives out there than the iPod. Especially when the alternatives allow for syncing with any software and not just propriatary software.

Plus if I remember correctly, the Aune HD is capable of HD video on it and can asl hook up to a TV via a dock that goes HDMI to play your HD video on a large screen.

I really think that Apple gets way too much credit for what they crate. iTunes has always been horrible software and if it wasn't for their great marketing of the iPod, would never have taken off. Add to that that it installs a nice program called Bonjour (very few people know of this) that leave open ports on your computer as it looks for other Apple products, thus leaving you open to many vicious attacks, it makes me wonder how people could support such software.

Maybe I am just crazy.