This is very difficult for me.
To those who know me personally or the few who keep up weekly with my columns, it’s quite evident I’m the biggest Google-loving, Apple-bashing son-of-a-who-knows-what to grace The Daily Reveille’s pages.
With all my might, I want Apple’s arrogant CEO Steve Jobs and his “Jesus Phone” to fail and everyone see it as the overhyped, technologically belated, signal-dropping machine that is the iPhone.
And I truly believe Google’s latest line of Android powered cell phones can be the ones to challenge the almighty Jobs — but we’re talking about cell phones here.
Music, on the other hand, is an entirely different story.
Ever since the iPod was released in 2001, it has become the brand name associated with MP3 players. So many people come up to me at my job at Best Buy telling me they want a Sony iPod. The name has stuck — like Band-Aid or Kleenex.
With each iPod purchase, the user must download iTunes to load and sync music, videos, pictures and more.
iTunes also allows users the ability to easily purchase singles, full albums and even exclusive tracks along with TV shows and movies.
It has basically become the one-stop media shop for those who like to obtain their entertainment legally.
Sure, others have tried to top Apple’s media giant — Rhapsody, Amazon and the redesigned Napster, to name a few — but all have fallen before the mighty Jobs.
Now, just like with smart phones, Google is stepping into the ring to try and accomplish where so many others have failed — it’s going to try to bring down iTunes.
The Web search aficionado recently reported it would launch its very own music service to coincide with its Android handsets.
While not much information has yet been published, Google has a fighting chance with the ability to link YouTube, Gmail and its search site together. And, given Google’s recent background, all of this will be done over cloud computing. Cloud computing is great because it allows users to store and stream data over the airwaves without the need for internal storage like a hard drive or memory card.
If Google’s new service could also provide its Android users ways to more easily sync and manage their media data, a la iTunes, it could pull the many new Android owners away from Apple and iTunes, as their Android phones could become more intuitive music players.
Unfortunately, that’s about as high as they’ll get — No. 2.
The closest competition to Apple is Amazon with 12 percent of the marketshare, and while there are other music services for consumers, it shows iTunes easily controls at least three-quarters of the music market, if not more.
Hell, Jobs was so confident in his digital distribution media service he changed the iTunes logo, removing the CD from behind the music note because he claimed iTunes is now outselling the physical CD.
And he’s right.
With more than 260 million iPods sold worldwide as of April 2010, and with every iPod needing iTunes to operate, the install base for Apple is just too high for anyone to touch.
Just like in the smartphone realm, if anybody in the market right now has a chance to topple Apple, it’d be Google.
But unlike smartphones, where I believe Google has a strong fighting chance, the terms Apple, iPod and iTunes have become so synonymous with music, it’d take a huge economic shift to change that in people’s minds.
When the day comes of a music service providing free legal downloads to everyone, then we may see the mighty Jobs fall.
Until then, we’re stuck with Apple’s controlling music scene of hip commercials and overpriced “popular” singles.
Adam Arinder is a 20-year-old communication studies senior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_aarinder.
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Contact Adam Arinder at [email protected]