France vs Google. France vs Microsoft. France vs CNN. Now, it’s France vs Apple. Just More of the Same, Right?

Michael Hedges - March 27, 2006

Maybe not! Keeping to their strong tradition of dismissing the French, the Anglo-American media missed the point. Interoperability may test business models but it’s great for consumers.
Go To Follow Up & Comments

The French National Assembly approved an authors-rights measure to force open the locks on download services and portable digital devices. The digital rights management (DRM) codes used by Apple – and others – to secure exclusive domains between the devices they manufacture (i.e. iPod) and services they provide (i.e. iTunes) must, they say, be open to all.

Through pure serendipity reaction to that story was coupled with French President Jacques Chirac’s storming out of a meeting with European business leaders because a French business leader made a presentation – Quelle horreur! – in English.

Apple shot back. Maybe, just maybe, the French market is not worth the trouble. Ouch!

DRM keys turned music downloading from an illegal activity openly fought by the music industry into a big, legal and popular business. Apple’s statement called the French move “state-sponsored piracy.”  Once again, the French government seemed to be taking on international market makers.

Music fans in France downloaded 8 million single tracks in 2005, according to the music business trade group International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), a five-fold increase over the previous year. The top three European markets – the UK and Germany lead France -  downloaded more than 55 million tracks in 2005. That pales in comparison with US downloaders, who grabbed 353 million tracks.

The Apple iPod has an estimated 80% market share of music downloading. 80% of the iPod+iTunes business is in the US, with less than 2% in France. Still, viewed from the Paris Metro, the iPod is an inescapable fashion statement, an elegant accessory to post-modern identity, shutting out everything but ME ME ME.

Open sourcing is central to all new media, defining, or defying, the business model. The French draft law – it still must pass the French Senate – collected more than a few supporters, even some in the US.

“The more people can move their content around from one device to another, the more they'll buy things to play it on,” said Electronic Frontiers Foundation attorney Jason Schultz, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Interoperability is crucial to attracting consumers to buy music online, but it should not be at the cost of endangering the technology used to enable legitimate offerings of music and services online,” said Chairman of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) Chairman John Kennedy. The record industry – with their friends in the motion picture industry – lobbied around the world for DRM standards in hope of killing off the pirates Apple so self-servingly referred to when it was time to roll out the public relations machine.

Apple makes far FAR more money from the iPod than iTunes, for which it turns over as much as 70% of the subscription price to – VOILA! – the music rights holders. IFPI has made no secret of their displeasure with the iPod+iTunes combination, mostly because Apple insists on holding the line on download prices. But for iPod buyers iTunes is the control panel – a browser, of sorts. ITunes is not a browser. Indeed, it’s a shop.

But the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the bastion of American protectionism (while railing about free-markets for all), neatly summed the dominant market-liberal voice with an editorial titled “Out of Tune.”  The negative attitude in France toward private enterprise and intellectual property rights is “not very surprising,” said the WSJ editorial. These are the same people who regularly editorialize about other French bad habits – cigarette smoking, wine drinking, sex enjoying and, well, French speaking – that cause twinge among neo-Calvinist Americans.

Apple can’t lose. Sales of the iPod are set to soar with a new ad campaign. And they’ve clearly been thinking about France. The electro-rock group Rinôçérôse, from Montpellier, France penned the track used on the new iPod ad campaign titled “1000 Tunes in Your Pocket.”

ftm Follow Up & Comments

Internet Downloaders Are People, Too - February 9, 2007
Médiamétrie/IDATE France, UK and US study shows surprise for music business

Internet users download pictures and images more than music, according to a survey of 4000 internet users in France, UK and France conducted by Médiamétrie, NetRatings and IDATE.  Those who download music are as likely to use legal as peer-to-peer services. It seems downloaders find what they want…and download it.

UK internet users are the most likely to download material (59%), followed by the French (55%) then Americans (47%). The Brits also spend (or pay) more: €7.3 per month. The French pay only €3.8 per month with Americans paying €5.2 per month.

The study notes that peer-to-peer networks are more developed in the UK than in either France or the United States.

Americans are more likely to pay for downloaded (66%), followed by Brits (59%) and then the French (49%).

Downloaders do, in fact, tend to be younger but the study reports that all age groups participate and the fun is equally distributed between men and women.

PCs and Macs are, by far, the tool of downloaders. Using the mobile phone for downloading is, according to the study, “marginal.”