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Sony could pull music from iTunes in ongoing war with Apple

Michael Ephraim, the head of Sony for Australia and NZ, was interviewed by The Age yesterday. He is rather pissed with the recent behavior of Apple, and he’d really like to see Sony sever all ties.

You know, when Apple decided to enforce that contract clause, perhaps they should have started with a company smaller than Sony. Sony are considering pulling their music and games from iTunes, and then stopping development of new games for iOS.  And they could actually do it, too. 

The mention about the game development surprises me more than the music. They’d take a loss, but Sony can afford it. The developers would be reassigned or laid off and Sony would hardly notice.

But once I got past the initial thrill of writing this post, reality set in. Sony won’t do anything drastic. Pulling the music would depend on having a good alternative (they’re working on one), but frankly I don’t think it’s going to happen. iTunes is simply too important to abandon. Also, Sony could end game development, but they won’t want to piss off their customers. Existing games will stay.

via The Age

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Comments


Scott G. Lewis February 11, 2011 um 3:16 pm

They are increasingly irrelevant in eBooks. Pulling music from Apple would be a move towards being irrelevant in music, as well.


Luqman February 11, 2011 um 3:28 pm

That would be the case if they didn’t control the catalogues of a number of prominent acts, including Michael Jackson, Bruce Springtstein, Elvis, P!nk, Neil Diamond, Santana, Shakira, Usher, Christina Aguilera, Avril Lavigne, and many, many more. People will still buy those acts through Amazon, Emusic, and 7Digital. Apple will be the loser.


Robert February 11, 2011 um 4:34 pm

Maybe this is the time when Sony needs to concentrate on the development of applications and games for Android… as it is they have an android/psp phone 🙂


fjtorres February 11, 2011 um 7:36 pm

Sony is also going to ship a gaming environmennt for Android. At this point, they have a big vested interest in undercutting Apple every way they can.
But.
(Oh, what a big but!)
iTunes moves a lot of Sony music.
Beaucoup de bucks.
It would take more guts than Sony management can collectively muster to do without.
Plus, the above-named Artists and their Lawyers just might have something to say about Sony sacrificing (lots of *their*) music revenue in a dispute over (somebody else’s miniscule) ebook revenue.
Let’s not forget that big company or not, Sony’s ebook business is tiny. Corporate is *not* going to go to war with anybody over a business unit they’ve been neglecting to start with.
Somebody else is going to have to bell the Apple cat.


Moriah Jovan February 12, 2011 um 10:40 am

Yes, but Luqman’s right. They own the most important music catalog in the world. They could sell it all from Amazon and build their own music store.

At the very least, I think Apple would stop to *think* about it if that catalog were threatened.


Sony won't be pulling their music from iTunes | The Digital Reader April 8, 2017 um 12:36 pm

[…] Saturday the head of Sony Australia gave an interview on how Sony was thinking about pulling their music from iTunes. Today it looks like that might not be the case. The San Francisco Chronicle asked Sony Network […]


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