You're missing the entire point. ALL that needs to be displayed is a page with some album art, a description of the thing, and a "Want this? Download iTunes!" button. Then Jeff Atwood can figure out what the heck he just clicked on in Twitter.
The full iTunes application still remains.
FYI Apple already has a web-based "what's hot on iTunes" thing on their site which is more or less just as simple to maintain.
Ah, I see. What we're asking for is an Apple-authored, Apple-hosted service to make it easier for Jeff Atwood to get free information from Apple without the risk of becoming an Apple customer.
I admit, it would be really, really useful to have a service which provided links to album information and cover art without asking you to download a special application. Perhaps that's why such services predate iTunes by six years, and were originally available as (anybody else remember this?) Gopher sites:
I find it hard to blame Apple for not bothering to reinvent that wheel. What's the profit margin on it? And, for all I know, Apple isn't even contractually allowed to serve up album info and cover art outside of iTunes. Apple has signed a lot of stupid contracts (cough AT&T cough); it's part of the cost of being the ones who drag ancient monopolies kicking and screaming into the future.
Perhaps I wouldn't have misunderstood Atwood if he'd given his essay the proper title: "Why the people I follow on Twitter are anti-web for linking to a non-web resource when AllMusic is just sitting there."
"Ah, I see. What we're asking for is an Apple-authored, Apple-hosted service to make it easier for Jeff Atwood to get free information from Apple without the risk of becoming an Apple customer."
Information about music is marketing material for Apple. They're just doing a poor job of using it. I'm more likely to purchase a song if I can figure out what the iTunes link is pointing to instead of having to install a program first.
Your argument is fine and it could be absolutely true... provided the numbers back it up. What numbers do we need?
- The number of users who post iTunes links.
- The clickthrough rate.
- The number of users who click through on an iTunes link who don't have iTunes already.
- The percentage breakdown of the number of users who will react to the forbidding "you need iTunes" dialog by a) downloading iTunes; b) going away frustrated; c) going away frustrated and writing an angry blog post.
- The difference between the previous data and the data on the number of users who, presented with a nice informative page with a discreet "you can get this at iTunes" link, will a) download iTunes; b) go away happy; c) go away and buy the music from a competitor.
- The approximate value, in dollars gained or lost, of every scenario I just outlined.
- The cost of building and maintaining an additional web app (which, once built, can never be taken down) both in dollars and in loss of focus. Remember that this is Apple: Their general philosophy is to maintain focus by eschewing profitable but low-margin businesses and focusing on a select few high-margin businesses.
- The extent to which the existence of two separate Apple music information sites -- the music store and the Web Thingy -- confuses users and decreases the probability of sales across the entire Apple customer base. This is a hard one to measure, but a good usability lab would enjoy tackling it.
As it happens, I don't know any of these numbers. Apple, however, knows them all to some approximation, provided they have an analytics person on staff. So, when Apple decides to let AllMusic and Amazon have the free-music-information business to themselves, I'm not equipped to second-guess them.
Reinventing the wheel, in this case, could be seen as a way to direct traffic to a profitable business. Being the central point for people investigating or sharing information about music on web seems like it might possibly have some value too. As you said, maybe it is a business Apple is contractually precluded from entering. If it isn't, it would seem Apple could fairly easily leverage their existing resources to create it. As was implied by other posters, perhaps they are not because they do not wish to dilute the iTunes channel.
The full iTunes application still remains.
FYI Apple already has a web-based "what's hot on iTunes" thing on their site which is more or less just as simple to maintain.