Digital Music - Where Next?
March 17th, 2009 7
I’m a child of the 80s, my music came on 60 or 90 minute cassette tapes and sounded worse the more I played it.
Then came the mighty CD (although my mum still calls these tapes), 74 minutes of digital clarity that skipped when you tried to take it anywhere and scratched when you didn’t put them back in their boxes.
Just prior to the portable digital music player iPod generation, I had a miniDisc player which was a kind of half way house between tapes and CDs and (supposidly) better than both. You had the robustness of tapes with the digital music clarity of CDs. The only problem was that these were about 10 years too late. If they’d have been invented before, they’d have been a smash - the trouble was they were kind of laughable in a world where you could buy a creative Zen jukebox that would store a WHOLE Gigabyte of music on it’s internal hard disc.
And now iPod and iTunes rule the roost. But hot on their heels comes a new kid on the block: Spotify has quickly become my music player of choice when I’m working. But I can’t take it with me. So, where next for Digital Music?
Digital Music On The Go
Surly the next thing that Spoitfy must be working on is portability, and it seams fairly obvious that someone, somewhere must be beavering away on this right now. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Apple - Why not have a service, available through iTunes, that does exactly what Spotify does. Namely offer unlimited streaming music for a fixed fee per month.
BUT what if, as part of your monthly fee, you could license those tracks (obviously with some form of DRM) for your iPod? Suddenly things start to make a lot more sense, The DRM free version on the traditional store would still be available if you wanted to own the music, but you could simply “rent” the music for extended periods of time to listen to on the go. I, for one, would also be more willing to pay a monthly fee for a service that let me take music with me.
Maybe you’d have to re-sync your iPod every week (or so) to renew the rental on your hired music, just to ensure you keep paying the monthly fee and don’t just pay one month and get a load of music for one small price.
If Apple don’t do this, then I can imagine that Spotify may through some kind of iTunes plugin (although I don’t know about the technical ins-and-outs of getting this to work).
It just seems obvious to me that this must surly be the next step in the evolution of digital music. And maybe, with everyone paying a set fee, we can save the music industry.
7 Comments (+0 in the moderation queue).
#1 On March 17th, 2009 at 1:44 pm Jon Jolly said...
Sorry Jon, but I think you’re wrong on this one! The whole subscription model has been tried many times with very limited success. The rebooted (and legal) Napster tried, RealNetworks’ Rhapsody Service did the same and where are they both now?
Apple have always fought against a monthly subscription model (against the wishes of the music industry) claiming customers prefer the simple fixed-pricing system - so it’s really unlikely to see this occurring through iTunes.
Spotify may well diversify into portable media at some point but they’ll have a job to prove a viable business model from it!
#2 On March 17th, 2009 at 1:55 pm Jon Roobottom said...
Thanks for your comments Jon.
I’m not necessarily saying that Apple will be the ones to branch out into subscription based music, merely that if this model has any chance of making it whoever tries it has to deal with Apple at some point. Lets face it, iPod is portable music.
Maybe I should have made more comment on others branching out, or, most notably Spotify expanding in this area.
I think your point about business model is a good one - and in fact I missed another trick by not mentioning the labels. Spoitfy have already built up an impressive catalog of music by signing up record labels who I think increasingly recognize the need to branch out into alternative revenue sources.
Any company wanting to make this a success will need the labels on board - something Apple already has.
You say that
Could you link to the source for this, I’d be interested to know more.
I for one don’t agree with the statement that Spoitify would trouble trying to find a viable business model from portable music rentals. - In fact, with the added value of rentals I think this solves the problem of most people using Spotify for free. This, surly, cannot be sustainable (even with the revenue from adverts). I know I’d pay to take my music with me.
#3 On March 17th, 2009 at 2:37 pm Jon Jolly said...
Steve Jobs has said repeatedly that people want to own their music. One example is here: http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/04/jobs_half_of_it.html
I personally like having my songs to do as I want with them. I would hate to lose them if I stopped subscribing to a service.
I like using Spotify & Last.fm just as I like listening to the radio. If it flags up a new artist or song then I check it out and buy it to keep! I wouldn’t pay for a subscription to spotify though.
#4 On March 18th, 2009 at 9:37 am Mark said...
I use Spotify at work too and the key improvement for me would be portability. However if it was subscription based I would NOT use it nor would I pay for DRM music. DRM has always failed and will always fail on anything but film rentals.
I’m perfectly happy listening to the odd advert now and again especially because I know that the advertising is directly paying for me to listen to MY choice of music.
The only way I can see portability working (other than streaming) is DRM’d albums (or playlists) that expire after, say, a week with non skipable adverts. If you want to keep the music longer you sync up and get a new set of adverts.
The only other problem with Spotify is trying to think of what to listen to next! (Jimi Hendrix is my current choice)
#5 On March 18th, 2009 at 1:50 pm Kris said...
I really cant see me ever paying for music again…
#6 On March 18th, 2009 at 1:51 pm Kris said...
Or films & porn for that matter…
#7 On March 22nd, 2009 at 10:32 pm Jon Roobottom said...
@Kris - cheers mate, lol.
@Mark - I just can’t see how advert supported music makes anywhere near enough money.
I also suffer from ‘what next? syndrome’ - they could do with a last.fm type suggestion service. Or allow a way for you to easily send suggestions to friends.