Monday, March 26, 2007
Music At Your Service
Could music downloads be going the way of the dodo? Maybe, according to a report from Pyramid Research. The company says that owning media is overrated, and subscription music services from wireless carriers are the wave of the future.Per Pyramid: "The report argues that the devaluation of ownership means that models offering access to vast digital libraries on a rental basis are in many ways more compelling than just having access to content that is purchased."
While wireless networks are just about everywhere, iPods have a convenience (going to the gym, on a train, etc.) where wireless connectivity not be so great and you might still want to listen to tune stored locally. It is premature to speculate that iTunes will start fading away anytime soon.
I would agree, however that the teens and tweens of today who are growing paying for satellite radio or services such as Napster or Rhapsody may very likely think that paying for a CD or download is a trite as listening to an LP. If you are just getting into music and don't have an extensive CD collections or iTunes library, would you rather spend $10-$20 per month and have access to everything on demand or pay that much just to here 10 songs over and over again? It would take years before you would have paid for the equivalent of a 100 CD or 1,000 iTunes track library.
“As today’s children inevitably come to own mobile handsets, the delivery of music and any other form of digital content will be over a broadband connection rather than via physical media.”
This also makes "free" music downloads much less attractive since consumers will be used to ad-free music. Has there been a SpiralFrog sighting anywhere? The first quarter is about to end, and still no word from the "revolutionary" music service about when it will launch. The good news for SpiralFrog is that the longer they wait to get started, the longer they put off shutting down....
Posted By John Gartner at 02:56 PM
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