Big labels are f*cked, and DRM is dead: "The real game in town is not online. It's a skirmish. The real game is mobile phones."
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Hello you. I'm a 38-year old MSc student, studying Advanced Computer Science at Sussex University. I'm especially interested in Internet and mobile software, sensors and pervasive computing, user interfaces, and the process of developing great software.
Before that I spent 11 years running Future Platforms, a software company I co-founded which makes lovely things for mobile phones, and which I sold to Vexed Digital in 2011.
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« Telesymphony | Main | MoMo London »
November 04, 2006
Comments
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This piece is right on.
The issue is around the labels' relationship with the networks. Companies like SFR in France see music as a brand thing (like Apple) and so are selling tracks for a loss.
DRMed music, especially streamed/licensed music is a binding thing, sticky content to keep customers using SFR, or iTunes. As the value of keeping a user for an extra year is the equivalent of the money a network would make from over a 1000 track sales, more networks are going to switch to this attitude, and the user will start to see music becoming ridiculously cheap... as long as they dont' want to physically own it.
Will they buy it?
Well they do from iTunes... However kids - usually unable to afford an iPod - have been sticking their ripped tracks on mobiles for years now. And their 'killer app'? A piece of hardware called a Data Card reader which allows them to copy and upload at will without worrying about all the DRM nonsense and data charges.
Posted by: Ben Scott-Robinson | November 07, 2006 at 11:54 AM
I'm not convinced. The fact that one can point to some people using mobile phones as their music player does not mean that mobile phones are necessarily the factor. Looking around (both in the UK yesterday and Chicago today), I see many, many more people with their ears hooked to mp3 players than I do listening to music on a phone.
And mobile phones are a pain to work on (from a development point of view). Unless you're Sony Ericsson, and control the hardware and software completely, you're in a world of compromise when it comes to getting all the parts of the chain right. What Apple did with iTunes & iPod was to make it easy and slick for people to buy, download and use music. That's all; it wasn't about the best hardware or the widest choice, it was about it being easy and slick. Just because a mobile phone has all the same components as a conventional computer does not make it one. Just because it has some of the same functions as an iPod does not make it one.
Posted by: Ben | November 07, 2006 at 04:19 PM