MySpace launches music service – ad-supported as well as DRM-free downloads

The music space news keeps coming.  MySpace is launching a music service with 3 out of the 4 majors on board (EMI curiously sitting this one out).  It could obviously have a huge impact and you have to believe that Facebook will do the same thing.  It will likely not have that much effect on Apple/iTunes but could have a big impact on others such as Amazon.  For right now it is a little hard to discern what will be the major focus of the MySpace music service because the press release seems to indicate that they are offering everything.  The unique aspect is the tie-in with MySpace where lots of kids spend lots of time.  Still if I have an iPod I will likely only “listen” on MySpace (perhaps via ad-supported model) and continue to “buy” from Apple.  Another interesting angle would be if ad-supported model generated enough cash to “subsidize” lower download pricing.  That might move some people away from iTunes but it probably would not matter a great deal to Apple anyway as long as the iPods kept flowing.  Now if there was all of a sudden a ton of cel phones that supported the MySpace music service that might move the needle.  Over-the-air content acquisition would also be cool and a clear differentiator because you take the PC requirement out of the picture.

Another Yahoo VP leaves & maybe music space will be better for it

Ian Rogers announced today that he is leaving Yahoo to become CEO of Topspin Media.  The company is co-founded by Peter Gotcher who was the co-founder of digidesign and subsequently became a VC (IVP/Redpoint) and is now a private investor.  Ian headed up Yahoo’s music and video offerings as far as I can tell.  Peter has a pretty good track record and is also an investor in Avnera where I worked.  Super smart people so I am betting some cool music offerings (unfettered by DRM) will come out of it.  Go, go, go!

Is EMI actually going to do something interesting?

It seemed like an April fools joke but apparently it’s true that EMI has hired Douglas Merrill, the CIO of Google.  Hopefully this will lead to something interesting! As I (and others) said before new business models are required to revive the music industry and to date the labels’ efforts to take their collective business out of a nose dive seem very uninspired.

Is free ad supported music the future of online music?

The Wall St Journal has an article this morning saying that Google will launch an ad-supported music service in China.  This is in part a response to Baidu’s lead in the Chinese market (where a large share of the searches are for music on the web) but could also be a harbinger of things to come in other geographic markets.  If this indeed has been blessed by the majors it is an interesting step for the music industry.  In some ways, the nature of the Chinese market may have forced them into this.  Note that the majors are also suing Baidu so the timing is a little strange here. 

However, the tracks that Google (together with Top100.cn) will be providing will be watermarked to allow download tracking although it’s not clear how this will work exactly.  Somewhere in the download chain something/someone will have to inspect the files for the watermark for this to work.  This therefore implies that whoever is providing the pipes will be inspecting all the content which seems like a serious problem.  As I mentioned before the music industry is already pushing for ISPs to snoop on internet users and this is most likely already going in China where the internet is not really open.  So while the business model here is interesting, I don’t much like what is going on behind the scenes:  Google (“do no evil”) and music labels using the fact that the Chinese government (“not open”) already is snooping on internet connections to further their own economic good.  Of course Google has already agreed to censor their searches in China so I suppose this move should not be a surprise.

I think Google and the majors could have been more innovative because the ad-supported music sales angle has legs.  But I don’t think it requires intervention by the government and ISPs of the world to work.  Perhaps I have this wrong but it does smell funny.  And lastly we should all work to prevent ISPs and our governments from routine 24/7 monitoring of our internet connections.  This is just plain wrong.  Additionally, when (not if because I think it will happen) someone comes up with a non-evil scheme for ad-supported music sales, it could potentially alter the internet music landscape in a big way.

Yahoo sells music subcsription service to Real

Yahoo has apparently sold its music service to Real. This is obviously unrelated to the MS bid for Yahoo but as a subscriber to Yahoo’s music service it’s sad to see. It does beg the question whether music subscription services are heading for bit bucket. With the advent of DRM-free music being available I would tend to think that the convenience of DRM-free outweighs the subscription service convenience of having the 4 majors’ catalogs available. DRM will always have an associated hassle factor and that’s hard to get away from nor will it be solved any time soon.

Backing up is hard to do

Backing up your data is a pain.  And so not many people do.  This is very broken in this day and age when hard drives are cheap.  Jeremy tells you why you should.  Add to this that more people have more DRM’d data on their hard drive.  In theory it’s no harder to back up this data.  In practice, it’s a bit more complicated than that.  Stories abound.

Now please backup your data!  And do it before Valentine’s day because otherwise it might be “breaking up is hard to do”.

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Moral as we want to be: U2 manager urges ISPs to help fight web piracy

Music is popular. U2 has a product people want and I think they are monetizing it quite effectively. And they should be concerned about people stealing their music. It is not right. However, this is just absurd. Techdirt makes some good points about how the economic argument put forth is just flawed. However, there is also the small matter of privacy.

The industry proposal (originating in France as I understand it) to have ISPs police what flows through their networks is not going to solve anything but it is a major invasion of privacy. I wonder how Mr. McGuinness would feel about the government tapping his phone line all the time but for no particular reason. They just want to check he is not doing something illegal. Perhaps this is legal in the UK but I don’t think it should be. Nor should he accept it. Neither the government nor private companies should have the right to snoop on my phone line, my internet connection or my mail unless they have a very good reason. With the Patriot Act (in the US) we are already short changing basic freedom that is in the Constitution and it’s a slippery slope. Next there will be legislation to inspect all internet traffic going in and out of my house just in case I am doing something illegal. It really does feel like 1984.

The internet is a very malleable place. If roadblocks are put up they will be routed around with new software etc. What Mr. McGuinness, U2 and the music industry needs to do is to innovate and stop suing people. It has not worked for the last 10+ years, nor will it work in the coming 10 or 100 years. Your industry segment has changed and you need to change with it. I am not defending piracy but the current music industry strategy is not working. Start working on something that will work.

Update:  European courts say ISPs do not have to disclose private subscriber information in civil cases.  I am not convinced that legislation will not be passed that undoes this but nice to see that the courts have some sense and are enforcing existing laws.

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Tags: music, internet, web

DRM, music and music player apps

The end of DRM for music is a great thing!  As I said before DRM is a road-block to reviving music sales and to new business models in the music industry  (Ian Rogers says it very eloquently here).  The king is dead!  Long live the king!

One symptom of the battle for supremacy in the music platform business was the attempt by Apple, Microsoft and others to own the user experience around the consumption of music.  This battle had the side effect of choking off competition in the media player space as each entry in the music player space (iTunes, WMP, Zune Player, Rhapsody, YME) basically just let you get music in their DRM-flavor from their back-end service.  DRM-free music opens up the media player landscape again and hopefully some innovation will happen in this space again.  BTW I don’t think any of the above media players are necessarily that great.  They did not have to be because competition and innovation was throttled by the mediaplayer-to -service ties.  Of course, iTunes is now the 900-pound gorilla but again as software goes it really is not that great.  I believe there are some big scenarios that the current media players completely miss and I for one would like to see these addressed.

New music service – Slacker

Slacker is a new competitor on the internet audio scene.  They have a couple of key differentiating features:

1. Advertising supported streaming radio.  This can be upgraded to no advertisements by paying a monthly fee.
2. A music player (not out yet) that gets content from satellite or wifi (whichever is available).   The player is not yet shipping so it remains to be seen how well this works.

While neither of these are exactly new, I actually think both of these features are pretty significant.  #1 lets you get started (and hooked) without paying for the service.  #2 effectively removes the requirement to have a PC as the gateway to the service.  It remains to be seen if a PC is not really required as a big part of the offering is also playing on your PC.  The big challenge will be how to make an impact and be heard in this space that is crowded and dominated by Apple.  Now if they actually subsidize the player price with advertising and effectively offer a heavily discounted player, that would be very interesting.  I think this could get them traction.

Not sure what part DRM will play in their service but I am guessing that EMI tracks should be available DRM free.

EMI & Apple – Better quality audio!

So everything has probably already been said about the news that EMI will be making their catalogue available without DRM but no one seems to talking about the fact that they are now using 256 kbps AAC.  It’s been a while since the music industry has pushed quality and I think this is a healthy sign.  Most MP3 and AAC tracks that buy or download are really of terrible quality and this at least raises the bar.  As I stated in earlier posts, music is primal and all people should experience high fidelity audio in all its glory.  It takes that primal experience to another level.  You don’t need to be an audiophile to have this kind of experience but the industry needs to start enabling the music and consumer electronics used to play back the music to deliver the sound of quality that is really possible today.  For too long quality has taken a back seat to price and convenience.  With larger disk drives and faster internet connections, there is no excuse to sacrifice quality any more.  I wonder if Apple will try to make their iPods sound better now that they have taken this step.