Slashdot Mirror
HMV to Sell Digital Downloads
An anonymous reader writes "Sales of digital music downloads on sites like PressPlay and MusicNet have been a bust so far and for good reason. They cost too much, have too many restrictions and the palette of music you get to download is too limited. They have almost nothing to offer over what the various P2P networks give you for free. So why do record chains like HMV want to get in the game? Simple, these services cut out the middlemen and if they should ever succeed record retailers would be left out in the cold. Research shows there is a percentage of consumers who will pay for digital tunes if the conditions are right. They aren't now, but market forces will push them to improve the terms or die. PressPlay has already capitulated to some of these limitations. To protect their interests in the long term, retailers like HMV and Tower records have jumped on board and signed on with On Demand Distribution (OD2) - a company co-founded by Peter Gabriel to be a wholesaler of digital music tunes - to provide the music and the back end to their new services. HMV's service launches in September at five pounds at month (about 7 bucks), a price point which will mean nothing if the song selection sucks."
Somebody out there actually realizes that the current music business model will eventually fail. How refreshing it is to see intelligence in corporate America once more.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
If the online music industry had music files that where in a much higher quality format than what is supported on CD, I'd definitely take a look at what they have to offer.
The majority of MP3's are ripped from CD's so the quality is limited to the quality of the CD.
DVD Music and other new formats are slowly working their way into the market, but if these online pay music sites offered these formats with no large initial purchase of equipment, they would definitely turn a few heads.
...we do start paying for music like this, and get mp3s in return, and the RIAA comes cruising along the networks and tags us for having "copyrighted content" on our computers?
Feel that power? That's mah MOUSING FINGER
Here is the next Brilliant Idea..
Since Radio and record Lables have acted monopolistic in nature to reducing the choics of quality music..
One would think if one offered a P2p music service with the ability for local bands to add their works and a play sample that this would be a very big business idea..
Hey Music execs WE WANT CHOICE!!!!!!!!Hey Music execs WE WANT CHOICE!!!!!!!!Hey Music execs WE WANT CHOICE!!!!!!!!Hey Music execs WE WANT CHOICE!!!!!!!!
Don't Tread on OpenSource
- Music stored available in multiple standard formats with multiple bit rates: OGG,MP3,FLAC,SHN
-
A pricing structure starting at $10/month going up to $30/month based upon bit rates, not the amount of songs you download. At $10/month you only get to download 64kbps mp3's, $15/month for 128, working your way up to $30+/month for flac or shn downloads that are lossless.
-
Every CD ever made period.
-
Allow transfer to portables and CD's
-
An intuitive web interface, instead of building some bulky windows client that does everything your computer already does: CD burning, music manager, etc; just have a well designed web interface that works on all platforms with all browsers.
Now if they can just figure out a way to pay the RIAA and the artists, we will be set!Digital music downloads is what's known as a 'Disruptive technology'. Every industry has disruptive technologies that, when they appear, are not as good as what is currently in place, but end up improving to a point where they replace the original sustaining technology.
An example of disruptive technology is the 8" hard drive. The 14" hard drives were fast and stored a lot of data, but few of the disk companies bothered to make 8" drives when they came out because they were slower and didn't store as much data. Not only that, but they cost more per megabyte. But the market for Minicomputers demanded lower cost (even if it was higher cost per meg) overall drives, so they started improving. Only one or two hard drive companies from the 14" market survived the switch to 8" drives because they didn't see the benefit, and their customers didn't either, until it was too late.
The same thing happened again when the 5.25" HDs came out. Only a couple manufacturers of 8" drives stayed in business, and only because they spent money on the 5.25" drives well before they were good enough to sell, or profitable.
Finally, look at the excavating market: Up until the 1940s, steam shovels were all cable activated. They used cables to lift the arms and control the scoop, not hydraulics. When the first hydraulic dirt movers came out, they couldn't move anywhere near as much dirt and they cost more to operate, but eventually they became more powerful, safer, and cheaper to own and operate then cable operated stuff. NONE of the steam shovel companies that were in business in the 1940s survived past the 1950s because they didn't see the benefit of selling what they saw as inferior technology, which hydraulics definately were in the beginning.
This created opportunities for the startups to dominate the small hydraulics market unopposed until they were able to grow into and take over the domain of the cable operated steam shovel.
What HMV (and these other companies) are doing is learning from the mistakes of those companies. Digital music download is a disruptive technology to the sustaining technology of physical music purchase. It's not as high quality as CDs now, and it has lots of deficiencies, but they know that eventually, the market for digital downloads of music may grow to compete with and even replace physical media sales. That's not what customers want right now, but the market and technologies change, so 5-10 years from now, customers will demand this, and whoever is in the business first will have lots of advantages.
Remember, what the customer wants is not always best, and if you spend your life following the customers requests only, you'll eventually go out of business when a disruptive technology appears. It happened to the 14" drive manufacturers who listened to their customers (who weren't interested in slower, lower capacity drives), and it'll happen to the music industry that doesn't embrace and extend downloads.
For more data on this, read 'The Innovators Dilemma' by Christensen.
And for the record, I did make heavy use of these machines back in high school. I'd create mix tapes by a dozen bands I was curious about but hadn't yet heard -- the Sugarcubes, let's say -- and come back later to buy full albums by the bands I ended up liking. (Mind you, this was before the popularization of both the Internet and in-store "try-before-you-buy" listening.) Pretty much the same thing a lot of people use Kazaa/Gnutella for today -- a sampler platter. And the labels would opposed a CD-based version for all the same reasons.
Shame, really...
I subscribe to emusic, and have for a long time. Unlimited downloads, mp3 format. It's mostly not major label stuff, which is a good thing for me-- why should I support the RIAA?
The only drawback is sometimes they don't add music as quickly as I wish they would. Still, they've got enough music in there to keep me busy exploring new genres and bands at no risk to me but the downloading and listening time (and their transfer rates are so high that download time is negligible).
Up front admission: I work one of OD2's rivals. So if you like, take what I say with a pinch of salt.
OD's service, as well as ours, does not cut out the middle man. The labels still get paid. OD2 paid the labels for this content (albeit by offering shares in themselves, not with actual cash). The subscription fee you pay does, therefore, filter back to the label. I would be very surprised to see any minor label, let alone any independant band hhave content available.
OD2 are well known within the industry for offering Microsoft formats only (perhaps one of the reasons MSN have choose them to power the MSN downloads.
Their licensing model is a music "rental" scheme. The problem, for slashdot users, is this seems unacceptable to the "technical public". The normal public may well go for this, after all, 99% of people accept the video hire model, why not music hire. However, it is, in my opinion, still too limited. If I am going to pay for access I want more than 25 downloads per month. I'd happily pay £10 pcm for access to all of EMI's back catalogue. Maybe one day EMI will listen and go for it (and preferably use my code base *grin*).
However, the suggestion in the story that "these services cut out the middlemen and if they should ever succeed record retailers would be left out in the cold" is rubbish. The labels provide the music, of course they get paid.
You can get 192 kbit files which sound no better and even worse than 128 kbit MP3 it's all down to the encoders. The latest version of LAME for example produces excellent quality files if you're willing to wait longer for your encoding. I've seen alot of 128Kbit MP3's encoded with intensity stereo which should only be used with 96 kbit or less rates. Also MP3 files tend to lose alot of harmonics regardless of the bitrate used, newer formats seem to do better in this regard. I personally like the sound of OGG and whilst I generally feel WMA sounds worse than MP3 some of files I've heard have sounded very "warm". Finally, 192 kbit is 50% larger and hence will take 50% longer to download and remember there are an awful lot of people who don't have broadband.
This doesn't make any sense at all.
Why would a company sell you a mistitled song? What, somebody's going to stick the CD in and type in "Britney Spears" when it's clearly a Beatles song?
It's simple: You pay $2 for the song. The song is downloaded. Whoops - that's not it - you have a digital reciept showing you paid for the Beatles, and you got Burke Backarack. You email/contact retailer, give sale ID number, they go "Whoops - our bad", and they let you have the one you want. Why? Because they know if they don't, you'll tell your friends how they hosed you, and most companies don't like negative press (especially of a fledgling business model).
Because they want a steady stream of revenue, the odds are greater they'll check the songs they put up for sale to make sure they've got it right. To say they won't is (except for a few human mistakes sure to sneak in), to be honest, just a little silly.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
All you have to do is play off the weaknesses of the current p2p models and they'd be set. Lord knows their's plenty of them.
1) Consistent high download speeds.
2) What you see is what you get downloads, ie; ensuring their quality (no cracks, loops, hiss, bogus files, etc).
3) Stable downloads. No "need more sources", "qued" and all of that BS.
4) No sideband search traffic or p2p downloaders sucking up my bandwidth.
The only reason why we use p2p is because it's the only option anymore, not because it's good. But to these three, you have to add:
5) Downloaders rights. You pay for a song/subscription, it's yours to copy, burn, etc. Some services erase your archive or it becomes useless if you quit their service. Funny, but I don't see the repo man coming after my T3 magazines if I don't renew. I bought it, it's mine.
If you combined these with a reasonable download price, and maybe some extra goodies thrown in for your patronage, then I'm betting you'd actually have a snowballs chance of grabbing a large share of the legal market. It'll happen eventially, but damn, they are seriously behind the curve.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Cutting of the middle men. Hmm.
;)
;)
Wrong middle men for me - I'd rather see the RIAA cut than record stores. Because you know, I kinda like having a hard copy of my music sitting in a drawer. Sure, I rip everything to mp3, but what if my hard drive sizzles? For me (And the average person who still doesn't have broadband), ripping a disc is still quicker than downloading one. (Especially if they limit downloads!)
"Initially, files could not be burned to CD or transferred to a portable digital music device. That alone turned many potential users off."
You think? The entire point of digital music in the form of files on a hard drive is the fact that you can take it anywhere and not have to worry about some ass stealing your discs, your discs being scratched, etc.
"Record retailers are aware that if digital files sales should ever take off they need to to make sure they are not cut out of the action."
As many have pointed out, kiosks. Let me go burn a disc in store, paying by the track, and putting whatever tracks I want to on the disc. See the above: Discs are good to have around, and we'll even throw in a few bucks for the disc itself if you don't let us bring our own.
"HMV's new service will cost five pounds or around $7.00 US for an undisclosed number of tracks. PressPlay recently changed their model to offer unlimited streams and downloads for $14.95 a month. OD2's Grimsdale feels confident the pricing for these services are getting closer to satisfying consumers."
Number of tracks and a flat rate? Sorry. Charge by track and I'd consider it. $14.95 doesn't sound bad for unlimited streams and downloads, but I don't see how they're getting away with it. *chuckle* (Unless the RIAA refuses to acknowledge the fact that cds don't cost $15 to produce!)
I'd bet I'd get screwed either way, what with having ecclectic music tastes.
""It's still early days but the consumer feedback is good," said Grimsdale. "The cost per track is low, so if you want to listen to music on your computer, it is very good value.""
Again, I want to store music on my computer and listen to it anywhere.
Here's the kicker: 'But subscribers may only burn five tracks per month.' Hmmmm.....
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Comment removed based on user account deletion