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HP to Launch Music Service, Player In 2004
securitas writes "HPShopping.com CEO Peter Appl told Reuters that HP will launch its own branded online music service and a portable MP3 / digital music player in 2004. Appl (the CEO) said that the newcomers would compete with Apple (the company's) music products such as the iTunes music store and iPod music player, among others. HP expects its store to be a branded version of an existing service. Appl also said that the launch will take place at the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January. Compaq sold its own line of digital music players, now discontinued, before its merger with HP. Mirrors of the Reuters story at CNN and Boston.com. A quick check shows that HPMusic.com resolves to an
'HP customer care local language selection' technical support page, and the domain has been registered since 1999."
...is that HP's entering the business. They're not creating anything new on their own: instead, they've decided to brand an existing product. Yawn.
I meta-mod all positive moderation Unfair, because it's abuse of the system.
With half a bajillion companies now offering song downloads at $0.99 and none coming to us without some sort of DRM involved, why would we choose one over another? The Apple iTunes store has had so much success because of (1) the sales success of the ipod and (2) the ease on integration of iTunes and OS X. Now let's turn this into a look at HP. HP's MP3 player (while the MP3 player in question is purely speculative since it has not been released) is probably no different than any other MP3 player and I doubt they could be much better than the Neuros. So this gives us no need to choose the HP music store over any other store. Further, HP hardware is not proprietary in the sense that getting music from the HP store would either be a required method of getting music or the easiest because of a lack of other sources. This seems to tell me one thing: HP's journey into online digital music sales will most likely be short lived.
"1. The collapse of the RIAA's scare-tactics business model for coercion to expensive copyright, and a change in how people listen and contribute to the music industry."
The RIAA's lawsuits (and by the way, there were more today) are symbiotic with, and not counter to, the growth in the legitimate download services. The RIAA's tactic is to scare people away from downloading copyrighted music without permission. The theory is that with greater awareness that doing so is illegal, and/or a fear of being caught, downloaders will migrate to legitimate sources, like iTMS, Napster, and the metric squillion others that have popped up.
So, "collapse" isn't the best word -- ideally, the need to resort to legal action will eventually evaporate.
"2. The total destruction of all online music sales, as all said businesses compete eachother out of existence."
The online music industry is like any other: some big players, some small players, some smart ones, some not-so-smart. It's been clearly shown that there's growing demand, so the industry will probably be around for some time to come.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Cash cow? What are you talking about? The market leader can't even make money, for cripe's sake.
Perhaps it's infinitely more revenue than was being brought in before, but that doesn't mean that it's profitable or a feasible business plan. And they're just going to be reselling someone else's service, which gives them an even smaller piece of revenue to play with...