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Google Shies Away from Digital Music Sales
mytrip writes to tell us that Google has announced that they will not be getting in on the digital music sales market anytime soon. Analysts have been predicting the response of a "GTunes" service for months but Chris Sacca, head of business development at Google, dispelled those rumors in a recent address at the annual National Association of Recording Merchandisers conference in Florida. Sacca emphasized the need for "ecosystem development" and partnerships within the industry stating that they were the "big opportunity" in the digital music business.
Several years ago everybody was going portal. Every search engine added shopping, communities, finance tips, travel, free mail account and tried to lure users into spending as much time as possible on their site as possible to get their cash and more cash from advertisers.
Then came Google with a simple interface and did one thing: search. And basically everything Google released since then was build around search. Even the videos. But music is very hierarchically organized: Artist - Album - Track. You seldom have to search for something, maybe you'll use Google to search for the lyrics if you cannot remember the name of the track.
Now everybody predicting that Google will go into music just falls into the portal trap. Hey, they did search, they have news, they do mail, so they must aim to become a portal, hence they will try to do everything and so they must want to do music.
Think: Google = search. If the product does not fit, there is no way to make money from it for Google and they won't do it (there will always be exceptions, but that is the general rule so far).
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With vinyl, cassettes and CDs there was a certain standard that meant if you bought music you could use it pretty much anywhere.
And yet I find myself maintaining two cassette decks and two turntables to play what I've got as it was meant to be played.
At least I don't have cylinders.
With a "media" player all you have to do is update the software/codecs. Restrictions on this are purely economic/political.
KFG
I prefer the Yahoo service over iTunes. The subscription model is more to my taste than purchasing. A lot of times though, I remember a snatch of lyrics, and you can't search for snippets of lyrics on Yahoo. Where do I turn? Google of course, to find the name of the song and/or band. Then I search to see if Yahoo has them. An integrated "snippet of lyrics" search for Yahoo music would be good. After I post this, I'll have to check to see if somebody has written a plugin that mashups these features into Yahoo music. If it exists, cool, but I've had trouble with Yahoo plugins crapping out. Google should partner with the other services to offer enhanced music search capabilities. It would play to their core competancy.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
If I were (one of the guys) in charge of Google, right about now I would be looking to create GMusic, a Google record label.
Offer fair prices on albums, and offer artists the majority of the profit (aside from what is required for operating expenses).
With all the piracy/lawsuits/RIAA crap that has been happening lately, I'm pretty sure at least a few major bands would jump at the chance to be part of a less evil label, and consumers would be happier/more inclined to buy from a label that actually supports their artists.
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If they're not looking into getting into the digital music market, what was the head of business development doing at the annual National Association of Recording Merchandisers conference? Sounds kinda shifty to me. :-P
Does this rag smell like chloroform to you?
They're really about providing free advertising funded services. Search is free. gmail is free. Groups are free. Presumably they don't want to deal with the inconvenience of paying consumer customers, who after paying a few dollars want everything. Business customers pay a lot more and are no more demanding.
I don't believe this. Why would Google send one of their top execs to give a speech at an organization of music retailers saying they have no interest in selling music?
If you read the article, there are some interesting points where Sacca argues Google is already in the music business, meaning that when people hear about an artist or song, they search for it on Google. It seems like what they're saying is "we get a ton of traffic that we can easily identify of people who seem likely to buy music, we're not interested in building a music store because we know from Google Video we can't design stores, you guys sell music... maybe YOU can make a Google music store, and pay us a little sumthin sumthin."
In an ideal situation there would be thousands music selling services out there, in much the same way that there are lots and lots of book retailers in the world. In that kind of scenario, Google could act as a sort of directory or a froogle for music that lets you find a particular artist's music for sale in the format you want. They could charge for referrals and skim 2-3c off of every transaction for their services.
:o|
That'd be nice, but it's unlikely to happen too soon, as we're stuck with a slew of different formats, business models and DRM lockins that mean if you want to buy music online, it's vendor lock-in all the way
The bottom line is people need to be able to change vendors and hardware the way you could change CD players and the shop you bought CDs in.
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Hey, Google's business model tends to give away their services for free, as in advertiser supported.
I'd love to see the RIAA vs GNapster go to court.
The music industry is in the middle of a revolution still (and they don't want to be in it :-p), and I think more than one Google exec may have been happy they didn't get into this business when they're now starting to see the crap Apple is starting to get, about e.g using DRM at least as much for anticompetitive practices as reducing listening rights, in a sort of an unholy alliance between their corporation and the music industry.
:-)
The only way I think Google could get in and win would be if they made a nice little site for indie musicians, completely staying clear of anything labelled Shakira, Backstreet Boys, or that young, rich lady that played with her boobs and sucked a penis on a video tape.
If they made something clever there, things could be interesting. Like giving uploading bands/musicians a profile page, their albums, songs, and downloads, and let them either release them as e.g. a Creative Commons license (most "free"), a free but copyrighted license, or if wishing to go commercial, for a custom fee where 95%+ went to the artists (Google could probably finance most of their bandwidth on adwords like on Google Videos). Then build a community around that where you can discuss and support the artists on forums on their respective pages, and have top lists, etc. Have monthly/weekly featured artists in different genres.
I mean, a service to pretend RIAA don't exist and just let musicians get promoted Google's ways without a need for music companies. I think I would check out such a service.
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