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Nokia the Next to Try an iTunes Killer?
fragmentate writes "Nokia recently acquired Loudeye Corp., a digital media distribution channel, presumably to offer streaming media to providers and their customers. BusinessWeek is speculating, 'the company may be seeking to go after none other than the 800-pound gorilla of the digital music world, Apple Computer. [...] Yet the Loudeye brand is virtually unknown when compared with that of Apple's hugely popular iTunes service. This gives carriers the chance to market their own brand instead, says P.J. McNealy, an analyst with American Technology Research.'"
"Killers" rarely work. Name me one that did work.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
The Nokia N91 has been one of the most highly anticipated music phones. It was one of the phones touted to be an iPod killer, as it has a 4GB hard drive similar to the now defunct iPod Mini. After being delayed for some time now, the N91 is finally here, and Mobile Burn managed to get hold of one for a test drive. The Nokia N91 runs on Symbian OS v9.1 and, like the previously reviewed N71, it also features the much improved 3rd edition of the S60 user interface.
Probably because the US cell phone market is so byzantine compared to the rest of the world.
Every time I go to Asia, I am reminded of just how fast the rest of the world is moving away from computers and towards phones. When you have your email, games, videos and music on your phone, justifying a computer purchase becomes harder and harder.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Simply quoting the article
Nokia has already tried to enter the music area
Nokia also tried to become a content provider, only to be rejected by the carriers:
So they will enter the music distribution area, but not competing with the carriers. Instead they will use Loudeye to compete with iTMS, making you download the music to your computer and then to your phone?
And why? To sell more phones?
But 100% of the 22.5 million iPod buyers bought it to listen to music. Most of the Nokia buyers bought it to make phone calls.
I'm not sure what Nokia is doing with Loudeye, but believing that they intend to attack Apple + iTMS directly instead of doing something with wireless music distribution seems pretty far fetched.
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
After the smashing success of the NGage, Nokia couldn't help but go after the one manufacturer that owns its market more than Nintendo owns portable game systems. I see nothing but success in their future, and -- god willing -- the triumphant return of sidetalkin'.
Game... blouses.
'nuff said
Ah yes. There is Napster! For what reason might we, the enlightened internetweb people, need to pay 99 cents a song?
And then Apple sold umpty trillion $ worth of 99 cent songs.
And now everyone runs to copy them.
Just further proof that:
skeptics.
are.
ALWAYS.
wrong.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Get out the shovel and dig another grave.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killer s_by_country
I find it interesting how every competitor to iTunes simply sets up a music store and expects the consumers to start flooding in. If they paid more attention, they might get a feeling for what Apple is actually up to. (And why they're constantly ahead of the competition.)
Has anyone here seen the pilot episode of the new Aquaman series that didn't get picked up? If you did, then you probably watched it off of iTunes. If you similarly saw the Global Frequency pilot, then you may have found that the experience of getting Aquaman off of iTunes compared favorably with getting Global Frequency off of a P2P network. The only difference is that you didn't have any TV execs telling you how horrible a person you are for "stealing" the material off a P2P network rather than... erm... not watching it because it wasn't available via any other outlet.
In fact, the pilot for the new Aquaman series feels very much like a the network testing the waters to gauge viewer response. Since they weren't going to produce a series anyway (it got canned in the WB/UPN merger) it made perfect cannon-fodder for this sort of experiment. Now we'll see if the execs pick up on the fan enthusiasm and produce the show.
Or will we?
What I think goes right past many analysts is that (IMHO) it's also Apple's experiment. Just how many viewers can they get from Internet purchases alone? Is it enough to run a series only on the net? Perhaps enough to partner with a television network as SciFi and SkyOne did with BSG? Or perhaps the results will be just enough to suggest that advertiser-supported Internet television will be the wave of the future? Either way, this is a huge experiment for Apple and content creators alike. Slowly but surely, Apple is ushering in an era of content distributed ONLY via the Internet, thus phasing out the old methods of distribution.
If Apple's experiments are successful, they will instantly make other iTunes clones obsolete. Not only would they need to be content carriers, but they'd need to be content producers (or at least exclusive distribution points) as well! I don't think anyone else is ready for that leap quite yet. Apple may have come from behind in regards to Internet music, but they will probably be the first in show with Internet television.
Sorry Nokia. You're already too late.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Nokia likes to highlight how many 'music players' they have shipped.
I can understand their enthusiasm, I have an E70 and it's an awesome, uh, minicomputer.
And I'm all for carrying just one box around with me, instead of many. However, the battery life isn't all that great as I'm using the web and AIM/MSN chat via 3G or WLAN all day. I'm not sure if playing audio helps.
I'll maybe give it a try someday, as soon as I get around to buy the super-special-magic-adapter that lets me connect... my headphones.
When I can buy the music I want at a reasonable price with zero DRM (nada, none, zip... not Apple's kinda-friendly-with-the-masses DRM... none) and uncompressed formats, then I'm in... and I will buy a lot of music that way. There's a few places I buy from now, but the selections are limited.
But until then, it's physical CD's for me and all of the overhead that goes along with that. If stupid record companies want less profit because they're moving around physical media, then fine... that's their problem.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
The problem here is simple. People want to be able to listen to music for at least 4 hours between charges, but they want their cell phones to run multiple days between charges.
http://www.loudeye.com/en/partners/stores.asp
Loudeye has worked with MSN quite often in the past, as well as Packard Bell and Coca Cola. Nothing with organizations known for music sales, but still a large portfolio.
You can now sign up for Napster, and they give you up to 3 free plays of most of their stuff. Record using Freecorder or some similar software, and you've got an unemcumbered MP3.
Where were you when the voynix came?
nt = no text
N-Gage, and now this. They really put the NO in Nokia.
Maybe people are setting their goals too high. Instead of an "Itunes killer" or an "Ipod Killer" they need to make a "Itunes competitor" or an "Ipod competitor". Get into the market first, then work toward a larger share.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
"Killers" rarely work. Name me one that did work.
I dunno, I was under the impression Nokia were doing a pretty good job of killing themselves. coughN-Gagecough
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What possibly can Nokia offer me that iTunes doesn't already provide me?
I search, I listen, I download, I jump for joy!
It's left blank because I have nothing to say to you punks!
It'll never happen as long as they insist upon charging people for every little thing they do to their phones. I love my iPod nano, and I have never bought anything from iTMS. I don't even have an iTMS account. While much of my stuff is (gasp!) downloads (mostly stuff from Japan that I can NOT get in an American music store), a lot of was ripped from my own CDs.
The purpose of iTMS is to sell iPods, not the other way around.
Just look at what's on your own MP3 player and imagine a greedy cell phone company making you pay them for the privilege of putting them there.
Note that I rarely use a cell phone anyhow, and the phone I do have is seconded to my mom's cell (since she's the one who wanted me to have a cell phone in the first place), so if I'm wrong in my perception of cell phone companies, then I'm wrong. But what I've been hearing about cell phone companies makes me think I'm pretty close to the mark.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Hmm.. People want to own uncompressed copies, but sure don't want to play them from a portable device that way. (Physically tiny HDs still don't hold enough data.) This means music needs to be downloaded to a personal computer first, then encoded and copied to the phone. In other words, the phone's connection to networks becomes irrelevant (for music-file-transfer purposes).
That's fine for us geeks, but I don't know how to sell it to Joe Eueryman.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It was a good story by Hemingway, right? What does Nokia have to do with it?
Isn't the right word, oh, I don't know, "rival," or something like that?
Unless, of course, the Nokia is equipped to sense the proximity of the PortalPlayer chip, and destroy it with a huge electromagnetic pulse. That would qualify as an iPod "killer."
You know, with all of these supposed "iPod Killers" running around, you would think someone would have been charged with Conspiracy to Murder already, and scare the rest off.
I suppose it's fortunate for Mr. iPod that not a single purported killer has been succesfully. Oh, sure, he's taken a few dings, but nothing and no-one has yet to get close to him.
"When I can buy the music I want at a reasonable price with zero DRM (nada, none, zip... "
I got modded troll for pointing this out elsewhere in this news item, but you might want to try the new Napster. They allow up to three free, full listens to any of their tracks. There are many programs such as Freecorder out there that will let you record the songs when they play. Then you end up with nice, useful, unencumbered MP3 files.
BR I'll never even consider iTunes as long as you pay more to "get less" in the form of encrypted non-standard-format music files that won't play on most players.
Where were you when the voynix came?
128k and higher MP3's will do just fine for lossless music: unless you have the super hearing of a dog or an alien from Krypton.
Where were you when the voynix came?
I got a sidekick three with a 4gb SD card. I am perfectly happy with MP3 only support. I think the sound is better too and the battery life is much better. The music player app isn't "awesome" but it does the basics and the thing acts like a usb drive when connected to the computer so it's easy to manage and transfer songs. The best part about it is I don't have to keep multiple chargers around and my pockets are less full of crap. Even better when someone calls me when I've got my head phones on the ring goes through the head phones and I can pick up quickly.
Sorry Nokia. You're already too late.
If anything it's Apple that's running out of time if the theories that Apple is not working on a iPodPhone are really true because that's the way things seem to be heading. If Nokia teams up with powerful content providers they are in a unique position to create a competitor to any iPodPhone. They can combine their smartphones with an MP3 player and complement that with a built in music store. Plenty of users, myself (a long time Mac user) included, would instantly dump the iPod for a decently designed Nokia phone with 6-8 Gigs of storage for music, a blackberry client, wifi, VPN and a decent organizer and the ability to download music directly onto the phone from a Nokia music store via GPRS/EDGE. While I don't think that Nokia can kill off the iPod they can definetly erode it's market share considerably and come to think of it I hope they do succeed since Apple's dominance of the online music business is just as unhealthy as Microsofts OS monopoly.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Scutttlemonkey is.
They survived? Having interviewed with them back when they were "big" in media distribution nothing in their facilities struck me as "wow." I admit I'm biased having worked at NeXT and Apple but damn they just reminded me of what BSquare reminded me -- a knock off building from Microsoft.
I am always amused at how overdone "*insert company name here* to try an *insert market dominating / news headline catching product here* killer" headlines (and similar) are. Especially when it comes to things like Google, MySpace, or iTunes. First of all, how can one new produt or website possibly come out to actually "kill" one of these brands? Don't sell by the headline, sell by the content. The real killers are lawsuits.
I gotta have more cowbell.
Yeah, just like "Virgin Superstore" was a "Tower Records" killer, which was a "Sam Goody" killer.
What is it with these "business" experts, whether writers, MBAs, VCs or daytraders who can't recognize a simple good business competitor, but have to have an overnight monopoly to be satisfied?
--
make install -not war
"Yeah, just like "Virgin Superstore" was a "Tower Records" killer"
Could be. I've run across more Virgin Superstores that I have run across Tower's. Never seen a Sam Goody.
Where were you when the voynix came?
That's because a product has to be VERY well established for someone to talk about it being killed. Sure, AltaVista may have been fairly well established, but nowhere near as well established as iTunes is now in terms of market share and whatnot (also, searching the internet was just a New Thing back then). Marketing something as a killer really is sort of a doomed system, because labelling something a killer admits that the opposition product is already very well established and in domination of the market. So yes, the Super-Parent is half-right when he says that killers don't often succeed: when they're labeled as killers, they're going up against absurd odds, whereas products that aren't developed to be killers are often killers because they break into the market that isn't as well established. That's what I think, anyway.
As for coming up with "Killer" products, VHS was sort of a BetaMax killer, to present a famous example.
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
the market is growing. why do you have to "spice" up your lame article with ipod killer. was competitor too hard to spell ?
I don't think I would like a mp3 player that makes me convert my collection to WMA.
In an (un)related note, I don't know why cell phone companies have to segment that way their markets. "If you like to listen to music, you will not need to use QuickOffice, se we better remove it". I really want a cellphone with 4GB of space that lets me install all the apps I have in my P900: HP48G emulator, ebook reader, MP3 player, the MetrO application, and so on. And a PDF viewer. And Quickoffice. The only missing thing to me is disc space. The P990 simply doesn't compare well with mp3 oriented phones in the space department.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Anybody else remember loudeye from their days as the parent company of "overpeer," who hosted fake music files on p2ps? http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051212-5748 .html
Well, they are forever on my shit-list for that, and now nokia is too. I still don't understand why someone would pay a dollar a song for poor-quality .mp3s when the actual CD is about the same price (cheaper used). Think I'll be stickin to allofmp3 and my good ole ipod.
Have they forgotten nGage so soon??
if MS can maintain a monopoly with arguably the worst OS currently available in computer space, Apple can maintain a monopoly with the arguably the best music store/player combo with ease. There will be no iTunes killer - that's just not possible right now.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
I remember when OD2 was 3 guys in a bedroom, and I was one of them.
:)
The main failure I see in OD2's business model was that it ran a "white label" system. It powered the music stores for brands that didn't give a shit about music. Packard-Bell is a great example. They barely give a shit about building computers, but they know even less about music. Wanadoo (now Orange) was (is?) one of the biggest customers, but again - what does an ISP care about music? Nothing. So none of these partners really cared about their music portals or did anything with them. They just let them rot away.
MSN is the biggest customer in terms of users, but they never really cared enough to do anything useful - and they showed just how much they cared when they started installing big Flash ads all over their site. The ad revenue probably brought them more than the music ever did.
Apple made the right decision by building a single brand. Of course, this requires some serious marketing outlay which white-labelling doesn't (your partners spend the marketing beans), but in the end produces a much richer experience IMO.
Why does Coca-Cola need it's own music store? It's a trick question - they don't. Coca-Cola had their own store built around OD2's platform, but now they've abandoned it and just have a page inside iTunes. THAT is a better combination of brands.
OD2 Loudeye also pissed their money away buying OverPeer. I kept asking the Korean tech guys - "How will you keep getting more IPs as your servers get blocked?" "Ah, it's our secret" they said. I never did find out their "secret" for all the good it did them. Never start a war against the hardcore pirates on the Internet. They're cleverer than you. And plus, they're 12 years old and have far too much disposable time to fuck you up.
Am I surprised Nokia bought OD2? A bit. I worked on the N91 project with Nokia a couple of years ago, back in the days when they were pissing themselves with fear over a Apple/Moto iPhone which still hasn't *really* arrived. The idea of Nokia phone which does music is fairly sound - the main idea of course is that you cut out the PC element. You buy and download the songs straight to your phone (and you can sync them back to your desktop too if you want). The spanner in the works, as Apple found to their detriment, is the networks. Apple tried to do it without the networks and they demanded their cut. They want a chunk of every track sold. The problem is, Apple (like all the other music stores with fixed pricing) only makes a couple of cents on most tracks - there is no room for a cut for the networks. And the networks need to pay for all that bandwidth you'll use downloading your songs.
What have Nokia actually bought? 5 pieces of paper. The contracts with all the record labels (majors + indies). I wouldn't be surprised if that was all they really wanted from the deal. It saves them a whole bunch of work in negotiating contracts and paying royalty advances.
Do I think Nokia will succeed? Maybe. I've been inside the belly of the beast though. Nokia have gone seriously downhill in recent years. The quality control on their software is shoddy. Their desktop software has always been horrendous. A lot of their software design is outsourced. Internally their organisational structure seems to be dragging them down. I really don't hold out much hope.
My money is on Apple. They have everything, end-to-end. If they really are building their own phone from scratch with their own UI then they'll end up winning this game. The only thing they lack compared to Nokia is the relationships with the mobile networks, but money can solve that problem - as Apple have hinted previously about setting up their own virtual network.
Caveat: I'm a OD2 Loudeye shareholder. My shares are barely worth the paper they're written on
Like most on here, this thing sounds like it will totally fall on its face, just like all the other "iPod killers". The thing is, will having a lot of high-profile iPod clones start to make the Zune look like just another bogus clone (which it really is)? I think it might. I think having all these new products screaming for attention are just going to make people put everything not iPod into the same catagory... that being the "ignore" list.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Not sure I've heard synth bass. Got a great synth bass track to recommend?
Where were you when the voynix came?
I don't think you understand why the iPod sells so well. Nobody is comparing the iPod features with its competitors and buying an iPod because it is more features for less money. If average people comparison shopped for music players, the iPod would be dead already.
I want something small, something that works, and something that I enjoy using (ie has exceptional industrial design). The iPod wins here. Why is Apple the only major consumer electronics company that seems to give a crap about good design? Beauty is subjective, but it would be hard to argue that Apple has failed with their product designs.
I definitely don't want a music player bundled with my phone (I have yet to see a phone that I consider well designed- the Moto Pebl, or whatever it's called, comes close). I do not want moving parts and definitely not something the size of a frickin' cd or dvd.
I currently have about a 10 GB audio collection and maybe 2-5% is music that I have copied from somewhere else. A big chunk of it is audio books and pod casts. Don't assume that all anybody uses their iPod for is music. If I could, I would probably have videos as well
I swear, if I had a dollar for every iPod/iTunes killer that was announced, I could afford an iPod with iTunes.
The only reason I don't use my current Nokia phone to play MP3s is that it's too quiet.
When I'm on a bus or walking next to a busy road, it just doesn't have the volume to shut everything around me out.
I don't know if it is done to save power, but any music player I buy will need to have a very loud maximum volume without the use of an external amp.
A 4GB drive?
I can get a 4GB MS Pro Duo stick right now from Buy.com for $100. Why would I want a spinning, fragile, unreplaceable media when I can get solid state storage in a slot instead? I can stick that Pro Duo stick in my Sony W810i and play the music off it. The music UI on the W810i is better than that on the N91, although both can use a little work. And the W810i battery will play for about 25 hours, the N91 goes 10. The W810i lets you use your own earbuds through a clever microphone yoke, the N91 has wired-in earbuds on its special headset.
Nokia diddled around too long, the N91 was pointless before it ever came out.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
One example is bleep.com, which offers FLAC versions of some releases. I've bought a couple of them, but unfortunately the selection is quite small (all of Autechre and then some). Maybe the transferring of FLAC music to portable device (eg. convert to Ogg Vorbis) is too much of a hassle for ordinary people. Me, of course, have an iAudio player that plays FLAC out of the box.
Other than that, emusic.com provides over a million MP3s with no DRM used, but I won't buy music in a patent-restricted format. And with the superioty of FLAC (after all, I'm _paying_ for the music, I'd expect perfect quality), I'm not sure if I'd pay for Ogg Vorbis songs, either.
People keep saying iPod price/performance is bad.
I was wondering: Is that really true?
As far as I can tell there's hardly a player that's even in the same market segment as the current iPod. Please tell me which player has 60GB, plays the same quality of video (or better) and tops in features (ogg?) and/or is cheaper in price.
I'll probably by a music player soon, and it certainly needn't be an iPod - but I just don't see any alternative.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
apple has nothing to worry about
Being in Japan, a 4GB mobile comparatively doesn't sound very exciting, but thanks for the advertisement.
Seriously, what is the advantage of being able to download a DRM-encumbered song for (in the UK)79p?
I'd rather buy a CD for £10 or less, at least then I have a physical backup and I can copy it to my computer/iPod-alike as a simple MP3. Nobody buys singles nowadays except for DJs.
I am missing out the whole issue of "piracy" to avoid confusing the issue.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Do you have to remove the battery in order to change the playlist?
.....because of the itunes visualizer. it totally owns every other visualizer I've seen.
it's.....so....very....shiny......
I agree...Killers dont even work "rarely"