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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.
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.
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
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?
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
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.
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.
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