Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
And also, it should be able to play DVDs.
'nuff said
Can't Nokia (supporter of EU software patents) just fucking die?
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?
microsoft killed IBM,
I think the list of companies that MS killed is nearly endless actually. If MS wants to kill the Ipod, face it, they can. They just proved that against sony who everyone thought had an invincible position with the PS2. The first generation Ipod killer might not do the job, but since MS can lose a lot of money on the product and Apple can't it's pretty much a no brainer that apples day as THE mp3 player is coming to an end. Companies like MS and Nokia and many others have plenty to offer and are actually in better position to release a media player than apple was.
The ipod will not be hard to kill. It's not a very reliable product, apple's tech support BLOWS, it's far overpriced for what it does and and personally i think the wheel interface sucks.
Cell phones without a doubt are posed to destroy the very idea of a stand alone media player. Who in the right mind would want to pay 200-300 bucks for an ipod when their cell phone does that same thing and is nearly free.
It's only obvious that the trend will be to consolidate media players/cell phones/PDAs. At some point the additional features will cost almost nothing to add to a device.
Ipods only advantage was getting hitting the sweat spot in the market for price/space. It's not as if there were hundreds of mp3 players before the Ipod that played mp3s just as well. It's just that apple timed the release of their product at a point when the capacity of the device could actually make it practical instead of just a gadget. Unlike MS in the OS business Apple has no real grip on the portable media player market they simply got off to a strong start. While Ipods may be popular at public schools and colleges they aren't as popular as people think.
Another thing to note is that one of the major reasons there is a demand for mp3 player is because music has in recent years become free to anyone with an internet connection. So yea, we need portable players for our massive music collection, but take away the free music and a CD or DvD player full of mp3s is likely to have the capacity to hold your music collection. The only reason most people need 4 gigs of portable music is because our music collections are full of pirated music. Take away piracy and you take away the need for high capacity mp3 players.
Think back to you or your friends music collections before kazaa and other file share networks. Most people had a modest collection of CDs or tapes, while a few true music collectors have massive collections.
When you add up the cost of accessories these mp3 players are pretty lousy investments really. They are prone to failure and most people wind up buying hundreds of dollars of accessories for them. What we really need are DVD audio players that play mp3s. This way music players become standardized again. You take your CD or DVD with mp3s to your friend house and pop in the player and music becomes a shared experience again. It's more convenient, it's far cheaper, it's more reliable and you don't have 3 different audio formats confussing the hell out of people.
Portable audio players are a trend, just like boomboxes were. Kill the Ipod now or just wait for it to die. If music/video piracy is put to an end the new generations of kids won't have any use for a portable terrabyte of music because they won't be able to afford to fill these devices up with music. I'm a musician and I bet all the cds I've ever purchased in my entire lifetime would only take up around 4 gigs (in mp3 format) and it's not as if I want to listen to most of that music anymore. Really radio is the superior form because it forces you to hear new music and it offer innovation and socialization that pumping the same boring collection of music into your brain never will. I do believe the age of pirated music/video/games is coming to an end so grab it while you can folks.