Coolfer has an interesting post this morning, responding to Peter Kafka's suggestion that it's getting too hard to buy music because fewer retailers are stocking CDs. I think Kafka's confusing cause and effect--if retailers were still making lots of money on Britney and Rihanna, CDs would be sold front and center. But regardless of the chicken-and-egg question, Coolfer makes the very good point that most music purchasers don't seek out music and aren't willing to sift through the racks at their local record stores, but rather pick up a CD as an impulse buy on their way to the beer aisle. So what happens to those purchasers once CDs are relegated to a small corner in the back of Wal-Mart or Borders?
I look forward to an Amoeba trip like a kid looks forward to Christmas. But most towns don't have an Amoeba, and most casual music fans wouldn't stop by anyway.
(Credit: Amoeba Records)The most likely replacement scenario, I think, will be over-the-air digital downloads: users will hear a song on the radio or in some public space and make an impulse buy from their mobile phone or other portable device. But the technology to make this process as easy as picking up a CD is still in the very early, geeks-only stages.
With an iPhone, you can make a purchase only if you've got a Wi-Fi connection, not over your service provider's cellular network. (The same holds true for the iPod Touch, since it's not a phone at all.) And identification requires a third-party app like Shazam (which just added another 2 million songs to its already impressive database). Apple could make impulse buys a lot easier if it bought Shazam, incorporated its functionality into the iTunes Wi-Fi app, and created a cellular version of the iTunes store--perhaps giving users the ability to download a very small but highly compressed version of the song over 3G, then giving them the right to "upgrade" to a better-quality file later.
The Buy From FM feature on Microsoft's Zune player is another good idea, but it only works when you're listening to the Zune's FM radio--there's no identification of audio from outside sources--and of course the Zune isn't a phone (yet), and can't connect to Wi-Fi hotspots that require a browser-based log-in. Microsoft's also making a big push for its Zune Pass, which lets you stream any song in the Zune Marketplace on demand, but like subscription services from Rhapsody, this won't appeal to impulse buyers--by definition, those folks aren't going to pay $15 a month (or whatever) for the right to listen to music.
Internet radio with click-to-buy functionality is another strong contender--think of Pandora on the iPhone. But once again, there's a disconnect between hearing, identifying, and buying (which requires a Wi-Fi connection).
Don't get me wrong--the CD still has a lot of life left in it, and specialty music stores and online retailers will continue to sell them by the tens of millions. But as smartphones become more common, somebody (probably Apple) is going to close the loop in a way that makes impulse buys of digital downloads just as easy as grabbing a CD from the rack next to the cash register. Whoever does stands to become the Tower Records--or should I say Wal-Mart music section--of the next decade.
A couple weeks ago, after being briefed on the new Zune, a colleague described some of its features to his teenage daughter. She responded positively to the Wi-Fi download feature, but was skeptical about the "Buy from FM" concept that lets people tag songs they hear on the Zune's built-in radio for later purchase.
Would lots of radio stations actually support this feature or would it be relegated to a narrow niche like XM radio? (Her example, not mine.)
Tag songs for later purchase with the Zune's 'Buy from FM' feature, available later this month.
(Credit: Microsoft)She need not have worried. On Monday, Microsoft announced that many of the largest radio conglomerates in the U.S., including giant Clear Channel, would support the RDS tagging technology necessary for this feature.
Let me just get this out of the way: I find commercial music radio to be way too narrow and repetitive, I hardly ever listen to it, and I don't get any new music recommendations from it. But I'm in the minority. A Microsoft-commissioned study recently showed that more than 60 percent of music listeners still use radio as their primary source for discovering new tunes.
So this is a win for Microsoft. While Clear Channel was rightly reviled earlier this decade for allegedly accepting money and other compensation from brokers to play particular tracks, it's still the big gun of U.S. radio, with 9 percent ownership. (That's about 1,200 stations.) Other partners announced Monday include Citadel (with more than 200 stations), CBS Radio (with 140 stations), Entercom (110 stations), and Cox (86 stations).
When the feature launches on September 16, it will immediately work with 450 stations across the U.S., with many more to come.
- prev
- 1
- next
