Inspirational Technology

Rethinking Digital Music Services

Lately I've spent a bit of time looking at the various legal music services. In particular listen.com Rhapsody, Pressplay and eMusic (which I subscribe to). I've posted several times that I'm a big fan of eMusic and it's a model that I'd love to see replicated with services that have access to the catalogs of the majors. However, from a business perspective I also have to say I don't see that as a practical idea.

I've never been a fan of services like Pressplay. This is mainly because it just feels like an artificially hindered service compared to what is possible (which it is). The restriction to WMA files that have to call home once per month to renew their licenses is just annoying. However, given their new pricing model this isn't really a terrible thing. For $9.95 per month you get unlimited downloads. What makes this model still seem undesirable is that all those downloads become useless if you cancel the service or if the service goes under. The question is why is this a problem? It's all a matter of perception. I believe they're actually shooting them self in the foot by focusing on the idea of downloads.

The other service I've been looking at lately is listen.com Rhapsody. This service doesn't offer downloads at all. It's more a music on demand streaming service. This means you need a connection to access the music. They do allow you to pay extra to burn tracks to CD, but do not offer any way to download a portable music file any other way. Now even though this is technically more limiting then Pressplay, I find the service more appealing. Why is this? I think it's because I feel I like Pressplay is trying to misrepresent what it is they're offering. They aren't really offering downloads, they're offering streaming music on demand service that just happens to cache on your hard drive in WMA format. This just feels dishonest and smacks of trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the consumer. In contrast the Rhapsody service doesn't claim to be anything other the a streaming service and at $9.95 per month for unlimited streams it's actually not a bad model. You just have to compare it to services like satellite radio to understand the value. XM radio is almost the same price (more if you factor in hardware) and you have no control over when and what music you hear. With listen.com you have access to a large catalog and can choose exactly what you listen to.

For me, when I think about why I like digital music so much, it's all about convenience and quantity. I like being able to call up just about any music that I get curious to hear with just a few key strokes. I've always wanted access to any kind of music, it's why I own so many CDs. Now if I can have access to huge amounts of music without having to worry about storing all of it, why wouldn't I go for that? So to me listen.com Rhapsody actually looks like a really interesting service. I haven't tried it out because it's Windows only, but someday when something like this comes to the Mac I'll be waiting. I'm changing my feeling about these services. I don't really care now if they offer unlimited downloads, all they really need to offer is unlimited streaming and a HUGE catalog that extends deep into their vaults. If I get curious to know what some obscure blues artist from 1922 sounds like I should be able to just call it up and listen. I don't need the MP3 file for that, a stream is fine (as long as it's high bit rate). That's a service I'd absolutely love.

So here's my new wish list in a legal music service.
- Complete access to the full catalog of as many major and independent labels as possible. I mean everything. If an album is there, the whole thing should be there.
- Solid well designed and easy to use software for Mac OS X
- Unlimited streaming of at least 128kbps.
- $9.95 per month
- The ability to purchase unhindered MP3s of songs for $.20 per song. (I doubt this will happen, but it'd be nice and isn't a deal breaker)
- No ads, no cross promotion of partners crap, no SPAM or anything else that distracts from the purpose of the service.
- Not marketed as a download service.

The last point is the one that will be most difficult to get people used to P2P to accept. These services need to focus their marketing on their strengths and downloading songs isn't one of them. Convenience can be though, and for the people who are actually willing to pay for music anyway, it's worth paying for convenience. So now listen.com comes close to what I want, and I'm hoping the rumors about Apple coming out with a service are true.