Google Music Store Inches Closer? 282
smallguy78 writes "Forbes is once again reporting on Google plans to launch its own competitor to iTunes, a Google music store. From the article: 'The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing and lack of subscription options at the market-leading iTunes Music Store and likely to support alternative services.'" We have touched on this subject previously. This most recent report would seem to indicate the launch will happen sooner rather than later.
Google's first serious misstep? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the Fine Article:
One of two things has to give here: either the music industry's unhappiness is sustained because Google has enough principle to do on-line music equitably (which, by definition will be unhappiness for the music industry); or Google capitulates and in the process violates their "Do No Evil" credo.
This could be a misstep for Google if they appear to be in the pockets of an increasingly strident and miserable music industry. Please let them do the right thing.
Of course, for the gazillionth time, the only right way to do this is unencumbered media. Hey, I can hope.
On what device? (Score:2, Insightful)
How many people are going to want to have two devices, one to play their hundreds of dollars in itunes music (that only plays on ipod) and another to play songs purchased from Google.
Anyway if they end up using an Open DRM format
why google will fail it (Score:5, Insightful)
hence why customers are broadly happy with iTunes - it's FAIR!
Server Centric? (Score:2, Insightful)
Still if it does come out, I expect Google to fit it in with its 'organise the world's information' line.
Perhaps just using their search algorithm to find the music you want to buy is enough.. perhaps...
Re:Google's first serious misstep? (Score:5, Insightful)
This IMO is the only short-term hope against the majors.
Basically, we need a Good Guy (TM) with deep pockets to raise a middle finger to the majors.
However, I fear this is not going to happen anytime soon.
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Re:what format? (Score:3, Insightful)
The music industry is broadly unhappy (Score:4, Insightful)
Who wants the service - industry or consumer? (Score:5, Insightful)
"The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing and lack of subscription options at the market-leading iTunes Music Store and likely to support alternative services."
I thought to myself, "If the music industry is broadly unhappy, then Apple is probably doing something right."
What we should be hearing is how Google is stepping up to offer alternative services that address a gap that consumers are experiencing. Instead that quote would indicate that Google is stepping up to offer alternatives to the music industry. Frankly, I don't hear too many people (myself included) in the mainstream complaining about the options. I'm all for capitalism and competition and welcome Google to the game. However, I'm going to remain skeptical about this until I fully understand where Google is going with this.
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"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." - Churchill
Unending greed? (Score:3, Insightful)
What part are they unhappy about? Making tons of money not enough, they want more? The only thing that could lead the music industry to be "unhappy" with iTunes is that they want to charge more per download, whether it be through higher price-fixing or subscriptions that seem like a good deal, but aren't. That's all they care about. Unfortunately, the MPAA doesn't get to dictate how the market works, too bad for them. Unless Google starts off with an online music store a good bit cheaper than iTunes and somehow manages to completely kill off the iTunes store before jacking up the prices, the music industry isn't going anywhere, and neither will any new efforts from Google or anyone else.
Re:why google will fail it (Score:2, Insightful)
Utter lack of sympathy for the music industry (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, really?
Well, I'm broadly unhappy with the music industry's desire to charge like wounded bulls for mediocre content and infest their media with single-platform proprietary DRM. I just *wonder* what sort of 'subscription models' the music industry is hanging out for. Guess what? I'm usually pretty supportive of google's enterprises, but if if I can't listen to the music on my iPod *and* my daughter's el cheapo MP3 player *and* my PowerBook *and* my work linux box *and* burn it to a CD so I can show it to my non-MP3-player-owning friends and relatives -- I'm not interested.
Oh, and I like Celtic folk, Afro-Celtic world music, blues, prog, electronica, choral and a bunch of other minority genres. I spent about A$70 on music last month, almost all from little indy labels. The Big Names of the music industry can take their overproduced teen manufactured product and stick it where the sun don't shine.
More possibilities for adsense? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Google's first serious misstep? (Score:4, Insightful)
re: a music store. Oooooooooooh, a shiny new music store. How innovative, Google. They're like eight years too late with that.
It's a misstep for google to be opening a music store.
Ooooh, a search engine! How innovative, Google. I mean, given Yahoo!, Altavista and what not, a *search* engine?
Gmail? Another email?! How innovative, Google! They're like, what, 30 years late? Or 40 years late? But from what I see, most people who've used Gmail hardly ever tend to use anything else.
Ever strike you that the million users that *mail has might be - just *might be* - because they don't have spammers signing up for thousands fake addresses?
Sheesh.
Remember that first mover advantage is very limited and very short lived. First movers may sometimes make it big, but the ones that come later also have the ability to not do your mistakes and improve upon what you've already built upon.
And they know that there exists a market that they can tap into, which is more than what the first mover had.
If you take anything that Google's done (Search, Maps, News, Email, IM), they've taken what others have done it and tried perfecting it. A much better idea than finding new niche markets.
DRM is Unnecessary (Score:3, Insightful)
Would iTunes or any other legitimate music/movie service be *less* successful without DRM? I don't think so. Which begs the question: what's the **AA's business case for DRM?
Re:Google's first serious misstep? (Score:2, Insightful)
Google has good intentions, but I think it's mistaken in believing it can keep launching service after service after service and be the leader in each. I'm really wishing Google would pull back and focus on a few key business plans, instead of half completing 1000 of them. Google's lack of focus is going to cost them pretty soon when smaller companies start focusing on the business plans that Google is getting lax on.
On-line indie stores? (Score:2, Insightful)
I've just finished reading Simon Reynolds' very interesting history of the British post-punk scene "Rip It Up And Start Again". There are sections in there discussing the indie labels like Rough Trade, Mute, Stiff and others which were set up and funded by enthusiasts. This was a world where music could only be distributed physically on casette or vinyl which presented huge barriers to entry. Yet these people not only overcame them they ushered in arguably the most creative period for British music since the 60s and created a few big stars along the way (whom they gave a fair share of the royalties to, no advances with profits being split 50/50 after the cost of pressing the records had been recovered).
How much easier would it be to set up something similar today when semi-pro and even pro quality recording equipment is so much cheaper and physical distribution is almost irrelevant? Yet, as least so far as I can tell, no one is trying this? Why is there no equivalent of the Rough Trade shop on-line entering into pure distribution deals with new bands to allow them to sell downloads without a record deal and enriching our lives by introducing us to stuff we probably wouldn't have heard otherwise? Not to mention encouraging (and possibly making commercially viable) the sort of experimentation which history has shown time and again is the best way for music to evolve both artistically and commercially.
Re:Google's first serious misstep? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
and why should they? 2 years from now, no one is going to care about what OS you are running, anyway. We will have true Windows emmulation on OS X shortly, and WINE seems to do great things for windows apps under linux... pretty soon your choice of OS isn't going to matter in terms of what software you can run.
Beyond that, we are heading towards a service-based model, which moves us away from the OS as a productivity space anyway. Google would do better to put their efforts into these services than mucking about with an OS and fighting a (probably loosing) battle with MS on that front. Better to take the fight to the internet, where they are stronger anyway.
Re:what format? (Score:2, Insightful)
For the simple reason that you can buy a bunch of different players that'll play the format. Next question?
Re:Google's first serious misstep? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, no. If Apple were the "good guy," they might use DRM, but they would make it available to other device manufacturers. The only reason for the iPod lock-in is to benefit Apple.
Not that I think there's anything inherently wrong with this - that's business, after all. But don't put Apple out there as some altruistic "good guy."
Re:Google's first serious misstep? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't believe Apple is altruistic, just as I don't believe Google is altruistic, and I never said so. What I did say is that Apple is the best consumer representative we're going to get for digital music under the current system, because Apple makes their money primarily from hardware sales, with the lion's share of song profits going to the RIAA. Apple could conceivably stop selling songs online. They'd take a hit, but people could go back to buying CDs and pirating music just as the did before iTMS. The hit to the RIAA would be greater.
As I said, the lock-in does benefit Apple. But what is the upside to Apple opening up FairPlay, even to device manufacturers? Now they have to support a bunch of different MP3 players and they have to make up in song sales what they lose in hardware sales. And then they are dependent on the RIAA and they lose their bargaining power. Their sole advantage is that the RIAA needs them a lot more than they need the RIAA. Take that away and Apple is beholden to the RIAA, just like every other music company, and we lose the only advocate we have.
Re:what format? (Score:3, Insightful)
I actually like iTunes. (Score:3, Insightful)
The music industry is broadly unhappy with the fixed pricing and lack of subscription options at the market-leading iTunes Music Store and likely to support alternative services.
Call me crazy, but I actually like iTunes. I like that all the songs are $1. I like their selection, the interface, how easy it is to get what I want on my iPod, etc. I don't want to pay more for music. I stopped buying CD's a long time ago and it is the $1 price point that got me to purchase music again. If it goes up I'll do what I did with CD's years ago and stop buying music again. The last thing I want is a subscription service. Honestly, who here wants a subscription service for music? Raise your hands.
Now ask me how much of my time I waste worrying about the music industry only making a crap-load of money rather than a whole shit-load. Their whining about "mean old apple and fixed pricing" is enough to make a person sick.
Mod Parent Up (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine the physical CD media of a popular record. Marginal cost is now not zero, probably instead closer to $1. How should we price it - expensive, to acquire the price insensitive "gotta-have-it" types, or cheap, to attract the "it-could-be-cool" casual buyers?
As you surmise, the answer in both cases is to set price such that profit is maximized. In one case, there are no costs, so the optimum price could be lower than otherwise, but not necessarily. Either way, companies will want to experiment in order to model the price sensitivity of their customers.
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I don't think that old tracks would necessarily be cheaper, either. Many customers of old and/or niche music are price insensitive -- other close substitutes don't satisfy them. Again, this isn't something that can be answered without real data as opposed to WAGs (we can try - this is slashdot, after all), but that's just a theory of mine.