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Online Music Finally Tries to Go Straight
By: Eastside Journal
December 10th 2001 11:52am
Last week marked the opening salvo in the second stage of the online music war. The first shot, by the way, was fired by Napster more than a year ago, when the online music swapping service took the entire music industry by surprise, and was only stopped by court order. Since Napster was neutered last year, there has not been any offering from the music industry to replace it. In fact, the continuing emergence of newer music swapping networks such as KaZaA, which reportedly trade in illegally copied digital music, proves two things: There is still a strong demand for digital music, and until last week the industry failed to address it. The trouble is, the new solution being offered suffers from a basic flaw -- the music being sold disappears from your collection in a month. Last week the Seattle Internet media company, RealNetworks Inc., launched its RealOne Music service, a $9.95-per-month subscription service to music from three of the five big labels, EMI, BMG and Warner Music. Later this month AOL is expected to launch its own version of the same service. AOL Time Warner and RealNetworks are members of the MusicNet consortium with those labels. The other two major labels, Sony Music and Universal Music, are also this month launching their pressplay subscription service, which uses Microsoft Windows Media technology. And Listen.com has launched its Rhapsody service, which includes music from 37 different independent labels. Listen.com is the only service among the group that still uses the MP3 format. For the first time the music industry has risen to address the demand for digital music, RealOne Music probably will get a few early adopters. But it won't replace the Napster phenomenon, because the limitations built into it don't address the reasons why Napster was such a hit. Here's what made Napster popular: 1) Music was encoded in the widely accepted MP3 compression format. 2) Music was portable: there were lots of MP3 player devices, meaning that you could go jogging with them the same way you can go jogging with a compact disc. 3) It was fairly easy to access the music you wanted. 4) It was free. Obviously it was No. 4 that got under the music industry's skin, and any offering from the music industry would definitely not be free. What did we get? With RealOne Music: 1) Music is encoded in the Real Media format, which is not as universal as MP3. (They make the most popular streaming software, but Real Player could play MP3s as well as its own proprietary formats). 2) Music is not portable: there aren't too many portable Real Media devices, unless you like to go jogging with your laptop. 3) It's too early to tell if it will be easy to get the music you want. But two of the five major labels aren't on board. Among the artists you may find difficult to get through RealOne Music, at least until a deal is cut, are Aerosmith, Leonard Bernstein, Plácido Domingo, Macy Gray, Michael Jackson, Billy Joel, Bob Marley, Modest Mouse, Rammstein and The Reverend Horton Heat. Conversely, when pressplay launches, you won't find much from EMI or BMG artists such as The Beatles, Mercury Rev, Busta Rhymes or Elvis. 4) Oh yeah, it isn't free. RealOne Music, for the money you pay -- $119.60 over the course of a year -- also gives you 100 live music streams and 100 downloadable files which will expire within a month. And you can't burn onto a CD or even put them onto something other than the computer you downloaded it onto. There's not much evidence any other competing services will be much better. For the same amount of money involved you could buy seven or eight CDs. Plus, you could copy them onto a cassette, rip them onto your hard drive to burn compilation CDs, put them into MP3 format to play in your MP3 player, even lend them to friends for a week so they can listen to them. And the songs won't expire in 30 days either; they'll last forever unless you break the CD. Yes, there's always the chance that someone will pirate the CDs or upload the files onto the Internet. I doubt that those people are in the majority, or even a significant minority. Here's my call: RealOne Music in its current form will fail. So will the others. Here's why. Some people may not mind spending $120 on music over twelve months that will have totally disappeared within thirteen. But the current offering seems tailored to consumers who are tied to their PCs, whose tastes change every 30 days, who don't mind paying more money for fewer choices in both music and what you can do with it other than listen to it at their workstations, and who won't miss the music when it's gone. In short, this isn't about targeting people who love music. It's about people who consume music. It's about music being as disposable as shrink-wrap. Some people may fit that narrow demographic, but I'd like to think the average consumer is both smarter and more appreciative of music than that. The magical ``recurring revenue'' business model doesn't apply here. If they want a subscription, they take a magazine. Even magazines don't self-destruct or call the cops if they are read by an unauthorized reader. Music lovers do lots of things with music that the industry is trying to prevent: they collect it, they lend it out, they compile their own tapes or CDs as personalized gifts for friends and loved ones, and they love to gather and talk about it. They very rarely play it on their personal computers, unless they're mixing a CD, and unless they also have speakers as good as those on their stereo systems. Napster was by and large a community of people who loved music. That's why it was popular. And those people, when Napster was shut down, found other places to go: Gnutella. Scour.net. KaZaA. They're like dandelions: You pull up one by the roots, three more spring up elsewhere. Music lovers are still out there, and while many of them probably wouldn't mind paying a reasonable fee for digital music, their needs are still not being met by the music industry. So far the music industry has experimented with killing the marketplace -- by shutting down Napster and its ilk and by building copy-protection software into CDs -- and with offering its own alternatives. So far, the alternatives are inferior, and the marketplace still exists. They're going to have to do better. Boot This! runs Mondays. Chris Winters can be reached at 425-453-4232 or at chris.winters@eastsidejournal.com.
© 2001 Horvitz Newspapers Inc.
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