Lots of talk this morning about Microsoft’s officially announced Zune music player/service.
It’ll be interesting to see how this all works out. I own an iPod. Love it. I use it sometimes with the headset and sometimes docked to the stereo so it can blast through the house. Although we have tons of CDs, for the most part they have been demoted to archival use only. The iPod is our jukebox.
Among all the chatter, there is one subtle theme that a few have repeated–such as in this Engadget story:
“…it’s obvious a music service + device ecosystem like what Microsoft offers now can’t compare to the user experience of an incredibly tight vertical integration [which the iPod has].”
I think this only is half right. I don’t think Microsoft had to build a tightly integrated end-to-end system, like the iPod. I don’t think that was the issue at all. While it’s true that many of the MP3ish players I’m aware of don’t have the design feel of the iPod, I can often get over that–for the right price. The problem–at least from my tail-consumer vantage point was from the music perspective service.
Here’s a story that says it all. Last Christmas I wanted to purchase some music for my Dad to listen to while he was exercising. I also figured I could get stocking stuffers for my nieces who both own Creative devices. Off I went to Best Buy. Why? Because I’d previously purchased a couple credit-card styled iTunes dollars for Lan and a co-worker. I figured Best Buy would have a non-iPod equivalent. I was disappointed.
Yes, there were some minute cards for Naptser and another service (I think it was a Sony card, with just Sony’s music). But call me picky, but no way was I going to buy a Napster minute card for my Dad. Nor my nieces. Sorry, but the Napster brand isn’t to respectable to me. Yes, I should practice corporate forgiveness here. Of course, even if I did, I know I’d have to explain the whole forgiveness thing to my Dad and my nieces too. I just wanted to buy some songs.
I also was reluctant to go this direction because from reading the cards it looked like the selection was not all that great. I could imagine my nieces would be struggling to find any song they’d like and my Dad would give up after ten minutes of staring at a list of unrecognizable song titles.
The sales rep suggested a music subscription service. No, I said. I wanted to buy songs. I don’t want them tethered. I want to let them buy songs that they can keep, play on a portable unit, play on their stereo, play on the computer. I was assured you could do all that with a subscription service, but I wasn’t buying it. I trusted the buy-a-song model. I’d seen it work with the iPod. That’s what I wanted. Of course, that’s not what I was going to find. I gave up. My Dad got an iPod. So did my nieces.
You see, it wasn’t the tight integration at all that was the problem here. From a consumer standpoint it was that I couldn’t easily buy music from a name I trusted. If you ask me, all Microsoft needed was a Microsoft branded music card at retail that I could buy. I would have.
Let me take this “tightly integrated” theory even further. Look at PodCasting. Look at its growth. Where’s the tight integration here. It doesn’t have one.
Here’s my theory. Microsoft is building a new hardware/software music package because like many things in the tech world it’s easier to start over and build from scratch. From an engineering point, that’s great, but will it solve the simple problem I had of purchasing music for my Dad? We’ll have to see.
One last concern I have in all this–just as Microsoft releases their iPod competitor, I’m concerned for Microsoft that the market will have moved on. Look at iTunes University. We’re not talking just music. We’re talking content creation. We’re talking videos. Who has the content creation tools? Who has the distribution network? And for Microsoft, who is facilitating the network effect? That’s where I’d look–not in trying to build an iPod clone+15%.