Never Go Up Against a Sicilian When *Death* is on the Line!

Image from WikipediaVizzini vs. The Man in Black in "The Princess Bride"... one of the most quoted and memorable movie scenes of my generation. The battle of wits to the death comes to mind often when I sit and watch what is going on right now in the music industry. The labels are Vizzini... overconfident, over-thinking, but also over-looking (the obvious). The consumers are The Man in Black... practical, nimble and immune.

For those of you that watch the industry, you have seen a flurry of announcements lately about the new approaches the labels are taking, the partners that used to be defendants, and how everything is the next "iTunes-Killer". While hyperbole is aplenty, clarity is hard to come by when it comes to making bets on what happens next.

• Last.fm offering free streaming of millions(?) of tracks has also just announced that they will also offer streaming simulcasts of CBS Radio stations (sister division)
• imeem cutting deals with all the majors with other "gray" services being coerced into similar deals
• MySpace Music's announcement today about offering free streams (from 3 of the 4 majors) and selling both DRM'd and DRM free tracks
• Nokia's "Comes with Music" offering (aka "the hardware tax")
• Apple's rumored discussions around their own subscription plans ("hardware tax")
• Omniphone's music subscription as bundled with wireless plan service in Europe ("wireless tax")
  
• Universal Music Group's "Total Music" plan(s) that are still unclear ("hardware tax"?)
  
• Warner Music Group's announcement last week that they hired Jim Griffin to drive and promote a service offering that would be bundled with your ISP bill (aka "the ISP tax")
• MP3 Search Engines (aka "information retrieval tools") and online storage lockers, like Seeqod and MP3tunes, being sued by major record labels
• New playlisting and music services popping up daily (see Muxtape and Mixwit)
• Other services getting acquired (Foxytunes, Qloud) while others close up shop (Ezmo)
  
• XM & Sirius merging
• EMI hires ex-Google CIO to head up their digital division
  
• Yahoo and MTV shedding their subscription music services (to Rhapsody)
• Yahoo Music VP, Ian Rogers, decided to move on to a new job focused on the *creation* side of the industry... presumably because the consumption side is such a mess?
  
• AOL farming out their radio programming (and presumably royalty liabilities) to CBS Radio
  
• Amazon is now the second biggest digital music retailer, but iTunes is now the biggest music retailer (digital or physical) surpassing Wal-Mart
  

The list goes on and on. The good news is that there are a lot of smart and passionate people dedicated to trying to change the way the music business operates. The bad news is that most of the business models being pursued above can only succeed at the expense of all the other models.

I like the notion of making music "feel free" even if it's not. The problem is are you going to pay Nokia, Apple, Verizon and Comcast all an incremental fee for the same rights (all the music you can enjoy)? Some would say the labels have finally gotten smart by recently making some online bets after years of just trying to wish the internet away. Others would say that they are extorting the digital music companies, forcing them to make huge upfront deals and trade away big chunks of their companies in the name of self-preservation. Taken a step further, many claim the labels are moving towards extorting the consumers directly (after years of suing them) by trying to inflict an "optional" ISP music fee that basically buys you (and the ISP) immunity from being sued.


The only thing clear to me is that there is a nuclear bomb coming, and I'm not betting on any of them until the smoke clears. Any one of the (r)evolutionary models will send ripples throughout the music/tech community.... anointing new kings while massacring hundreds of others in the process.

That is, of course, if Steve Jobs decides to let any of it happen or not.

Blackberry & Omnifone Team Up in Europe

Earlier this summer, before the iPhone hype, a little company called Omnifone announced there were working on a mobile-centric music subscription product called "MusicStation".

muSick in the Head: Mobile Music - All You Can Eat from MusicStation

If the service works as advertised, it seems pretty compelling. Basically, there is an incremental fee of 2 to 3 euros/week (8 - 12 euros/month) added to your mobile bill for the right to download and stream as much content from their 1.2 million track catalog as your heart desires (or your phone can handle). This includes the ability to stream one song while downloading another in the background. The weekly fees are inclusive of the data fees - where the higher subscription fees allow you to transfer the tracks that you downloaded to your phone back over to a PC. These tracks can *not* be burned to a CD, and it is unclear whether they can be synced to another mobile device.



The service works on "most" phones (symbian, java, 2.5g, 3g, etc), although Windows Mobile is conspicuosly missing from the list. The service has many "music 2.0" features including user playlist creation/sharing, charts, recommendations, member profiles, and the like. It also will send news, new release alerts and other related information on your favorite artists to your phone. Presumably, this is based on your listening history and doesn't require you to do anything special to receive this info besides just listening to your music.

Well, that list of phones now has extended to include RIM's Blackberry line (at least those running on Vodafone's network). It should be interesting to see what the uptake looks like for this feature - considering it is not cheap.

SHAMELESS PLUG:
Want to add social "music 2.0" features and discovery tools to your current mobile music experience without the need to subscribe to content? Check out the MyStrands Social Player (for Windows Mobile & Symbian).

UPDATE: Nokia has launched a new marketing campaign for their N-Series that features - you guessed it - MyStrands. Check it out (some screenshots below).

Omnifone's MusicStation Service Launches in Europe

Music download service for cell phones to launch in Europe - Yahoo! News: "British firm Omnifone said it had signed content deals with the four biggest music groups in the industry and had agreements with 30 mobile operators in a bid to steal the thunder of the much-hyped iPhone made by iPod maker Apple.

The service called MusicStation will be suitable for 75 percent of mobile handsets already available in the market and will launch first in Sweden on Thursday with Scandinavian operator Telenor."

I am a fan of the model that Omnifone is selling. Check out my coverage from a couple months ago (including their promotional/demo video): http://globallistic.blogspot.com/2007/02/mobile-music-all-you-can-eat-from.html

Mobile Music - All You Can Eat from MusicStation

Thanks to Hypebot, I just learned about Omnifone's new MusicStation service that is launching (outside the US) in partnership with Musiwave (a division of Openwave) and 23 of their 35 different mobile carrier partners - giving them a total addressable market of 690 million users. The first commercial rollouts will be Scandinavian network operator Telenor and Vodafone partner network Vodacom in South Africa beginning in Q207. Other countries where they have partnerships include: Australia, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and UK - most looking at Q3 rollouts or later.

If the service works as advertised, it seems pretty compelling. Basically, there is an incremental fee of 2 to 3 euros/week (8 - 12 euros/month) added to your mobile bill for the right to download and stream as much content from their 1.2 million track catalog as your heart desires (or your phone can handle). This includes the ability to stream one song while downloading another in the background. The weekly fees are inclusive of the data fees - where the higher subscription fees allow you to transfer the tracks that you downloaded to your phone back over to a PC. These tracks can *not* be burned to a CD, and it is unclear whether they can be synced to another mobile device.



The service works on "most" phones (symbian, java, 2.5g, 3g, etc), although Windows Mobile is conspicuosly missing from the list. The service has many "music 2.0" features including user playlist creation/sharing, charts, recommendations, member profiles, and the like. It also will send news, new release alerts and other related information on your favorite artists to your phone. Presumably, this is based on your listening history and doesn't require you to do anything special to receive this info besides just listening to your music.

As with all subscription services, sharing is easy.... if I'm a subscriber and you're a subscriber, we can "share" all we want. In that scenario we are sharing little more than a link to the asset on the service, but the consumer experience is seamless.

Other specs:

• Tracks are encoded as eAAC+ (Enhanced Advanced Audio Coding)


• Uses "industry standard" DRM is used (unclear as to which specifically, although it is not WMDRM)


• The application comes pre-installed on specific handsets


• Includes content from all major labels as well as many indies and aggregates


• Automatically stores a user's favorite tracks on the phone's internal or removable memory (This means that users can access their favourite tracks when in Flight Safe mode and access the full catalogue when connected to a 2.5G or 3G data network)


• It's play-on-demand capabilities (streaming) means their charts track most played tracks (instead of just most downloaded) - similar to most subscription services as compared to download stores like iTunes


• Uses collaborative filtering and nearest-neighbor technology to identify new tracks, artists, albums and other users that are likely to be of interest


• Message other consumers, sending recommended tracks, albums, playlists and messages