If you think about the business model around this, you would realize it's about "owning" a hardware and "owning" music on that hardware, physically. You get the hardware, fill it up with songs that you copied from your friend's hard disk or songs you downloaded from a P2P software or like a good citizen paid for the songs on iTunes, Zune marketplace, Amazon music store, or a similar service. But do you realise that you are actually storing tens-and-thousands of songs on a *physical* device?
You say > "yea, so what, I'm doing great with my device and I'm pretty happy with it".
I say >"yea, this is where the next revolution, shift in thinking will happen. When the customers are satisfied and content with what they are getting, it's time to hit the market and disrupt it"
Let's talk about some situations -
- What if the physical device (your MP3 players) crashed? You lose. LOSER. Unless you have another backup of these tens-and-thousands of songs at another location. Weird situation but think about "backing up" your data.. every few days.. manually.. uurrggg, I would hate this situation.
- What if you lost this physical device? Very likely.
- What if you are away from your computer and need to listen to a song that is not there on your device? Ah.. this is where the revolution starts from. What do you do if you're not close to your laptop/desktop? I have couple of suggestions -
- Put on the radio and pray some radio station playing the song God bless you!
- You start signing the song yourself I love this option!! :)
- You go to YOUTUBE.com and listen to your song there Yes, you do that, don't you? I'm doing that right now - listening to "aaj mausam bada by Mohd.Rafi sahab" :) And here's the opportunity.
What opportunity am I talking about?
Internet. Connectivity. Ubiquity as I put it. Think of a device that connects to the internet. Let's call this device NETTY. Netty can connect to the internet; Netty can play songs and videos. Netty has a memory space too but limited. Now think of a internet based service that has ten times the number of songs that you can ever imagine of, and growing. You subscribe to this service and pay a monthly/yearly charges. In return, you get to play the songs you want to listen to.
You getting the picture?
- You want to listen to a song - traditionally you take out your MP3 device and play the song. Think future - you take out Netty, and select the song.
- You want to listen to an album/artists - traditionally you take out your MP3 device and play the album. Think future - you take out Netty, and select the album.
- You want to listen to a song that you don't have - your MP3 device doesn't have that song, no use taking it out. Think future - you take out Netty, tell which song/album you want to listen to and bingo, you have it.
So Netty is now an MP3 player! All you need is internet, which in coming years will be something you would not even think about explicitly - it'll be always there, anywhere you go. This will be termed as "Cloud music", where cloud means the internet.
And to run your imagination wild, think about Netty equipped with SKYPE. Netty then becomes your Cellular phone as well.
Like the future? :)
