Internet Changes Everything

Thoughts on MP3's

Once I got over the novelty of free music, other aspects become evident. How to catalogue the music for example. MP3 has no naming standard, either for the file name or for the cataloging information. So it becomes a very time consuming and frustrating job to get them properly catalogued. The next problem is that they are all on the PC, yet the stereo and CD player are not connected. So how many MP3's are listed to on either small MD players, or through tinny PC speakers.

Clearly there are hardware issues to sort out here and solutions such as Alpha Tron will bridge the connection between the PC and the stereo system. But the filing and cataloguing problem still doesn't go away. Traditionally music was sold in CD's, tapes and albums, which could be nicely stacked. People are not going to rely in Windows to file their music and go through the exercise of renaming files to get them into a form where they can be easily located and played. Windows Media player and others allow the "genre" to be edited; this is interesting. With my CD's I cannot pick out the "easy listening" ones or the "alternative" ones without manually sorting through them all. Digital music opens up this new avenue.

Its time the music industry stopped fighting the inevitable, and started to think what value consumers need, particularly as they get older, and think about how to sell that. For example: what is the value for me to replace all my CD collection in digital form, full catalogued and backed up in case my PC crashes? That is starting to sound like the basis of a value proposition which baby boomers would pick up in a nano-second.

July 13, 2003 at 07:40 PM in @ My Views @, Business Models | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home