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:: And you can tell everybody that this is your song (for a price) ::
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Mobile phone manufacturers have begun to incorporate advanced MP3 playback capabilities onto some next-generation handsets. This should come as no surprise, since low-power decoding technology has been around for years now, and with the development of miniature hard drives (one model with 1.5GB of storage and a form factor no larger than average is about to sell in Korea) this is a natural step forward in consumer electronics. But, according to the music industry and wireless carriers, setting a song you've copied to your phone to play as your ringer is dangerous.
BMG director of digital Jon Davis agreed handset manufacturers could damage the business. 'People will just take the CDs they buy from Woolworths, rip them to MP3 and transfer them to their devices,' he said. 'For the handset to then pop up a text offering to convert it to a ringtone is a real danger.'
So let me get this straight: if someone spends $15 to purchase an entire album from your company - partially because they know they can transfer their favorite song onto their phone and use it as a ringtone - it's a "real danger"? What if they just bought that one track online, giving your company a disproportionate amount of revenue for a single tune, and copied it over? Would that be acceptable?
Universal, BMG, Vodafone and Orange have warned that moves by handset manufacturers to let consumers put songs they've bought online onto MP3 phones will damage the development of a legitimate mobile music market.
Ok, apparently not (delicious irony here stems from the major labels' historical sloth-like pace in setting up digital music stores, decrying consumers unwillingness to purchase music online - and now counting on it).
What I can infer from this article and elsewhere is that the music industry believes the purchase of music is not categorical. That is, buying a CD with a certain song on it does not equal ownership of its MP3 equivalent on your computer, nor the right to use it on your phone - at least, not without an additional fee. You do not buy a copy of the artwork, you merely lease it for a specific use on a specific device.
It really would be better (i.e. more profitable) for the labels if they could charge fans thrice for a single track (or more: how often will you upgrade your phone in the upcoming decade, and what are the chances they will let you copy your old mobile music to your new device?), but, to put it bluntly, it's insane.
While I don't entirely agree with the carriers on this subject*, I understand why they are going along with this: they don't get a single cent if users copy songs directly from their computers to their phones. The labels' perspective just reeks of ignorance and avarice.
*I think an unrestricted MP3-playing phone would sell like hotcakes and being the first to offer one would lure millions of subscribers from competitors. The carriers fear this would be a point of no return - once any one of them offered such a device, all would have to follow suit, depriving the entire industry of direct-to-mobile sales. To them, as they are immensely paranoid of becoming simply "dumb pipes" (the industry term for what happened to ISPs in the 90's as it became clear that proprietary content services ["walled gardens"] were less important to users than access to the far more comprehensive internet, relegating providers to compete as commodities solely on the basis of price), this ceding of control (receiving no remuneration for something transferred to the handset) is the equivalent of a nuclear holocaust, so they operate according to the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction: none of them make the slightest move in that direction, for fear that it will precipitate a full-scale war which will decimate them all. My personal opinion is that it's an inevitability, and while they can forestall it a better plan - from an individual carrier's perspective - would be to position the company to take advantage of the upcoming commodification of the marketplace (build the most robust, least costly-to-maintain network) and then spearhead the transformation to 1) capitalize on your superiority within the new paradigm and 2) reap the full rewards of the first-mover advantage.
Posted by morland @ 11:17 AM
:: Comments ::
this was a really weird Ramones eulogy man.
Posted by: Rob on September 16, 2004 02:49 PM
1) capitalize on your superiority within the new paradigm
--throw her playfully on the couch and start growling--
2) reap the full rewards of the first-mover advantage.
--put it where you like--
Posted by: the guy who lived in st louis on September 20, 2004 03:06 PM
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