Bringing Digital Music To The Masses
If digital music is to reach mainstream adoption, the music industry must eliminate the barriers that confuse many non-techie consumers. That's the conclusion of Forrester analyst Mark Mulligan's new report "Taking Digital Music To The Mainstream: The Music Product Features For The Living Room".
Easier and cheaper hardware if the key to the conversion according to Mulligan, "Our conceptual technology is a hard drive, midi-sized music hi-fi that with a detachable touch screen display / remote control." On his blog Mulligan writes that the next generation of digital music devices must:
- "Deliver a compelling experience even if not connected.
- "Include extensive music at point of purchase. This is, we think, the crucial element. Mainstream consumers don’t have the appetite for another format replacement cycle, so we suggest the device should effectively replace their entire CD collection and add more, all for the cost of the device.
- "Provide the tools for baby steps into the digital world: for those consumers that do connect we propose a convenient range of digital discovery and acquisition applications…".
- "Leverage telcos: …to really go mass market they probably need subsidizing by a telco e.g. a Sky Songs broadband package would include the device bundled with the router."
Simplifying the digital experience for confused consumers was also part of the message delivered by Maren Elwood and Rebecca Roth of On-Site Research during a NARM online seminar “Cyber Census 2009: An Ethnographic Study of Music Consumer Habits”.
The NARM sponsored in depth interviews of 100 consumers showed a growing digital divide between those comfortable with new technology and many others who did not have the time or inclination to master them. Some consumers want music to play a greater role in their lives, but felt shut out by the confusing array of choices. The iPod Touch was cited by one music fan as so overwhelming that she preferred her Nano. At the other end of the spectrum was Pandora which provided instant enjoyment for less tech savvy music fans.
You can watch the slides and listen to an audio replay via Vimeo here or download a pdf.
This industry is just so adverse to change. This isn’t even the real solution. Consider 1/2 the recording studios in LA are failing (LA Times reported it earlier this yr), recorded music sales have fallen by 4.2 billion over the past 4 years and the industry’s solution to harnessing more dollars is dealing down to artists with 360 deals! The only bright side to it all is the advent of Internet radio and that software sales of recording software have climbed substantially. Seems the solution should be simpler than all this – Hulu has caught on for TV/Film watchers- completely supported by Networks, ad revenue driven – seems that a combination of a Pandora like solution more akin to Hulu in simplicity is what is needed. The 4 majors and LiveNation need to consider coming together for the solution.
I hate to say it but it may just have to be a subscription model set by the ISPs..the more I hear the “music like water” concept and about what spotify is doing, the more i agree.
-Danny
I agree that some consumers want music to play a greater role in their lives, but felt shut out by the confusing array of choices. There is another article on digital music ‘Mobile Music At The Crossroads’ http://bit.ly/2m7jUq http://bit.ly/Aax4C http://bit.ly/2DCzIV http://bit.ly/1yGcQR