No, this post isn’t an attempt to gain hits from those looking for free MP3 downloads. If we are to believe the news, free, legal music may soon be available to the world. I can see Steve Jobs quaking in his golden clogs.
Universal is proposing allowing all of it’s songs to be freely downloadable, as long as consumers watch ads as they are being downloaded. They believe they can make enough money from these ads to be profitable.
I’m personally trying hard to fight back the euphoria. This is only a trial, so may be scrapped. If I was going to be cynical, I might say that they’re going to run the trial, declare it a failure and use it as evidence that there are no other options other than forcing people to pay for downloads.
But I sincerely hope that this is the first step in bringing some logic to web media distribution. I’ll gladly view ads to watch videos or listen to music, but I demand a ‘what I want, when I want it’ service that conventional tv or radio cannot provide.
My dream is that within five years, I’ll be able to throw away my sky dish, from the internet click a program that I want to watch from a directory of available programs, and watch it, complete with ads, at my selection, and importantly, legally.
I guess only time will tell whether this is a view of a real future, or just a dream.
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10 comments
Hamish says:
August 30, 2006 at 1:25 pm (UTC 13 )
What – who is going to sit looking at the website looking at ads while their song is being downloaded??
Pete says:
August 30, 2006 at 1:55 pm (UTC 13 )
Yeah, there would seem to be some questions about how you can feasibly prove to advertisers that people are actually sitting there and not flipping over to something else. However, if they figure out a way to make me, I wouldn’t really mind watching a 90 second ad to get free access to a song. You wouldn’t?
db says:
August 30, 2006 at 11:54 pm (UTC 13 )
Well, I wouldn’t. Personally I would rather pay a buck than watch an ad unless they were very short and very uncommon. Lots of people have a much warmer relationship with advertising than I do, though. I mean, you only have to look at TV. That is a massive success based on the fact that people are really going to sit in front of the TV looking at ads while waiting for their program to come back on.
I think Hame is suggesting it won’t translate to the web because we can multi-task? Like if it were me, I would most likely switch to another tab while it did its thing. But most consumers aren’t like that. They don’t have tabs. Also – and this is far-fetched, I know – if the ads are good, even I will sit around watching them.
This site will probably be a failure, because of the conditions: can’t share, can’t burn to CD, must keep logging in and watching more ads or songs ‘expire’, don’t work on iPod. This is the ‘superior experience’ to pirating? Even if their business model proves feasible, their poor offering will almost certainly sink it. Which is a pity, because truth be told, sometimes I do sit around watching the TV ads.
Incidentally, you probably know this already, but iTMS isn’t really profitable – Apple make their money on the iPods. If it didn’t have such massive marketshare, it could even be operating at a loss. Man, who wouldn’t want to enter that market.
Pete says:
August 31, 2006 at 8:41 am (UTC 13 )
Interesting last point. Do you have some links to back that up? I find it VERY hard to believe that it costs more to provide a download of a song than $1. Unless of course the recording companies are making them pay them $1.50 per song (which doesn’t seem unrealistic).
Pete says:
August 31, 2006 at 11:33 am (UTC 13 )
I guess it’s all academic for us, as New Zealand is being told, “maybe next time“.
db says:
August 31, 2006 at 12:27 pm (UTC 13 )
http://daringfireball.net/2004/08/2004_wont_be_like_1984
http://daringfireball.net/2004/01/the_hbomb
http://daringfireball.net/2005/02/magic_8ball_napster
Kinda long, but they are full of interesting stuff. To clarify, when I said iTMS isn’t really profitable, it might be a bit profitable. And I’m sure it is, because it is a raging success. I think they’ve reached 1 billion songs downloaded now? But heaps of that $1 goes to the record companies, some goes to Apple, and they have plenty of costs to cover. Anyway, the crux of it is, iTMS isn’t there to make money. It probably does anyway, which is why it must be so great to be an Apple shareholder these days, but Apple is a hardware company and they are making stacks of dosh on the iPods themselves.
One quotation from above links:
“Yes, Apple makes way more money selling iPods than they do songs at the iTMS. Yes, Apple probably only makes about 10 cents per song sold. And, yes, Steve Jobs has stated that the iTMS is a loss-leader (“break-even-leader” is perhaps more apt) intended to sell more iPods.”
Also consider:
“E.g., according to Apple, to date they’ve sold over 10 million iPods, and over 250 million songs have been downloaded from iTMS (which is not to say they’ve sold 250 million songs). That averages out to about 25 iTMS songs per iPod.”
Pete says:
August 31, 2006 at 12:47 pm (UTC 13 )
Hmm, cheers for that. Interesting reading.
db says:
September 3, 2006 at 1:44 am (UTC 13 )
This just in:
Wal-Mart and Apple Battle for Turf
Which has a little bit about pricing on the rumoured movies:
“(The plan is for Apple to pay a $14 wholesale price for new releases [and sell @ $14.99], say sources, although negotiations continue.)”
Pete says:
September 5, 2006 at 2:08 pm (UTC 13 )
Yeah, that was interesting. Would certainly make buying movies cheaper for kiwis (about NZ$24 at current exchange rates).
I have a question. The original service we’re discussing is going to limit users by their IP Address. Anyone with any sort of a dark side knows that it’s possible to mask your IP address with a false address.
Presumably it would be fairly easy to do this, and then to use the service. If you watch all the ads, would it be just as morally wrong as downloading them off the net?
db says:
September 5, 2006 at 10:20 pm (UTC 13 )
Well, my personal take is that the US-only rule is stupid (unfair, exclusionary, etc.), and so circumventing is not only right, but commendable and valorous. Taking a less anarchic perspective, I still think it’s OK, although if, say, the ads were targeted at US citizens and had no value on you, it could be argued that you are wasting their ad dollars and thus stealing.
I suppose one important issue is that legally, it is still wrong, which could be a sticky point.