Google and Napster? A Musical Marriage?
February 2nd, 2006 -
The rumors have been flying about Google possibly acquiring Napster. I am big fan of subscription services and in fact use both Rhapsody and Yahoo (mainly Yahoo-to-go because I was sucked into the $60 pricing for the first year).
If you are a music junkie, like me, it is easy to become addicted to the power of of having access to 1 million plus songs. But Yahoo is driving me crazy with it’s poor user experience. And now it seems to be losings licenses, at least 10 CDs I have downloaded I can not re-license. So I am in search of a replacement. I may upgrade my Rhapsody for their to-go service or I may try Napster. Both use Microsoft’s DRM and I use Window’s Media Connect to stream music to my home stereo. I am more than willing to put up with the pain of DRM to not have to pay for individual music, but I can understand why most people won’t. It is hard to see mass acceptance of subscription services with the current painful DRM schemes. Most people will give up the first time something happens like a corrupt DRM file.
Google is primed to enter the music market and Hitwise has some interesting stats which shows that Google gets a higher percentage of music searches than the other engines. However, their numbers also shows how hard it is going to be to make a big splash without iTunes and iPod support. I feel quite certain that Google is going to go after the music space. I’d be surprised if it will be another ‘Me-Too’ effort. I am reading a fascinating book called “The Future of Music” - you can read about it here on Gerd Leonhard’s Blog. I’ts a great book which reveals a lot about the recording industry. This book focus on on the idea of a world where everyone pays, and everybody gets what they want, Music like Water is the concept. Imagine, A DRM-free world! It’s a beautiful idea but one I fear is still 20 years away.
When you think about….it is the only thing that makes sense. DRM is just never going to work. Licensed music is always going to be just a small piece of people’s library. Kids are walking around with 60GB of music….maybe $15k worth of licensed music - I don’t think they bought it! It’s not just kids. When I explained at work to responsible 30-something adults that the beauty of subscription is that I don’t have to buy music - they say…they don’t either, they can get what ever the want. These are responsible otherwise non-thieving adults.
There is a big hole in the dam and there is no way to plug it up. The hole just keeps getting bigger. It’s getting easier to share music, new services like Streamload give 10GB of storage for free….easy enough to pass around new music without going peer-to-peer. The record companies and music executives are going to continue to try and plug the hole and iTunes online sales of music is just an illusion, just a temporary spot for music go before it makes it into the Free-o-Sphere.
The beauty of Music Like Water is it can also reward the artists. There would be no DRM system, nothing to expire or backup or get corrupt. There would be a mechanism to report back what people listen to so the money could flow back to musicians.
So that brings me back go Google. I wonder, can Google take us a step closer in that direction?