Switched On: The misguided marketing of PlaysForSure
posted April 27th 2005 3:40PM
When longtime industry watchers - some of whom rise before dawn to hear the unique mating calls of rare species of industries - look at Apple's iPod business, they are aghast that Apple's hardware is incompatible with so many music stores and formats and that Apple's music store is incompatible with so many other players. Has Apple learned nothing, they ask, from the history of the Macintosh which, according to business school case study cliches, would have become the dominant platform had it been licensed when it had a clear marketplace lead in graphical interfaces?
Perhaps Apple has not, but perhaps there isn't a relevant lesson for the iPod. While inexpensive Macs like the Mac mini are as competitive with Windows machines as they've ever been, let's envision a fantasy world in which Macs are almost universally perceived to be as cost-effective as Windows PCs, all Windows applications are available natively on Macs, and it rains chocolate milk. (The last bit isn't very relevant to the argument, but if you're creating a fantasy world, you might as well throw in everything you want.)
In fact, there�s only really one material difference between Macs and PCs in this world, which is that some companies offer all-you-can-eat PC software by subscription. (Why anyone would want to eat software when it�s raining perfectly good chocolate milk is a mystery, but it takes all kinds to make a fantasy world go around.) Software by subscription is of interest to a small group of customers, and Apple can offer that at any time it so desires should it start to prove more popular.
In this world, customers wouldn�t care whether Apple had 3 percent market share or 93 percent market share. Why? Because the hardware costs about the same and there�s no software availability penalty for buying an Apple product. This is essentially the world Apple now inhabits with the iPod. With PlaysForSure (which sounds like a series of stage productions starring Valley girls), Microsoft emphasizes the value of choice in music stores and devices. But choice in these decisions doesn�t resonate as long as the incumbent fulfills demand at least as well as the competitors do.
In the physical world, consumers choose stores based on price and convenience. The price competition among digital music stores is minimal as there isn�t much headroom for price-slashing and no online store has a significant convenience advantage. On the device side, consumers care about price and features. Again, no Apple competitor has undercut the iPod by a significant enough margin. While many players offer features that Apple does not, they haven�t been appealing enough to overcome Apple�s integrated approach.
The only choice that consumers really care about in digital music is choice in content. After all, consumers don�t pick their cable or satellite TV plan provider based on what kind of set-top box they�ll get. They choose based on the kind and number of channels available. And here again, no Windows Media-based store offers a significant choice advantage over the iTumes Music Store; device platform market share means nothing since, unlike with software, there is practically no incremental cost to support a player with a particular piece of content.
Indeed, Apple has courted the cutting-edge content of independent labels by, for example, working with CD Baby. And music sites that feature more independent artists such as emusic.com, garageband.com, and mp3tunes.com all work perfectly with the iPod given their support of the DRM-free MP3 file format.
If Microsoft thinks that the digital music player market will mirror the evolution of the PC market, it should start thinking about a different play � for sure.
Ross Rubin is director of industry analysis at NPD Techworld, a division of market research and analysis provider The NPD Group. Views expressed in Switched On, however, are his own. Feedback is welcome at fliptheswitch@gmail.com.
If you "Just Say Not To DRM", you'll find that all the music players play MP3 with no problems. So just ignore the legal paid for download services with their crappy DRM and crappy formats (WMA) and focus on how well the player handles MP3s.
What I object to is the lock in on the iPod that makes it hard to use anything but iTunes to sync with the PC. But then I also object to Creative requiring special drivers to copy songs back and forth.
How about pointing out some members of this "artsy crowd" of Apple users of which you speak, JMS - I mean, who are you referring to exactly? People like Bill O'Reilly? Tom Clancy? Karl Rove? Mac users all (and of course, let us not forget Dubya and his iPod - not a Mac, but getting warm.) One could argue from either side of politics about the merits of any or all of those men, but I think it surely indicates how witless it is to bash the Mac with some straw-man argument about its supposed user base.
To mveloso - post #31 - dude you are crazy; i could tell the difference between Heinz & any other brand w/ my eyes closed, 10 times out of 10. it is the best (in fact, back in '94, at college, my email address was ketchup@...edu). spoken like a true addict. oh and macs are better.
Where do I go to nominate this for the most pointless and asinine thread of the week?
#54: there are plenty of 3rd party programs to sync the iPod.
I.e.: ephPod
Using ephPod also gives you the possibility to extract songs out of your iPod nicely.
But guess what? Most of these 3rd party programs look like iTunes? Guess why? Because iTunes is pretty well designed.
To Cyberwhore (#50) Thank you for the link I believe it's the only constructive post to this thread so far. Still researching shuffler and the DB builder. Before I try anything on my friend's shuffle going to test it completely. I regret buying it already don't wanna destroy the filesystem on it, that would really ruin what has turned out to be a bad gift.
In response to Marian post #52, yes I'm familar with alot of crapware and am completely willing to learn to use good software and hardware. I have used a number of systems apple included but still perfer to run a pc with windows os for now.
I value elegant design but form is nothing without function. Requiring itunes to operate an ipod shuffle is beyond stupidity. The shuffle is a mass storage device, but everything it connects to needs propritary software(itunes), which cripples it's functionality. If all the shuffle needs is an 800k DB builder to function as any other flash mp3 player, I can only see this as Apple trying to strongarm it's customers into using itunes.
It does not matter to me anylonger if macs, itunes or the ipod are cheaper, supposedly easy to use, pretty to look at or anyother argument anyone makes for them. Apple has gotten it's last cent from me, the frustration and disappointment I felt from this purchase makes any other option than apple the better buy for me.
I only wanted to warn those who are thinking about buying an apple product about what they'll be getting into.
If nothing else "playforsure" can be seen as a warning of may require windows.
I wish the shuffle had said "will require itunes"
Admiral Venison,
Get of your pedestal, please. Yes, Apple crap is all over TV, Hollywood, and mass media. Apple products are used because Apple pays a premium for them to be featured in these shows and movies. They do this so idiots like you will see them and think to yourself If I want to be cool just like [insert tacky American pop culture icon here] then I need an overpriced Apple product. And it works, brilliantly. I must admit, Apple has a great marketing department.
Now, before you start talking about recording studios where as you stated my favorite bands record using Macs you should know that I am a musician myself. I use a PC that has the same functionality as an Apple and it cost me half as much! Mac OS used to be far more stable than Windows 95/98, so years ago when recording studios were adopting digital recording and editing they chose to go with Apple. Since that time Windows 2000/XP has proven itself to be just as stable, if not more, however Apple has done a great job of keeping most of its customers, and even non customers, thinking that its better. The only thing Apple is better at is fooling people into thinking theyre better! Although I guess its easy for them when tools like you are willing to do their dirty work.
Apple has a place in the industry, that place is to cater to fools who enjoy buying into marketing and image. Im sorry AV, its just too easy to pick apart your weak and rather ill thought out arguments. iTool!
..."Since that time Windows 2000/XP has proven itself to be just as stable, if not more, however Apple has done a great job of keeping most of its customers, and even non customers, thinking that its better."...
Yeah, Windows might have improved since the days of 3.1, 95, 98, but it still holds no candle to anything Unix/Linux-based. Windows is an unsecure, unreliable, overbloated pile of dung that multitasks like turtle (on its back), but I'll give Microsoft and Windows some kudos on the half decent improvement.
..."The only thing Apple is better at is fooling people into thinking theyre better! Although I guess its easy for them when tools like you are willing to do their dirty work."...
No, you have Apple confused with Microsoft, who makes a killing off of IT bureaucracy and comsumer ignorance, which is one element feeding the Windows monopoly.
..."Apple has a place in the industry, that place is to cater to fools who enjoy buying into marketing and image."...
And Microsoft has a place in the industry, that place is to cater to fools who blindly buy into the "IBM compatible" buzzword still being preached by morons (and other PeeCee Weenies) who should know better.
#62 (Your name here)
I admit that I wasn't that impressed with iTunes in the beginning either. My only experience at that stage with "digital jukeboxes" was Winamp on PC which I found to be fairly easy to use and Music Match Jukebox which I found to be absoloute crap.
If anyone wants to add songs to an MP3 player quickly (and maybe as a once off only) then iTunes is probably not the solution.
iTunes was a digital music player and digital music manager first and then the iPod functionality was added later. The iPod functionality added to iTunes is pretty much faultless but to fully appreciate the ease of use of an iPod with iTunes you must first make the commitment to use iTunes as your primary way of managing your music library.
This doesn't cut it with some people as they are either resistant to change, iTunes doesn't meet their needs fully or just because it is made by Apple some PC users automatically write it off in their own minds as something they dont want to get involved with.
I realize this is an old discussion, but it's newly pertinent to me. I've been using minidiscs for years, and a few months ago started using Sony's download service, Connect. Well, my MD player died last Monday, and I've decided to get an MP3 player to replace it. The extreme bad news is that my Sony Connect songs are in a proprietary, non-convertible format; hundreds of my download dollars have just gone down the drain.
Sony is therefore off my list of manufacturers for MP3 players, for everything, forever! Learning as I did today that iPods only work with iTunes has put Apple into that same boat. I'm not going to commit to *another* proprietary format and end up screwed again when the new MP3 player dies. I'll take a PlaysForSure device any day. At least Microsoft will probably be a going concern for the next 30 years; after that I don't anticipate needing an MP3 player :-)