Many, many years had passed since I last went into a music store. My back-catalogue of CDs together with a subscription to the Rhapsody streaming music service had sufficed for my needs. But Rhapsody has many gaps. So I went in to see if my updated “long tail” musical tastes could be catered for.
I recently got totally hooked onto modern dance and trance music. I’ve always had a taste for electronica, particularly tip-top downtempo and trip-hop delights. House music struck me as sugary mind candy, and dance music seemed, well, boring and repetetive.
Digging into the genre in retrospect, after the wheat and chaff are pre-sorted, brings up some tasty bites.
Scanning the stacks in the store, I found two things.
Firstly, none of the albums I was interested in were there. Oh, there might have been a divider with the artist name, but not the album I wanted.
Secondly, it’s totally impossible to know what Digital Rights Management (DRM) crapware might be applied to any CD you’re buying. There are some vague allusions in small print on the back of some CDs to the existence of DRM. But you can’t buy with any confidence. No labelling scheme of any merit.
So I did a bit of searching online, and found I can download the ones I’m interested in DRM-free in high-quality audio formats from Audio Lunchbox. (Usability hint to them: a question mark may be a valid character in an album name, but it isn’t for a Windows directory name. Fix it.) I’m very happy with my purchase, than you very much.
But I still wasted a pile of time looking. And I mean wasted. Dead time, not recoverable. The cost of any goods comes from two parts. The money cost, and the non-money cost. (I think I’m on firm ground, here, logic-wise.) To the extent that the non-money cost represents search or time costs, it’s a total waste. Don’t believe me? Just look here.
No wonder CD sales are drooping. If you’re interested in DRM-free music, or even just music that will be compatible with your devices, you’ve got high search costs. The retailers have done nothing to mitigate them.
Now we get to the telecom bit. The cellcos are lining up to flog you overpriced tunes to play on your phone that you’ve probably already paid for via other means.
With Apple and iTunes, you don’t need to look at the Ts&Cs to know two things in advance, based on every product Apple have ever made:
Unfortunately for cellcos trying to retail content, their brands tend to stand for two things:
These brand values will collide in an unpleasant explosion of user distress. Users will start to have to face the cost of inquiring what content will work where. Even the Apple brand won’t be able to overcome the cellco stupidity. Whether or not the iPhone lets you play iTunes you already bought doesn’t matter; because it’s tainted with a “we’re stupid and voraciously greedy” brand, you’re going to have to check it out first.
In other words, DRM and lack of format interoperability will make non-money costs of purchase skyrocket. This reduces the pool of money left in the user’s budget. The market will shrink as a result.
Ironically, guides to DRM issued by the EFF with pointers to DRM-free suppliers will partially offset the search costs of comparing DRM systems. As such, they make DRM more, not less, atractive.
The industry faces a prisoner’s dilemma, where collectively the players are unable to co-ordinate themselves to the optimal level of openness. I suspect the only way out is regulation. Just like we have “fit for the purpose” rules for normal consumer purchases, we may have to set minimum levels of impediment for DRM and lower search costs by imposing labelling rules.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 10:01 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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Martin, maybe off topic but thanks for the link to shpongle - what a great band.
Personally I punch a band I like into www.Amazon.com or www.Last.FM, see what others like who like something I like, then download the album dirt cheap DRM free (any bit rate, any Codec) from www.AllofMP3.com .If I then really like the band, I buy the CD (often import or 2nd hand) off Amazon since I want my full 1411Kbps stream - a real CD thus no compresssion and some money to the artist.
We know the RIAA/MIAA have their heads in the same place as the telcos. Their distribution model has not changed since it's inception! As with P2P telephony (Skype), this is simply the result of decentralisation enabled by the Internet.
Posted by: at September 4, 2005 12:10 AM