20040701   

Cripes will the music never end?

Michael considered fate at 11:30   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment

In this day and age of corporate culture is it really any surprise to see companies start to act like inviduals? This whole online music store thing has been about as close to a fashion trend as I've ever seen.. and now even good 'ol Commodore is jumping into the fray with the Commodore World - Music store.

So, right off the top of my head that's

• Walmart


• Apple


• Sony


• Napster 2.0


• RealNetworks' Rhapsody


• MusicMatch


• Dell


• BuyMusic


• Microsoft

Can you say saturated market? Perhaps the real war is just beginning but I fear that they just can't all survive for a very long time. Even Apple, at 99 cents a song, has admitted that the iTMS is more a plug for the iPod than it is a revenue model. And that's at 99 cents a song!

Perhaps.. maybe.. someday.. if the record companies pull their big fat asses out of their heads they will decide to create their own online record stores which could potentially have a lower unit cost ratio than the others, since they would not have to license their own music.. maybe?

I'm not so sure the monolithic record companies that we know now will survive into the next wave of music entertainment. I'm not sure they can compete with such narrow minded attacks on the music market. Recent history, however short, shows us that when technology is involved you must innovate or die. I don't see the record companies innovating too much.

Course I'm still waiting to see what happens to Microsoft, too, so what do I know?