The heaviest used and the biggest wars have been fought over digital retail. This has pitted iTunes, Amazon, WalMart, BestBuy, Microsoft, etc. against each other. iTunes for the most part has swept the floor with their competition up to this point. Amazon has now become the dominant number two with BestBuy and WalMart essentially backing out.
The second area for competition has been in the radio format. Pandora completely dominates this market, but they have gotten some tough competition lately from Slacker who is making some interesting expansions in this area by signing deals with ESPN radio and ABC News. They have also moved to a subscription model that includes on demand playing.
Before Spotify the subscription market had Rhapsody on top with MOG, Rdio, and Napster all sitting quietly behind. There was not much vocal competition between these services, but that all changed when Spotify threw their hat in the ring. It has already claimed one victim with Napster getting bought out by Rhapsody. Spotify has grown very quickly even with the worst library, because of their marketing. MOG has now fired back announcing today that their service is now free. I still don't understand how many free songs you get or exactly what you have to do to extend your free play, but it's an interesting move. Unlike other free services MOG lets you pick albums, songs, etc to play. So for instance if you want to listen to the new Etta James album, then just go play it for free. They have also lowered their subscription price. It is now just $5 a month for unlimited streaming over a computer, that's cheap.
Spotify has changed everything. Though subscription services have been available for quite some time, the subscription arena has been quiet and no real threat to iTunes and Amazon. Not sure how the growth of Spotify and so the boom for subscription services will affect those retailers long term, but this competition has made the market incredibly friendly to consumers of legal music, and really leaves no excuses for illegal sharing.
Pandora is just amazingly good. It is one of the very best things about the Internet.
ReplyDeleteI strongly recommend giving Slacker a try if you like Pandora. It has a much richer catalog.
ReplyDeleteWhy is Pandora doing better than Slacker?
ReplyDeleteSlacker is rather new to the scene so they are trying to cut into Pandora's already strong market.
ReplyDeleteI think their approach though is a good one. The setup is very similar to Pandora. You pick an artist it creates a station. But where Pandora has only 700,000 songs, Slacker has around 3,000,000. So you get a better variety of music.
They have recently added the ability to include streams from ESPN Radio to their paid services as well as the ability to do play on demand. They are definitely worth giving a try if you haven't.
I just signed up for MOG, and I just listened to the Government Cheese cover "People Who Died," which I hadn't heard in 20 years. This convinces me that this service is going to crush all of the others. Thank you for the tip, Matthew!
ReplyDeleteIn other news, while following the football games last night, I deployed a record player in the closet in my office. I'm really looking forward to listening to records while I work next week.
Was that on the Government Cheese 1985-1995 album? Love that they have live tracks from Picasso's on there.
ReplyDeleteI want to hear more about Eric's Record Collection. I could see this becoming a whole new feature.
ReplyDeleteyou are so kind to say this.
ReplyDeletethe first record i've put on the record player is Get It On!, a 1974 ronco collection that has started with "smokin' in the boys room" by brownsville station and "funky worm" by the ohio players. now we've got "spiders and snakes" by Jim Stafford; i absolutely loved this song when i was 6.
"Spiders and Snakes" turned up on an old Casey Kasem countdown a few weeks ago that I heard on XM Radio, and I remembered the entire chorus.
ReplyDelete