Hey, the new Fountains of Wayne album, Traffic and Weather, is AWESOME...its put out by Virgin/EMI, and since I have the CD, there are no DRM issues!!! New Jersey Rulez!!! You guys should listen to it...

So it will likely end up a 3 way digital media war between Apple, Sony (I haven't counted them out yet)

I haven't counted Sony out either. Despite having bought a sony mp3 walkman in a moment of weakness (It looks soooo cool but the software was crap! - like I said moment of weakness!) and being dissapointed with their software, they DID have a vast range of music on offer, and all in exceptional quality, albeit in their proprietary encoding format.

With the PS3 however, they really could be in for a bright future regarding online media. There's no doubting that they're going to sell dizzyingly large quantities of them, which means they'll have a large user base. Whether or no tthey'll be able to communicate to their users the functionality of their online media stores remains to be seen however.
i can really imagine them being one of the major players in music downloads soon.

ORIGINAL: ooblecaboodle
the reason we go to certain (real, brick building) record shops these days is either

Actually I don't any more. In my very niche favorite music genre, there are only two or three shops in my area (Amsterdam) that hold this music. They are seriously overpriced (I knew their margins and it was just silly) so I stopped going there and order everything online.

The online stores have 1-2 minute previews at a high enough quality level that I can decide if it is worth buying or not. They are cheaper and have a much larger collection than any of the local shops. Also, I got bored with bringing the new releases lists to the shops to tell the what was and wasn't worth ordering.

a) it stocks some niche kind of music we're into
b) we support the local record shops
c) the prices
d) the range of music available
if you can think of more, go ahead.

The only above argument that is valid for me and the music I like is b). Everything else is in favour of the online shops. And when the local shops showed no inclination in supporting me while I saved them money by telling them what NOT to order, my visits to them ended promtply.

Now, if all online music stores are going to eventually sell DRM free music what will the seperate online retailers have to do to make us go to their stores rather than others?

That depends of their market and catalogue. If it is mainstream, absolutely nothing. If it is a specialist genre shop, their catalogue, their service, pricing, shipment rates etc.

Unfortunately this will favour bigger online shops (even if only bigger relative to other online shops catering to that specific genre).

Are we going to end up with some shops offering uber high quality downloads?

I doubt it. 44.1Khz/16bit is as far as it will go for anything but a bunch of audiophools IMO. The market has spoken and SACD or DVD-A is not a success. Knowledge of digital audio will reveal why this is so. The public has not been fooled. Good for the market!

Maybe aggressive pricing?, although the way it's going, prices may well be standardised

What is you line of thought here?

Some retailers only offering some formats (WMA, AAC etc) whilst others stock a different one? - this last one could be quite important.

It could indeed but I think that in time, any shops that do not offer the main formats (AAC, MP3, WMA, WAVE and possibly FLAC) will just loose out.

Some retailers getting exclusive deals with record labels? For example, I know that if I want to buy a Ninja Tunes track on download now, that MSN is the store to go for.

This is indeed important. If you can't buy something somewhere, it won't be bought there. But as download shops become more ubiquitous, labels and distributers will have to be carefull not to cross the "this is too much hassle I'll just get it off P2P" line. Consumers want instant gratification. In this case it means finding stuff easily, paying for it easily and downloading it quickly and easily. Shops need to cater to that.

OR, will the record labels start up their own download stores?

It has been tried more or less succesfully. Don't Warp Recs have an online shop? I just saw that the new Younger Brother album is announced on the Twisted Recs shop but I've never ordered anything there directly...

So in this case they need exclusivity or fan loyality to get orders in. That only works if they have allready built up a fan base through other means.

Or maybe compatability with certain devices.

I think this will be a prerequisite for success rather than a diiferentiatior between shops.

could be interesting times ahead.

Indeed. :) Thank goodness I didn't start that label 5 years ago. These are hard times for labels!

UnderTow

I doubt it. 44.1Khz/16bit is as far as it will go for anything but a bunch of audiophools IMO.

indeedn, but a 44.1KHz WAV file is stellar wuality compared to most compressed formats.

quote:
Maybe aggressive pricing?, although the way it's going, prices may well be standardised

What is you line of thought here?

I was just thinking about the recent EU investigation into itunes selling tracks at different prices in different EU countries

It could indeed but I think that in time, any shops that do not offer the main formats (AAC, MP3, WMA, WAVE and possibly FLAC) will just loose out.

I do find it fairly likely that at least in the near future, Sony will continue to insist on selling in it's proprietary ATRAC format only, whilst extolling it's virtues. Sony do have a rather tedious habit of doing that

It has been tried more or less succesfully. Don't Warp Recs have an online shop? I just saw that the new Younger Brother album is announced on the Twisted Recs shop but I've never ordered anything there directly...

So in this case they need exclusivity or fan loyality to get orders in. That only works if they have allready built up a fan base through other means.

The trouble is, as you point out, if people have never heard of warp records (for example) that they're unlikely to find their online store. Warp would then be more or less reliant on word of mouth or traditional advertising to draw new customers.

Consumers want instant gratification. In this case it means finding stuff easily, paying for it easily and downloading it quickly and easily. Shops need to cater to that.

Maybe we'll find google-like services dedicated to searching online music retailers, kind of like froogle does now. That in itself could be BIG business, with various outlets paying for prime positioning on the search site.

Anyway, these are just my meandering thoughts and musings on the matter, it's impossible to accurately predict the future.

ORIGINAL: UnderTow
My girlfriend has one of those. The device is cool but the software is just ridiculously bad. If they would have made it a standard USB harddrive that you can drag&drop files to I would even recomend it to people but, of course, they tied it in to their online store and failed miserably on the software front. It crashes my girlfriend's laptop regularly and is just a serious pain to use.

IF they get the software side sorted out... otherwise they are going to fail. Whoever is responsable for the rootkit on the CDs and the abysmall software that comes with the Walkman needs to be fired.

UnderTow

The software really is very very bad isn't it! They've changed it back to SonicStage again now, whereas i prefered the umpteenth revision of Connect. i've lost my original software disc, which means i can't install connect until they change their minds again!
It never actually crashed my machine though, it just performed really, really poorly!

One of the silliest things about it is that everyone who's seen the player loves it, but I then have to actually reccomend they DONT buy one!

It's such a shame because as far as i'm aware, it's the only device that will do proper gapless playback, so if you've got Live recording Cds, or DJ set CDs, where there is no break in between the tracks it will play them back properly.
this only works with ATRAC files though, which really is a big plus point in favour of the format.

But again, shame about the software. it's the only Sony product I've EVER bought that's let me down. Over here, Sony have an almost mythical reputation for making things that work, that work well, and that work forever!

Whoever is responsable for the rootkit on the CDs and the abysmall software that comes with the Walkman needs to be fired.

I hope they already were! disasters of epic proportions.

ORIGINAL: Howdy
I was thinking that Bigweb was Fretwizz

Bingo!

I stuffed up the Fretwizz profile by changing to an invalid email address.

I'm surprised no one picked up on this earlier, due to my propensity to
format my posts into short lines and the tendency to leave a trail of.......
at the end of each line......

Plus the wink
I would've thought that was a dead giveaway......

10/10 Howdy!

ORIGINAL: D.Triny
Sony has, a record label, movie studios, TVs, mobile phones, music players, computers... All the pieces! what are they waiting for. This should have been their game.

The portable version of OSX maybe?

Software (good software!!

oh that's right. Those Oxford plugins are calling me. You shouldn't have reminded me. There goes another grand.

Wow. I've been away from this forum for a few days, and I see this thread just keeps on growing even without Axe posting here. He truly is a genious when it comes to generating repiles...

Sven

ORIGINAL: SvenArne

Wow. I've been away from this forum for a few days, and I see this thread just keeps on growing even without Axe posting here. He truly is a genious when it comes to generating repiles...

Sven

Why thank you Sven but I really cannot take all the credit here. In fact it is almost unfair given the "child like" patterns of logic from these guys. I am willing to bet that I am really conversing with some teenagers that just popped their 1st zit

That is what is seems like at least.

AXE for president...he's as smart as George Bush and just as smart, too!!!

ORIGINAL: axe
I am willing to bet that I am really conversing with some teenagers that just popped their 1st zit
That is what is seems like at least.

What a co-incidence!
I was just thinking the same thing about you.

Sorry, just not buying that.

That's ok, as long as you ARE buying a Mac...

Nah, sarcasm and I are often good friends.

What I wasn't buying is that you were actually thinking about Axe as a teenager. Not that many of his/her posts aren't in that realm, but more that your opinion of him/her would probably be something, uh, a little different.

PS... You do realize that we are just proving Axe's point again, right? That Axe couldn't pay someone to better lift him/her into the higher echelons of intellectual debate? (how was that? )