Alright,
pop quiz:
I've
just bought a new car that happens to run
on unleaded gasoline, and as I'm driving home from
the dealership, I pass a station that only sells diesel fuel.
Do I:
A) drive
on past the diesel station and get my gas from a station that
sells the
kind of gas my car uses,
B) take my
car back to the dealership and trade it in, then proceed to
search for a car that uses diesel fuel, or
C) wonder
why I just bought a brand new car and I'm already buying gas
on the way home from the lot?
I think just
about everyone reading will agree that the answer is invariably
going to be "A". The car is the major investment here, the
item that you've chosen after careful consideration, which
you've committed to with a rather large sum of money, and won't
be replacing for a few years at least. And with that, you've
just taken what I'm going to coin the "iPod test". It's why
iTunes downloads are likely to continue growing, and why competitors
who rely on other file formats aren't likely to be around for
long.
I've read
one too many times that the iPod is doomed to failure because
it doesn't use the same "Windows Media" format as its competitors.
The logic goes that the consumer is going to look at offerings
from WalMart, Napster, and BuyMusic, and upon realizing that
the iPod isn't capable of playing back songs purchased from
those services, will instead opt for some other digital music
player. But that theory ignores the "food chain" that exists
as far as what drives the sales of what. For instance, Windows
came to prominence not because anyone thought it was any good,
but because it happened to be the operating system that came
with the computers that were the most popular.
There's a
definite cause-and-effect pattern that should allow us to see
that since everyone wants an iPod and everyone is buying them
to the point of worldwide shortages and to the point of making
the competition almost non-existent, the only music download
services that are going to gain in popularity are the ones
that provide music that can be played with the iPod. It would
be different if, oh, let's say that half of all popular music
was only available in iPod-compatible format, and the other
half was only available in Windows Media format. But that's
not, and never will be, the case. iPod owners can get their
hands on every bit as much music as anyone else, and
WalMart's little bare-bones slightly-discounted service notwithstanding,
iPod owners can get their music at industry-standard prices.
It comes
down to whether it's more important for a user to be able to
choose the digital music player he wants (in nearly
all cases, the iPod), or to be able to choose which company
he downloads his music from. In the case of current iPod owners,
the choice has already been made. In the case of prospective
iPod buyers, if they've already sampled iTunes and the competition,
then they're likely to just be relieved that iTunes exists
for their platform. They'll be even more likely to want an
iPod when they find out that it's the only hardware that will
allow them to continue using iTunes for their downloads. It's
a win-win situation for Apple. Purchasing an iPod will steer
a user toward using iTunes, and using iTunes will
steer a user toward purchasing an iPod.
So what's
Microsoft going to do about it? Well, Microsoft generally succeeds
when it can cram its own solution so deeply into the user's
face that most customers don't realize that there are
other choices.To this end, Microsoft is likely
to build a music download service into the next version of
Windows Media
Player, which they can offer for free download, but that
merely puts them on equal footing with the Windows version
iTunes in terms being in the customer's face. Throw in the
fact that iTunes has a head start and has already been installed
on millions
of
Windows
PC's,
plus
the fact that with every iPod purchase comes another automatic
iTunes customer, and Microsoft really has no way of tricking
Windows users into thinking that the Microsoft download service
is the only one out there. The earliest Microsoft will be able
to do that is with the shipment
of the next version of Windows, which is at least two years
away. By that time, it will be way too little, too late.
Well what
about Netscape, you say? Didn't Microsoft manage to murder
Netscape by bundling Internet Explorer (and not Netscape) with
every PC, allowing unwitting users to assume that IE was the
only web browser, and allowing lazy users to simply settle
for whatever came bundled? Well, that's because while Netscape
was a higher-quality browser (at least early on), there was
no web content that was Netscape-only, nothing that you had
to
have
Netscape installed in order to do. In other words, there was
no iPod test for Internet Explorer to fail. The two browsers
did the same thing, if not at the same quality, so users went
with the one that was more easily accessible. Luckily for Apple,
Microsoft's download service will fail the iPod test just as
miserably as the "we sell a third of what iTunes does" Napster
service, the "we're not on anyone's map" BuyMusic.com service,
or the
"we're basically just a list of songs on a webpage" WalMart
service.
There's a
rather sweet irony in the fact that proprietary file formats,
the tactic that Microsoft has used to bring its only two successful
products
(Windows, Office) to prominence, is precisely what's going
to end up locking Microsoft out of the digital music game altogether.
There's no trick for Microsoft to play here, no smokescreen
to keep other choices hidden out of sight. Windows users only
know that they want an iPod, and that they like iTunes. They'll
be thrilled when they figure out that those two desires are
complimentary. Beyond that, the rest is just details.
If you haven't
joined the online
MUG yet, then you're not among the 185 coolest
Mac users on earth. If you've got something to say about this
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