HIGH FIDELITY

The production and consumption of music is different than other forms of entertainment, like movies, books, games or TV. A great deal of high quality music is being produced at any given time for a relatively low cost. Therefore, there is a huge, and ever-growing, supply of music. At the same time, an individual can consume music more quickly than he can other forms of entertainment, about 12-15 songs per hour, compared to a one TV show per half hour, one movie per two hours, or one game or movie per 5+ hours.

This creates an information gap between supply and demand, which, until now, has been (inefficiently) filled by critics, magazines, and the music cos themselves. The dilemma is this: given so much music choice on the one hand, and an insatiable demand on the other, how does a regular person easily find new music? Subscribe to every music magazine available? Expensive and time-consuming. Get it from the radio? Terrestrial radio (other than college radio) is pretty much dead as a source of discovery; the same artists circulate ad infinitum. Get it from TV? Some shows, such as the OC, have been effective at promoting new music talent, but given an endless supply music available digitally, this is just a drop in the bucket.

The Interent, of course, offers the perfect mean of filling this gap. Enter music discovery services like Jango.

New LA times article about startup spiralfrog here.

In my opinion, this model just won’t work, for the following reasons:

1) Their service is mp3 downloads supported only by advertising. No subscription fees. This is very tough. Ad-supported non-interactive (i.e. not on demand) streaming like Jango, Last.fm, Pandora, sure. Ad-supported interactive streaming (think Rhapsody with lots of ads and no subscription fee), maybe. Subscription-supported downloads, like eMusic, sure.

But ad-supported downloads with no subscription fee? Seems unlikely b/c it’s too damn expensive; the labels get $.50 of every itunes download, and $.01 per rhapsody play. This model relies on extremely high CPM ads (not likely for a music site) and a great deal of page views per user session. Unless the other content on spiralfrog is compelling, there’s no reason to assume a high average time on site for this service.

2) Once the user actually gets the downloaded music file, there’s DRM all over it! The entire industry is moving away from DRM. What kind of retrograde, anti-consumer move is this?

3) their music library is limited to Universal artists only. Universal may be #1 among the majors, but not including Sony BMG, EMI and Warner catalogs will make for a limited library of available songs.