Over the past week or so vague details have been appearing about a new digital music format being developed by the 4 major labels which is tentatively called "CMX". Both CMX and a competing format being developed by Apple dubbed "Cocktail will bundle such rich media elements as videos, song lyrics, interviews and album art along with music tracks in what one can only guess is an attempt to bring back the golden era of people buying full albums.
On one hand it's nice to see the record industry finally realizing that they need to offer some sort of value proposition in order to make people feel like forking over their money. On the other hand, a concerted effort to bundle things together at a time when digital consumers like to increasingly get their content a la carte seems a bit misinformed.
Now consider the polar opposite approach: songparts.
Much in the same way itunes dismantled the notion that paying $16 for a cd with 2 good songs on it was a good idea, songparts goes a step further and argues that even $.99 is too much to pay for that one part of a song you really like. Instead why not fork over $.06 for the "Best line in Steely Dan’s 'Kid Charlemagne'
looped for your convenience" or the "Gluten, gleebun, glauten, globen" intro from Def Leppard.
The majors recently bought a 17% stake in Spotify, the much loved (but Europe only) music subscription service and one can only hope they can get on board with these guys too.... I give the site about a week to live.
Image by Laser Bread
Could someone with a wheat allergy just go with "gleebun, glauten, globen?"
Posted by: bartlebyvqf | August 12, 2009 at 11:04 AM
Steely Dan’s 'Kid Charlemagne' has a best line?
Posted by: JunkMonkey | August 14, 2009 at 05:35 AM