Jazz Odyssey

I’ve complained frequently and loudly about how the lack of interoperability in digital music is negatively impacting the entire digital music business, and preventing the essential restructuring of a flawed industry. Business Week adds their two cents in this article, saying:

Apple, which launched the digital music revolution, may now be holding it back. Critics say Apple’s proprietary technology and its refusal to offer more ways to buy or to stray from its rigid 99 cents a song model is dampening legal sales of digital tunes

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…the music buying/listening experience that people are used to is that they go to *ANY* store, buy a CD, put it on *ANY* CD player, press play and enjoy their music. There same simplicity should apply to the digital music experience. Period.

Variable pricing also comes up as an issue in the article….this argument has merit provided that the labels work faster in getting more of the less expensive (read: deep catalog) tracks cleared, digitized and made available for sale. There is still an enormous amount of previously released music that is unavailable digitally, and tons more that is sitting in vaults collecting dust when it could be collecting revenue. So OK…offer the more current, hit product at a premium and drop the price on deep catalog, but please increase the urgency in getting the vaults digitized…tapes are deteriorating and audience most interested in the older recordings isn’t getting any younger.