Jazz Odyssey

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So this morning I went to a record store and bought a CD.    Brought it back to my office, but it wouldn’t play on my Denon CD player.  Called the store, and they told me that their CDs wouldn’t play on my Denon CD player, and that I’d have to play it on my Sharp CD player because their discs only play on Sharp hardware.  Sound ridiculous?  It is, and I’m making it up.  Unfortunately, it is the current reality in the digital music universe, currently solidified by Apple’s recent firmware upgrade that locks out Real’s Harmony from allowing consumers to play music purchased on either service with the hardware of their choice.

People go to a store, buy a disc, put it in a player and push a button to hear the music.  That’s how it works in the physical world, and that’s how it should work in the digital world.  If everyone is truly serious about moving the digital music business forward, interoperability and portability need to be addressed right away.  If the hardware manufacturers and digital music stores work on figuring this out, and the labels open the floodgates so that the idea of any piece of music being "out-of-print" or "out-of-stock" becomes obsolete, we stand a reasonable chance at growing the business in a positive way.

It’s not my place to criticize either Apple or Real about their business tactics and strategies….I haven’t sat in the boardrooms of either company to get fully briefed on why they’ve chosen the paths they’re travelling, and I’m sure there are facets and nuances that would be illuminating.  Since I can’t expect either of them to share these insights with us, let me simply say that as a music marketing executive and as a voracious music consumer I am disgusted at the existing impairments to my freedom of choice, frustrated that you make it harder to sell more music to people who want to buy it and I’m URGING you to stop this madness.  It isn’t good for anyone.