What Apple Lacks In Music: The “S” Factor
This guest post is by Jack Isquith, who is head of strategic development for Slacker Radio and blogs at Digital Music Insider.
Do you remember the scene in Almost Famous when pre-teen William flips through his older sister’s vinyl album collection? I flashed on this great scene as I thought about this week’s events. Apple’s recent iCloud announcement was warmly received by most digital music proponents. In the first couple of days after the announcement the mainstream press fawned over Apple and the iCloud, and Apple stock gained.
That’s not to say that everybody was impressed.
There was grumbling from well informed digerati, as well as Apple competitors, that this was much ado about very little. After all, the dissenters argued, Apple still hadn’t rolled out a subscription music play to obliterate the old model of paying for music track by track, album by album.
This all makes for a fun digital debate, but I think both camps miss the musical mark.
While the Apple cloud integration might be the best we have seen so far, it offers no surprises. Your collection remains your collection. You can simply access your music now much more easily. This makes Apple devices more attractive, and that’s smart business for a company still driven by hardware and design, not software and content.
Think about the biggest music fans you know — the people who call themselves music junkies. Chances are that while they love their devices of choice (classic 160gb iPods, Sonos systems, vintage turntables and vinyl) they still spend the majority of their waking hours engrossed in discovering music. Talk to them at length and they will tell you that they live for that Oh Wow moment of discovery. The perfect moment of surprise. Surprise with a capital S. Their favorite music story invariably revolves around “the first time they heard or saw Elvis, The Beatles, Springsteen, Nirvana, Wu-Tang, Arcade Fire, etc.”
Music fanatics live for surprises and discovery above everything else. That’s why they are so loyal to the bands, magazines, fanzines, radio stations, and websites of their youth. They’re constantly trying to recapture that moment that young William has, flipping through those albums, in Almost Famous.
I’ll never forget this comment from a Warner Bros. Records co-worker a couple of years back:
“I go to Best Buy to get the music I know I want to buy, but I go to Amoeba a helluva lot more, to get the music that I didn’t know I wanted to buy”
With the iCloud, Apple has made progress on getting you the music you already know you want. But what about discovery?
The battle for the Oh Wow moment of surprise — for the music you didn’t know you wanted, for that elusive “S Factor” rages on.
Discovery maybe should be left to music blogs, community radio, magazines, etc? Lots of very good people in those spaces offering early recommendations on new artists all the time!
This article is a ridiculous and contradictory. Evidently you’ve never perused the genre chart listings at iTunes, nor have you clicked on the play sample button. You bemoan the lack of record store-type “discovery” while ignoring that no record store I was ever in let you listen to tracks, other than one or two promos they were paid to pimp. So how could those closed record stores possibly be better for discovery of new music? They never were.
The hottest discovery tool these days is Pandora. So it seems what you really wanted to say is that you wish Apple had invented Pandora, so that you could “Subscribe”. Head over to pandora.com and knock yourself out. The first one is free.
lol, you mean the “S” factor, the “slacker factor” since you are their head of strategic development, it seems like what you are trying to do is point out the value of slacker radio by belittle apple. Nice! Slacker its a nice service and the discovery issue its a good one. And you are right there is a filtering problem which to me its the biggest problem in the music world right now. Too much clutter. But I thought thats what Ping was supposed to do right. Have the music all your friends listen to, so you can look at other peoples tastes and discover music you haven’t heard based on what they are playing. But I doubt thats enough. Any way. Its still going to be left to the blogs and word of mouth. Since Ping hasn’t done much. And radio station both online and terrestrial.
Why don’t they make the stream cloud so that you can only stream an entire album 1-3 times? That way it is simply a discovery service. People would still be encouraged to build their own collection, thus supporting artists, and also improving musical feedback, since purchased music would more accurately reflect quality music instead of hype.
I love music but I hate searching for music and/or listening to songs that aren’t enjoyable. I agree the S factor is something that could be a awesome source of revenue if monetized correctly. But the trick is creating a way for them to need to use you for the S factor, not just want to. That’s the tough part. People feel a strong need to use apple products, whether it be for ‘security’ because ‘it just works’ or a myriad of other reasons.
Chris – CoolProducts
discover new music here: EyeSeeSound
not convinced i’d ever ‘discover’ new music via iTunes other than the stuff that is predominantly pushed by the people who don’t really get the sort of music that music lovers love. iTunes is about revenue not music loving.
I agree with the sentiment of this post, apart from the bit about Arcade Fire 🙂
These are the albums that we the consumer has already purchased it is a terrible idea to limit access to music I “own”. I agree that something needs to be done… just maybe not this.
S could also be for serendipity, or HA- ‘happy accidents’.
I’m in the UK and so benefit from Spotify (and will have to wait until 2012 for iCloud/Match). I’m a bit rubbish at finding new music, or even looking for it, but the easiest and most pleasurable way to do so in recent weeks has been to pull a Spotify playlist from Australian music buzz site WeAreHunted. Cheap, quick and convenient, and it was a real pleasure.
It has been a while coming, but I’m pleased to finally have an Internet experience where I see someone recommend something and in one click, I’m listening.
Despite it’s murky financial dealings with labels- a cloud hangs over what is reported to artists and how, Spotify definitely has the ‘S’ factor, albeit curated by external tastemakers.
i have to agree in parts because i found myself googling the other night for new music that i haven’t heard before…i do have my favorites but it would be fun to discover what’s out there that’s not been commercialized yet.
Thanks for your thoughts!