“Former Microsoft executive Robbie Bach led the company’s entertainment division… through the launch of the Zune music player,” Todd Bishop reports for GeekWire. Bach “left Microsoft in 2010… He shared some inside stories during a Northwest Entrepreneur Network event.”
Some excerpts from Robbie Bach’s quotes regarding Zune:
If I had hindsight, 20-20, and could do Zune over again, we would skip portable media players completely. We would go to what, at the time, was the Windows Mobile team and say we’re going to produce the coolest music service for your phones ever. The portable music market is gone and it was already leaving when we started. We just weren’t brave enough, honestly, and we ended up chasing Apple with a product that actually wasn’t a bad product, but it was still a chasing product, and there wasn’t a reason for somebody to say, oh, I have to go out and get that thing.
It’s not like we didn’t try but — I don’t know how to say this politely — the music industry just didn’t get it. They just didn’t figure out that being dependent on Apple was bad for them. And they were so hooked on the drug of what Apple was supplying them that they couldn’t see past that to realize that they needed something else to actually drive their business. The label business, the music industry, has never recovered from that. If you look at business value, Apple took whatever business value was in the label business and erased it. That’s not a complaint about Apple, good for them. But they erased that, and created some new value for themselves.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple saved the music industry.
Apple didn’t “erase” value, they added value by making a product that anybody with half a brain can find for free into something that people will pay for anyway. Without Apple there would be no major music labels today. Apple did it by making music easier and more convenient to buy than to steal. Microsoft never could have achieved that feat. They don’t have the ability to make things simple and enjoyable. They never have; it’s not in their DNA. Everything they touch turns to pain in the end users’ hands.
Bach is wrong. If he knew what he was talking about he’d still have a job and Microsoft wouldn’t be floundering around like a fish on dry land today.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Sarah” and “GetMeOnTop ” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Microsoft: ‘We will no longer be producing Zune players’ – October 4, 2011
More blood on Apple iPod’s Click Wheel: Zune hardware gone from Microsoft site – October 3, 2011
Opinion: More blood on Apple iPod’s Click Wheel: Microsoft pulls plug on Zune – July 25, 2006