“Record labels can take data from streaming services such as Pandora and use it to inform everything from radio airplay to touring schedules, merchandise sales and the real value (beyond the pittance of a royalty) of a particular song with respect to marketing activities,” Rocco Pendola writes for TheStreet. “If Pandora’s unwilling to step up and provide that data (quite possibility because of competitive reasons, re: informing radio airplay, or strategic reasons, re: the battle over royalties), an Apple/Beats combo could be more than ready to seize the opportunity Pandora leaves on the table. Apple, given its dominant position, simply doesn’t have the same strategic-competitive concerns.”
“Building a data business as it relates to music represents a largely untapped area,” Pendola writes. “I know Beats Music has wanted to go there since prior to its public debut. That was going to be a significant part of their business. It’s a game Jimmy Iovine talks. I can’t imagine a situation where he joins Apple’s executive team and drops that mission, because there’s wide-ranging value there. Iovine and his colleagues at Beats know this.”
Much more in the full article here.
I had no idea Pandora was holding back its stats. Obviously the media companies would love that data. Maybe if Pandora had made it more obvious that they are free marketing for the media companies, those companies (RIAA, ad nauseam) would not have had their daggers out for years trying to kill Pandora with outrageous licensing fees. (At one point the RIAA was demanding licensing fees more than 300x higher than what they charge land radio companies. One report stated that they asked as high as 1200% higher. IOW: Attempted murder of Pandora).
Sorry: 1200x higher (not %).
The media conglomerates are pushing and shoving amongst themselves to see who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. I question their value at all (now that distribution is essentially free), but any valued is not nearly commensurate with their historical take.
I often say these self-destructive companies get what’s coming to them via their own actions. But of course it worries me that the public response will be as extreme as these company’s abuse of the public. There are such things as excellent businesses. Apple clearly is one (but as usual, they’re not perfect). I don’t want to see some lunatic rush of the public to up end capitalism in favor of some less -ism, as per Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, the entire Muslim empire, on and on.
Sure, there are excellent businesses. They are the small businesses who know their customers personally, and they provide excellent service with their excellent products. There is no executive class skimming off all the profits, just hard-working entrepreneurs doing what they love to do. These companies, in general, are getting slaughtered by corporate entities that are happy to move their operations to communist countries and do everything possible to hide their piles of cash from fair taxation necessary to maintain a civilization with clean, safe, fair infrastructure — and yes, that does mean market rules. Corporations have bent these rules in their favor when they can, and departed when they couldn’t. Corporate customers are treated like dumb sheep — take it or leave it mentality with practically no customer service.
Is Apple different than the average corporation? Of course. But with each step Apple takes, it seems to be courting Wall Street, enriching executives with obscene pay, playing tax games, hiring communist subcontractors, blowing money on ridiculously overpriced office buildings and bizarre acquisitions — all while NOT delivering the new products that Cook claims are in the pipeline. Apple’s current leadership seems happy to go from being a user-focused hardware maker with some great software into becoming a megacorporation with no soul, subscription-based computing shoved down its users throats, very slow product development, and surprisingly poor software quality. Apple was better when it was the scrappy underdog, Now, without serious competition and a focused leader, it’s succumbing to complacency and bloat.
You’re comment is ridiculous. Do you really think new products (other than incremental updates to existing product lines) just materialize upon demand? And what, Apple should just shove everyone in a warehouse in cubicles and make them work?
Playing “tax games” is by necessity dictated by our tax code. That’s what the Tax Code is: the rules of a game to see who can keep the most of their money. You do it with your personal finances, but Apple shouldn’t? Stupid.
You want Apple to devolve into a scrappy underdog? Why? So you can say you’re a member of the few, the proud, the Centris 610 crowd? Apple’s products and software offerings are NOT of surprisingly poor quality. I’d take any Apple software product over some Windows/Android product any day. Are there bugs? Sure. But making software that works over the cloud (which is where ALL computing is going) is much more complex than it sounds.
Apple is being anything but complacent. It has invested heavily in designing and producing its own chips, building its own huge data centers, going after its rivals with free software, building its own factories in the US (Mac Pro, Sapphire Glass).
But of course, you don’t see any of that playing Candy Crush on your iPhone. You just want to reminisce on “the good old days”.
I think Blackberry has a phone you’d like, and you can then root for the “[s]crappy underdog” too.
LOL “Centris 610 crowd.” I’m giving you 5 stars just for that reference
GREAT post.
I will add that I’ve had plenty of experience with outright, deliberately abusive companies who don’t simply treat their customers (AKA the backbone of economics AND their companies) as sheep, take it or leave it. They outright LIE to them and CHEAT them at every opportunity. I’ve written two detailed exposés of Time Warner Cable doing exactly that.
The revolution will be peaceful, and I was speaking with my tongue in both cheeks. People are more than happy to reward good work, but tire of the slothly monopolies that dominate media. When are new way emerges, the crowd will flock and, I suspect, leave the giants moribund.
Apple has had lots of products fail. Yes, even under the great Steve Jobs. So I will park the Apple Beats product in my attic next to my Newton Message Pad, Apple Hi-Fi, and Fire Wire iSight camera.
Pandora failed? It is shutdown?