Convenience Is King In Online Music

Yahoo’s Ian Rogers has a message for the record industry: adapt or die. Now it’s true, many others have been saying the same thing for a long, long time, but there’s a key difference, Rogers is saying it in front of recording industry audiences. Rogers recently posted a talk he gave at the Digital Music […]

rogers.jpgYahoo's Ian Rogers has a message for the record industry: adapt or die. Now it's true, many others have been saying the same thing for a long, long time, but there's a key difference, Rogers is saying it in front of recording industry audiences.

Rogers recently posted a talk he gave at the Digital Music Forum, an insider meeting designed the bring together industry execs and digital music providers like Rogers, who works for Yahoo Music.

The title of the talk alone captures the scathing tone: Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses.

Rogers' talk and notes aren't going to open any eyes if you've been paying attention to online music trends, but coming on the eve of the RIAA's legal “victory,” Radiohead's decision to sell its album online and Trent Rezner's loud and unfriendly departure from his label, gives them a timely weight.

Here's some highlights from the talk:

Inconvenient experiences don't have Web-scale potential, and platforms which monetize the gigantic scale of the Web is the only way to compete with the control you've lost, the only way to reclaim value in the music industry. If your consultants are telling you anything else, they are wrong.

Roger's isn't above indicting himself and Yahoo Music either, though he does sort of pass the blame on to the music industry:

When you compare the experiences on Yahoo Music, the order of magnitude difference in opportunity shouldn't be a surprise: Want radio? No problem. Click play, get radio. Want video? Awesome. Click play, get video. Want a track on-demand? Oh have we got a deal for you! If you're on Windows XP or Vista, and you're in North America, just download this 20MB application, go through these seven install screens, reboot your computer, go through these five setup screens, these six credit card screens, give us $160 dollars and POW! Now you can hear that song you wanted to hear… if you're still with us. Yahoo didn't want to go through all these steps. The licensing dictated it. It's a slippery slope from “a little control” to consumer unfriendliness and non-Web-scale products and services.

But perhaps most interesting part of his talk is that Rogers seems to indicate the Yahoo Music will be turning its back on record companies that insist on maintaining these controls:

I'm here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels [that] offer their content to Yahoo put more barriers in front of the users, I'm not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I'll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won't let Yahoo invest any more money in consumer inconvenience.

For more thoughts on the future of music online, check out Michael Arrington's interesting article, The Inevitable March of Recorded Music Towards Free, from last week.

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