Can We Predict The Mobile Music Backlash Already?

from the when-will-the-stories-come? dept

As Motorola gets closer to launching a music phone (certainly not the first, but one that's getting lots of hype), the press is gearing up with their stories about how mobile music services are going to conquer the iPod and change the way we all listen to music again. It may very well do that at some point, but everyone seems to assume that creating the perfect mobile phone/music player converged device and service will be easy -- and that seems unlikely. In fact, noticing just how much trouble Apple and Motorola have had figuring out how to create an iTunes phone should give you an idea of just how difficult this is. Before the iPod, there were plenty of music devices that just didn't catch on. There have been plenty of music phones that haven't really caught on -- and building a converged anything often leaves the device open to criticism that it's good at none of the things that were converged into the device. With that in mind, it's quite likely that, for all this hype, many of the first "big" mobile music offerings will fall completely flat. The devices will be clunky and expensive with an annoying interface that people will hate. They won't get much usage, and suddenly there will be all these backlash stories about what a "failure" mobile music is... based only on the hype the same reporters created in the first place. Of course, if it's like most other wireless technologies (3G, Bluetooth, WAP, etc...), only after the backlash comes and people start declaring mobile music dead will someone work out the kinks and suddenly it will catch on for real.
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  • identicon
    Beck, 26 Jul 2005 @ 11:04am

    Carrier Obstruction

    I don't want to have to pay to load my MP3 files onto my phone.

    Verizon sells phones such as the LG VX8100 which have a built-in MP3 player (and 512 mb memory) but they have disabled the MP3 playback function because they haven't figured out how to charge customers for the songs they want to play.

    It's an extension of their photo transfer racket, where you can't just hook up a cord or use bluetooth to transfer photos from your phone, they disabled bluetooth file transfer so that you have to pay to Verizon to get your photos off of your phone.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    thatguy, 26 Jul 2005 @ 11:50am

    And immediately following...

    this new technology catching on, we get to hear all the "threats" of viruses' wiping out your purchased MP3s and other random highly unlikely occurances to create more panic for all the un-tech-savy people who decide they NEED the newest and best technology as soon as it gets popular. Round and round and round it goes. Doesn't anyone get tired of this shit?

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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