Datz Music Lounge: Gimmick or the Future of Digital Music?
If you live in the U.K. and you have 100 British pounds to spare, you can now subscribe to the Datz Music Lounge, where those 100 pounds can buy you unlimited access to DRM-free MP3s for one year. According to Music Week, Datz features about 2 million tracks from EMI, Warner, Beggars Group, and The Orchard. While the service is encumbered by technical problems like having to use a USB dongle, as well as a relatively limited selection of songs, we can't help but wonder whether this all-you-can-eat plan for DRM-free MP3s points towards the future of the digital music business.
For now, Datz is only available in the U.K. and users will have to buy a boxed retail package with a CD and the USB dongle from either Sainsbury's or Datz's own site. One more negative for the service is that it doesn't have a licensing agreement with either Universal or Sony, leaving it with a relatively limited music selection compared to more traditional subscription services like Rhapsody or Napster.
At about $160 a year, Datz' plan is comparable to most subscription services, though the high upfront cost and limited selection might make quite a few potential subscribers think twice about the value of this new service.
Mark Mulligan from Jupiter Research argues that Datz is a big deal - not because it might become a market leader itself, but because it has laid a licensing groundwork for the rest of the industry.
Indeed, it will be interesting to see if other services will offer similar all-you-can-eat plans in the future and if the music industry as a whole will be willing to go along with this.
At the end of the day, it is good to see yet another new business model for music services and that at least some of the labels are willing to experiment with new licensing models as well.
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To answer your question: gimmick. It's simply asking people to do too much. Pay. Upfront. Have a USB dongle. And then you don't even know if they are going to have what you want.
Not the future.
In my opinion.
While I think they may be asking people to do too much upfront I think this model could be revised to really be great. I remember when eMusic was $14.99 or so a month, "all-you-could-eat" about 4 years ago and I loved it.
This is almost the type of stuff you'd expect to see if you were paying a "music tax" with your high-speed bill. For people into music who always want to hear new stuff its a great deal. (Especially impressed with the Orchard in on this deal.... lots of great indie stuff)
Anyway, get this to the US so I can signup.
it is good to see yet another new business model for music services and that at least some of the labels are willing to experiment with new licensing models as well.
Here we go!!
Traditional music playback continues to be a multi-billion dollar business in the United States alone.The growing popularity of high-quality audio compression is destined to forever change the way that consumers use recorded music. Currently,most PCs only utilize the most basic capabilities of digital music.Digital music has become another part of American pop culture.
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rosejenifar
Influencer
To pay £100 for a pretty limited catalogue of music is asking consumers too much. Why would they pay £100 in case Datz could provide some of the music they want, when they can download the tracks they actually want for free. The only answer piracy, is to offer consumers a realistic alternative. Also, if people did really download "all they can eat", Datz would be faced with an unsustainable bill to artists and rights holders making their service no longer profitable.
Steve Purdham
CEO - We7
http://www.we7.com
After rereading my comment, the position on the Datz service sounded very negative, which was not my intent.
Clumsily I was trying to use this as an illustration of the challenges new digital models face with traditional costing stuctures still in place.
Mark Mulligan from Jupiter is right, its not the company but the model that is important here and what it can reveal going forward.
Given there is 'no one size fit all' model out there it is important that a spectrum of new models from Datz to We7 are allowed to evolve, with the consumer deciding which is appropriate for them and at what cost.
Overall, the arrival of these new models are exciting and right for the industry going forward giving more reasons for optimism.
Cheers
Steve
Steve Purdham
CEO We7
www.we7.com
It's always rad to see companies trying new things. My first thought about this would be that it wouldn't really fly. It's all about making things easy to use and needing to buy extra gadgets (USB thingie) is not user friendly. Even though they've got 1.4 million songs to choose from I think they'll have a hard time getting the other couple million that are out there because of how hard it is to partner with these big labels (all the troubles that Pandora and others have had and are having). I do like the DRM thing though - we'll see what happens. DRM all the way.
www.sayvee.com
"It's all about making things easy to use and needing to buy extra gadgets (USB thingie) is not user friendly". We agree that's why the USB dongle is included in the price of the product. The dongle is just to prevent people sharing the music on mass. You only need the dongle inserted to download not to play or copy/transfer tracks to new devices. Cheers
"It's all about making things easy to use and needing to buy extra gadgets (USB thingie) is not user friendly". We agree that's why the USB dongle is included in the price of the product. The dongle is just to prevent people sharing the music on mass. You only need the dongle inserted to download not to play or copy/transfer tracks to new devices.