Interesting post at MocoNews from the World Mobile Congress. Rob Wells, Universal Music Group SVP of Digital, talked about the goals of the company with an almost cinematic flair.

The start and endgame for Universal and, indeed, the industry worldwide, is providing consumers with blanket access through a celestial jukebox anytime, at home, in the car. This is the next step in the utopian future for music...

And this about temporal pricing:

If an artist has just delivered an album from studio, we could potentially deliver it to a limited number of users for a higher price. It’s something we’re quite keen to develop; for example, through our own B2C channels - artists websites.

There are different definitions of "utopian future." UMG sees paid services as the future, as evidenced by its Total Music plan and Nokia's Comes With Music mobile service.. Others see the best route as unhindered P2P, which would certainly have more content and would be closer to a true celestial jukebox.

The pricing comment is worth taking a look at. Labels have yet to do a whole lot of direct-to-consumer stuff (other than merchandise) but that should change. Fan clubs and artist websites offer ways to deliver music and bring a sense of scarcity to digital downloads. If the iTunes and the Amazons of the world won't raise their prices for time-sensitive releases, artists and labels can go it alone.

Posted by Glenn at 2:37 PM | Link
|Comes With Music||Mobile Music||Total Music||Universal Music Group|

For those of you wondering what will become of all-you-can-eat music services in the next few years, mosey on over to this post at paidContent that quotes Sony BMG's global digital music president Thomas Hesse.

This idea of bundling music or access ... enjoying music on a fairly large scale with either a device or with access, be it a cell phone contract or a cable contract ... to me, that’s the next frontier. We feel quite optimistic about it. ...

Access to music so that music becomes something you can access in a very free way with very little encumburences.

Last October, reports surfaced that Universal Music Group was working on an industry-owned music service called Total Music plan, an unlimited (but presumably tethered) music service whose fees would be embedded in the price of compatible hardware. In addition, UMG is working with Nokia on Comes With Music, a music service for Nokia handsets. The service's costs will be embedded in the device's price.

Coolfer is optimistic about this kind of embedded service. A great number of people don't put much value on digital music, and they care little about subscription services. The best way to frame the cost of such a service, in order to take it to the masses, is to render it as invisible as possible. Labels would receive income from the sale of every device, which is far better asking device purchasers to take a second step and opt in a music service. Maybe then would consumers embrace music services in light of their inability to work with Apple products, their DRM, their catalogs that don't dig as deep as the illegal options.

One thing is for sure: Either subscription services have done a horrible job marketing their products, or consumers just flat out don't want them.

Posted by Glenn at 11:49 PM | Link
|Comes With Music||Sony BMG||Total Music|