Why Sony Can't Create An iTunes For Movies
from the too-much-conflict dept
As if the content companies haven’t already been making fools of themselves with some recent strategic decisions, things are only going to get worse. Sony is now saying that it wants to create an “iTunes for movies,” saying it will “set business models, pricing models, distribution models like (Apple chief Steve) Jobs did for music, but for the film industry.” First of all, that’s simply not going to happen. Sony is in the content business itself — so its competitors in the movie business probably aren’t going to be thrilled about contributing to its movie store. However, even if they can set up business models, pricing models and distribution models just like iTunes, they’ve totally missed the point. That, alone, is not what made iTunes successful. It’s the customer experience. Apple made the customer experience work. They made it easy. While some of their decisions have been less than user friendly concerning copy protection and the forced-iPod connection — overall it’s the user experience that makes iTunes work. That means, for the most part, not treating your customers like criminals. However, Sony’s entertainment execs have made it clear that they already view their customers as criminals and will do everything they can to lock all their content down. Hell, just take a look at Sony’s widely disparaged already existing iTunes clone for music to see how copying the business model isn’t nearly enough.
Comments on “Why Sony Can't Create An iTunes For Movies”
No Subject Given
You’re right, it’s the experience. If there’s going to be a movie version of iTunes available, it will have to present a multi-OS client utility with which to play movies, where the image and sound quality are near-as-dammit DVD-quality, interoperating with other media in addition to copyright-“protected” stuff – like I use iTunes to listen to *.{mp3,wav,m4a,m4p}, for example. And, of course, in the case of something hundreds of MB large, it’ll have to be stored locally for posterity as well – not just streamed.
And to do that, they’d basically be best off giving commercial and programmatic support to MPlayer… 😉
Re: DVD quality? that'll kill'em
with HD gaining in popularity in the same group of people that would be this store’s “early adopters,” I would argue that they would have to deliver better than DVD quality. say 720p. Especially since the media would get delivered to a computer. Have you ever seen 640×480 movies on a computer before they get resized? It doesn’t exactly inspire on with “screen filling quality.”
Re: QuickTime 7
For all in the know QuickTime 7 owns the space for all 264-10 delivery and ALL delivery systems outside cable have already committed. Cable will quickly adopt the same and wannabes like Microscrap and Real Crap will simply be insignificant in 20 months.
Sony is lost in the new Software World
Sony was fine when Hardware was only required to do one thing and consumers had few choices – now, we, the consumers control EVERYTHING. You don’t offer TV shows on the internet – fine, we’ll p2p, bit-torrent or whatever … same with Sony’s plans. You’re absolutely right – Sony cannot design an interface to save their life – just toggle through any of their TV’s … or the music CONNECT – great relaunch – how many tracks are they selling now? I heard 100,000 a month verusus itunes 1.3 million … itunes beat out kazaa or napster for simplicity and ease of use … Sony’s will have to beat out bit-torrent … unlikely to happen on many fronts …
Re: Sony is lost in the new Software World
You are kidding me – Sony Connect sells 100K songs a month? Only maybe because they force their employees to use it.