Can We Predict The Mobile Music Backlash Already?

Predictions

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.