View Single Post
Old 08-16-2007   #3
Super Member
JerryDelColliano's Avatar
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Beverly Hills
Posts: 1,423
Default Follow up....

Thanks for your thoughtful response to my article and welcome to our forum.

A few counter points to your post....

1. The music industry has been MARRIED to FM radio and MTV for 50 and 20+ years respectively. That marriage is ended now that FM is dead and MTV is fractionalized. The music business needs to learn how to market which means actually spending money to promote and develop acts - something they stopped being good at in the early 1990's and show ZERO signs of doing now.

2. Market space would have been made for SACD and or DVD-Audio assuming that the players didn't cost $1000 when a DVD player (that plays a market favorite - video) cost $100 to $200. PLUS you needed a new preamp or receiver AND 9 cables ALL to listen to Queen or Dark Side of the Moon but not much more. Movie studios for the same basic money delivered ALL of their best movies for an audio video experience and consumers voted as did retailers. The reason DVD-Audio and SACD failed was because of fear of people stealing the music by the labels and the insuing lack of titles.

3. The idea of trying to beat Steve Jobs at the download game is a good one. You are telling me the geniuses at the majors who can't wipe their rear ends without an lawyer crouched in the stall with them to say it isn't "anti-trust" could get their act together well enough to take back the market from Apple? C'mon Gerben. Seriously. D&M Holdings, a MULTI-BILLION dollar company tried to be in the space with the iPod and they got killed with their RIO players. Napster, with GREAT brand recognition, can't get anywhere today compared to iTunes. Apple owns the space and there is little the majors can do to get it back other than to go back to selling music by album not the download in a video-oriented package with HD audio, HD video, good copy protection with A-list titles at a fair price.

Ironically, the BEST business model I heard over the past decade came from DTS. Before DVD-Audio and SACD, DTS could sell high resolution music on a DVD. 3:1 compression on 5.1 surround with DTS sounds PRETTY damn fantastic compared to MP3 or even CD. How many DVD players were sold to date? Hundreds of millions. How many surround sound systems are there today? Tens of millions? No copy protection problems because ONE digital cable does it all. MAN - selling music on a DVD sounded like a GREAT idea. Add in car audio and the potential for surround in the car and you would have REALLY been cooking with gas. Without DTS leading the way for high resolution surround - the market is lost. It didn't have to be DVD-Audio vs. SACD. It could have been more mainstream.
Jerry Del Colliano
JerryDelColliano is offline   Reply With Quote