Through a random series of links, I read about a new service called MusicGiants, which recently opened its “high definition” digital music service. The online store offers tracks in Windows Media Lossless format (450 – 1100 kbps) instead of selling compressed MP3, WMA, or AAC tracks, as other music services do.
Good idea. On audiophile-quality equipment (including a Windows Media Center PC), I can hear the noticeable difference between a 128K MP3 and an original CD or a track ripped in lossless format. Those lossy files are fine on a portable player, but not in my living room.
And I really wanted to like MusicGiants. But after reviewing the terms of the deal, I give it a big thumbs down. What’s not to like? Plenty:
- The software only runs on Windows XP or Windows 2000. Not a deal-breaker for me, but still, not a user-friendly approach.
- There’s a $50 annual fee. The fee’s waived if you buy $250 worth of music per year, and you get a credit equal to the value of the fee for the first year, but still…
- Each track costs $1.29. An entire album costs $15.29. By contrast, I just paid $10.99 for the new Neil Young album, Prairie Wind, from Amazon.com. I regularly buy used CDs from Half.com for much less. Charging this price is ridiculous. Especially when …
- The tracks are “protected” with Windows Digital Rights Management. In exchange for accepting the restrictions on my right to listen to the music I’ve purchased, I should get a hefty discount, not pay a premium.
In fairness to the company, they’re probably not setting the price. Since they have deals with the big record labels, they’re not going to get a deal that’s any better than Steve Jobs got.
But then I read this profile of the company in Business Week:-Is This Digital Music’s Future? And I think the company may be truly clueless:
That’s why MusicGiants plans to sell a $9,500, 400-gigabyte device called the SoundVault that would sit in the stereo cabinet, just like a CD-player or receiver. (The package includes hardware, a high-end sound processing card, and networking gear.) That way, MusicGiants’ customers could bypass their PCs and load songs directly into their living room stereo. “It’s hard to sell gas, if no one has a car,” says [founder and CEO Scott] Bahneman, who hopes to get out of the hardware business as soon as other gear starts to appear.
$9500? And then another $6000 to fill it up? Please send me a bag of whatever this guy’s smoking, because it must be truly mind-bending shit. If anyone out there is willing to pay 15 grand for this product, I’m in the wrong business. I can build a super high-end Media Center system and fill it with perfectly legal lossless music for … oh, let’s say about $5000-6000. And it would also replace the TiVo and the DVD player and do digital photography too. If I can sell one or two of these babies per month for the price that these guys want to charge, I can make a pretty fabulous living.
Anyone want to take bets on how long this company lasts?
[Cross-posted at Ed Bott’s Media Central.]
Ed Bott 
The most important point you make in this post is this
“In exchange for accepting the restrictions on my right to listen to the music I’ve purchased, I should get a hefty discount, not pay a premium.”
I have tried purchasing digital music (bearing in mind I currently reside in Australia and our legal choices are EXTREMELY limited) and the experience was frankly woeful.
I won’t even try to list the litany of things that were dire about it, but the end point essentially is that I ended up buying some music that I am now unable to listen too, as the provider has “issued the maximum number of licenses”
So the music companies think it’s a great idea to sell music at a poorer audio “quality” that I can play in less places/devices, with the possibility that eventually I won’t be able to play it at all, at a price equal too or higher than music obtained elsewhere under much more favourable conditions ie on CD
They have to be on crack.
I am sure you haev heard all this before but the price is simply rediculous. I’d pay, maybe 10c for music the way they are packaging it. The restrictions would still suck, but having to buy a new license would be workable at that price point.
P.S. While I am on the subject, the fact that i can’t simply log onto a US online music store and purchase music there is simply a travesty in this 21st century connected world.
The music companies had a really good chance to make bucketloads of money by making it easier, not harder, to purchase their product. They have made a total and utter mess of it now. It is actually easier to steal their product, than to buy it.
Fools.
These guys are just pandering to the “audiophile = expensive” crowd – the guys who buy a pair of speakers for $100,000 or a $40,000 CD player. It’s just nuts…