A Personal Note to Microsoft, It's past time for Music Czar

Michael Gartenberg | February 25, 2005, 09:41 AM

This is a note to some folks over in Redmond (but it's OK for the rest of you to read it as well.)

Hi guys. There's no doubt that you must be frustrated. Really frustrated. After all, you were in digital music long before Apple. There were WMA players on the market long before iPod. In fact, Microsoft might have been dominant in digital music if it weren't for that pesky little iPod thing (along with iTunes). Worse, Apple introduces a flash player years after anyone else, actually removes features and then has customers waiting 2-4 weeks to get one. Gladly waiting I might add and ignoring all those other devices your partners have brought to market. Let's face it, you have all the tools to respond but at the moment, you seem to lack the leadership to tie it all together. You need to find someone to do for digital music what Martin Taylor is doing for Linux. You needs a master strategist that can deliver what folks like Brad Silverberg and Brad Chase did for Windows and Yusuf Mehdi did for IE back in the last century. In short, you need a digital music czar.

Folks, It's time for you to take a leadership role. You have one the one of the only differentiated models in the market in the form of subscription portable downloads to compete with Apple's business model and hardly any consumers understand what that's about.  You have a viable DRM. You have advanced functionality for going beyond music into places like video. You have partners to deliver services and devices. What you don't have is a coordinated person to make all this stuff work together. To make sure that internal technology is aligned with device vendors and music stores and services. That there's a single, coordinated marketing message that can be presented to consumers, press and analysts and that you not only respond and react to competitors rules but you actually start changing the rules of the game.

It's not game over yet. The market is still nascent and there's still time to act. There's time to pull together what you need from your partners and really get out there to compete. The clock is ticking though and it's time to get to work.