Posts by Mark Mulligan from August 26, 2008

Mark Mulligan | August 26, 2008, 08:02 PM
You Say You Want A Revolution...

My colleague Thomas Husson just blogged on Nokia’s new N series handsets. The N85 combines the best of the N95 and the N81 and looks like a really cool media phone. But my question is whether Come With Music (CWM) will initially launch on handsets such as the N85 and the N95 8G or whether there will be a new range of optimized handsets? Don’t get me wrong, both devices would do an admirable job of supporting CWM but I’m not convinced they would do the outstanding job that CWM merits. CWM is a revolution in digital music. The N85 is an evolution in Nokia’s N series handsets. I’d argue that in order to maximize impact, CWM needs a similarly revolutionary handset from the off.

Mark Mulligan | August 26, 2008, 10:36 AM
What I Want From Apple

It’s been pretty quiet for some time now regarding iPod and iTunes rumours. All Apple buzz has been around the iPhone. So add that dynamic to us being smack in the middle of the silly season and it makes sense that rumours are finally beginning to bubble up, principally around a full iPod range refresh and an iTunes subscription offering.

Needless to say it doesn’t pay to try to second guess Apple, more often than not they surprise us. So I’ll use this opportunity instead to scope out my short wish list from a music service perspective:

1 – Pre-loaded content: start retailing iPods with either a significant amount of songs already pre-installed or with on-device credit for songs from iTunes.

2 – A music subscription offering: premium subscriptions are dying a not-so-slow death. Apple could change that over night. But please Apple, don’t just play the Rhapsody / Napster game and offer portable rentals for ten dollars a month. Be really brave, do one or more of the following:

• Charge just a few dollars a month
• Have permanent downloads at the core of the offering (e.g. a fair use number of tracks rather than just a dozen or so)
• Subsidize the cost of the subscription in the price of a device (i.e. follow Nokia’s Comes With Music lead)
• Do DRM free subscription and include the cost in the device sale price
• Offer Pay as You Go, with ability to dip in for a day at a time (‘dip in for a dollar a day’) to help drive discovery and impulse purchases (the labels would love you for this, trust me!)
• Include music videos in the subscription mix