News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

May 10, 2006

itms

When it comes to video, Apple is short-sighted

Authored by Dan Moren at 9:06 AM
Category | Music » iTMS
Digg it | del.icio.us

iTunes TVI’ve been mulling over yesterday’s announcement of Fox television shows on the increasingly innacurately named iTunes Music Store and I’ve come to the conclusion that Apple hasn’t quite gotten their head around the video download market.

Now I’m not about to issue any grandiose, Dvorakian ultimatums here: “Apple must do X or perish!” Nothing quite so theatrical, I’m afraid. But I do think there are trends and behaviors that Apple is failing to take into account with iTMS. This isn’t to say that they aren’t doing bang-up business, but the store is clearly music-centric, making video downloads (and PDF downloads, for that matter) seem like mere afterthoughts: fancy icing on the musical cake.

They’re hardly alone—I’m not sure anybody has figured out the video download market yet. And though Apple’s certainly ahead of the pack, they haven’t quite brought it home. Follow me, and I’ll show you why.

Steve Jobs has insisted since the debut of the iTMS that people don’t want to rent their music, they want to own it. I think he’s right, and I think that mentality is one of the key reasons that iTMS has succeeded so wildly in music, when compared to services like Rhapsody or Napster.

But video is not music, as Steve tried to convince us when he was pooh-poohing the idea of a video iPod. Video has different consumption patterns: you don’t, for example, watch a movie while you’re driving. Hopefully. If you do, I hope you live nowhere near me.

And here’s the thing: I don’t want to own my television content. Not all of it, anyway. For one reason, storage becomes impractical. Even with today’s cavernous hard drives, multiple seasons of multiple shows is likely to be space-consuming for most people. But, mainly, it’s a matter of consumption. Unlike music, which I’ll listen to over-and-over, how many times will I watch the same TV show?

“Aha!” you say. “You can just delete them once you’ve watched them.” Of course I can delete them. But here we enter the foggy realms of economic psychology. If I’ve paid money for something, I have an investment in it. Two dollars may not seem like much, but if I paid for every episode of every show I watch, we’re talking hundreds of dollars. This is the same reason I don’t buy DVDs of every show I watch. And yet, TV is a serial medium—like the fabled Lays potato chip, it’s hard to watch just one episode of Battlestar Galactica.

The way I see it, iTMS’s value for video is not in owning the content. If I do want to own it, I’d rather have it on DVD; it’s easier to store, it’s better quality, and, let’s face it, it’s tangible. The real value of iTMS is in time-shifting and near-instant gratification; it competes with broadcast, not DVD. With iTMS, I don’t have to wait to the end of a season if I missed last night’s episode of Lost because I can go watch it whenever I want.

The company Apple needs to compete against in the video market isn’t TiVo; it isn’t Google, or Microsoft, or even YouTube. The company they need to take on is Netflix. Find a way to appeal to the people who just want to watch video, not necessarily own it, and you’ll have yourself a big new market for online video. Subscription plans haven’t worked for music, but Netflix has shown that with the right implementation, they can work for video. The Multi-Pass option that Apple debuted with The Daily Show is a good start, but I think they need to take it further than that; I want a Multi-Show Multi-Pass: a monthly fee, all the streaming video I can watch, with the option to own an episode for a small additional cost, say the magical $0.99 price point. How about it Apple? The whole world’s watching.


Comments

Excellent post, I couldn't agree more. I also think that iTunes is so perfectly geared towards music that it seriously falls down when it comes to video. Which is which I right click all my video podcasts and "Show Song File"* so that I can play it in QT instead.

*and what's up with "show song file" when even my audio-only podcasts aren't songs.

Posted by: Oliver | May 10, 2006 01:41 PM

Post a comment

(If you haven't logged in with TypeKey, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting. For quicker posting, set up a TypeKey account.)

 


Warning: include(/web/macuser/includes/hbx_page_code_standard.txt) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /export/MW-WEBLOGS/macuser/itms/when_it_comes_to_video_apple_i.php on line 196

Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening '/web/macuser/includes/hbx_page_code_standard.txt' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /export/MW-WEBLOGS/macuser/itms/when_it_comes_to_video_apple_i.php on line 196


IDG IDG NETWORK:   CIO   Computerworld   CSO   Digital World   Digital World Tokyo   GamePro   GamerHelp   Infoworld  
   ITWorld Canada   JavaWorld   LinuxWorld   Macworld   Network World   PC World   Playlist   Techworld