The first person I remember having an MP3 player of any kind was a friend of mine. I think we were just starting college, and if I recall correctly the player was a Dell Music Jukebox. At the time I remember thinking, what a stupid purchase, this will never catch on. I thought it was a case of someone running out to buy the latest technology without really thinking about it. It played the files through the radio, and if you lost your radio signal, you also lost your ability to use the player. On road trips, you’d find yourself constantly trying to find a signal. I was so incredibly wrong about how popular MP3 players would become. They’ve changed music forever. They don’t scratch or skip like cds. They’ve changed the way music is purchased – now we download files directly onto our computer, then update them onto our music players.
Obviously, the dominant market share belongs to Apple and their line of iPods. I have an iPod and have been very happy with it. I use it everyday. I have a dock with speakers in my bathroom and I wake up to it each morning for my shower. I also had an auxillary cable installed in my car, so I can hook my ipod up to my car and play it on my 30 minute (round trip) commute each day. I come home for lunch a lot of days – where I use it again. Sometimes my wife and I use it at night while we’re talking in bed before we go to sleep. I couldn’t imagine life without it (actually I could – that’s too dramatic…but I like it) - although there are a couple of things I miss about having individual albums. Overall, I think MP3 players make life easier, because it’s like having all your cds with you all the time.
There are plenty of players to choose from outside the ipod, including Sandisk, the iRiver and Creative Zen. I’m going to focus on the pricing option of the Microsoft Zune. Instead of buying a license to listen to the music whenever you want as often as you want for $0.99 a song through iTunes, Zune encourages you to spend $14.99 per month as part of a subscription service. You can download all the music you like – but it’s only for a limited time. You can, however, keep ten of the songs you choose at the end of the month. So you get about $10 worth of songs to keep for $14.99 per month. One good thing about this is you can test drive the songs and see which ones you really want to keep. I think this has some value.
To make this deal worthwhile though, you need to really be taking the time to listen and discover new music. The bad thing, is you’re spending $14.99/month no matter what. Whether you’re using it or not. $179.88 per year. Ask yourself whether you spend more than that on music each year right now. For me, I don’t believe that’s the case. It’s also a way to have all the music you want without stealing music. Companies are looking for ways to protect their intellectual property and slow down the free flow of music between users. I know people who pass around hard drives of all of their music, and it keeps snowballing. This gives the companies more control and more ability to sell and re-sell their products to you.
I don’t know which player is best. I’ve only used the iPod. I would love to hear from someone that has used both and has some insight into the quality of some of the players. As far as the pricing plans go, I think that depends on the individual. For someone who mostly listens to their established favorites and buys the occassional song, the Zune pass probably doesn’t make a lot of sense. For someone who stays on the cutting edge of discovering new bands and sounds, a subscription service makes more sense. Like with anything else, competition is good for consumers. It forces companies to evaluate what people want, and at what price, and try to figure out a way to give it to them. Having more players, ways to pay, and services is good for consumers – unless you’re an Apple shareholder, in which case you hope that iPod/iPhone keeps it death grip on the market. Let me know what you know about the iPods competitors by email or in the comments. Thanks for reading.
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