Reuters caught up with Microsoft’s J Allard at the first public demo of the company’s answer to Apple Computer’s iPod. Equipped with wireless networking capabilities, Allard envisions turning once passive consumers into defacto street teams for music labels.
Reuters coverage here.
On unseating Apple and the iPod:
- ”There are billions of people on planet earth who listen to music and they’ve sold 50 million gadgets so we’re in this early phase of digital music and portable entertainment. In some ways, the iPod is truly signature and breakthrough. and it’s a great product. I don’t want to knock them at all. But in some ways, it’s the Pong or Model T of digital music.”
Turning pirates into promoters:
- “We believe in connection. We’re launching a product. It’s a simple idea, but we’re putting Wi-Fi in everything we do.”
- “It legitimizes peer-to-peer. If you and I are sitting in a coffee shop and I’ve got a playlist that I’ve put together that I think you would really like, I can share it with you. You can listen to it for three plays or three days.”
- “If we have Wi-Fi in every device, our customers become the street team or promoters of the music labels. We turn the adversarial relationship where the labels see them as pirates in some ways but we turn them into promoters.”
Music not dead:
- “In some ways, the implicit statement (from Apple’s iPod announcements this week) was music is done and our view is that music is just getting started and let’s go do new stuff with music. In some ways, we’re the indie band, the new band, at Microsoft and we’re going to go partner with a bunch of indie bands.”
- “We’re partnering with people in the music industry that’s thinking about where music is going not where music has been.”
Zune to learn from Xbox:
- “The biggest (lesson) is that it’s not about the hardware.”
- “It’s not just about the device. It’s the device, hardware, software, service and of course the community that surrounds it. We believe in connected. We believe in connected entertainment and that’s the soul of this thing.”
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3 comments so far
In the era of podcast the Wi-Fi system in such device will really attract customers, I hope video marketing is a nice way to turn customers to promoters as Warner Brothers supposed to have big plan for promoting their movies.
- Posted by Offshore SupportI happen to agree. I hope to see great things from the wifi broadcasting capabilities of these devices. It’s a definite leap forward in technology and should advance the design of all other players.
- Posted by Zune ForumsI would have to say that the jury is still out on this one. Microsoft isn’t the first to try such a device to device entertainment network. Sony PSP also has this function for gaming and despite all of the hype, it really hasn’t taken off. It is a function of the device not an earth shaking technology shift. After all, devices have been “talking” for years.
The one concern about portable devices of any kind is to avoid Scope Creep, or trying to jam too much into a small device. No one has gotten the hand held device right yet. Thus, the jury is still out.
- Posted by Musashi2000