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08.24.05
Japanese
Music Providers Have Long Road To Hoe
 By
Jason Lee Miller
When one company becomes the first to tap a geyser of a market, every other company
that follows suit just looks like a bunch of copycat opportunists, even if they
had it planned in advance of their rival's success. When Apple iTunes sold one
million digital music tracks in four days to the Japanese, Yahoo! and Sony seemed
surprised that the folks who invented karaoke might be music lovers.
The resounding "sugoi!" hit the boardrooms of both companies as they watched the
numbers come in, dry erase markers squeaking as Yahoo! and Sony eked out a counter
attack. At 150-210 yen a track, that adds up to a lot of green, er, tan.
Last week, two of Japan's largest online music distributors, Oricon Inc., and
Label Gate Co., clasped hands together as well combining their inventories to
launch a service offering 310,000 in the island nation of 125 million potential
music lovers.
Yahoo! wasn't far behind, slapping its own music service into place on Monday
offering streams of free songs to encourage CD sales. These "samples" cannot be
saved to a computer or MP3 player, but Yahoo! is the first to offer full length
samples. One might imagine it won't be long until the search portal's full music
download subscription service is made available as well.
But all companies have a difficult fight if they want to take down Apple in the
music arena. As The
Register has noted, Apple iTunes has an exclusive music format, and iPods
don't support WMA, the choice of every major competitor. This basically rules
out winning over any iPodder as they'd have no incentive to switch over to another
format and a new MP3 player.
Yahoo!, Sony, and the rest will have to dig up a less loyal market.
About the Author:
Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.
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