Caught this from todays NYT. Let’s see if Steve Rubel offers his p.o.v. I would expect he chimes in the issue, although it may take some prodding.
I’m not as interested in the “did they or did they not disclose” rathole as I am in the longer term impacts of Wal-mart feeding bloggers information. I can’t wait to see the conversations about this!
Kudos to Wal-mart for using a new media channel and being specific about expected disclosure.
Everybody reading this knows about iTunes. What a great distribution concept (not only for the content and hardware, but for the reinforcement of the Apple platform/brand) well executed. But there is one thing (at least one thing that currently bothers me) missing that would allow me to buy more music for my iPod: an area to converse w/other iTunes users. And this doesn’t have to be too complex: a wiki would be just great.
No need to build a myspace-like ecosystem. Just support the underlying ecosystem that is already there. How many songs have been downloaded? 100,000,000 million? A billion? I don’t know. But how many people would have downloaded 1 more song if they had known about that artist/song/genre? If only 5% did it, imagine how much it would bring back to Apple (and the artists)?
The Rant: I want to know what else is out there, but don’t want to take the time to go through and find it by myself. Why can’t I tap into the collective knowledge of the iTune econsystem? Other companies are providing an analog to this idea. Pandora allows you to listen to music online and you can provide feedback to their genre learning system. You can even buy the music directly (from iTunes or Amazon).
Come on Apple! Somebody in the product development/marketing group wake up! The more people browse, share and contribute suggestions (if you like X, you’ll love Y and Z) the better it is for all of us.
