They’re being sold all wrong.

You can’t sell a streaming service as a value proposition, it doesn’t work.  What you’ve got to do is sell it as a LUXURY ITEM!

This past week has been enrapturing because I’ve been listening to the history of recorded music via Napster on my Sonos system.  But I’d like to beat up the labels for excluding certain tracks.  Like on David Ackles’ "American Gothic"…  He wrote "Another Friday Night", why is it not included too?

I know from e-mail that licensors intentionally left out tracks as in incentive to purchase.  That’s just fucking ridiculous.  Every song should be available on streaming services.  The key is not to incentivize people to buy, but to not FRUSTRATE THEM!

I’m not going to try to convince you to sign up for Rhapsody or Napster.  That doesn’t work, not unless you’re a true music junkie.  A real junkie should have one of these services in order to facilitate exhibition/exposure/tryouts.  "Chinese Democracy"?  Let me dial it up, give it a spin.  Everything you read about you can check out.  And, of course, you’ve got most of the history of recorded music at your fingertips.

But if you’re rich, if you’re upper middle class, if you’ve got an empty room in your house that you use as an office and you like music at all, you should have a streaming service subscription with a Sonos system attached.  Because you want the convenience!

Anybody fitting this demographic would buy one of these systems upon exposure.  But they’re out of the loop, unfortunately.

It’s kind of like cell phones.  To introduce in the eighties portable handsets with $40 a month subscriptions would have been a mistake. People would have complained about the price and the lack of necessity.  But what the companies did was get the people who needed mobile phones or were so rich they didn’t care about the price to buy them, innovating along the way.  Don’t forget, at first there were just car phones, with no portability.  The portable handset came later.

Kind of like music subscription services today.  Portability sucks.  Both the devices and software (thanks Microsoft!)  But if you’re willing to be locked into your home, or your computer, they’re really damn good.

So, the product is less than perfect and the audience is limited.  But it’s not that small.  The key is to motivate the entire music-loving upper class to buy subscription services for their homes.  And, eventually, the middle class will have envy and the portability issue will be worked out.

Does it have to be Sonos?

Well, Apple’s a good solution, but there’s no subscription component.  Yes, you can buy an AirPort Express and control your music via your iPhone or iPod Touch, but the missing link is the subscription service!

Insiders believe that Steve Jobs has got a service ready to go, he’s just waiting for the right time to activate it.  Many believe he was waiting to see if Rhapsody and Napster got traction, which they haven’t, but it appears he’s truly waiting for 3G connections everywhere.

Unlike AT&T, every Verizon cell in New England is 3G.  Verizon’s 3G coverage dwarfs that of AT&T.  And this is important, because you need a fast connection in order to stream music.  Get fast connections everywhere and Apple introduces a subscription service with utility on the iPhone and it explodes.  You know those iPhone customers will sign up just to be able to show all the non-owners how cool it is! That’s how you sell product, word of mouth, not by suing your customers, trying to tell them how to utilize your product and still holding back some of the material.

That Zune subscription deal where you can keep ten tracks every month looks cool on paper, but the Zune is a shit device that no one wants.  Argue all you want, but statistics prove my point.  The Zune is never going to grow subscription services.  Sonos can.  Apple obviously can.  If iPhones were on Verizon, that day would be closer than it is.

But now it seems far away.

Music will be a service.  WHEN THE PUBLIC DECIDES!

The fact that the asshole record companies and publishers have fought P2P, which will evaporate once subscription is truly adopted, drives me nuts.  It makes no sense to own when everything is at your fingertips.  But people are not conditioned so at this point.

Charge for P2P.  But seed the wealthy and early adopters with a viable option, an experience of the future, now.

Everybody I’ve played the Sonos with iPhone/iPod Touch control with Napster wants one.  Sure, the economy sucks, but we’re all facing that issue.

Sonos doesn’t have enough of an advertising budget.  Napster’s got a bad name.  The labels are suing their customers.  When is everybody gonna have the same agenda?  How you beat Apple, or force its hand, is by coming up with an alternative.  Not the same thing less convenient and poorly executed, but something different.

Broadband penetration is huge.  And more reliable than in the past.  You don’t worry about losing the connection and your music.  As for losing your music when you stop paying, IGNORE PEOPLE WHO SAY THAT!  That’s like saying you won’t go to a restaurant because after you eat the food it’s gone.  Those people will come around eventually, but for now, you want to convince those who still go to restaurants, who treasure a night out.

Is it a Sonos system with a subscription service in every hip restaurant?

Is it Sonos with Napster parties, the way we used to have Napster parties in 2000?  Yup, you can pull up anything INSTANTLY!

Who knows.  But the way to get to the future is to make it enticing.

The major labels and publishers are so scared of the future they want to make like it doesn’t exist.  But it does.  Home-based streaming services are not perfect yet.  But that does not mean people won’t buy them.  There are early adopters in every field.  But you’ve got to convince people.  And you convince them based on pleasure, not restrictions.  Don’t advertise that you can take the music with you.  Don’t talk about expiration.  Say that Little Johnny can listen to Fall Out Boy in his bedroom, his sister Sarah can play the Jonas Brothers in the den and their parents can fuck to Sade in their suite.

And when you’ve got a pool party, you can play whatever you want outside!

Sell lifestyle, not restrictions.  Talk about opportunities.

If you’ve got the Sonos with streaming you don’t need the disc.  You don’t need the file.  You’ve got the music.

How come everybody in this business can’t get on the same fucking page!