Introduction

Quick: what do you think is the main achievement of Apple’s iTunes Music Store? The quality of the user interface? The site design? The fact that you can buy one song at the time? Wrong.

While all these are very important achievements, I believe that there is one particular aspect that makes the Music Store such a success with its users: ownership. When you buy a song from the Apple Music Store, you actually own it: you can share it with members of your family, you can burn it on a CD to use it in your car.

Apple has built its reputation on recognizing what “the rest of us” want from technology. That’s what made the Macintosh a success. The phenomenal impact of the iPod is based on similar characteristics. And clearly, Apple has hit on something with its on-line music store.

The iTunes Music Store is based around a handful of simple assumptions the rest of the industry does not seem to have integrated yet:

1) Most consumers do not mind paying for something they desire, provided the price is right.

2) To be a success in a consumer market a product or service has to be as simple as possible.

And, most importantly:

2) When we pay for something, we want to own it and share it with our friends and family.

The iTunes Music Store is probably the first consumer level example where digital content is treated as an object that has ownership characteristics. We have not just acquired the right to listen to a piece of digital content: we own what we buy. This, I believe, is a very, very fundamental step.

Let’s face it: We like to own things

In Fact, the real question is why digital rights management systems so far have blatantly ignored this simple truth. Let’s take one example. You can buy the “electronic edition” of the New York Times (as well as a number of other newspapers and magazine) through an on-line service called Newsstand, which lets you download and read an on-screen version of the printed publication. The cover price of the electronic edition is very close to that of the printed edition (65 cents per weekday issue in the case of the Times), yet when you buy a copy you do not own it: you have acquired the right to read it on the screen of one computer for a limited time—in the case of the New York Times an issue “expires” after 3 weeks.

Why? Because that’s what has been programmed in the digital rights management system. And if you have not read an article you are interested in by that time, that’s just too bad for you.

Now, if you are a simple user, how does that make you feel? Well, imagine if you bought a book or magazine and all of a sudden there was an empty space on the shelve with a note: “Sorry, I have just expired. You can buy another copy if you would like to finish it.”

Owning things is one of the pillars of human civilization. Getting pleasure out of ownership is ingrained in our way of life, and directly or indirectly motivates a huge portion of our actions. So why on earth did we forget about that rather vital aspect of our life when dealing with digital content? Just because it happens to be easier to copy?

The New York Times Electronic Edition is a good example of what is wrong with digital content today: the publishers are far more concerned with blocking illegal use than with providing the legitimate user with a pleasant experience. This is true for many digital rights management systems, and as long as that is the case, digital content will fail to take off in a major way—and peer-to-peer file sharing systems such as Kazaa or Morpheus will thrive.

The Apple Music Store is groundbreaking because it manages to incorporate a few basic facts of human behavior in an enjoyable, easy way. Whether or not it will be a long-term success is besides the point: in terms of making digital content a pleasant user experience it has definitely broken new ground.

Think about digital ownership—fast

Digital Content providers need to think very hard about this. Digital ownership will be a key aspect of the future of media, especially if publishers want to charge similar amounts for digital files than they do for physical books and records.

The one lesson Apple teaches us with its music store is that users need to get the feeling that they get their moneys’ worth. As soon as that is the case, they do not mind paying.

But before we get there, many content providers may still have to do a lot of creative thinking…

July 18, 2003

©2003 Pfeiffer Consulting

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