Nosce te ipsum

The folks over at the iPod Observer has an interesting piece about Walk Mossberg's continuing analysis of the online music market. Walt is known to be pretty fair in his recommendation, despite his bias for Mac, he frequently calls Apple on things that don't quite pass the bar.

As a Mac user, it's been fun to watch the market be born (long before Apple entered the fray), evolve, expand and crash and bus (for some). There's little doubt that iTunes really does provide a great consumer experience. What baffles me, is these other guys, and there are a lot of them, have the advantage of being able to copy a successful recipe as set forth by Apple. They've also got the backing of Microsoft's format and industrywide support, yet not one of them has been able to anything worth writing home about.

I love to try out these new services just to see how they are repackaging the same thing everyone else is doing and the one company vote least likely to do anything interesting, otherwise known as Real, surprised me recently by going the route of doing an infomercial! It was well done, polished and really sold the product well. If it hits it's intended audience (total non-technical people who have no clue about the online music alternative), they might attract a little attention for it. As far as the other guys, go back to bed, there really isn't anything all that exciting here except for the fact that iTunes remains the one to beat.

From the article:

Walt Mossberg's latest column on the Smart Money Web site focuses on the rent vs. own dilemma currently happening in digital music. He concludes that "iTunes and the iPod are the better choice," but first he runs down the pros and cons of each service. Apple's iTunes Music Store, which offers 1.5 million songs for sale and holds approximately 80% of the market for legal music downloads, allows users to own their music forever and use it on up to five computers, along with an unlimited number of iPods. Individual songs can be burned to CD an unlimited number of times, but playlists are restricted to being burned to CD seven times.

Meanwhile, as Mr. Mossberg points out, the rental services have a variety of restrictions. Some songs can only be streamed, not downloaded to a computer or MP3 player, and an extra payment is required if listeners want to burn music to a CD. And, of course, anyone who stops paying the monthly rental fee will find that they can't listen to their music anymore.

Mr. Mossberg writes: "So rental users are stuck with inferior portable players that don't sell well and thus don't attract the huge number of accessories available for the iPod. Apple estimates the iPod has about a 75% share of the total U.S. portable player market, with the next-highest brand at just 5%. There are over 500 accessories sold for the iPod, such as customized car mounts and leather cases, and just a few for other players."