The Killer Music Rental Device

Bob Lefsetz said this in his recent post The Price Must Drop

How about rental?  Rhapsody, Napster and Yahoo?

Good model, but presently people don't want it.  They want ownership, we live in an ownership world.  You can fight this, or accept it.  Hell, until there's a reasonable rental device, as easily used and as sexy and cool as the iPod, rental is a total nonstarter.  Why hasn't anybody come up with a device this good in five years?  Well, how come latecomer Apple makes the coolest and best mobile phone?

I sent Bob an email after reading that. Because there is a killer rental device. It’s called Sonos with Rhapsody. I have four of them and we barely play mp3s anymore even though we also have a terabyte of legally purchased mp3s on our Sonos system.

My daughter Emily has a friend. He’s 14, same age as Emily. He loves music the way I loved music as a teenager. The way I still love it. He’s got an iPod full of mp3s and always walks around with his earbuds in his ears or flipped over his chest waiting to go back in his ears.

But when he saw the Sonos, held the controller in his hand, played the music right from the controller and it came out on the speakers all over the house and in the backyard, his jaw dropped. It’s hard to describe Sonos with Rhapsody. You just have to do what Emily’s friend did. He sat in our backyard by the pool last weekend and DJ’d all afternoon. He was in heaven.

The “problem” with Sonos is its expensive. $399 for the zone player you connect to your music system and another $199 for the wireless controller. But that’s only $99 more than the iPhone. It’s not absurd and everyone I’ve shown it who has had the means to get one has done just that.

Sonos is not a master of marketing like Apple. Not enough people have seen it. Not enough people understand why ownership doesn’t matter when you have pretty much all the recorded music in the palm of your hand.

Maybe Sonos will break out. Maybe Cisco’s rumored “connected device” offerings will break out. Maybe Apple/Jobs will finally understand that streaming audio and video from the cloud is a better way than selling files. I am not sure who will be the iPod/iPhone of the streaming/rental device market.

But I am sure that it’s the future. All you need to do is get Sonos and Rhapsody and you’ll agree.

UPDATE: Bob wrote me back. Don't you love it when your favorite bloggers write back? He said Sonos with Rhapsody is nice but he hates the scrolling. He wants search like in iTunes. I agree with Bob on that point. If Sonos had a search on the wireless controller, now that would be super killer.

Comments

[phil]

man i been jonesin' for this since my bar mitzvah...

http://www.eightfatswine.com/View.aspx?bid=46

[jacksonj]

Apparently none of you actually care about music if you are looking to the web to supply it.

[Michael Parekh]

Like the Sonos + Rhapsody solution too, but it doesn't help when I've discovered new songs I like through the experience, and then want to make them part of my portable music collection.

Of course, my portable music solution is iPod, and that doesn't play nice with the Sonos/Rhapsody system.

Which means a Rhapsody-compatible portable music player.

Which means another gadget to manage, maintain, and shepherd accessories for...i.e.,

more gadget complexity.

So then you sink back to the lowest common denominator with the least friction: listen to your favorite playlist on the iPod for the umpteenth billionth time.

We'll get there eventually, I know.
But it sure is a long journey.

[blink]

Love the Sonos system! I've got two zones in the house and considering a couple more. Lack of iTunes DRM support is a pain, but the system is great.

I still can't wrap my head around Rhapsody; I suppose I'm still trying to let go of "owning" the music. Although, it's probably a better value than the $20/mo wasted not watching or sending back the netflix dvds.

big fan of the blog. keep up the good work.

[Jeremy]

I love Sonos with Rhapsody. It is really the only thing we listen to now with a little internet radio thrown in. I think it really is the perfect solution for us because we are not people who listen to music when we are out and about doing things. That is the real hurdle for most people and is a problem for those like Michael above who want an end-to-end solution. For me though it really is nirvana. If Fred mentions a band I look it up on the rhapsody client, play a short bit, and if I like it add it to my library so I can load it up on the sonos desktop controller or wireless controller. If you look at the price it is comparable to buying one cd a month. I would much rather have access to thousands of cds than add only a single cd a month to a library I own. Some will argue the cd is a better investment, but over the long term it usually ends up that you own a bunch of stuff you will never listen to again.

[Ethan Bauley]

Lefsetz wrote you back? I'm jealous...

[Jon Smirl]

Charge $50 to fill your iPod legally. 100M iPods, that's $5B. Give Apple $500M to pay for the bandwidth. It's so easy to make money in the music industry.

$10 month license and you can copy what you want from P2P legally. Sue the people that aren't paying the $10. I'll sign up tomorrow. That ought to be good for another $2B a year. Pay with a credit card on-line.

Sell high priced CD's and have the retailers drive your margins to zero. Nobody even wants them. It's the path to destroying the industry.

The record industry just doesn't get the concept of "IP".

[Mike D]

I am also a huge fan of Rhapsody / Sonos and I was really excited to see them add support for Pandora a couple of months ago. I even have a Sonos "zone" set up in my 6-month-old's room where we have it set up to play the Children's Music Channel on Rhapsody.

[Jim Marshall]

Fred: I held off on the Sonos because of cost, and what I heard was operating complexity. Don't you have to buy a new device for each "zone"? I did, however, recently purchase a Squeezebox and have to say, it has changed our lives. Being able to listen to Pandora while it blares through our outdoor speakers has been liberating and enjoyable for the whole family. Sure, it has some limitations, but it's cheaper than Sonos (and the apple solution) and has given our family incredible value.

[Peter Bowen]

Check out the Sansa with Rhapsody - I think it's a Best Buy deal. I love renting music, and now I listen to a fair amount of music that I didn't know existed.

The Sansa will update playlists and songs just like the iPod, but now you can have it pull down channels too. Very cool.

-Peter

[steve]

Hi Fred,

I couldn't find a contact address for you, so I'm leaving a comment. I'm editor of last100, a blog dedicated to tracking digital lifestyle products and services such as InternetTV, digital music etc. You may enjoy it.

I'm interested to hear more about your music setup etc. and your views on rental vs download to own.

If you have the time, please ping me back via email.

Thanks,

- Steve