What if Logitech pulls the plug

[pablolie]

... the more common was of enjoying popular music for most of the 140 year history of music sales to the public.

Interesting message.

I am aware the debate is about recorded music.

Let us not forget the music "ideal", despite its sometimes compromised audiop quality, is the live performance. I think most stereo shrines pay tribute to pursuing that ideal. And longer compiled works give us the ability to tailor said pseudo-live performance to our ideal.

In a technology unconstrained future, I'd probably have a hologram of my favorite -past and present- artists performing songs in a variety of perfect surroundings, and thanking me personally for my patronage. I'd probably own virtual rights to said performances, but the storage location is utterly seamless to me. I can just pop on my 3D Glasses and B&W Nautilus headspeakers and rock on.

[wildgoose]

"Music access, not ownership, is the future"

I don’t know. I’d rather pay the $120 every year to buy songs off iTune rather than waste them on some music rental services. I have so many monthly payments that, despite my love for music, I have not signed up for any music rental services. Music accesses are definitely changing. Consumers have more choices now than they ever did before. But I don’t believe the vast majority will pay a monthly fee to listen to music. I do however believe a far more majority will pay for video services.

My guess is the original Slim devices people, those who had vision and roadmaps of where they want the devices to go, are long gone. Logitech just doesn’t quite know what to do with the product besides coming out with incremental products/fixes/changes. The way the product has evolved over the last few years is consistent with someone’s earlier comment about 3 different generations of management for this at Logitech. No one in charge has a good vision or bold enough to make big changes.

This is different from Sonos. For Sonos, it’s their main product. Either they make it, or they die. So they put much more effort into it than Logitech (advertising, R&D, etc..). The survival of Logitech does not depend on SB, the survival of Sonos depends on their products.

As for specifics, there are quite a few things Logitech could’ve done to improve the SB experience, in no particular order:

- Replace Perl in SBS with Java or something less heavy. Perl is picked because it allowed Slim devices to originally bring the product to market fast, but it has far out lived its usefulness. Something more lightweight and efficient will enable better product development in the future and allow more efficient use of resources when SBS is run on less capable hardware. Basically a SBS re-write focusing on speed/feature/efficiency.

- Improve music library management. When you have lots of music, how do you organize them? You can label them for example, my music, wife's music, baby music, with ratings, smart playlist, etc. Something that will enable more intelligent music playback that will impress the user. Yes, I can do some of it with addons, and I can manually create playlists. But what I really want is some integrated solution. Don’t make the mistake of Palm which provided a basic OS and hopes 3rd party software vendors will fill all the holes. You need to make improvements to the products itself like Apple does.

- Switch to a common platform such as Android (heck, is there anything else?). Provide video features. The first thing my brother in law asked me when I gave him a SB Touch is, can I hook this up to my TV and watch Netflix? Can I see the playlist on the TV, etc..

Honestly, I think Logitech is the wrong home for SB. Google might be a better choice. I’d love to see a combo device of Squeezebox and SageTV. The SageTV server is a much better server and it shouldn't be that hard to add SBS features to it.

[mortslim]

The people that used to have over a thousand CDs and hundreds of albums and cared for them lovingly, and played them on equipment they had emotional attachment to... you find a lot of them in these forums, but they weren't the majority 25 years ago nor will they ever be.

New article: "Will streaming sites dethrone iTunes as king of digital music?"

"With the growth of Spotify, Pandora, Songza, and other streaming music services, consumers now have the opportunity to treat the entire world of recorded music as their playlist. And as mobile devices transform the way we interact with our surroundings, it’s making the idea of paying to own songs look ever more expensive, even at $0.99."

http://news.yahoo.com/will-streaming...-20120816.html

[pippin]

Yea, these commentators always have a really narrow view on "the whole world of recorded music". Even though I don't listen to them, for me that would at least include some smaller acts like The Beatles or so but who am I to judge, I listen to Lady Gaga more often than to Paul MacCartney... Yet still... less than half of my music is on iTunes and iTunes is much better than Spotify and even on Spotify after 18 months I see that a significant percentage of what I once bookmarked (like 1/3 or so) is not there anymore.

No, Spotify et al. are invaluable for occasional listening and to discover music but music you like, you still need to own, no way around that. And yes, people will learn that, they are not dumb, just because they might be young.

[RonM]

This is somewhat off-subject, but the concept of an album as a "complete work" is a relatively recent idea in popular music. 78s and cylinders only allowed for a few minutes of music. While you could buy classical works on 78 records, you ended up with a group of 8 or 10 records. That wasn't done with popular music.

Prior to the 1940s, sheet music outsold records and popular songs were purchased as individual works. The song "After the Ball" by Charles Harris was a sheet music pop best seller in the 1890s. It sold 2 million copies in 1892 and perhaps 5 million that decade.

The LP (long playing record) wasn't available to consumers until 1948 and through much of the 50s was rarely used as anything more than a collection of songs by the same artist. "Theme" albums (other than Christmas, etc.) didn't really come onto the scene until some of the rock bands in the 1960s started to fancy themselves serious artists.

So, one can argue that the sale of individual songs on iTunes, Amazon and similar services is actually a return to the more common way of enjoying popular music for most of the 140 year history of music sales to the public.

Agreed, mostly. There have been a lot of "theme" albums, but not many that actually worked very well. Most "albums" (CD or otherwise) are simple collections of songs from a particular time in an artist's evolution. Some of the songs might be good, some not so good.

On occasion this works very well as a reflection of a very creative or special period in an artist's (or group's) working life. Sadly, there are just not all that many Gracelands or Dark Side of the Moons or Broken Englishes.

Ron

Edit - this got me thinking about what albums really work as albums -- I've started a thread in the Music forum on this

[GeeJay]

.

The people that used to have over a thousand CDs and hundreds of albums and cared for them lovingly, and played them on equipment they had emotional attachment to... you find a lot of them in these forums, but they weren't the majority 25 years ago nor will they ever be.

This is a really good point, and one I hadn't thought about in this way before you mentioned it. Since I started buying records in the 70s, I can think of very few people who amassed large collections of music. They listened to the radio, and had 10-20 albums, max. Maybe a larger collection of singles (particularly the kids). Most folks cared about what was popular in the moment, and they could get their fix from whatever commercial station they fancied. You only became a collector if the radio didn't meet your need, whether it be eclectic stuff, deep cuts, whatever.

Today's music consumer may not really be that much different. Subscription services may be more appealing to them, but that would only be the case (I think) if they can't find what they like on free radio. In any event, if Squeezebox is going to survive in the Logitech world it will have to tap into how the broader audience consumes music...us music nerds won't support the growth a public company needs.

I just hope they find a way to do it and keep us nerds happy, too.

[MelonMonkey]

Streaming services and the like are replacing radio, not music ownership. If you look at music purchases historically, including the yardsticks by which sales awards are given, you'll see that music ownership has always been comprised of a rather insignificant proportion of the music listenership.

I'm not one to make bets, but if I were, I'd have no problem wagering that iTunes (or its Apple-owned derivative) will be around in 10 years time. Spotify and Pandora? I wouldn't make bets for that kind of longevity. I don't think I'd feel comfortable predicting they'll still be around in 3 years, let alone 10.

Unless free streaming services all go away, I don't believe that pay streaming/rental services will realize the big money in this industry. Just look at how many of those companies/services have folded. It's like clock-work.

That said, Logitech hasn't done anything with Squeezebox. At least with Harmony they managed to significantly grow the business and make it the de-facto non-disposable universal remote brand. Sonos by comparison has much greater brand recognition.

Honestly, if it weren't for iPeng and the other third-party software supporting this platform, I think it would be in far more dire straights than it is now.

[JJZolx]

New article: "Will streaming sites dethrone iTunes as king of digital music?"

"With the growth of Spotify, Pandora, Songza, and other streaming music services, consumers now have the opportunity to treat the entire world of recorded music as their playlist. And as mobile devices transform the way we interact with our surroundings, it’s making the idea of paying to own songs look ever more expensive, even at $0.99."

http://news.yahoo.com/will-streaming...-20120816.html

A couple of years ago I'd go into a bar and the bartender would be playing tunes from an iPod, with very few exceptions. Now, I don't see many iPods. Instead, they play Pandora through their smart phones.

I think we're less than a decade away from this being the main form of music play for the vast majority of people. It's where Logitech wanted to take the Squeezebox line, but failed miserably. I can still see them returning to this mass market, but they'll need to do it by churning out cheap boxes by the tens of thousands for well under $100 to do it. The Squeezebox product line as we once knew it is dead.

[mortslim]

The Squeezebox product line as we once knew it is dead.

Although Squeezebox may provide good control of a local server-based music database, the demographic trend for future marketplace growth, as seen in the recent prior posts, is for internet streaming music. This is where Squeezebox’s problem is.

The squeezebox “walled garden” approach is falling behind the marketplace. End-users beg for new services and request updates to existing services, and Logitech is either non-responsive or slow in responding.

If Logitech wants to continue to be a player in the music delivery arena, it should be looking to Roku for a model business plan. Roku sells 3 different boxes, with its top of the line priced at $100. and going downwards from there (far cheaper than squeezebox in this cost conscious world). And Roku is an open platform.

Here is how Roku works with content developers:

“An open platform, Roku’s Streaming Player enables content owners to bypass traditional distribution routes and reach views and consumers directly. Roku’s platform allows a wide variety of channels and monetization options.”

“There is no fee for joining the Roku Developer Program or for publishing a Roku Channel.”

“Roku does not host any content. Your Roku channel connects to your existing service and servers or CDN to locate and stream your content.”

http://www.roku.com/developer

I arranged for the Stitcher podcast service top brass to contact Logitech to host the Stitcher service on the squeezebox platform. Logitech wasn’t interested. That was frustrating for me and really crystallized Logitech’s problem with squeezebox. Content providers want control of their own hosting service, rather than be captive to Logitech’s whims.

Both consumers and developers want more than Logitech currently offers. Unless squeezebox can meet these dual challenges, it will squander any hope of future opportunities.

[pallfreeman]

The Squeezebox product line as we once knew it is dead.

It's just resting.