Rob Glaser addresses a variety of topics during a 20-minute IT Conversations interview with Larry Magid, including subscription music, Yahoo, pricing, the slow video uptake. It’s an easy listen. Some quick hits:
– “Our Rhapsody service has over 1 million songs and one of the most amazing things to me about that is that, in a given month, over 90 percent in the library are listened to at least once and the top 100 are only 1 percent of the listens. …”
– “Our average subscriber listens to over 200 songs a month including 100 different songs … When you have no cost other than your time to listen to music it encourages experimentation.”
– Rhapsody To Go: “The reason it costs a little more is the music industry thinks that might cannibalize sales because, if you can put it on a device and take it with you, why would you ever need to buy a CD? We argued with them — people will want physical stuff, it’s collectible, it has the liner notes, album art, cd players are ubiquitous. Our experience is that subscribers like buying songs. We don’t see it as either-or; we see it as both-and.”
– On Yahoo Music: “We did a price promotion last year where we sold songs for $0.49 for a limited period of time and it was a big success. … In terms of the long-term economics, their pricing is below their cost. It won’t last. In fact, it already says on their website that the price is not going to last. It’s a promotional stunt. We actually have a much better product that’s not a promotional stunt, that’s a permanent offer … which is our Rhapsody 25, which is free to consumers. … For people that are super price sensitive we’ve got the best price in town, which is free.”
– On pricing: “If this becomes successful could I see the music companies raising prices? Yes, potentially.” But he added that could come at the risk of driving potential download buyers to radio instead.
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