Music Discovery 2006 - the year that nothing happened.
I really thought that 2006 would be a year of momentous events in the digital music world - instead 2006 will likely be remembered as the year that nothing happened. Since this is the season for making lists, here's my contribution (Now since I am a lazy blogger, I'm going to break this list up into 5 separate posts, sorry):
The top 5 things in the digital music world that didn't happen in 2006
#1 - Apple didn't innovate - Apple, the undisputed leader in the digital music world, with its stunnning 85% market share, with more than a billion tracks sold, and the sole supplier of the coveted 'perfect thing' is spending less time on music and more time on video - expanding its iTunes empire to include TV and movies. This focus on video leaves few cycles left in Cupertino to devote to improving the music experience. This year Apple gave us music listeners a few crumbs: gapless playback, a slightly smarter shuffle, an album art browser and a minimal text search capability on its latest iPod. There are lots of things that Apple could have done but didn't. Apple didn't offer an 'all-you-can-eat' music subscription service. Apple didn't add music or taste sharing to iTunes or the iPod. Apple didn't improve iTunes music discovery tools to help get listeners beyond the short head - much less into the long tail. Apple didn't do much to help us find music on our own iPods - an iPod becomes the place where a song goes to die - 60% of songs on a typical iPod have never been listened to by its owner. One would think that this inattention to the music space would leave Apple a little vulnerable - perhaps that's what Microsoft thought - perhaps that's why Microsoft barely tried with the Zune.