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Apple Music Services And The Digital Generation

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by Kevin Maney
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Oct 21 2008 9:09am EDT

Apple, Music Services, and the Digital Generation

Kevin Maney writes: Don Tapscott has spent a decade studying the first generation that grew up in the Internet era. In 1999, he published Growing Up Digital. This month, he came out with its sequel, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing the World.


When I started reporting the piece on the coming decline of Apple's 99-cents-a-song music model, I talked to Don about how this digital generation cumulatively looks at music consumption. The rap on the younger crowd is that all they want to do is steal music. Tapscott says that's not true -- most would rather not steal anything. But they also think 99 cents is too much for a song and that downloads are the wrong model.

"Why would you ever take possession of a song?" Tapscott says, reflecting attitudes he found among the digital generation. "Why would you own thousands of songs on a hard drive and try to organize them?"

He goes on: The new model is what I call everywhere Internet audio. If you could have any song ever recorded streamed to you on any device at any time in any place, you'd happily pay a few dollars a month for that. Kids will happily pay a few dollars a month. Give us that...and we'll never steal music."

Tapscott doubts Apple can or will create that kind of offering, which means thinking of music as a service, not a product. "Apple and the iPod is not the new model for music," he says. "It's a variant on the old model of a song as a product. Apple I doubt will be the one to change the model. More likely it will be a telecom company or a company like Nokia."

Or maybe imeem, which today unveiled its music service for Android-based phones...


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