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Online Messaging to Digital Music

6/1/06
Race Meider

I love when tech companies are so involved in making the buck over their rivals, that the customer experience gets lost in the shuffle. Back in the day, Yahoo, AOL and others were trying to let their users talk with other instant messaging clients to be able to brag that their messenger could talk to everyone and therefore be the most popular. AOL was the kingpin of messaging clients, because it was integrated with their proprietary software. Aol kept changing their software to block the new way MSN or Yahoo found their way in, to protect the "privacy of their customers", which meant they wanted to hold onto every reason to stay with AOL and brand their instant messenger on people's computers that weren't running the AOL software.



We seem to be going down the same road with the heating up war of digital music. Apple makes it easy for the digital music purchased to work with the iPod and Microsoft's new Urge deal with Mtv will seem to work well with anything but, at least that is what is being reported. With technology that is supposed to make things easier as things integrate into our lives, the tech companies become so competitive, they make customers choose sides like an elementary school playground. Inevitably, people will go where they want to go and buy whatever Mp3 player they want, but the tech companies will feel like they are being slick, forcing customers to pick and choose. The obvious crack that Microsoft is not filling in, is that Apple has a commanding lead in the digital music world. Microsoft wanting to get all the rest of the customers and leaving out the iPod, will just force the iPod users to go back to Apple and pay them for their digital music. When these sort of pissing contests begin, the customer will be lost in the shuffle and again, because the companies believe they are competing aggressively.



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