January 8th–Omnifone and Gracenote yesterday announced the first solution to provide easy integration of a consumer’s personal device. This includes from mobile to desktop PCs, to home entertainment systems and in car stereos. Hallelujah!!! There is a God. The world’s first real opportunity for consumers to sync their music collection across all devices and DRM technologies. Firstly, TMV have to thank both companies for coming together and getting such an innovative product on the market.
On the flip side why no other companies have come up with such a solution till now escapes the team at TMV. It is such a no-brainer from a consumer experience viewpoint. So, this new proposition works across multiple platforms without consumers having to worry themselves about file formats or interoperability. I cannot wait till I get the opportunity to try this new offering out.
According to the press release this new holistic approach provides unlimited access to millions of music tracks along with the ability to create playlists, get recommendations and play music whenever and wherever you are without DRM and file format headaches is in truth just what the holistic doctor has been screaming for over 5 years.
Numerous analysts predict that synchronization across content with a unified experience across all platforms is critical to their forecasts in terms increased digital music consumption in the coming years. Apparently, US Digital music sales will grow by 17% per year for the next five years, totaling over 41 percent of music sales by 2013.
Going further Juniper Research has predicted the success of unlimited subscription-based music services will overtake “first generation” pay-per-track services by 2012. Tim will tell on this one but the TMV team are right behind in praying that it does indeed unfold to meet such a prediction.
Jim Hollingsworth Senior Vice president sales and marketing at Gracenote stated “this is an example of the future digital entertainment experience, and exemplifies the direction that commerce, content and technology companies should be headed.”
Omnifone’s CEO Rob Lewis also made it clear that this is the way forward and he is sure consumers will embrace it. We all know it has to be this way. TMV sure hope it is and we are now keen to hear what the iTunes bemouth and Amazon MP3 propositions will come back with in response to this blow up the walled garden proposition. Keep your eyes and ears peeled.
