There will be varying price points depending on the size of the flash drive, the biggest one will be about 400$ like a large iPod. And they're full fledged MP3 players so they'll work without a subscription.They have nice itune type software, you can stick the thing in the window when you're in the house, download a bunch of music from the radio, listen to it, go into the software, get rid of the stuff you don't like, keep what you want as part of your library, mix it with your own MP3 collection. If you need to buy some specific tune you get it from Napster. Why buy an iPod?
As disclosure I'm not long the stock. I was long and did very well, you'll find me back on the board when the stock was in the low single digits. I've been waiting to get back in for a couple of years.
I do think though that this argument that people are making about the proliferation of delivery platforms is dead wrong. I listen to XM all the time now, I have my favorite 5 or six channels, commercial free, and I think the programming is great.The more subscribers they get the more power accrues to them within the industry, the better the programming, and this is crucial, the more organized programming gets. How is some local station, even broadcasting over the net, going to compete with a company with 10-20 million subscribers and 50 studios when it comes to content. I think it will be difficult. Plus who is going to organize this babble of competing content. Most people are too lazy to do it themselves.
These new devices are also presumably just the beginning. There will be flash based cell phone/organizer,MP3/satellite radio/video players all in one.. |
