markets

Pandora, Emusic, iTunes 0 vs KKBox, Sky.fm and Last.fm 3:

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It’s all about the dollars, cents, pounds and pence, isn’t it? After all, that’s what you’re all fighting about, isn’t it? That’s why you aren’t really entering non-US markets, … you don’t think Asian markets have enough cash, do you? Well, here’s my cash. I put my money where my mouth is: but you guys didn’t want it. Pity, I’ll reward those companies who do want it.

Who wanted it? Well, here’s my list of top three online music providers who were delighted to take my money, and provide me with great music to listen to. So drum rolls, please!

 KKBox wanted my money, so I put down a subscription with them. And they made it so easy to pay: I could have paid in any of a dozen different ways, including just going to the local convenience store, and handing over my cash! This is a screenshot that includes some recently popular songs. The only caveat was that I had to set my default language on my PC to Chinese, which of course, broke one of my blogging applications. Never mind.

KKBox Software

No problem. Last.FM made it really easy, too. So I plumped to spend money with them. Nothing needed to download, but it works. And there are software programs you can use if you need to.

last-fm

I also put my money with Sky.FM who wanted it. Nothing to download here. Just play the stream in your favorite player.

sky-fm logo

It’s not that I didn’t want to give it to Emusic – they wanted too much with too many conditions attached, including paying for a catalogue that I couldn’t access – well done, Sony BMG!; iTunes wanted the money for the products (iPod, iPhone, iTouch, etc.) but didn’t want to provide the services to my country of residence; Pandora just shrank from the challenge of facing too many lawyers, without a good excuse.

After all, when did lawyers run a company? In fairness, lawyers are paid to respect the law, to follow the law and to help understand and interpret the law for other people. But, it seems that they are increasingly being used as an excuse by business leaders to hide behind.

Legal Music Alternatives

So I put my money where I could; and I’ll likely start buying even more CDs courtesy of Amazon, etc., … by the time that Emusic, iTunes, and Pandora wake up to the HUGE LEGAL opportunities they’ve missed, it will be too late for them to capture the market in many countries. Why? Because while they can wait, other hungry companies can’t, and neither can audiences. The world won’t wait for Pandora, Emusic or iTunes to grasp what’s being offered in terms of markets. Instead, these markets will take their ball, and play another game altogether.

Think that it hasn’t happened in Taiwan before? Think again.

Kindle and iTunes

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Kindle and iTunes

I was browsing for an MP3 player last Sunday, but I couldn’t choose between the low quality offerings in the store, and the DRM enabled higher priced offerings of Sony and Apple. Of course, the bigger question with these ‘tied devices’ is the availability of songs to international markets.

Here in Taiwan, iPods are very popular, but is there an iTunes store? No. Can you buy on any other iTunes store? No. When is iTunes going to open? Who knows: Apple has made no announcement. In other words, we can’t legally buy music downloads here from any number of retailers for the same reasons… While this is a bearable situation, as long as there are CDs available… one day CDs sales will vanish… what then?

With iTunes not being available in a significant number of countries, and Kindle just starting out… the availability of books on Kindle will obviously be restricted. Throw in DRM, regional restrictions… and there you have Regionalization of the book market devices, meaning that if for any reason you don’t fit the profile, you won’t be able to buy a device, and even if you do, you can’t use the Kindle shop. With Kindle, it’s going to be much the same. Books will become region-coded. That is going to be really scary.

Let’s hope that Amazon don’t take such a ‘restricted’ world view of the Kindle, otherwise… the DRM and copyright notices will make books regional, too. I’m not hopeful given the use of Sprint’s Whisper network for distributing material.

While I don’t pirate music or books, I am a frustrated user who finds it difficult to get music or reading matter that I like legally. But will the American-centric publishers ever wake up to the market they are NOT serving?

Tuesday’s Drop: Is it just China’s bubble? Or is it America’s too?

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It’s been three days since Tuesday’s large point drop, and the markets haven’t really recovered yet. Should we be concerned?
Chart from Yahoo! With Thanks.

This is just a personal opinion: but I’m not concerned at all. Why?

  1. The markets have risen steadily for months without a correction. In fact, many people believe that a correction was coming anyway.
  2. I’m not speculating in stocks at the moment. I do have some positions, but I have sold out my Tech stocks (taking a loss in the process).
  3. I don’t use money that I need or (I hope) will ever need.
  4. I wasn’t totally invested. In fact, up until this month I was sitting 25% in cash. Right now, I’m still about 11% in cash.
  5. I’m investing for income at the moment anyway. The stocks I have produced a fair dividend, albeit with some risk.
  6. With cash waiting, a correction like this could open opportunities to buy good stocks at attractive prices.

I don’t usually blog about the stock markets at the moment, since I don’t really have much expertise in them. But my hand was forced when I read John Mauldin’s latest newsletter Global Market Brief: China’s Engineered Drop written by George Friedman.

In the letter, he notes some scary statistics about the balloon that was developing China’s stock markets:

In January, the number of total traders on the Chinese exchanges grew by 1.38 million, an increase of 134 percent from a month earlier, while stock turnover was up 700 percent from a year earlier.

Given the penchant for Chinese to gamble anyway (and Taiwanese, I may add), whenever the stock market or property prices start to rise, or the lottery jackpots get bigger, we will see this phenomenon. Friedman notes that this is the first time that Chinese stock markets have had a major effect on Global Stockmarkets. One thing I’m sure about, this is not the last time!

I’d certainly welcome more informed comment from my readers…