Digital music players may have been the hot gift of Christmas 2004, but downloading the music to play on them promises to be a less than enjoyable experience, according to a new report that lambastes the state of music websites.
The thumbs-down to online music comes in Click-Here Commerce: Digital Downloading, a study that ascribes the problems of websites - including Apple's iTunes Music Store, Sony's Connect, Real's Music Store, Rhapsody and Virgin Mega - to "Digital Deficit Disorder", where "symptoms include loss of concentration, feelings of being trapped, and format anxiety".
"I have to say I was horrified at the level of development of these sites," says Ms Shelley Taylor, whose company, Shelley Taylor & Associates (www.infofarm.com) produces regular reports evaluating e-commerce sites in the US, UK and Europe.
Even the most hyped and popular of the sites - Apple's iTunes Music Store - couldn't satisfy more than half the criteria Ms Taylor's researchers used to measure the quality of music retail websites.
And many Apple fans will be surprised to learn that the iTunes Store was not considered the best of breed - that honour went to the music site operated by French store, Fnac. Apple's Music Store took second place. But Ms Taylor says even Fnac fails to approach the customer savviness of her gold standard in retail websites, Amazon.
The commercial music vendors also haven't learned from the very sites they are meant to displace - the once hugely popular P2P pirate music sites and programmes such as the former version of Napster (since reborn as a commercial site) or Kazaa. Vendor sites fail to build sales out of music lovers' desire to create online communities where they can talk about music, share playlists, read reviews and recommend artists, she says. Yet music buyers tend to be passionate about genres, bands, tracks, live shows - and as Napster demonstrated, they love to talk.
A key problem is the whole user experience. According to the report: "Online fulfilment and post-transaction support are the least developed areas in online retailing yet contain the greatest opportunities for future revenue."
Ms Taylor again points towards Amazon.
The site lets users search for items in many different ways and save items to wish lists. Amazon records visitors' page-viewing path for each visit so they can easily return to an item already viewed, the site clearly lays out the purchasing process and issues an on-screen receipt (iTunes users have to wait for one to be sent). Other items you might be interested in based on current and previous purchases are also offered.
By contrast, music site users cannot even obtain basic artist discographies or learn the year in which a particular album was released, she says.
But the biggest problem with the sites is that they try to turn customers into "slaves".
"We see some of the most popular download services actively engaging in a form of guerilla slavery, using proprietary formats, closed system media players and proprietary portable devices," says Ms Taylor.
"Why do they think they'll be able to handcuff users depending on format or device?"
The whole area is ripe for change, she predicts.
First, survival of the fittest will mean those who learn to give consumers what they want, as well as cross-sell to increase their own sales, will still be around as the industry begins an inevitable process of consolidation.
Ms Taylor believes users aren't going to take the current situation for long, in which the vendors are beginning to try to control the market just as the music labels tried unsuccessfully before them.
"There's too much power in the hands of the Sonys and the iTunes and they're ignoring these little voices - which, remember, were quite loud when it came to P2P."
Consumers will eventually force change, demanding open formats, open players, and open devices.
"It's about 18 months before the user revolt," she predicts. Online music has always been "grassroots and counter-culture driven. It's back to power of the people".
That said, she acknowledges that online music sales at this point are merely a drop in the bucket of music industry revenue. Only a minuscule 1 per cent of music sales are transacted online.
But there are signs that the medium is taking off. In 2004 some 200 million tracks were legally purchased and downloaded over the internet - the majority through Apple's iTunes store.
That figure, while small, is 10 times the number sold in 2003.
With 25 million digital music devices in the market, and no sign that the public's passion for devices like iPods is waning, it looks like the online music industry is ready to rock and roll.
