End of last year, I wrote about my frustration with iTunes.
Today, I see that the tech giant is closing its doors on iTunes.
Confirmation found here.
Mismanaged. Dated. Inconsistent. Massive opportunity ended.
Also, this week saw the last of BBM service. Free chat platform that gave Blackberry its short lived market dominance.
Times are changing. Market leaders do not also stay in the lead forever.
Technology visionaries fight a tough battle of constantly changing scenarios.
Also, like iTunes is showing, being the leader and sticking with one approach is not always the best strategy.
I know Apple also offered a streaming music service to compete with Spotify.
To offer both services though is overwhelming.
Also, the iTunes UX lacked the interface that new tech brings.
Having worked with software engineers, simple design is often the hardest to achieve. It requires a lot of thought to get the process simplified.
Apple lacked this innovation after Steve Jobs passed.
I still believe that streaming music services only cater for countries with strong internet infrastructure. South Africa has expensive and limited options of unreliable connections.
We are also lagging behing in implementing or updating our physical technological infrastructure.
Saying that, I bought my wife a new car this month. It doesnt come with a CD player. This eliminates both my audio and data CD burning needs.
My bluetooth connects to her car set and we play Spotify playlists that have been downloaded to my phone. Its amazing and refreshing.
I still have the complaint though to build playlists on Spotify eats away at my limited monthly data. Therefore my music playlist play time is very restricted.
The new car does offer USB port, so the next idea is to build a mp3 playlist on a flash disk.
Plenty of pro’s to this approach (no data usage concerns).
The only con I have with mp3 flash disk approach is that without iTunes, there is not really a legitimate way of accumulating new content.
Thats the gap in the market in my opinion. Buy MP3s.
Come on world. Step up.