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Future of Music Coalition’s Brian Zisk: The Do’s of Streaming Music

In 2008 the idea of another subscription-only music service was enough to get your knickers in a torrent. Sure Rhapsody was doing well, but they’d been around for forever and in 2008, freemium was the music model du jour. With a year to reflect, co-founder of the Future of Music Coalition and longtime San Fran Music Tech Summit organizer Brian Zisk tells us what it takes to survive in today’s music environment.

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In August 2008 ReadWriteWeb asked What Would the Perfect Streaming Music Service Look Like? While Pandora, Imeem and Muxtape were mentioned, services like MOG’s All Access, Spotify and Rdio hadn’t even been hatched. Given what appears to be a major shift in the industry, we asked Zisk to weigh in on some of these upcoming features:

RWW: A number of companies are offering cheap all-you-can-eat music services where users pay a set price for unlimited playback and streams. How important is price in this instance?
While price and large catalogues are important, having full songs goes without saying as the most important feature. People will pay for convenience and I personally am not interested in a service that only lets me play the entirety of a few songs and then forces me to listen to 30 second clips.

RWW:The killer mobile music application appears to offer offline caching of streams. Is this a make or break feature for streaming music services?
It’s important to have a killer mobile app or device integration, but as connectivity improves, I’m not sure just how important offline caching will be.

RWW: While some services offer a community curation feature, it’s a select few (Hype Machine being one of them) that manage to maintain a sense of cool. How important is curated discovery?
I don’t think this will be the most important feature of a service, but I could be wrong. I mean, how many folks would listen to the Village Voice Annual Picks or the Amoeba Records picks even if they were available online?

RWW: If not through editors, then how do you like to discover new music?
One of the features that I love is the ability to drill down into the music any way you want. For example, with Spotify you can search on a band and find their albums, and then start listening to their body of work chronologically. From there, you can choose whatever song you like, listen to it again and again, and then pivot on that song to hear versions from the other folks who have played that same song.

RWW:And what about social features?
Zisk:Lala’s feature where you see what your friends are listening to is cool, but I think the social aspect or the curated aspect is more important to others than it is to me. While I think it matters on a favorites level as in “You have to hear this band”, I don’t know how deep it actually reaches. I wonder if folks don’t already feel like they hear what they want from a radio station or recommendation-based radio like Pandora.

Zisk is hosting a SF Music Tech mixer tonight as a precursor to his Dec 7 San Fran Music Tech Summit. To register for the event visit sfmtsmixer.eventbrite.com.

Photo Credit: Rossina Bossio Bossa

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MOG Launching Five Dollar All-You-Can-Hear Music Service

Just when you thought media darling Spotify was going to be the sexiest music service of the year, music blogging platform MOG is announcing plans to offer a $5 dollar per month, all-you-can-hear music service. In an interview with MOG CEO David Hyman, ReadWriteWeb learned that tomorrow morning the company will announce deals with Universal, Sony, Warner and EMI. While other services are scrambling to sign licensing agreements with the four major US labels, MOG All Access will launch before November 26. It looks like Americans will have plenty to celebrate this Thanksgiving.

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MOG All Access is a browser-based service that will offer more than 5 million on-demand tracks from a number of major and indie record labels. Similar to Grooveshark the service will require no installation; however, unlike Grooveshark, MOG will not provide a free music service beyond its initial trial period.

Says Hyman, “The problem with free services is that if too many people use them, you can’t offset the licensing fees with ad revenue. There’s only so much you can do with advertising, but the subscription model ensures that you’re running something sustainable.”

For the cost of five monthly iTunes purchases, users gain access to a huge catalogue of on demand music and music reviews. While MOG’s editorial service and MOGtv channel will remain free to the general public, the subscription service will offer easy access to songs, radio recommendation features and a plethora of popular tunes. Because Hyman has negotiated for full access to files, his service will not be bound by the same streaming radio restrictions as Pandora. Hyman was also excited to announce that mobile device integration with the iPhone and Blackberry is expected before the end of 2009. And if the low cost of the upcoming subscription service isn’t promising enough, MOG’s first mobile release will boast the same offline caching features that make Spotify’s US launch so widely anticipated.

With data from more than 700 of the top music blogs and an editorial lineup that already draws more than 9.5 million unique monthly visitors, MOG’s recommendation service will offer more than just your run-of-the-mill selection. The community of music mavens appears poised for total noise domination and if competitors are smart, they’ll fire back before the new year.

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