[Sigia-l] Buy or rent?

[Listera]

Manu Sharma:

> I'm not sure why you say that. Sony Connect...

I was actually a marketing counsel to Sony and worked on Walkman intro to
U.S. I know what Sony can do when it wants to promote/market/merchandise a
product line. I can emphatically say that Sony is not doing that with any of
their digital music hw/sw.

> Walmart [2] does it for 88c and Real Music store [3] for even less. All of
> these stores are in the download-to-own business.

I think you know what WalMart can do when it focuses relentlessly on a
mission, whether it's a store opening or pressuring a major supplier.
WalMart's commitment to digital music downloads can only be described as
tepid or casual. Real? Frankly, who cares what Real does.:-)
 
> Surely, something happened that convinced them to drop it for their own
> store when they released it later last year.

Don't get me started on this.:-)
 
> Yes, but what's the point.

To get back on point, the fundamental question remains: what will happen
when many/most of these subscription-based services fold? This becomes even
more problematic when the digital assets in questions are not discretionary
stuff like music but company documents, for example.

I'm about to sign on to a project to design a fairly complex
ASP/subscription product that will change a specific vertical market. So the
notion of buy vs rent is uppermost in my mind.

I haven't yet found a satisfactory answer to buy vs rent in user
preferences.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba