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Yet another step toward iPod gold…
By Brian | January 15, 2009 | Share on Facebook
Back in July, I blogged about the Last.FM AppStore app for the iPhone, and how it moved digital music toward it’s holy grail – the impulse buy of a song when one hears it ambiently – such as on the radio or from some other streaming service.
I call this the holy grail because a person’s reaction to a good song on the radio is powerful, instant and short-lived. If a music vendor can provide the consumer with a “Buy it now” button while his/her toe is still tapping, the impulse purchase rate would likely be very high. And if it’s on a mobile device, which is often used in a group setting, there’s a “network effect” possibility (think a group of teens on a bus or at a party, and one says, “hey – check out this song!” and before you know it, a dozen kids have all clicked “Buy it now.”
If that button isn’t there at that exact moment, the person likely forgets about the song minutes after hearing it, and even if they have the opportunity to buy it soon afterwards, they probably don’t think to do so.
Today comes news of another AppStore app from Slacker Radio, which can access over 100 Internet radio stations, as well as custom stations derived from user preferences (genre, decade, popularity, etc.). While a given song is playing, the interface has a nice big “Buy on iTunes” button at the bottom of the screen (click the image to enlarge it). This, combined with the iPhone’s ITMS purchasing capability is pretty close to the situation described above. My only pie-in-the-sky request, at this point, is to make the “Buy” button 1-click, rather than opening the iTunes app. But then again, I’m picky that way.
Topics: The Future is Now | 2 Comments »
The inability to 1-click a “Buy It Now” is likely Apple’s fault — a lot of what ships on the iPhone is behind the API firewall where developers have no access. Ironically, that means you probably *could* 1-click a purchase from Amazon MP3 provided that was all done with HTTP.
And a group of teens all clicking “buy it”? Hardly. More likely a few teens texting their online friends to grab it off BitTorrent and drop it in email.
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