Coca Cola enters the online music biz |
Loading ...From blogcritics: Coca-Cola’s music site has gone live:
But this one must not be a competitor to the iTMS. Why you ask? Because I cannot seem to load the site in Safari, OmniWeb, Mozilla, Explorer, or Opera on the Mac. I am going to assume it is WMA based. I did get to the site in Windows IE, and only IE. It doesn’t work in Windows Mozilla either.
Hmm. My initial reaction? I’m not sure I would want to pay a la carte for streaming. I am pretty certain that currently I listen to more than 999 songs per months (a mere 33 songs per day times 4 minutes average a song equals 132 minutes worth of music average per day? Yeah, I’m almost positive I stream music through Rhapsody currently more than that). So not seeing any cost savings there. It’s one of the best looking interfaces of the legal online music websites, but the maze of flash menus and intro screen setup — as of this writing – will almost certainly frustrate those with slower connections and/or regular surfers. [mycokemusic.com]
Best looking? Ack! It’s a throwback to 1995 or something. A colorful jumble that’s worse to navigate than the lines at the local Department of Motor Vehicles and Disneyland combined. And the service is slow, to boot. I wasted 2 bucks on it… and I recommend caution for others wanting to try it.
That said, I think a penny per stream is a neat way to be able to hear music you might not already be familiar with, without having to pay for a $10 monthly subscription. This way, a friend could tell you “Hey, you’ve got to hear this song by [so and so] and if Coke has it, it costs you just a penny. Not a bad deal at all.
Comment by Adam Lasnik — January 24, 2004 @ 2:39 am PST
Adam - how is their selection compared to the others? Do they have music that (you listen to that) isn’t available at the other services? I’ve found that Rhapsody is one of the first to get new music (that I like to listen to) and has the best selection of the services that I’ve tried, so I can catch the music there. Agreed that if Coca Cola’s service had a song that nobody else had that a penny to be able to hear it in its entirety would be cool.
Comment by TDavid — January 24, 2004 @ 9:27 am PST
Hi TDavid,
I must admit that — even after paying $2 or so — I was so annoyed by the Coca Cola service (slowness, unreliability, etc. — which may have been attributed to its newness) that I didn’t look into the selection very much, and have not yet returned.
I, too, have found that for my taste, Rhapsody has the best music selection. However, compared to Napster, it offers much less functionality, so for now I’m a paying Napster Premium user.
Back on the pay-to-stream thing… I wonder if iTunes would ever consider getting into that market? Or any of the other American services. Hmm.
Comment by Adam Lasnik — January 27, 2004 @ 4:44 am PST
How interesting that Apple and Pepsi get in bed together, and then Coke’s music service won’t work with the latest Apple OSX and browser (Safari)… hmmm.
Comment by Jason Holland — February 10, 2004 @ 11:44 am PST