So Close and Yet

This seems obvious: You are listening to a radio station and you like a song. You want it.  The obvious solutions that pop into your mind might be:

A. Text *97.7 while the song is playing, the radio stations commerce provider gets the text and the song is emailed/dropped in your music locker.

B. Press the magic "I want it" button on that new car radio and the broadband connection dials up the provider and gets the song delivered to you.

C. Press the OnStar button and say "that song" which gets the song currently playing on your radio delivered right to you.

Right. Not exactly.

So, here is an example of pretty close but, major oops.

If you like 'smooth jazz', there is a great radio station in LA. 94.7, The Wave.  A really well done station.  The web site is here.  They have an option so you can listen to the station live. They use streamtheworld.com to power the streaming radio. Canadian company, thanks for asking.

In addition, 94.7 has a e-store where you can buy the songs they play.  That store is powered by TuneGenie which is really powered by Puretracks.  You can see the store here.

The store basically has the play lists of what the station is playing and for .99 each, you can buy the tracks as WMA files.  All fine and dandy except for one glaring brain fart: Nothing is linked together and the UI for all of this is a disaster. 

Here is one UI Turd:

As you click around the store, load up some songs into the shopping cart. Then type in your name. Then put in an address from any country except the US. Yeah, you can't buy anything.  But, for sure, they make you go through a bunch of hoops before telling you about it.  The TuneGenie guys clearly blew this despite trying to be major cute with all the flash stuff in the application. It's annoying but thanks for getting the province thing right.

But the bigger issue?  None of this solves that instant gratification problem.  The exact moment somebody is grooving on a song and wanting it is the exact moment you should be providing an instant, friction free way for the customer to get the song, not 25 clicks.

Memo to Streamtheworld: new revenue source; aisle 3.  Add the buy it now button to your streaming app, take a cut, and off you go. Or buy the TuneGenie guys, get some UI help, and make one app.

Memo to the rest of you: There are tons and tons of opportunities to pull pieces together, get it right, and make some coin.

[Side note on Internet Radio] I have to give 94.7 credit for really doing a great job of exploiting the fact there are people listening from around the globe. On the morning show, Pat Prescott make references to listener comments, requests, etc, from the Internet crowd.  She calls out the contest and makes a point of telling the Internet folks, come on, sign up.  I listen to the station when home in Toronto and it's a great piece of work.  Listening to LA traffic reports and the commercials about Empire Carpet being able to deliver to my house tomorrow is also good for a snicker or two.

Comments

[Jenny]

Yes, I've wanted a service like this for many years now. Just wished for it again as I listened to a great song on the drive home tonight. I hardly ever buy music but I sure would load up if it was an impulse buy. I'm sure there are lots of hurdles to overcome to make this work but whoever can get this right would make a killing.

[Braydon JM]

Well, we're not quite there - we offer that instant gratification "getting" if you're listening in our music client, but otherwise the function is pretty similar. We also have mobile streaming and "getting" on our roadmap so you'll be able to do much of that with us soon. Getting there, getting there....

www.rvibe.com

[Charlie Berg]

First, a disclaimer. I work for Music to Go, the creator of the TuneGenie music store. That said, we are restricted from selling music outside of the US based on our licensing with the record labels - we are licensed to ONLY sell in the US. And, to that end, we sell ONLY thru US radio stations. That said, I would agree that a notification somewhere upfront might be useful that we sell only to holders of US credit cards. I'll file a bug, and see if we can get it fixed in the future. As for your instant gratification thoughts, watch for our new product, that is a scaled-down version of the store, embedded in a radio station's website near you. This will be released across on of the big 5 radio groups within a week or so, and should then spread beyond. Soon after, it will be embed-ible on the various portal sites - myYahoo, iGoogle, etc.