I’ve been playing with music site, Rawrip, recently. I like digging through artist-led music sites hunting for good trance / electronic music. The biggie with Rawrip is that they give 100% of royalties to the artist, so if you’ve got some nifty trance (or, indeed, other types of music) that you’ve been cooking up, it represents a good place to go, set up your store and, crucially, get the word out with all sorts of widgets and online marketing aids.
Das is gut, as the Germans say.
My problem — my issue — is that, again, it’s one of those cool resources that’s totally cut off from the mobile masses.
And services such as these will continue to be online-only because, quite simply, the mobile industry is so shite. Try and get Rawrip working on a Motorola RAZR — one of the most popular handsets in the States (for example) and you’ll be trying a lonnnng time. A very long time. There’s little incentive for the owners of Rawrip to bother jumping on the mobile wagon and making it easy for me to stream my songs — or, if I’m an artist — showing my catalogue off, at a moment’s notice, to an interested A&R chappy, via my iPhone.
Unless one or two people in Rawrip management team are particularly fascinated with mobile, they won’t bother. Because when they phone up their web design team and say, words to the effect of, ‘So, what’s this mobile thing about, can you do us a mobile enabled site?’ They’ll wonder why the phone is put down faster than you can say the words ‘total arse’. Developing for mobile is generally a hornet’s nest of pain.
The iPhone changes that. Indeed, the chaps at Rawrip may well consider deploying an iPhone App as a mobile front-end into their service. I think a lot of people would find that valuable. Clearly, streaming music is also a good look on an iPhone. I’m pleased that, with the launch of the new iPhone, at least there’s a way forward. It’s certainly not comprehensive. But at least, when people talk to me, I can now say ‘errr, well, look, you could make an iPhone app,’ — and say that with a straight face, knowing that the development costs and the end-payout won’t be entirely ridiculous.
As for everyone sat using a bog standard Sony Ericsson? Dream on. You ain’t getting Rawrip — or 99.9% of the other brilliant services out there on your handset. Ever.
And we move on…