EU looking to make online shopping easier

Following on from a post over at Sandlines about how many of the digital audio providers are switching away from DRM and over to MP3 which does not restrict consumer usage; it was interesting to see that the EU was also trying to do something about making EU-wide licensing and rights simpler – this will no doubt help boost the number of EU wide companies in the digital space as it will lower the barriers to entry for them, but also it might allow for more unified pricing across Europe.

Hopefuly this could mean similar pricing for the whole of Europe (minus the exchange rates between pounds and euros) so scenarios like we had with iTunes where they charged 79p and 99 cents in the UK and EU respectively should not happen.

The group of people being consulted for this included Apple boss Steve Jobs, the head of EMI Roger Faxon, Alcatel-Lucent boss Ben Verwaayen, Fiat boss John Elkann and the boss of eBay John Donahoe.

Obviously the presence of Apple and EMI means they are looking at the digital music space and I imagine may have come about post the court case between Apple and the EU over its iTunes pricing schemes as mentioned above.

What is interesting is the presence of Fiat, Alcatel-Lucent and eBay – what are they bringing to the table other than general online expertise? eBay I imagine might be looking to simplify auction rules across Europe? But are there scenarios where someone in one part of the EU cannot get Fiat/Alcatel-Lucent products in another?

In any case, there must come a day where someone figures out a way to have global rights to digital content – right now the costs of obtaining these are astronomical but maybe if a framework can be built for across Europe that will be a start.

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I have been planning on writing this post ever since I first got access to the beta of pandora (thanks guys). That was a little over a month ago now and the beta has now ended and the service live. It has been created by the Music Genome Project who (to quote from the website) "came up with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever".

So what is Pandora? Well it is in effect an internet radio station with a twist. You can create your own stations from a particular track that you like and then as you play tracks, you can rate what you think of the song. This constantly updates your preferences for that particular station. If you dont like a song you can skip to the next track. It actually reminds me of Spinner (bought by AOL in 1999) which had predefined stations you could choose and listen to. With Pandora of course, you can define the stations yourself.

It is a very easy to use – the interface is clean and friendly. There is one downside and as usual it comes from the music licensing side. Currently:

• You can only skip a certain number of songs per hour (I do not remember the precise number, and the website does not tell me  it was not that low a number though I did come across the limit every now and again)
• You cannot choose a specific song – this means Pandora is not going to be a replacement for your music collection – it was my single biggest gripe as it felt i could never quite communicate the exact style I wanted – though maybe this would not have been the case even if I could select the right track
• You cannot go back/rewind

All in all, pandora is a great service for discovering new tracks – even with licensing restrictions – it is meant to be a service to introduce you to new tracks and I found new tracks I liked, so it does what it says on the box I just wish it was integrated into something like Napster’s To Go service – then I could have all the flexibility and find new music in one place  

Saying that – it is only $36 a year or $12 a quarter.. Napster To Go is $15 a month – or for us UK people £15 a month (thats a whopping $315 a year!).