A Good Idea: It's All in the Timing
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A library of 1000's of albums. Listening to free music samples before you buy. One click music purchase. Sound great? Sounds like iTunes? Well, I'm actually describing MCI's 1-800-MUSIC-NOW service. I was cleaning my attic and came a cross a compilation of articles from the Washington Post in 1996. I figured I'd leaf through it before recycling it and it fell open to an article about MCI's service. For those that don't remember (since it only lasted about a year), the service allowed you to call 1-800-MUSIC-NOW, enter an artist's name and sample the album. If you already had an account setup, you just pushed a button and the CD arrived at your front door in a few days. How simple. How convenient. What a failure. MCI recognized an opportunity to both make themselves more than a phone company and address a potential market need, but sampling over the phone and waiting for physical shipping just weren't what people needed. Five years later, facilitated by the tremendous growth of the Net, Apple introduced iTunes and changed the way we buy music.
I think often about some of the innovations that DigiKnow has been a part of, several of which were built before their time. Most near and dear to my heart are some of the projects we envisioned for the Cleveland Indians, back in the days before MLBAM.
- Live Blogging - In 1996, before we were even familiar with the term blogging, DigiKnow staffers provided a text-based play-by-play "Cybercast" of every Indians game so out-of-market fans with no TV or radio access could be a part of the game as it happened.
- Subscription-based Audio/Video - In 1998, the next evolution from text was to audio and video for out-of-market fans, called IndiansXtra. This subscription-based service allowed fans to listen to live audio feeds and get immediate post-game video highlights.
- View from Your Seat - In 1999, we added a seat viewer function to allow ticket holders and interested buyers to checkout what the view looked like from every section in the stadium.
- Ticket Exchange - In 2000, we built what may have been the first online ticket exchange. This system allowed season ticket holders to put tickets up for sale to other season ticket holders (at face value).
So what happened to all these great systems?
- Live Blogging - As Java/Flash replaced good ol' HTML, the written version was replaced by visual play-by-play we see today.
- Subscription-based Audio/Video - Although there were hundreds of dedicated fans getting their audio and video, there wasn't the critical mass necessary to sustain the service. Today, MLB TV and their other audio/video products are wildly successful.
- View from Your Seat - Just about every stadium in the country now has some kind of view from the seats. Basic images are starting to give way to 3D renderings and video from your seat, but the concept remains generally unchanged.
- Ticket Exchange - Unfortunately, the system never took off for the Indians. Today between Ticketmaster, StubHub and others, you can buy and sell seats for almost any event through a secondary market.
With all that, is a good idea still good if it is ahead of its time? My short answer is no. A good idea must bring value to the market and if there is no buyer for a service, then there is no value. But yesterday's failure can be tomorrow's success, so stop and think about an idea from the past could be redeveloped today.
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