Bruce, when you say local do you mean like local radio, with news about your hometown?

About the large adatabase, I think if anybody gets a truly encompassing catalog it will matter, but nobody’s even close. I don’t know what the number is, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was 2X – somewhere around 30 million. Maybe if the database can incorporate YouTube it can get close.

“Discovery – yawn” – *guffaw*

But actually, I think that “discovery” is one of the big things people pay for when they get an on-demand service. Unless I’m opening the app with something specific in mind, my first stop is MOG’s “editor’s picks”, Rdio’s “Heavy Rotation”, or the Pitchfork app in Spotify. That’s not about finding new music, it’s about avoiding a lot of clicking around. These discovery features are solving a problem with information architecture.

But Iovine thinks the real problem is that nobody identifies with on demand services. He thinks people see on demand services as techie gibberish rather than things to love. He thinks there should be people with tatoos or patches for the on demand service. I personally think this might be true! But if so, it’s not the same kind of app as Spotify etc. It’s more like a members-only fan club where the operators of the fan club also own the content.