The Challenge of Product Development . . . By Director Wayne Hall

February 28, 2007

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There are some major challenges confronting our industry, and one of the key issues that we have had to deal with here at SBA during the past few years has been that of how we respond to “player” technology. For instance, as demand grew for digital music management systems, we were faced with the questions of should we develop them ourselves, outsource the requirement to developers…. or perhaps implement a mix of both strategies? The expectation was that the digital world was going to be so much better – music players and music system solutions would be more accountable, reliable and flexible …. and, of course, less expensive.

The results haven’t quite delivered to this expectation – not yet, anyhow. The digital revolution has brought with it it’s own series of challenges within our industry, including, in no order of priority, a new breed of developers who don’t have market knowledge; ever changing digital components and “standards” with little thought to ensuring product is “backward compatible”; a lack of agreement on a format standard; too little consultation between content providers, operators and developers; and our old favourite, licensing issues.

The result has been a lot of “false starts”, wasted resources and disappointment at all levels of our industry. Our experience, for what it’s worth, is that most of the issues have occurred because developers/manufacturers were allowed to get away with not sitting down and speaking with the intended users of the product. Consequently features were not prioritised and delivered to a plan. I am yet to speak with a developer who can run off the six most important features of their product as determined by discussions with the market. Scary stuff, really.

A lot of us - content providers, operators, customers – allowed this to happen. We went through a period of almost blind faith on product. We were effectively our own worst enemies as we handed over product responsibility to inexperienced people while hoping products would work to our satisfaction (and which didn’t in most cases).

The point of all this? Well, primarily that there are lessons to be learned – and it’s not all doom and gloom. There is emerging -  finally - a generation of developers/manufactures who “get” what is required for the business music industry and who are building to market needs. Furthermore, we have found that being more ruthless (for want of a better word) with developers about our requirements is the only way to go. No more “hoping” things will work out. Finally, we have come to the conclusion that it is more beneficial to focus on what we are great at doing (music programming), while leaving others to focus on product development and manufacturing.

Hopefully, this experience has relevance to your business and how you go about your implementing your strategy.

Finally, if you are developing or representing a business music product, and you would like to discuss content requirements, we’d be happy to discuss this with you. Our experience is that seamless content supply is a vital ingredient for a player’s success in the market – and the sooner you speak with the content supplier in the development cycle, the better.


Wayne Hall
Director

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