The time has come for new music products and experiences that cater to the mass market and that (for the non-tech-savvy majority) bring the home-music experience into the 21st century. In our latest report “Taking Digital Music To The Mainstream: The Music Product Features For The Living Room,” Forrester puts forward a vision of what we think is needed. 

We propose that the new mass-market music experience must be explicitly part of a new hardware experience that is contemporary but competitively priced. Our conceptual technology is a hard drive, mid-sized music hi-fi that has a detachable touch screen display and remote control. We argue that the new hardware must:

* Deliver a compelling experience even if not connected: It’s just too risky to assume that mainstream consumers will have the inclination or know-how to connect a music product to a home network, even if they have one.

* Include extensive music at point of purchase: This is, we think, the crucial element. Mainstream consumers don’t have the appetite for another format-replacement cycle, so we suggest the device should effectively replace their entire CD collection and add more, all for the cost of the device. (And yes, we know this is light years away from where current licensing values are.) And in case you didn’t notice, we just invented a new music-consumption paradigm here, and a new role for retail.

* Provide the tools for baby steps into the digital world: For those consumers who do connect, we propose a convenient range of digital discovery and acquisition applications to encourage consumers towards the digital arena.

* Leverage telcos: we want these devices to be affordable, but to really go mass market they probably need to be subsidized by a telco (e.g., a Sky Songs broadband package would include the device bundled with the router).

Of course, there are many other ways this challenge can be met, but met it must be. Unless the music industry enters the battle for the living room, it will soon lose it — and with it, the mainstream music consumer.

Mark Mulligan is a Vice President and Research Director at Forrester Research, where he serves Consumer Product Strategy professionals.