Right time, right place… wrong game?

Before there was iTunes there were a whole bunch of MP3 player apps to choose from for your PC or Mac.

I can't remember the name of the one I used, but I do remember spending lots of time trying to find a custom “skin” to change the look of the player on my desktop. I had a timber-looking one, then an old car radio style one. Of course, I also tried out a whole bunch of minimalist options too. It was fun.

A lot of people put a lot of time into creating those things, and they were really great. A few of them probably made a tidy profit selling the premium ones too. 

They were in the right place, at the right time, but I wonder, were they playing the right game?

While all those clever pixel wizards were busy trying to out-do each other with their new styles, they were so focused on the MP3 app game, they missed the music game. 

But Apple didn’t. 

While those guys were competing to win a decorating competition, Apple was busy working out how to make music better. How might music lovers find and organise the music they love in a post-CD world? How might they do this in a way that’s not expensive but still fair to the artists?

The answer of course was iTunes. 

When Apple introduced iTunes they changed music forever. Just about any song you wanted for 99 cents. You could fit 1000 of them on your new iPod too. By the way, Apple's MP3 app looked the best—and they gave that away for free. 

Apple won the decorating competition and they hit the jackpot too.

Obviously, some of those app designers weren't in it to change the world. They were probably happy enough to make something that looked good and share it. And good for them.

It's an interesting story because it highlights a common trap that any of us can fall into.

It’s so easy to get sucked into copying our competitors. If everyone else is digging in the same spot, we don't always stop to look at the map. We figure, that must be the right place. Right?

Maybe not.

Maybe there's a problem on the surface that's easy to see and easy to fix. So most people don't bother digging any further.

But what if you were the one, like Apple, to keep on digging? To keep on digging until you find the deeper cause of that surface problem? What if you dug deep enough to find something that was causing multiple problems at the surface? What if you were the only one who dug deep enough to truly understand what's going on?

Then, while all the others can jostle for attention as they shout about the 'effects' they see at the surface, you'd stand out as the one true expert who truly understands the 'cause' deeper down.

Then you don't need to shout for attention. Attention will come to you.

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Photo by Lucas van Oort on Unsplash