It’s an iWorld – You Just Live In It.

Since its introduction in 2001, more than 100 million iPods have been sold. In the process, Apple’s compact digital media player has revitalized that company’s fortunes, helped to reshape popular culture, and (along with iTunes) almost single-handedly destroyed the traditional-model recording industry. Sure, there are other compact players out there – some marginally successful, too – but the iPod is king, with over 70 percent share of the market. It’s an icon, an all-purpose synonym for any product with similar functionality: Much as one might say, “Do you have any Scotch Tape?” or “Pass me a Kleenex,” for most of the world “iPod” = “portable media player” and that’s just all there is to it.

If you add in the millions of iPhone owners out there (and, since iPhones incorporate all the functionality of iPods, you can) that means that a lot of people – a lot of potential customers – are in the iPod Army. Oh sure, just because 100 million iPods have been sold in the past eight years doesn’t mean that there are 100 million users/owners out there – people upgrade to newer models, older units break, and so on – but conservative estimates would tally the current total of domestic iPod/iPhone users as being in the high millions. Again, that’s a lot of potential customers. You’re not a phone store, you’re not an electronic gadget store – what do you care? One of the fastest growing segments in the contemporary MI world revolves around hardware and software designed for use in conjunction with the iPod/iPhone (from now on we’ll just say “iPod,” but you’ll know we’re talking about both the iPod and the iPhone since, for the purposes of this article, it’s the same difference. Cool?).

In addition to DJ Gear and Recording/Pro Audio hardware specifically generated to work with the iPod, if you add in the larger world of music making via iPods that is created through “Apps,” the number of products in this category becomes staggering. For those not in the know, “Apps” (applications) are programs that can be downloaded directly to an iPod Touch. The “App Store” has become wildly popular and, while most of the available programs have nothing to do with music – GPS Apps, Games, Tools, et cetera – some are all about turning the iPod into a music making device. If Apps are downloaded directly to the iPod and, thus, can’t be sold in a store or on a retail outlet’s Web site, why do you care? Well, you don’t. Directly. What matters is that certain of these Apps turn an MI product that might not be inherently compatible with an iPod into something that iPod owners who want to create music would want to purchase.

The potential synergy between items that can be sold in-store (or online) by MI retail outlets and the iPod is beyond huge and quite literally ever-changing – the only way to stay on top of it all is to really stay on top of it all. That means a lot of work, particularly if you’re not exceptionally “tech-savvy” or interested in that kind of thing, but even a cursory knowledge of the market may suggest some new approaches to selling and some new products to consider stocking that might, in turn, lead to heretofore unexpected profits.

This article truly only barely scratches the surface of the “iWorld” for MI dealers to navigate (and, hopefully, exploit) – and, given the sheer volume of product out there, it’s a pretty feeble scratch, at that. Read on, though, and see what some of the key players in the iPod game have to say about the specific products they’re fielding, their takes on iPod-related gear in the MI marketplace, and what they expect the future holds:

An App a Day
Andrew Smith, the founder and head of Studio Six Digital is operating smack dab in the middle of the iPhone revolution. “People have in their pockets a pretty powerful computer with high quality stereo audio in and out,” says Smith. “As developers continue to figure out how to adapt their applications into that platform, they’re bringing products and features to the masses in a way that people could never have dreamed of before.” Smith notes that the iPhone has “lowered the bar, it’s lowered the point of entry – more people have access to acoustic analysis functions than ever before and I think that’s a trend that’s just going to keep increasing.”

Studio Six digital currently has nine different audio applications available in the iTunes store. “Our most popular App is RTA,” says Smith “It’s a real time analyzer which does 1/3 octave band room analysis, and has as many advanced features as any hardware platform based RTA.” Some of RTA’s features include, “saving graph files, overlaying noise curves and cursor readout.” Smith is proud that his little $9.99 app “has more than the standard hardware RTA systems have.”

“They’re all my concept,” says Smith “I’ve been in the audio and acoustics analysis world for about ten years and previously, had built all the audio toolbox products for Terrasonde. When I got my first iPhone and started playing and writing programs for it I realized that almost every function that we had put into previous products would be able to be put into this iPhone.” After coming to this realization, Smith immediately began to write programs. “The first one I did was our speaker polarity tester,” says Smith. “From there I went on to build the SPL meter and then RTA and FFT.” Even with nine Apps in the iTunes store, Smith is still writing programs and even plans to introduce a hardware device. “We’ve got a lot more on the drawing board that we’re continuing to work on. We’re just in the final stages of developing a hardware product called iAudio interface.” Smith tells us that the product, which will be released in mid-September, will have a calibrated microphone, balanced line ins and outs and a headphone jack. “It’ll work with our acoustic analysis apps and actually any other iPhone apps including the recorders that are out there,” says Smith. “Musicians and engineers will have access to a high quality audio interface that’s not limited by the microphone in the iPhone.”

For Studio Six, the Apps have been a hit. “They sell really well,” says Smith. “We started doing iPhone Apps part-time last September and we went full time with them in January. The top seller in numbers is the SPL meter and then the biggest revenue generator is RTA which is a more expensive app but one that a lot of people are buying.” Smith tells us that up to this point, he’s never had spend a dime on advertising. “We’ve been expanding mostly virally — people have found us and told other people and so on. In the future, I’m not sure — it’s kind of a new world for us and I don’t really know what avenues to reach a wider market might be. At the moment, we’re reaching a pretty big market but there’s probably a larger market out there.”

Planet Waves is also tapping into that market and the company currently has two applications available and several more in development. “In December of last year we decided to look into porting the Chordmaster which was a handheld computer over to the iPhone. We were fortunate enough to find some good developers and launched the app sometime in March,” says Jim D’Addario of Planet Waves. With over 7,800 chords, D’Addario notes that the Chordmaster “is the most extensive chord library ever assembled. Even though there were several other chord libraries available at the iTunes store, D’Addario says, “ours was so much better that it received quick recognition and shot up to number one in the music category for almost six weeks. It even hit number six over all for applications on the phone. We were selling as many as 4,500 a day.” At the time, D’Addario was working on a scale program that was initially set to launch on their website guitar.com. “We ported that over to the iPhone and called it scale wizard,” says D’Addario. “That’s done very well also. So we have these two apps that have been selling quite well.”

As a result of D’Addario’s success with its applications, they were contacted by Apple. “Prior to their World Wide Developers Conference [WWDC] when they were launching the operating system 3.0 for the phone, Apple wanted to know if we had anything in development that would use the features,” says D’Addario. “We started speaking with the Apple folks and came up with an idea for controlling MIDI instruments from the phone.” After contacting some of his friends at Line 6, D’Addario decided to push ahead with the project. The program by Planet Waves is called Rig Remote and it works in conjunction with a device produced by Line 6 known as the MIDI Mobilizer. “Our first effort is to control most of the Line 6 amplifiers, Pods and Variax guitars,” explains D’Addario. At the WWDC, we managed to control a Variax guitar and a Veta amplifier. Now we are developing the final product with Line 6 and we’ll branch out and offer the platform to any other MIDI instrument, synth or effects device manufacture.”

While some dealers and suppliers have been apprehensive of the application abilities of the iPhone, D’Addario thinks that it’ll improve the business. “You can’t stop change,” he remarks. “The iPhone and the Internet are paradigm shifts and will in no way eliminate the brick and mortar retailer and his ability to make a profit. Movie theaters feared that the VHS would put them out of business; it didn’t. They had to reinvent the paradigm. The industry evolved and the movie business did not go away, in fact, it went up,” explains D’Addario. “Over the last 15 years or so we have not grown the amount of music makers proportional to the population. As an industry, we have not done a good enough job. If we want to try to protect our old little business as we have, we’re going to limit that growth potential. Let’s try to figure out how to use the iPhone to give people cheaper and better tools, so they buy more instruments.” Rather than viewing the iPhone as a threat, Jim sees it as a means to broaden his market. “We used to sell a good quantity of hand held Chordmaster devices but nowhere near the quantity of $1.99 Apps that we sold in six months. It opens the market up to many more people and when you make things more available at a lower price you make it easier for more people to become music makers. They then become customers for guitars, strings and amplifiers – that’s stuff that’ll never be sold through the iPhone. If I can make more people play guitar, then I’m going to sell more strings,” explains D’Addario. “The guy’s gotta buy strings; he can’t pull strings out of his iPhone! He’s got to go to a store.”

When asked about the threat to hardware devices and brick and mortar retailers, Douglas Wright, president of Sonoma Wireworks, is quick to respond and his take differs somewhat from D’Addario’s: “We also make a desktop application which we offer as both a direct download and is distributed in a box to dealers worldwide. I would say that the threat was there before the iPhone came. The threat being that people are going to stop driving to the store to take a dusty box off the shelf when they can go to the Internet, download the demo, try out the software and decide to buy it without ever setting foot in a store.”

“If you compare the iPhone to the computer that I first had when I was in 5th or 6th grade, it’s a super computer in your pocket,” says Wright. “I don’t see it slowing down. Moore’s Law says it will double in two years and I see it doing exactly that. They’ve already doubled the RAM, so the iPhone3GS with 256 Meg on board makes App development much easier and more powerful. 32 gigs – that’s enough space to record an entire album in 24 tracks!”

Wright tells MMR that his “primary product is FourTrack. It’s exactly like it sounds: a four-track recorder on the iPhone. We’ve continued to add features since its original release back in November and I’m about to do an update that includes master effects and mix down, plus song title and track naming for the WIFI sync.”

The co-developers of FourTrack is a company called Retronyms. “They just released a new App, that’s the first member of our Global Audio Product Integration Program,” says Wright. “The idea is to get all these little audio Apps on the phone talking to each other so you’ll be able to do more interesting things and be able to bring loops or audio from other applications into FourTrack.” In addition to working on his flagship product, Wright continues to develop new ones. “Today we submitted an app to the app store, InstantDrummer: Part Breaker. Basically we took the loop content that we create and sell for the desktop in Riffworks and we built an iPhone app that plays tempo adjustable sliced recordings of drum loops and gives you quick browsing by song part — verse, chorus, bridge, lead ins, endings, etc. It automatically plays fills, lets you adjust the tempo by tapping or dialing in the tempo and lets you sequence a song and then WIFI sync the completed sequence,” says Wright who hopes to integrate the new app with FourTrack in an upcoming update.

Hey Mr. DJ, Put a Record(?) On…
Alesis, Numark and ION Audio have a ton of experience with iPod related products. Alesis fields eight different iPod-integrated mixers, recorders and speaker systems, Numark has targeted DJs with seven different iPod products and their consumer audio arm, Ion Audio features six different products. As the guys at Alesis pointed out, just about every musician on the planet has an iPod. “We’ve created that link, so musicians can take their iPod and connect it directly to their source of music and either record or playback directly from their iPod,” says Kurt Heiden, Marketing Communications manager at Alesis.

“The implementation of an iPod from the Numark perspective is to make it easier for the DJ,” says Chris Roman, Numark’s Product Development manager. “Somebody might walk up to you with an iPod and say, ‘Can you play my song off my iPod?’ You just plug the iPod right into the dock on your mixer and play it back.”

“The recording capabilities on the Alesis side are designed to take advantage of software that’s inside the iPod itself,” says Roman. “When you plug it in you can record your sets directly to the iPod and then go listen to them later on.”

“I think it was a natural progression,” says Heiden. “It was very easy for our company to look at an iPod and say, ‘Hey, iPod looks like a really good thing. Let’s go talk to Apple.’” Talking to Apple inevitably involves a lot of R&D. “It’s not like you can plug it in, flip a switch and it just works,” says Roman. “There’s a lot of engineering that goes forth within our walls to insure proper compatibility. If you’re not a company that does R&D like we do, then iPod integration is just not going to work. It’s an ongoing, working relationship. Hopefully in the future we’ll be able to do bigger, better, greater things.”

Heiden points out that Apple is not their only partner in this endeavor. “iProRecorder for the ProTrack is a perfect example of partnering with a company, explains Heiden. “BIAS, Inc. is well known and respected throughout the MI industry, so they were a logical partner to work with to make sure that the ProTrack had a professional grade recording software that would work with our hardware. We create complete solutions for the customer. If there’s an application out there that makes sense, why reinvent it?”

In addition to partnering with other companies, Numark and ION Audio have had a couple of homegrown software solutions. “The EZ Vinyl Converter software, was created by our brand MixMeister. It’s a one step solution for getting vinyl onto an iTunes collection and your iPod,” says Heiden.

While Alesis / Numark / ION Audio won’t divulge precise numbers, they do say iPod related product sales have been very good. “They do very well. As a company with four separate hardware brands, we have several different distribution channels. Especially with iPod related products, every MI retailer on the planet should be selling Alesis and Numark products,” says Heiden. “The ION products are sold through mass merchandise retailers like Costco, Best Buy, Target, and Wal-Mart.”

Numark/Alesis/Akai/ION Audio intend to broaden their market through innovation. “We look for ways to innovate based on what’s available to us. We look at ways our customers use their iPods and what kind of people are using iPods. We think they’re very successful tools for both the consumer and for the DJ. “Technology just keeps on growing and growing and hopefully the innovation will continue as well.”

Jason Davies, the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Bias Inc. tells MMR that the iPod and iPhone “offer a lot of users a whole new platform for both gathering and developing audio content. We’re augmenting what used to be confined to the desktop in terms of the power of being able acquire and develop content,” explains Davies. “Its really a liberating thing, users are able to take a very small, portable device like an iPod or iPod touch and are actually able to get work done. In the past, people would need to buy dedicated hardware devices to do portable field recording. Now, you can simply use an iPod or iPhone and you can acquire high quality audio. Plus, you have the advantage of software interfaces that can be updated as new things develop.”

Davies is excited about the iPro Recorder App for iPhones and iPods. “The application actually interfaces directly with our Mac audio editors, Peak Express Peak Le and Peak Pro,” says Davies. All of these versions of Peak support direct WIFI file transfers from the iPro Recorder. Users can use our recorder in the field to record whatever sounds they choose and then send them via WIFI directly into our audio editor.”

The iPro Recorder and was originally developed by Steve Berkley, the company’s president and CEO. “Steve was the genesis for much of the initial concept for the product,” says Davies. “We wanted to make sure that it was professional in terms of its feature set, so we looked at various hardware devices that were out there and we modeled it after some of those hardware recorders.” When asked about their relationship with Alesis, Davies tells us that Bias “got an early version of their product and were able to confirm compatibility ahead of its release. We have a good co-marketing relationship in that we’ve insured that both our products work well together.”

As of the writing of this article, the iPro Recorder held the Number 5 spot on the iTune store’s ranking of recording applications. “It’s doing very well,” says Davies. “It’s consistently been in the top ten to twenty. We’ve slipped a little bit on occasion, but never below 50.” Bias has found that most people will start out using Apple’s voice memo recorder before migrating to the iPro App. I think they realize very quickly that there are a lot of features that they wish they had. I think it’s going to be a real asset to people that want to become more portable with their efforts,” says Davies. “More and more people are going to be able to do more portably and then integrate whatever they’ve done at their desktop or portable computers.”

Reaching the Larger Market
“The iPod seems to be setting us on our ear a little bit,” says Lester Batts, product manager of ProCo sound. “In the MI industry it’s sort of setting the pace. Even in the pro market, which is what we deal with, a lot of pros are using iPods in their daily endeavor to do their jobs and I think that that’s what we’re seeing as the biggest change.” ProCo has recently introduced a professional interface for sound systems to interact with line level devices such as iPods. “We obviously bundled that with the iPod because they are so popular and obviously gaining in popularity,” says Batts. “We figured out how those devices work best coming off the headphone outputs and we created a professional interface for it.”

ProCo came up with the concept through its dealer network. “When we have people ask us how to interface things, we either present them with a solution we already have or we design a new solution,” explains Batts. We had dealers that were asking for some sort of decent interface for these devices and so we put our engineering team together and this is what we came up with.” Batts says that although the product is a decent seller, “there is still a lot of misinformation in the market. Typically the way I sell a product is to have someone use it to understand what we’re doing for them,” says Batts. “They’re not the majority of our sales by any means, but they’ve been a pretty steady seller since we’ve created them. Right now, they’re being sold through our dealer network both nationally and internationally,” says Batts. ProCo’s dealer network “consists of many different facets from retail to mail order and internet sales.” One of Batts major goals is to “increase sales through education and word of mouth.” Although ProCo doesn’t spend a lot of time or money on advertising, Batts notes that the company relies “pretty heavily on our rep and dealer network.”

When asked about the changes that the iPod and iPhone will bring to the MI industry, Batts is quick to answer. “I think it’s going to do two things: Number one, these devices are going to allow people to transport a lot of information with them; Number two, I think you’re going to see a lot of other sidebar things, such as automation, especially with some of the products that we build. We’re looking at automation software with those devices so that through Bluetooth or WIFI, users can access automation into other systems and integrate them seamlessly.” For Batts, the future is where the action is. “It’ll be interesting to see where it goes from here.”

When Jim Dunlop, the owner and founder of Dunlop Manufacturing first recognized that, “new applications for the iPod/iPhone are introduced to the market on a consistent basis,” he decided to get in on the action. “Many are musician-focused, such as guitar tuners, music identification, music making, and even turning your iPod/iPhone into a musical instrument,” says Dunlop. “The iPod/iPhone platform has created a portable and convenient way for musicians to listen, transport, store, record, and learn music and has become an indispensable tool for working musicians world-wide,” says Dunlop. “Because of this, the MI industry has reacted by creating musician-specific products to enhance their experience with them.

The D65 was designed by Dunlop Manufacturing to provide a flexible way for guitarists and other musicians to hold their iPhone and iPod touch. The unique feature of the D65 is its ability to attach to the front of your guitar and display lyrics, chords, or music in the ideal position,” explains Dunlop. One of the unusual features of the D65 is that it’s not just aimed at the MI market. “The high-powered suction cup will hold firmly to any flat, clean, non-porous surface,” says Dunlop. “Use it on your coffee table, computer desk, airplane tray table, your car, or anywhere you need an extra hand.”

Jim explains that the product is available trough both “online and traditional retail outlets world-wide and is selling successfully due to the fact that many musicians own iPods/iPhones, and Dunlop is a trusted brand name.” Dunlop also explained that while his company is “mostly focused on the guitar/bass market and the band/orchestral market with the Herco line, the D65 is the musical accessory that will allow us to expand into even more genres and types of players.” With the D65 Jim is looking to expand his accessory market, by merchandising the product in such a way that it will attract just about anyone with an iPhone or iPod. “This will allow us to expand out of the MI market with several non music-related applications that can help everyone enhance their experience with their iPod/iPhone,” says Jim. “For example, the D65 can hold the iPhone or iPod while driving as it plays music or displays GPS mapping or attach it to a coffee table or airplane tray to watch a video,” says Dunlop. “As the technology advances, it will bring with it even more musical tools for musicians and users which, will only be limited by the amount of new applications and hardware introduced.”

“We’re all iPod users,” says Mark Wilder of Samson Technologies. “They’re ubiquitous. They offer a lot of versatility for musicians. Our products tend to be PA oriented products and it made a lot of sense to add iPod compatibility. It’s like putting an RCA adaptor on a mixer when you want to use a CD player,” explains Wilder. It just makes sense – It’s what everybody’s doing, it’s what everybody’s using, so it’s just something you can’t really avoid.” Wilder doesn’t necessarily think that the iPod has changed the MI industry. Instead Wilder tells us that “it’s added a new dimension to our R&D and marketing thinking.”

So how much has it changed the R&D process? “Quite a bit,” says Wilder. “You’ve got to work with Apple to be an official user with their made-for-iPod and made-for-iPhone programs. It adds a whole other layer of basic back and forth and their programs are pretty rigorous in terms of testing.” Although Samson hasn’t yet developed products that are aimed at the application-bearing iPhone and iPod touch, Wilder is excited about the future. “We were really thinking of it as a music storage and playback device and it’s kind of evolved since these products were first in development,” says Wilder. “The iPhone thing is a whole different deal because of the things that you can develop from a software standpoint. And certainly you can do that for the iPod Touch as well. I think that the potential is very high for products that make life easier for musicians.”

Wilder tells MMR that their iPod and iPhone related products fall into one of two different categories. The first is their expedition series of portable PA systems with iPod docks built in and the second is a line of USB speaker systems called the studio dock. “They sell well,” says Wilder. “We’re very pleased with both the PA and the studio monitor business that we’re doing right now. I think that there is still a lack of awareness on a lot of peoples part about them — it’s kind of weird because, pretty much every musician has one but maybe they’re not thinking of ways to integrate the iPod into their music making life beyond a music player,” explains Wilder. “I think that our job on the manufactures side is to make the consumer more aware that these products are out there and that they simplify their life in some way. The future is very bright for these products,” says Wilder. These products are here to stay.”

“The MIDI mobilizer is the first MIDI interface for the iPhone and iPod touch,” say Marcus Ryle of Line 6. “It enables you to use your iPhone to communicate with potentially any of the millions of MIDI devices that have been produced since 1983. A musician can show up at a gig with a hired back line of Line 6 or any MIDI gear and have all of their sounds stored in their iPhone,” explains Ryle. “Instead of having to haul their own amps out to a gig, they can just load their sounds into the amps and guitar that are available and they’re ready to play.”

Ryle explains that the development of the MIDI Mobilizer began when “Apple announced the possibility of 3rd parties being able to develop hardware peripherals with their iPhone OS 3.0.” At the time, several companies including Line 6 and Planet Waves started thinking about what might be possible in the music industry. “Planet Waves was already doing some applications and together we were discussing what might be possible with some hardware,” says Ryle. “We realized that the iPhone would be an extremely portable device with which you could store your own sounds and edit parameters for all your Line 6 gear.” Although the product is still in development, Ryle is excited about the possibilities. “Already it’s proven to be very valuable for musicians,” says Ryle. “Much like computers have had a dramatic impact on music creation and music products, I think the iPhone is going to be able to have a similar impact for portable music applications.”

“I think Apple has become a market leader because they are concerned about every aspect of their products and the customer experience,” says Ryle. “That does mean that there’s going to be more constraints than with an open architecture where everyone can do whatever they want but the great benefit is the fact that customers genuinely have a great experience with Apple products. I respect the fact that Apple has tight controls over what they’ll allow to be implemented and how they expect people to implement it because that’s really what guarantees that the customer going to be able to have a great experience with the end result.”

“The iPod, and the iPhone have always had the ability to record top notch audio,” says Skipper Wise, the president and founder of Blue Microphones. “However, Mikey is the first professional stereo microphone that can be hooked up to the iPod. We are the Rolex of microphones and when you take that knowledge and trickle it down to the consumer side your bringing a vast amount of knowledge to table. That’s something you just can’t acquire,” says Wise. “Microphones are a timeless commodity its not as if it’s going to’ become trendy and go away. You can’t plug a USB connector into your larynx so it’s something that’s always going to be around.”

“Back in 1995, a half million bucks for a recording studio was considered to be a mid-fi room. Today GarageBand [music creating/editing software] is free with your iMac and features probably 90 percent of what that $500K studio was back in the ’90s,” says Wise. Today with over 9 million artists on MySpace, the market has changed and Blue is changing with it. “We realized that we were speaking to a whole different generation,” says Wise. Just as we came up with products that were revolutionary back then, we’re doing the same thing for consumers and for people who are recording on their own in their home or on the road.”

Brian Bigget, the chief technology officer at Blue is excited about what he calls the “recording revolution.” “One of the reasons we’re so excited about the Mikey is that it’s legitimately a professional recording tool that’s also simple enough to be a great consumer product and Apple totally gets that about us.” Blue’s relationship with Apple began about four years ago when Garage band was starting to catch on. “We went to work and developed the snowball which has been a huge hit,” says Wise. There’s no direct contract, saying we’re going to guarantee you this or that. But, if you go into the Apple online store or even if you walk into an Apple retail store, Blue has eight products, which is quite a bit.”

“Its exciting for us because we have products that range from about $60 to about $2,000 all represented by the same brand, and the reason that they’ve done that with us is that we’ve been a good partner in terms of developing products that fit with what the Apple user wants,” says Bigget.

“We wanted to facilitate and be the creator of the hardware that supports the revolution of making high quality recording accessible to all,” says Bigget. “Ten years ago digital photography was not relevant to many people, the technology was there, but it wasn’t accessible. Audio has been the exact same thing since recording was created. Today, anybody can create a Web site or take a digital image and edit it in Photoshop – we want to do the same thing for audio.” Although Blue is working on the hardware side of the recording “revolution,” Bigget is excited about the possibilities that applications are starting to provide. “I think what you are already beginning to see, is a lot of really great helper apps. You’re going to see a pretty big revolution in terms of how easy it is to do these things, and therefore, how often people are doing them.”

“We actually have videos on our Web site that show how to do this,” says Wise. “With an iPhone, a Mikey and a five dollar App from the iStore, you can literally cut a demo track in about two hours and the quality is actually better than what most people could do with a reel-to-reel recorder ten or twenty years ago.”

Bigget agrees wholeheartedly. “If you can provide people with something that’s fun and easy, something they can just plug in, hit a button and instantly be doing high quality audio recording, then I believe that that can become a much more significant part of a lot of peoples lives.”