Best Buy has acquired Napster for almost twice it's current share price, no doubt Best Buy was sick of losing more and more CD sales and decided to join the digital music revolution. Of course we all know this isn't really Napster, it's just the brand slapped on a music store built by Roxio, unfortunately this means it's not iTunes and hasn't been a huge player in the market.
(we all know that the real Napster lives on through imeem)
Meanwhile myspace music is all talk about its 'new' features, all of which we've seen elsewhere. It's kind of a shame because there are great companies out there who are going to find themselves competing with the behemoth that is myspace. For the sake of good music I hope that the problems with EMI and indie artists hobble the site sufficiently that it doesn't wipe out the competition.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Thursday, September 4, 2008
'Told You So'
You know I always said that new fangled muxtape site wasn't going to work, what with it being nothing more than a minimalist clone of websites which had important things linke business plans.
I'm amazed at how many people are acting suprised or outraged at the supposeds RIAA shutdown of the site. Well as you can guess I'm not one of them and I could expend all sorts of energy explaining this, and point out that the RIAA probably only had a small part in this shutdown and that lack of cash and revenue was more important.
I think Justin Oulette secretly wants to be Shawn Fanning. Sorry, Justin you're not nearly cute enough to compete.
Meanwhile people seem to be missing a potentially bigger news story, In Europe a court has decided that Buma, the dutch performing rights society cannot supply Europe wide licensing agreements. This means that sites like eMusic and Beatport suddenly find that they're now illegally selling music in countries other than the Netherlands, since they were foolish enough to sign Pan-European licensing agreements with Buma. Now these music retailers have to go back and negotiate with PRS (UK), SEESAC (France) and many more agencies who they have now pissed off by trying to cut them out of their deals.
Elsewhere in the social music morass Techcrunch pointed out that even though CBS pushed out press releases praising the last.fm redesign it hasn't helped them gain any market share and they're still a distant second to imeem.
But one wonders if imeem can remain dominant in the face of myspace music which we are assured is coming soon. I hope myspace can sort out some way to pay those indie artists, otherwise they might just decide to start sending people to their last.fm and imeem pages - both companies have had programs in place to pay artists, regardless of whether they're attached to a massive label or a bedroom producer.
here's hoping for a massive myspace music fail
I'm amazed at how many people are acting suprised or outraged at the supposeds RIAA shutdown of the site. Well as you can guess I'm not one of them and I could expend all sorts of energy explaining this, and point out that the RIAA probably only had a small part in this shutdown and that lack of cash and revenue was more important.
I think Justin Oulette secretly wants to be Shawn Fanning. Sorry, Justin you're not nearly cute enough to compete.
Meanwhile people seem to be missing a potentially bigger news story, In Europe a court has decided that Buma, the dutch performing rights society cannot supply Europe wide licensing agreements. This means that sites like eMusic and Beatport suddenly find that they're now illegally selling music in countries other than the Netherlands, since they were foolish enough to sign Pan-European licensing agreements with Buma. Now these music retailers have to go back and negotiate with PRS (UK), SEESAC (France) and many more agencies who they have now pissed off by trying to cut them out of their deals.
Elsewhere in the social music morass Techcrunch pointed out that even though CBS pushed out press releases praising the last.fm redesign it hasn't helped them gain any market share and they're still a distant second to imeem.
But one wonders if imeem can remain dominant in the face of myspace music which we are assured is coming soon. I hope myspace can sort out some way to pay those indie artists, otherwise they might just decide to start sending people to their last.fm and imeem pages - both companies have had programs in place to pay artists, regardless of whether they're attached to a massive label or a bedroom producer.
here's hoping for a massive myspace music fail
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