Idolator
MySpace's digital-music joint venture is reportedly bringing Sony BMG and Warner Music Group aboard this week; the service, which will allegedly launch later this year, is expected to incorporate both paid downloads and ad-supported streaming. Or, as a nameless source breathlessly says, it'll "bring in all forms of [making money from digital music] and much more tightly integrate them." It should probably think about somehow integrating the hackers who will be gunning for a way to make the "paid" part of the service free as soon as it launches if it wants to really be all-encompassing. [NYP]
Comments
Summary: MySpace Music's milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.
MySpace is now The Man.
By placing themselves opposite the trend of new music slowly becoming free of all charge and by trying out dodgy tricks like offering free downloads via a text messaging scheme, they've now clearly demonstrated that they're thinking like the dinosaurs.
Pity, because they had the network, the contacts and the word-of-mouth credibility to try something really contrarian at this point, to lead the way for some really arse backwards approach to distributing music taking into account that charging for songs can't ever be a valid business model because it is impossible to control scarcity.
They have aligned themselves with something that I personally hope to see dead, but, more importantly, a kind of business practice that'll most likely not survive the internet, not unless they turn the internet into a dictatorship - I'd hate that, but I wouldn't discount it.
This could have been something new, exciting and progressive.
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