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Scour Acquired, Relaunching
Eric Sun writes: "Just got an e-mail from Scour that talks about how it has recently been acquired by CenterSpan Communications Corp. It tells you to either register for the new Scour Exchange beta testing program or to unsubscribe."
Someone provides something.
They want you to register for that service.
Big deal!
It's not news.
It's about as newsworthy as saying that Sears want you to give them your details before they'll send you a catalog.
Oh wait.
They do already.
So what?
Now maybe if Sears stopped providing their service that might be interesting.
But this, this is of no significance.
The trouble with dot-com startups is the very thing which they aspire to - going public - is the very thing which enables them to get taken over by larger, more established players in the market. And even if this isn't possible, when you're talking about the legal minefield that digital content has become, the threat of multi-million dollar lawsuits can succeed in scaring companies into giving up control a la Napster. My prediction is that over the next few years we'll see all of the for-profit digital content services get absorbed into the mainstream, being taken over by RIAA and MPAA member companies just to survive.
So it looks like this will leave us with the not-for-profit, decentralised services like Gnutella, which despite its flaws is less vulnerable to corporate bullying than services like Napster and even its open variants, all of which require a central point. Sure, you'll still be able to get your latest Brittany Spears MP3s over Napster or Scour, but it sure as hell won't be for free, and it's even less likely to be anonymous.
Actually, there's one way these companies might like to operate. Instead of asking for cash they could instead ask for personal information. Chances are this kind of information would be worth far more to them in the long-term than some kind of micropayment - it would enable true targetted advertising, the holy grail of marketing departments across the corporate world. And most people would rather give this information than pay for a service...
So when Napster starts asking for demographic information, you know it's time to start looking for an alternative...
However, getting a single song on the spur of the moment was very easy with Napster. Since its demise (and I think it's a demise because I can hardly download anything from anyone now--and who knows why? It just fails. Plus it just hangs when I try to log in with anything over 2,000 songs shared. It used to handle 5,000+ no problem)...anyway, since its demise, I have checked a few others out. Audiogalaxy seems pretty low key. Aimster...looked promising, but after waiting months, they only got AIM buddies to work, not ICQ, and hardly anyone is on their server. Gnutella was fun for a while, but I like to also BROWSE lists...not knowing what I want till I see it. iMesh was always a joke. MojoNation was a pain in the ass.
I don't know where I'm going with this exactly, but I just want to say that Napster had key elements working for it that some people aren't mentioning here...
Power in numbers. There is always this "hump" that a new company has to get over: ever try a service...it looks good, but no one was there...so you leave? Process repeats? Napster...you show up. Everyone is there. You stick around. More people come, see you and everyone there, they stick around...etc.
People talk about Napster being easy to use. Then others say that other solutions are easy to use too. However, I state that when Napster first started out, not only was it easy to use, but it was quite reliable. In otherwords, if a person was "online" and their songs were available...there was a very high chance that you'd be able to download that song no problem. I just don't see that with services nowadays that link up ftp sites, etc.
Rader