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Goodbye, Liquid Audio?
gosand writes "Yahoo is carrying the AP story that basically says that Liquid Audio's days are numbered. The board voted unanimously in favor of a $57 million stockholder cash payout. They would rather sell the company, but if there is no buyer then they would probably have to liquidate the company. Liquid Audio indeed. There have been other Slashdot stories on this topic, but this could be the last one."
...is what the parent says when converted to ASCII.
Charming.
From their web page:
"OUR SITE IS OPTIMIZED FOR INTERNET EXPLORE (sic) 4.X OR BETTER AND NETSCAPE 4.X OR BETTER"
Ignoring the AOL-ish use of capitalization and the misuse of the word 'optimized', I'm using Galeon 1.2.6, which I think is better than either one of those, but I still can't get into the site.
I guess their non-sighted customers aren't important either, since the above notice is provided as a gif.
Liquid Audio sold its intellectual property to Microsoft in September. If the company goes under, you'll see support for their format in a Windows Media Player Update or Plugin.
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http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,10550
And second, it pisses me off that a company's board can legally screw the company and pay itself a bonus out of the remaining cash just before they fsck it to death.
It's a corporation. The board--that being, the governing body elected by and composed of stockholders--acts as the "owner" of a corporation. Everyone else works for them, and the whole point of the corporation is to make them--the stockholders--a profit.
If a company isn't making money, the owners are able to do anything legal to cut their losses and get what they can from it.
Don't like the system? Think it's not fair? Figure out something better.
Liquid's strategy from the beginning was to enable customers to burn their own (standard, redbook audio) CDs of purchased music.
If you have any Liquid tracks you have not yet burned to CD, now would be a good time.
There have been issues with the service not working with all CDR drives. For those customers limited to on-system playback, the Liquid Player should be able to continue playing your (paid, non-expiring) content until some day in the future when OS incompatibilities prevent it from running.
If you substantially change your system, make sure to retain the passport.lqp file. This will NOT allow you to move CDR burn permissions to your new system, but should allow playback.
Chris Owens
San Carlos, CA
This guy knows it. I don't buy games just because I can play them on Linux. I buy games because I want them, and being able to play them on Linux is really nice, cuz I won't have to boot into that other operating system I keep around for gaming. But- I'm not gonna pay more money for a later game just so i can play it on Linux / Xbox / other system.
Go Blizzard's way with mac's: release a hybrid version and people just might pick it up.
Note: UK2K3 is one such game, I hear...which absolutely rocks. Go buy it.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
My parent company (AEC - I work for allmusic.com) was in talks to merge with Liquid Audio... purely for a cash infusion into the company, but the stockholders wouldn't let it happen (in exchange for AEC stock - which in the long run probably would've been better than this nominal cash payout). Just something you should know if you're interested.
Folks,
I worked at LA for a couple years (during the boom years through the IPO).
First of all, Liquid was fairly revolutionary - back in 97 (pre-broadband, cd writers were burning at 1x speed and fairly expensive) we were distributing compressed music for playback and cd creation.
It was sometimes difficult - Gerry Kearby, the CEO, was not always easy to work with and was always courting the music industry. He once said "Empower those in power," while also espousing an "empower the little guys" ideology. That conflict was frustrating - we had a chance to become the premier indie online record distributor but instead were constantly fighting with the majors to distribute their music.
LA was also a mix of antiquated and visionary. MP3 was added _after_ Dolby AC3 and AAC compression - again, siding with those in power while the populace went for the simple solution.
Complicated licensing, expensive ($20k+ servers), and other such issues slowed adoption. Plus, a purchased song was priced at $1 or more - basically the same price as a physical copy - without liner, art, etc. So you could pay more for less or you could napster it, which is what most people did.
It was a wild ride - I wish GK and crew had went further with enabling creation and distribution and less into property rights, but I enjoyed it. Not the mention the perks - jam sessions, Electric Barbarella 24x7, and busting webmoves with MC Hammer's webmaster! =)