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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."
I'd rather see it sold/iquidated than crash and burn. Good go though, in what is rapdily moving out a niche market, it's good to see companies actually present themselves as viable corporate entities, even if they couldn't take on the big boys :(
Apparently they haven't realized that we can find any music on the net...
There are so many streaming servers around that you can prolly find anything you wanna listen to.
More important, maybe consumers aren't ready to download music from the net. I mean, what percentage of people browsing will prefer to buy music from a company, then either listen to it online (meaning you hafta TURN ON the comp to listen to it !) or burn it, thus taking the time to burn the track (ok, not a long time, but still...)
I'd rather go to the nearest diskstore & buy some CDs that will have a nice cover...
Tsuyoikoto ha taisetsu da ne, dakedo namida mo hitsuyousa (Strength is an important thing, but tears too are necessary)
Since the company will be dissolved, this precludes anyone stepping up to ensure that this music will be playable on future operating systems, such as the upcoming Microsoft Windows Goatsex Rights Management Edition.
The likelihood that these users will be left out in the cold without being able to use what they bought^W licensed in perpetuity is the kind of argument against DRM/Palladium/TCPA we should be pushing.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Liquid Audio sued two dissident shareholders, including MM Companies Inc., for allegedly violating federal securities laws in their efforts to block the online music company's planned merger with media distributor Alliance Entertainment Corp.
The merger died last month and two MM Companies executives now sit on Liquid Audio's board of directors.
Liquid Audio's suit against MM Companies has been dropped, Doig said.
Does that seem a little unethical to anyone else? Maybe what is killing Liquid Audio is poor management and outside investor influence.
While I think you're being a little harsh, I have agree with you on another level.
It seems to me that a lot of the new "Internet audio" companies that are endorsed by the major music industries have been overgoing a very slow and very painful evolution.
Phase 1: We've got music - but you can only listen via Windows and Internet Explorer, and you must be connected to the Internet for it to work.
Me: Fuck that - I'm an OS X geek.
Phase 2: All right, now we've got music you can download - but it only works on the original machine you bought it at, and you have to be connected to the Internet to make it work - and you have to be using Windows and Internet Explorer.
Me: Fuck that - have a Powerbook I like to put my music on, and I'm not always connected to the Internet.
Phase 3: How about this - you still need Windows and Internet Explorer, but we'll let you burn CD's - but you can't rip them to MP3.
Me: Fuck that - I've got an iPod, and I want to carry my music with me.
Next phase will probably be: All right, you can have portable music but only if you use a WMA file for it. And you have to pay a monthly subscription.
Me: Look, how about you offer each song I want for $1 to $2 each (depending on newness of the song, length, etc) at 64-320 bits MP3 encryption, and keep a record of what I've bought so I can downoad it whenever I want.
Them: But...you might let others listen to it! Oh, well, - I guess that online music sales don't work. We tried.
Me: Arrrrgggghhhh!
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Maybe they should have embraced more platforms than just Windows. Every time there has been a story on /. about Liquid Audio, many people bitch about linux or mac support. They should have listened, then they'd (theoretically) have a few more customers.
Like Loki, the games company, you mean? The unpleasant fact is that Slashbots make a lot of noise about free-as-in-speech but their behavior indicates that free-as-in-beer is all they really care about. If it cost more to port to Linux than can be made by paying customers, then it would only accelerate a company's demise.
Ah, you say, but if it was Open Source, it would outlive the company! Sure it would, but what kind of a business model is it when you actively encourage your users to withhold their support and circle like vultures waiting to devour the products you've invested your time and money in?
> Maybe they should have embraced more platforms /. about Liquid Audio, many people bitch
> than just Windows. Every time there has been a
> story on
> about linux or mac support.
not to derail your totally valid and warranted rant here (supporting all platforms really shouldn't be as difficult as most companies make it sound), but you can HARDLY attribute the failure of a company to what platforms it supports.
No matter what you would like to SEE happen, windows is by far the most used platform in the world. Remember the old saying, 'you can never lose by buying blue'? The same holds, for the most part, with windows. You can never go wrong by picking windows.
If a company does fail, it's going to be due to a flawed business model, a poor product, whatever.
But at this point in time, failing to support mac or linux is not going to be a driving point in a company failing.
I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven...
My only argument against that is the same one for Mac games: time.
I honestly believe that Loki fell, not because Linux geeks "don't want to buy software", but "don't want to buy 6-12 month old games". There's a huge difference. I have both a Win98 PC, a PowerMac, a PowerBook, and all 4 consoles (GC, Xbox, PS2, GBA).
Now, if I already have Max Payne for the PC, what's going to make me want to buy Max Payne for the Xbox - 6 months later? Or the Mac version - another 6 months after that?
Games are more of a "gimme now" effect - usually the first version of a game released for any console does the best. (Odds are, I'm willing to bet that the Xbox version of Dead to Rights will sell better than the PS2/GC versions, only because it preceeded the other two by 6 months or so).
So I'm afraid I can't accept your argument that Loki fell because "Slashdotters don't want to pay" - I've noticed that most Linux folks don't mind paying for things if they need to. So $50 for a game now, or $50 a year later for the same game that might or might not run on your favorite flavor of Linux (if you get it running at all - that was my biggest problem with Loki games - I could never get the Linux versions to run anyway because I'm not "elite" enough.
But that's just my opinion - there's a kernel of truth to your comment, but I think there are more factors than you were willing to look at.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
No. Wrong. Linux and Mac support counts for less than 10% of website traffic - in the UK, it counts for less than 1% of website traffic. I'd rather hunt the 99% of users who use Windows, not the 1% who use Apple or Linux, thanks.
Virgin Radio
Broadband. You can't listen to shit with 56K analog, and the vast majority of all Net users don't have anything coming even close to an uncapped, unlimited high speed pipe. I would have gladly paid for it when I had a job that had broadband. Hell, I used quite a bit of streaming audio when I worked (mainly launch.com), but as soon as I got home, fuck it. They were waaay too early. Something like this will fly in about 10 years when broadband is more ubiquitous then it is now.
as given. The suggestion was that instead of embracing *only* the majority market they could have *widened* their appeal by embracing the niche markets as well, thus giving them more customers.
You responded with the commercial failure of a company ( which, by the way, only sold physical media, not net media) that catered *ONLY* to *one* of the niche markets, thus having the *narrowist* customer range possible.
Not the same thing at all.
Let me ask you this, have fewer people adopted the use of Shockwave or RealPlayer since they have been made available for Linux, or, perhaps, *more*?
Which is still alive, Real, or Liquid?
KFG