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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 $57 million stockholder cash payout. They would rather sell the company, but if there is no buyer then they would probably have to liquidate the company. Liquid Audio indeed. There have been other Slashdot stories on this topic, but this could be the last one."
I'd rather see it sold/iquidated than crash and burn. Good go though, in what is rapdily moving out a niche market, it's good to see companies actually present themselves as viable corporate entities, even if they couldn't take on the big boys :(
But then, maybe AssetsandHardCurrencyAudio would have been a better name. Seriously, this is sort of sad.
You are not the customer.
*smirk*
TANSTAAFI: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free iPod.
Apparently they haven't realized that we can find any music on the net...
There are so many streaming servers around that you can prolly find anything you wanna listen to.
More important, maybe consumers aren't ready to download music from the net. I mean, what percentage of people browsing will prefer to buy music from a company, then either listen to it online (meaning you hafta TURN ON the comp to listen to it !) or burn it, thus taking the time to burn the track (ok, not a long time, but still...)
I'd rather go to the nearest diskstore & buy some CDs that will have a nice cover...
Tsuyoikoto ha taisetsu da ne, dakedo namida mo hitsuyousa (Strength is an important thing, but tears too are necessary)
Maybe they should have embraced more platforms than just Windows. Every time there has been a story on /. about Liquid Audio, many people bitch about linux or mac support. They should have listened, then they'd (theoretically) have a few more customers. Frankly, IMHO, if you are going to be an internet/internet based service company, you'd better support all internet platforms or you're just bound to fail (unless you are M$).
today is spelling optional day.
between mplayer and xmms, i dont think much people will miss liquid audio (i never heard of it before until today)
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
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.
I think something may have been wrong with the Liquid Core.
These guys Offices were right across the road from Napster's offices..... there's something very hostile about the internet music business.
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.
Would Liquid Audio be a good purchase for one of these here big '5' labels?
They are the ones who are using this stuff the most. I could see one of them buying it (or a puppet technology company owned by some company that all the labels have their fingers in) just to continue along the 'all your music are belong to us'.
This might just be a ploy to get the labels with to cough up some money by threatening to take away their favorite DRM technology.
Might work eh?
m
There have been other Slashdot stories on this topic...
... there are many like it, but this one is mine.
With apologies to Stanley Kubrick.
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.
Maybe what is killing Liquid Audio is poor management and outside investor influence.
Oh no, the people that OWN THE COMPANY are exerting their influence.
I don't know what you believe in, but I think the owners of a company should have COMPLETE control of a company, irrespective of them being "outside investors" or not.
... about liquidating Liquid Audio.
That is all.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
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.
1 ,0 0.asp
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,10550
All of which is a pity - a genuine Internet based electronic music (and content in general) distribution method that can raise revenues and other incentives for artists while making it cheap and affordable for people to obtain content is a wonderful thing. It can happen, it must happen: Distribution costs right now far out-strip revenues for artists (typically a few percentage points of the cover price of a CD will go to the creator) while prices continue to rise as the costs of bricks-and-mortar delivery methods rise above and beyond inflation.
Challenging the status quo - creating new networks that independent artists can use and which afford reasonable benefits for those who would otherwise have not the time to produce wonderful content - will not happen by itself. Resources need to be devoted, and unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Tell them that open, non-proprietry, content distribution are important to you - that you believe it is important for strong alternatives to the existing music distribution systems exist so that all voices are heard, not just those a small minority feel are the most profitable. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how locked up networks destroys all three. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on his or her policy on open distribution networks.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
This seems curious, given that Microsoft just bought 20 or so of Liquid's patents for "digital watermarking, content distribution, audio encoding, loss-less compression and transferring audio to digital playback devices". Maybe Liquid was just trying to raise cash, but where MS is involved one has to wonder if there's something else afoot. Maybe they told Liquid to sell or they'd stomp them. Maybe Liquid knows that their days are numbered once the beast gets into the business. Maybe Liquid feels that DRM is a lost cause and is getiin' while the getin's good. I've got a headache, so someone else can do the math, but this has to be more than a coincidence.
Sigs are bad for your health.
The need to be politically correct and to have a diverse, apartheid-like management team has trumped the business requirement to have competent managers who understand what their engineers are working on.
Huh? "Apartheid-like" & "Diverse" management? Two completely opposite-minded philosophys, which are you promoting?
Only when Asians are promoted into management, as Americans are, and can have their voices heard will most tech companies start to understand what they are doing and begin to turn a profit.
Again... huh? When did the failing of LiquidAudio become a "race" thing? Please correct me if I am reading your post wrong, but are you telling me that had "Asians" managed LiquidAudio, there would be no threat of bankruptcy? That all would be "good" in the world?
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.
I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven...
Another crippled proprietary format bites the dust!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
So tell me exactly why they needed to have a proprietary format/player in the first place? See, it is music, there is no need to PORT anything. There are verrrrrry widely accepted formats that work regardless of the OS (MP3). So do they release the stuff in a standard format so everyone can enjoy it? No. They monkey-fuck it so it requires their player, their choice of OS, their choice of browser, their choice of Digital Restriction Management.
So in my vocal opinion, they didn't try very hard at launching a usable music download site, they just tried to fuck their customers in a new way. It didn't work, so screw them.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Liquid audio was always a pain in the butt. Songs would be outside their "play dates" so after 6 months or whatever, your files would suddenly not play. Argh, they bit so hard. Death to Liquid Audio, thank you very much.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
Dear Recording Industry: feel free to implement this at anytime...
A music professor of mine said that he thought the music industry would improve if it went back to a "singles" market (ie: Don't put out a whole album of crap if you've only got one or two good songs). This is the way it was in the 1950s and 1960s. This makes perfect sense for downloadable music. I see two real problems with these a la carte tracks right now.
Number One: There is not an easy way to pay for something online that costs so little
Number Two: Traditionally, you have paid for a tangible product that you hold in your hands... a work of art, if you will.
I suggest the following to counteract this:
If the music industry truly want's to treat online music as a service, how about $0.10 - $0.50 a track. You don't get unlimited downloads (except maybe a way to resume a download that did not complete or something) At this price, who cares if you lose it? You can just download it again really cheap. It's probably not even worth most people's time to back it up to a CD, but it's certainly something they can do.
Now what about the micro-payment problem? It's simple: pre-paid music cards. They work for telephone service quite successfully in the US and for cell phones overseas. Why not sell a $10 card at the local convenience store (or even at something like Tower Records to start with) that works like a phone card and allows you to download whatever music you want! Maybe you get even more "download credits" for buying more at one time (a la Dave & Busters game cards... the more money you put on at one time, the more credits you recieve) Special incentives can be offered to frequent downloaders, etc.
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.
Simple, easy-to-implement solution: your money buys you a certain amount of time (six hours? 24 hours?) in which that file is available for you to download. A click-through legalese document says that you assume the risk of making sure your download worked, and backing up the file after it's been downloaded.
They give you six hours (or whatever) so even a modem user can retry once or twice if he's having temporary problems downloading (lousy connection, computer crashed part-way through, etc.). And they implement the permissions by storing a cookie on your computer with a session ID; the *server* stores the "time left in download window" information so that hacking the cookie won't do you any good. This also defeats people E-mailing the d/l link to their buddies or putting it up on a Web site (a really savvy person could E-mail the cookie along with the link URL, but this will stop 99.8% of the kiddiez who might try this).
I've seen a system like this work for delivering software across the 'Net: you pay and you get a temporary download link. Seems like it should work just fine for music as well.
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
"The Source will be with you... Always."
I'm sure that most people dont agree with you. Lossless compression is an exercise in futility. The way that music comes out of the studio is not of quality much greater than that of a CD player, as that is the distribution media. (unless you are one of those argumentative analog people) The quality of a CD is a fixed rate (44Khz in a defined frequency response range) So lets assume that you generally dont get better quailty than a CD. At the point at which your CD is played you suffer tremendous loss of sound quality. Unless you have a super hi-fi amplifier and speakers, you probabally can't hear the difference between a quality compressed audio file and an uncompressed one. Try if for yourself. Rip a WAV file and MP3 it to 192kbps. I challenge you to distinguish between them. Move the whole contraption to something like an ipod and I guarantee it. So in short, you can get this service when you create it. But dont try charging for it because your bandwidth will be outrageous and you wont find people to pay.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
There have been other Slashdot stories on this topic, but this could be the last one.
I'm pretty sure there will be another one. Oh, it depends if you are drawing a distinction between 'postings' and 'stories'.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
No Mac OS X version. Plus it was not digital music lover friendly, they started to come around though. Just give me a service like eMusic with a better library. Hell I'd even wait two months after new stuff comes out before they post it for downloading.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
They could make it so if you know the contents of the cookie, you can download more songs no problem until all the time is used up. This will stop people from copying the cookies to their friends machines because doing so would allow their friends to steal their downloading time.
Your professor was probably right. But I can't agree about your two "problems". Even including distribution costs, a CD costs about 20 cents to its producer, excluding the jewel case, fancy cover printing, etc. I see no good reason why music companies couldn't make plenty of cash selling "doubles" (remember, singles always had B sides) on mini-CDs with monochrome labels in paper envelopes for $2.00-3.00 each. Their margins would be only slightly lower than now...
No, the real problem is that consumers are willing to pay $18 for a product that has about $1.00 in per-unit cost: no sane government-imposed monopoly (c.f. copyright extensions, music licensing laws, attempts to make the folk music industry pay, etc.) would want to mess with a market like that (unless they were sufficiently not-evil).
Consult Dr Dan Streetmentioner's seminal work...
What you fail to realize is that you probably do not make up a very large section of the market at all. And while I'm sure that LiquidAudio would have absolutely loved to have you, WookieOnTheRun, as a customer, I honestly doubt that any company is going to fail or succeed based on whether or not you are a paying customer.
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
...or so I've heard. I read about it here on Slashdot, but I can't find the link. Some company in Canada is selling prepaid porn cards in convenience stores, for accessing porn websites. This could definately work for music.
As they say, the porn industry drives internet technology like nothing else!
damn, I'm in Karma hell.
How many of these will it take before it starts becoming funny?
I dont know for a fact, but that definitely sounds like something that could be solved with a proper EQ setting. I dont know how you connect your MP3s to your car, but if it is some high resistance analog adapter thing, that's the first thing to look at.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.