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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."
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.
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 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...
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.