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MTV Getting into Music Download Business
Pranjal writes "According to this article at Economic Times, MTV is getting into the music download business. MTV chief Tom Freston announced on Monday, the service would debut within the first half of next year. Looks like the online music download business is heating up."
I really do feel bad for the RIAA members (not the RIAA itself). They are stuck having to eventually face the fact that they are 80% of the way to extinction. Can anyone realy imagine a future 50 years down the road where anyone is interested in buying a piece of plastic with music on it?
Yes, storing it in a way that does not rot too fast or get deleted for video game space is valuable, but I see the future retailers of music being the clubs that host musicians. They should strike a deal with the performers that they host to sell the music via a Web site and via a kiosk at the show.
Here's one business model for that:
Club makes USB-fobs that contain the customer's name, credit info (or a key that they look up the credit info in their database with) and email address. The customer goes to a show and likes it, so they walk over to the kiosk and plug in their fob to order the "album" on the way out. The kiosk notes the purchase in the database and sends email to the customer with a link to download the music from the Web site.
Quick, easy, and here's the best part: you don't care about file-swappers because you get the customer at the exact point where they decide they like the music. You don't care if the 5 billion people who never come to your club swap this music around. What you care about is that your club (and the artist who gets a cut) made some extra money from a customer. You win, they win and the band wins.
But, I still feel bad for the labels who are doomed because they can't make a "star" anymore out of some semi-talented performer who they can stick on MTV. Or more to the point, they can make the star, but there's soon going to be no point in terms of selling CDs.
All errors in this comment are mine. Corrections are considered a derivative work, and punishable under copyright law.
I thought they only showed crappy shows like "Made" and "Road Rules". Since when has MTV been about music?
another .com bust in the making.
Threadkilling since 1992
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
MTV dropped the ball big time and they should have seen the writing on the wall as soon as Apple released iTMS. Besides, I spent some time watching MTV a couple weeks ago and all the music they were playing was "do me baby rap" and commercials. I remember when MTV first started out when they billed themselves as 24 hour commercial free music. Nah, MTV has lost this game. Apple is ideally situated to provide just this sort of music video service. They already have the infrastructure in place to deliver movie previews (and have had for some time), and have been interested in expanding the content available to folks who are interested in downloading music with album covers etc....
The other thing I would like access to with the music is lyrics, liner notes etc... My guess is that all of this is coming.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
There are a zillion places to download music in MP3 (or whatever) form, iTunes being legal to boot.
That niche is being served.
MTV didn't get to where it got by playing music, they got to where they are by playing MUSIC VIDEOS. So put all the videos (particularly the old school stuff) up for purchase as downloads and use a decent codec that doesn't require a spyware laced install on the client.
Damn, I should patent that.
We already have MP3s. Sell us MPGs of the music videos.
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Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer