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Off-The-Shelf Online Music Stores

Posted by timothy on from the commoditization dept.

jpkunst writes "The Chicago Sun-Times and C|Net news.com report about a new product from Loudeye Digital Media Solutions and Microsoft: pre-fab online music stores for companies who want to join the digital music goldrush. I wonder when this bubble is going to burst."

12 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. what bubble? by silicongodcom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    when will what bubble burst? best i can remember is that apple's barely making any money at all off the actual music sales, let alone all the companies following

    1. Re:what bubble? by FooAtWFU · · Score: 5, Insightful

      that's the point. Best I can remember is that most of the dot-coms weren't really making ANY money off anything.

      --
      The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
    2. Re:what bubble? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, but Apple has made money off the 4 million iPod's they've sold. It's like giving away condiments with your burger and fries - if you don't offer them, people may go somewhere else.

    3. Re:what bubble? by sagarsanghani · · Score: 5, Insightful

      True, Apple makes about 5 cents a song from itunes. So even selling 25million songs is not a lot of money. However- iTunes is the big trojan horse for selling iPods. And that is why Apple has had its best year -EVER!

  2. Burst... by swordboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It'll burst when someone creates a non-RIAA internet radio station / distribution hub. Unsigned artists submit their music to the site, a group of public moderators give the music good/bad karma and the good stuff gets streamed to millions of PCs. Users can download the stuff that they like with a simple click and yet another simple click burns it to CD or moves it to the player.

    --

    Life is the leading cause of death in America.
    1. Re:Burst... by wo1verin3 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Great until some troll mods up Celine Dion and Bryan Adams... :(

    2. Re:Burst... by LetterJ · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is like saying that there aren't any painters producing any good paintings. Just because you're trying to buy paintings at garage sales and WalMart doesn't mean that no one is painting great art, just that those places don't have any decent art.

      In almost any style, there are innovative, original musicians making music. For instance, one of my favorite styles is acoustic/roots rock. PasteMusic has a bunch of free MP3s and an Internet <a href="http://www.pastemusic.com/radio/">radio station</a> of their music. In the last 3 months, I've found several artists through them and bought 8 new CD's. Out of those 8, I'd only heard of 1 of the artists before hearing them through Paste. These are not the artists that your local gas station has at the checkout or carried by Target, WalMart or BestBuy. They're also not ultra-rare imports or obscure techno. It's straightforward music, made domestically (for me in the US) that just happens to not be distributed as widely as the popular stuff.

      I haven't bought a CD in the top 40 (or top anything measurable) in several years, but I do buy CD's regularly. Just get off the damn music freeway and see the rest of the music countryside.

      --

      The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
  3. Bubble-Bursting.... by Tsali · · Score: 5, Funny

    "I wonder when this bubble is going to burst."

    I'm predicting 2004, second quarter.

    Of course, I'm a software developer, so I don't know squat.

    --
    This space for rent.
  4. Yeah, reminds me of the good old days. by aclarke · · Score: 5, Interesting
    At the company I used to work for we built a prefab online CD sales store in 1999. I think our client got around 60 clients running the site before they went belly up. It was a fun project - all the sites were run off a single data/code base with a syndicated industry information populating templates so each site had the same content but looked completely different.

    But back to business ideas: it seems the first wave was taking an existing idea (music stores) and putting "internet" in front of it. Now the idea is taking an existing "internet" idea (online music stores) and making it "digital" (digital online music store).

    Go figure.

    --

    www.clarke.ca
  5. The bubble will burst by An+Onerous+Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    When Wal-Mart decided to open their own online music service, I started getting skittish. Now I'm positive the whole thing will collapse when any of the following entities announce the creation of their own online music store:

    * K-Mart
    * Home Depot
    * The Municipal Government of Topeka, Kansas
    * Richard Stallman
    * The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
    * Satan
    * Hormel Foods
    * Gary Coleman
    * Rick and Linda's Bait Shop and Outboard Motor Repair (Jump of I-75 at exit 215B, then head north seven miles to the lake. Can't miss it.)

    If you see any of these, it's time to sell short.

    --

    You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!

  6. Re:Why would anyone want to pay for music? by AKnightCowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful
    amen! why pay for gas either? the prices are heinous! just drive off after pumping. And what about food? Why dont we just get it for free by leaving before they give the check? What has this world come to? what has happened to our god given right to free stuff that others work hard to make?

    Another person confusing copyright infringement and theft. *sigh*. If I take your gas and don't pay for it, you don't have the gas to sell to another customer. If I create gas out of thin air that is completely identical to your gas for my own use, you still have your gas to sell and nobody is missing anything. Sharing is GOOD. For Pete's sake, the only people that are against sharing are fscked up RIAA lapdogs who must've been the ones running home to mommy when other kids asked to play with their toys. Selfish pricks.

  7. Re:Remember Netscape? by Unoti · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yeah, but Microsoft plays a pretty mean game of catch-up.

    Witness: the internet. Back in the day, Microsoft was promoting MSN as a non-internet alternative. TCP/IP wasn't even in Windows. Once they saw that the networking was going IP, they played catch-up pretty well.

    Witness: Internet Explorer. Netscape was dominating the browser market for a long time. When Internet Explorer came out, it was terrible technologically. Microsoft was playing catch-up. It seemed ridiculous for Microsoft, this upstart in the internet world, to try to take on Netscape. Netscape had a huge lead.