Slashdot Mirror
AOL Making Media Player, Music Store
An anonymous reader writes "BetaNews is reporting that AOL Music is ramping up its efforts to release a new Media Player independent of the AOL client software, with a long-term goal of building its own music store. The company plans to bring AMP outside its "walled garden.""
AOL's Media Player = AMP, and they want to win, right? So there you go, Winamp!
Don't get your hopes up just yet, the article is quick to mention that:
"Surprisingly, AMP is not based on AOL's Winamp platform, only utilizing Winamp's "Unagi" playback engine. Instead, AMP is built atop the company's Communicator XUL user interface framework. Communicator was first unveiled in beta form two years ago and eventually evolved into Fanfare."
However, AOL did say "its new Media Player is not a competing product and has different audience, as Winamp users are not likely AOL users."
Is this the knockout punch for Winamp? What did Netcraft say?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
ITunes . . .
ME TOO!
-Peter
I love the way they buy things like Netscape and Wimamp and then basically ignore them. This seems like a strange mix of Winamp, XUL and AOL native stuff.
Why not cut out the middle man and just mail you CDs with music on them?
Beep beep.
No.
I don't.
On the forefront of new technology and not just jumping on someone else's bandwagon.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Not surprising, but interesting as AOL already has several arrangements with Apple to allow AOL Music, AOL accounts, etc., interoperate with the iTunes Music Store:
Apple and America Online Announce Online Music Alliance
AOL Members Now Have Instant Access to Apple's iTunes Music Store
iTunes Music Store AOL account signin
..they will only sell extremely annoying music.
So is this going to be their replacement for WinAmp now that most of original developers have left.
R.I.P WinAmp
If I remember correctly, doesn't AOL own WinAmp?Could this be why they recently let go of most of the WinAmp progammers? So that they could take what they already have and turn it into their own with some extras thrown in?
Even though they write:
AOL says its new Media Player is not a competing product and has different audience, as Winamp users are not likely AOL users.
I really cant see why they shouldnt use winamp instead, and bless the aol users with a good player..
( I havent had any first hand experience with aol software, but the horror stories dont make me want to try it out...)
Whoever is making these decisions needs to be _fired_. Now.
"You've Got a cheap imitation of the iPod!"
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
Comment removed based on user account deletion
iTunes already has most of the market share, and AOL certainly isn't a very popular name among many computer users. People that use AOL will probably be semi-interested, but with AOL's trouble... that might not be very many people. Non-AOL users will likely choose iTunes over it, without much thought.
With a little luck, they might just break even.
You've Got DRM!
...promises of 1048 free hours of Yanni in my mailbox, encased in a tin, sent to me every other week.
SNACKS ARE AWESOME
AOL-Time-Warner owns a huge part of the music recording industry. The software is just a means to an end: To make money selling music.
Is it my imagination, or are there many many companies these days trying to be the one resource for everything in their field? I suppose technology companies do this especially, but to my mind there are a lot of places that are trying to be everything to everyone.
I suppose you can liken it to what many car companies are doing. They sell vehicles across all types and price ranges, even if it's not something they are good at. They do not leave even a tiny gap in their product offerings so that it's physically possible to buy their product even if it is inferior to a competitor's product for approximately the same price.
Join the Empire! http://www.empirereborn.net/
My parents have been on AOL since v3.0 and are finally upgrading to cable (I can't stand returning from my college T1 line to dial-up). The media player came around before AOL bought Winamp, so that explains why it's separate. I just am curious about AOL's overall strategy with it breaking up into 4 separate companies, phasing out broadband, discontinuing Winamp, making its own browser (to compete with its own Netscape I guess), and now trying to push a standalone media player when the market for them is already saturated with free programs. The only real advantage to AMP was that it could do the standard formats (wmv, mp3, avi, etc) and RealPlayer media as well.
Because every CD in the known universe has already had a free AOL account burned into it.
Besides, who the hell's crazy enough to employ a business model based on distributing lossless copies of non-DRM-hobbled music files on 650-megabyte removable media? :)
First, didn't they do something like buy nullsoft or at least winamp and kill it recently?
I wish, really, really wish they or someone would create a robust plugin enabled medial player for OS X. It would be nice to use one player instead of 3 just to listen to music from time to time.
So, in the finest tradition of AOL...
"ME TOO!!!1!"
Seriously, does anyone remember the days when AOL was actually a unique, innovative company as opposed to a punchline?
(blinks)
Um... AOL... music service...
Zzzzzzzzz.......
--- Ban humanity.
Are these the same walls that prevent the AOL marketing department from getting their filthy little hands on winamp?
Look what happened the last time someone slipped over the wall... *cough*Winamp 3*cough*.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
...more free coasters on the way!
Currently bidding on sig
The top selling track on this service will be titled "ME TOO!!!!1111!! LOLLOL!!!!!!!!1111"
I, for one, do want a better Internet with cool technologies like automatic Email virus protection, *free* web popup blocking, full parental controls, and *free* SuperBuddy(TM) icons and am sure all of you do too! Yay AOL!
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
this will certainly do it.
Time Warner owns AOL. The other members of the big five would be dumb as hell to support this by opening their catalogs up to it. If anything, it would be an incentive to help the iTMS defeat AOL because every song that the AOL Music Store sells for them would also go into helping a competitor, Time Warner.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
AOL EXEC1: oh fuck, look the horse has bolted!!!
AOL EXEC2: someone, anyone, shut the stable door!!
HAPPY CUSTOMERS: too late, guys. next!
i wish i was but oh well
I'm interested in precisely who is AOL's targeted demographic for this product.
l e-People-Laugh-At-Us-Player, or they might go for WinAmp, which despite being deprecated is still popular (yes, it's owned by AOL, but I think it's still tagged NULLSOFT, which sounds better AOL/NULLSOFT? That's a rhetorical question).
The way I see it, the average totally incompetent user will just use MS Media Player given it's preinstalled, and probably does all they want (and anything it doesn't do probably won't occur to them anyway).
Then you have the more competent, slightly smarter (not that smart, still using Windows remember *cough*) user, who while looking for alternative is likely to dismiss AOL's offering simply because it's, well, made by AOL, who don't have a particularly cool aura about them. Even when their aren't good alternates around, I'd imagine even these users are more likely to stick with Media Player than migrate to AOL's You're-A-Fucking-Retard-Let-Me-Hold-Your-Hand-Whi
The only remaining demographic is incompetent users, who choose AOL as their ISP, two problems: 1) This market is declining, especially given the fact they seem only to care about dial up users, who themselves are in rapid decline, 2) These users are the sort who use the interet at most about an hour or less a day, and are probably over 50. In short, they are the least likely people to be interested in purchasing music online.
In summary: AOL Sucks! and most people who might potentially install their product are beginning to realise they suck. Anyone left, who might install it as a tie in to this particular ISP's crap-ware, is probably not going to use it, and even less likely to purchase music from it (which is the whole point from AOL's perspective).
Hopefully this will cause a drop in prices. Hmm, but on second thought, most AOL products aren't that good, so it won't be able to compete. Doh!
AOL is Dying.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Now thats kinda sad....
As most of AOL's most recent ideas, I'm sure the majority of Slashdotters will pretty much call this idea dead in the water, but it seems to me as one of AOL's better ideas in awhile. (Not hard)
It's amazing it didn't happen earlier. I mean hell, Microsoft has an online music store--and Microsoft has proven it's pretty poor at recognizing good content (Slate excluded... MSNBC is basically an NBC venture content-wise).
AOL actually sort of gets what the masses want for content and they want to be a content company. And there content divisions are performing the best internally. After all they merged (essentially bought at this now) with Time Warner--where content is King.
Remember, AOL still has a large, captive audience of users with a decent amount of money and usually like popular culture. Plus, they have a direct route to install software onto the PC's of milions of their users.
That's a pretty big foot in the door. Add in the music library of Time Warner and you may have a serious competitor.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
They'd leverage their huge media empire and undercut their competitors. After all, Sony is the only other competitor that has their own media empire, and they're not really doing much with it (other than pushing their stupid ATRAC3 format). I imagine AOL would get a nice foothold in the industry if they managed to sell all Warner Music songs at, say, 80c each instead of the standard 99c. This might end up triggering a price war between everyone.
Though, now that I'm looking, I can't find any actual listing of Warner Music Group being affiliated with Time Warner at all. I assume it'd be a subcompany of Warner Bros., but it doesn't appear to be so, at least going by the timewarner.com site.
AMP 1.0 : Very interesting, but still already existant in some competitors such as iTunes
AMP 2.0: AMP is sent out massively on DVD's at major department stores and in mail. Still no new features
AMP 3.0: AMP only allows you to buy AOL-TW approved songs, only 3% of the total songs at the time. The ownership of AMP cites "virus concerns".
AMP 4.0: AMP includes a new AIM plug-in so the cops can IM you their subpoena.
AMP 5.0: AMP is bought out by an outside corporation.
AMP 6.0: AMP acquires iTunes. People revert back to Kazaa.
AMP 7.0: AOL-TW announces the discontinuation of AMP.
~Ilyanep
To get message, take amount of carrier pigeons at each stage mod 2. Then decode binary.
Oh yeah... Too little - TOO LATE!
Should have partnered with Apple like HP did.
Woah. You mean they're making a music store in order to sell music? What's the world coming to?
From the 'nobody-gives-a-shit' department.
their choice of names?
* media-sound/amp
Latest version available: 0.7.6
Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
Size of downloaded files: 97 kB
Homepage:
Description: AMP - the Audio Mpeg Player
License: as-is
And, IIRC Nullsoft got nailed with a lawsuit from these guys for having 'amp' in their product name, which is the whole reason they got bought up by AOL in the first place.
Karma: Negative (Mostly affected by dorm trolling)
Will AOL release this to the general public or to just AOL customers. My hunch says it will be for everyone, but with some special deals for AOL customers. What can AOL bring to the table that nobody else can? I don't think anything. A name? Would anyone use the AOL service because they knew the AOL name? iTunes is certainly better known. Will this drive AOL business? Would anyone buy AOL to get the better deals they offer? Doubtful... So what is the Competitive advantage AOL can bring to the mix? This is a dumb move with no way for AOL to differentiate or leverage any competitive advantage. They should fold up shop now, before they waste any more money on printing press releases!
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
"conspiracy in restraint of trade?" I thought you could.
Of course, there's the question of whether the Bush administration Justice Department can, but that's likely blatant enough to get even their attention. Folk will probably open catalogs to AOL's music store, perhpas a little reluctantly, and probably not for any less than they charge iTunes.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
So AOL recently announced they were going to cut their broadband services. They also just laid off a whole slew of people. And now they're going to try their hand at a music store and a media player? I see a desperate, desperate company with no focus right now...
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
It's about time someone came out with a media player and a music store to support it. Its brilliant original ideas like this that keep AOL rolling in new subscribers.
I personally have to look at the other angle of this; AOL does have access to a pretty strong multimedia group with Time Warner, and they can probably get a deal together to sell the songs for significantly less than iTunes currently.
Then Apple's behemoth will get the companies to cut their royalties and will reduce *their* price to five cents less than AOL per song, and then AOL will go ":`(".
The obvious name for what AOL ultimately intends to go up against iTunes would be "meTu-nes".
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Why not develop Winamp further? Extend it so that it works with their music store ... God knows they could write a plugin to do that. And with the massive user base that Winamp has, they'd kill two (or three) birds with one stone. I probably wouldn't use said store ... but I dunno, working with Winamp just makes so much more sense to me.
... a wider userbase for Winamp could only make it more profitable.
- They could push Winamp to their users
- They could push the AOL Music Store to Winamp users, so they'd immediately have a vast potential customer base.
- They'd continue and extend development of a very mature platform that they already own.
C'mon, AOL...
Who doesn't like free music?
Reuters just reported important business news from new and emerging market.
Mr and Mrs Jones from Waukesha Wisconsin just confirmed that they won't be launching their Media Player and Online Music Service. Asked about the reasons of this difficult decisions Mr Jones told that he can't promise he won't start his own Online Music Service in the future but it is just impossible at the moment. Mrs Jones wasn't immediately available for the comment.
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
NullSoft founder and WinAMP creator Justin Frankel was rushed to the hospital today and treated for unspecified abdominal injuries incurred during a prolonged fit of laughter.
Stay tuned for more on this story as it becomes available.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
Time Warner sold off Warner Music Group. Vivendi Universal sold off everything but Universal Music Group. This leaves Sony as the only major label that is also a major movie studio.
I read this "Instead, AMP is built atop the company's Communicator XUL user interface framework." And thought AmpZilla
The PureAudio url is http://homepage.mac.com/steve_bryan/FileSharing11
Yes, but how much of every sale through AOL would go to AOL, and how much would go to the other label(s)? IIRC, on iTunes, the labels get the VAST majority of the cash from every sale. I'd gladly give my worst enemy $1000 to get $100000 myself..
Who's gonna buy music over a dial-up pipe?
Look, trash AOL all you want to (really, I enjoy it!), but this is built on two technologies - one is the playback engine in Winamp (which, as I recall, was a fork of a BSD licenced cross platform player) and XUL.
That means that a major technology company is using XUL to build their apps. Is anyone putting this together with the previous announcment that there is a new Netscape - sure, it uses the IE rendering engine (triton) on IE specific sites, but thats embedded in an XUL interface!
AOL is actually _using_ the technology it developed when it ran Mozilla. This could mean AMP and AOL come to Linux/*BSD/Haiku/Amiga whatever alternative OS supported by XUL, same as Moz already does. It's like XUL brings rich client application written using thing client technologies - which is a big win for both the developer and alternative OS crowds.
I'm ecstatic to see XUL being made mainstream.
No, they don't. All one needs to do to 'Jump the Shark.' is to use the term "Jump the Shark."
The software is just a means to an end: To make money selling music.
Note to self: Software companies write software to make money.
This is the future of all "computers": proprietary data, with no "Save" function. Media objects will be encrypted, among other DRM, and will copy themselves only in owner-approved scenarios. Players won't "play"; small proprietary format decoders will be embedded in the object itself, and the installed, persistent player will include only GUI and other "safe" features.
We might be dancing in the open-source streets with our accumulating troves of open software. But once the media giants like AOL, Microsoft, Adobe, and RI/MPAA members turn the corner, we'll all be driving cars with the hoods welded shut.
--
make install -not war
This reinforces the idea that AOL is going to ditch their client and start using a web-browser for their service.
From the article:
Aargh! How many times are BetaNews going to get this wrong? AOL Communicator does not use XUL. It uses wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows). They just keep on getting this wrong! Now I don't know what AOL Media Player is going to be based on.
Step 1. Buy Netscape.
Step 2. Spend time and money developing new browser
Step 3. Still use Microsoft Internet Explorer as underlying browser for flag product.
Rinse and repeat
Step 1. Buy Nullsoft
Step 2. Spend time and money developing new media player
Step 3. Not use it in flagship product.
Here
and Here
and Here
This has a nice timeline of time warner.
Still - it could have been Worse . Imagine an ISP owned by microsoft. no... wait... :D
I don't get it. Instead of more online music stores, why don't they just make music that's actually worth listening to and worth buying and drop the DRM bullshit? Last I've heard, none of these stores are really raking in the dough and even iTunes is only successful due to the iPod. I haven't even seen anybody going into FYE and the other music stores in the real world in like the past few years now. It makes no sense from a business point. Hell! It makes no damned sense from a simple logical point. Are these people deaf AND stupid? Nobody wants to pay $20 for a CD. Nobody wants to pay a buck for a lossy, DRM'd music file, and slapping lawsuits on people using P2P is doing absolutely nothing to bring people back into the music stores. What a great way to run a business into the ground, man because the RIAA is too stupid and arrogant to see the writing on the wall.
'Yeah, WTF, man! Let's open another music store! What a great idea' ;-p (intense sarcasm)
when is aol going to quit? they just keep on getting knocked further and further out by broadband suppliers. give up!
Something I should know about? No? Hmm...
Oh really?
But, no, seriously... BWAHAHAHA!
AOL already has big licensing agreements with the other major labels as part of the MusicNet deal. If they can give Sony over $0.60 of every $0.99 they take (nevermind surcharges, development costs, etc), why would Sony turn that down?
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
Is the DS doomed by popularity?
Rock and roll dying? Who would've thought? ;-)
http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/15167
>iTunes already has most of the market share,
And Windows has the overwhelming majority of
the OS market. So I guess what you are saying is that if you are competing against a monolith which rules a certain field like Itunes does its field, then the only option is not to even try?
Good, I guess Apple will finally give up its puny 6% share of the pc market then.
>AOL certainly isn't a very popular name
>among many computer users
Which ones? The millions who left it or the even bigger millions who are still there?
AOL is as popular as Microsoft is in their market, you might not like but thats reality.
Geeks cant seem to grasp (or care) that the majority of users are not computer savvy, nor do they want to be. And once the BSOD went away with the arrival of Win2000, the majority of users are more than satisfied.
I actually wrote AMP and let me tell you this: don't download it. Don't let it anywhere NEAR your computer.
The day AOL hired me, they put me in a big, wet paper bag and asked me to code my way out of it. 18 months later, I'm still in that paper bag.
You've got John Tesh!
/theme to NBC Sports
Dant dant DANT DANT DANT DANT dant dant DANT DANT - da DAAAAAAAAA!
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Idon't think price drives this market. iTunes is the most successful store because of iPod. Innovation and new business models will drive sales in the new "digital music age", not price per song. Not to say that price is completely inelastic, but I do not believe that $.99 vs. $.94 will sell music in bulk.
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.