Grokster in Talks to Be Bought By Mashboxx

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "The Supreme Court's ruling in Grokster has driven the P2P company to enter talks with Mashboxx, 'an upstart that is attempting to establish a legal peer-to-peer music company, according to people familiar with the matter,' the Wall Street Journal reports. Mashboxx would let users sample free but charge for downloads. The WSJ adds: 'To encourage the file-sharing companies and their users to go legitimate, the labels are seriously considering dropping such claims, some record executives say. In fact, say people close to the talks, Grokster is negotiating a settlement with the RIAA. The RIAA and Grokster declined to comment.'"

Comments

Why P2P?

[garcia]

What I need someone to explain to me is why I should have to forfeit my upstream to a company for downloads?

If I'm paying I shouldn't have to share shit. It's not going to help w/the costs of the songs. If anything, the RIAA will want to increase the costs just so that there isn't anyone saying that P2P is acceptable (legal or not).

Apple and allofmp3.com have it the right way. Pay for the songs, download them w/o sharing, and be done with it.

People shouldn't be charged twice for shit. P2P was popular because it was free and no other reason.

Re:Why P2P?

[BewireNomali]

Apple has it right for a company that sells consumer electronics. they don't make any money off song sales. Therefore, this model is not appropriate for a music company.

Ringtones sell for 3-5 bucks and sell pretty well. this suggests that songs are underpriced, or at least priced significantly less than the market will bear. To that end, it seems that Apple is artificially depressing the cost of music, to the detriment of music companies.

I can't speak for allofmp3.com, but ITMS is probably a loss leader as opposed to a viable revenue generation model for sales of music.

Record companies can't make money at a dollar a song. Peer networks would help because they kill bandwidth costs and presumably pass saving on to the consumer.

Re:Why P2P?

[nEoN nOoDlE]

Ringtones sell for 3-5 bucks and sell pretty well.

keep in mind, people have thousands of songs on their hard drives, but only a couple of ringtones on their phones. The usage is not consistent so therefore the price can't be.

Record companies can't make money at a dollar a song.

Ridiculous. Record companies have been making money - and lots of it - at a dollar or less a song when the songs were on CD and tape. And at least the consumer got a hard copy of a product. In the case of digital music, it costs the record companies even less since there are no shipping, packaging, or production costs after the music is recorded.