Immediacy: The problem is that many pirate downloads are available prior to the official release.
Of course it's clear that early access to material is currently being used as a stick to pull people to media websites - I know my favourite site imeem.com has promoted the showing of at least one movie releases prior to the theatrical premier and plenty of 'exclusive' music from big name artists.
The article does seem to be a little behind the times in terms of music accessibility "We'll pay Acme Digital Warehouse to serve us any musical tune in the world, when and where we want it" - right now you can get practically any piece of music for free via ad supported sites like imeem.com, deezer and last.fm. There's still room for paid services though, there are holes in these collections either content-wise or geographicly - imeem has the biggest catalog, but most of it is only in north america, last.fm and deezer have half the number of tracks, but are available in more countries, spiralfrog has the smallest catalog, but it's the only one to offer downloads.
And I can listen to any tune instantly, between imeem.com, last.fm, deezer and one of the other less legal sites one of them is bound to have the exact music I need.
Downloads are of course needed so that the internet connection isn't continually active which will never scale.
From what I'm seeing elsewhere they're claiming to have deals which they don't have, supposedly Universal and Warner have yet to sign on to allow their music to be shared. I feel the fail gathering in the wind......
imeem is an odd site - it used to be a p2p im + social network + filesharing (hence the im part)
but it changed and now it's one of the biggest music sites on the web, with a name which really doesn't have any hint at all about music. The funny thing is, now it's an established player there are a few music startups who're playing on their name (meemix.com is a good example)
At the start of the year I still thought the big labels hadn't figured out to work with the internet and were going to litigate my favourite websites into submission, but they've finally got it and made deals instead of suing potential business partners. At the start of the year I was steadfast in my opinion that music labels were going to collapse, by the end of the year I've got the feeling that they might just make it through.
You've never looked at imeem.com then?
It's youtube for music - upload music from your favourite bands and anyone can listen to them - a fraction of the ad revenue gets paid to the label and all of the major labels have signed on.
So, I think they do get it, you just haven't been paying attention;-)
How about 'clip is static image so I can upload a piece of music to a video site' - it annoys the hell out of me to find a reference to some piece of music and to think 'oh I never knew that had a video' only to watch it and realise that the uploader just wanted to share his/her mp3.
These people need to find a site which lets them upload the music directly without trying to turn it into a video file.
All those major label videos are costing Youtube money to show, that's why embedding is disabled for many of those most viewed videos - because they have to pay a cut of the Ad revenue, and with embedded videos they're not getting any direct ad revenue.
This is exactly why youtube wants to promote its 'alternate' list, because otherwise the bloggers won't be able to embed any of the top videos on their pages and drive traffic to youtube.
Deezer is just one of the many sites that saw imeem's explosive growth in 2006 and threw together a clone, their SACEM deal was announced in August - over a month after imeem's first major label deal, Warner Brothers in early July.
YOu're either
a) Not signed in
b) listening to something that isn't licensed for your country
otherwise it would be full length.
presuming you can answer a or b and rememdy the situation then you'll be able to listen to it whenever you want and you'll have your answer to why imeem beats last.fm
Last FM doesn't let you pick the exact tunes you want to listen to, you start out with some preferences and then it goes on its way serving you tunes guided by your preferences - imeem is completely on demand, you can play whatever you want, when you want, as many times as you want. Also, last.fm doesn't have any user supplied contents so you're not going to find things like nigerian kuduru (a cross between techno and booty bass)
Actually you haven't even tried the site, because if you look there's tonnes of stuff from all corners of the music industry, just because the PR people announced 4 major labels doesn't mean they don't already have deals with a load of indies.
Ultimately it's like youtube - somebody has to upload it, and a lot of people have been uploading it, so try the site before you criticise it.
"These services will never take off on a large scale. If I can't do what I want with the media, it's not really free. We need more free as in freedom. Free as in beer is great, but it should come secondary to the other."
That's right people would much prefer to download a high quality video via bittorrent which they can watch on their iPod rather than going to a website and streaming it, and that's exactly why youtube will never be as popular as thepiratebay....
Oh well there goes that theory
Oops sorry there, yes I got that wrong.
In addition to imeem and spiralfrog there's also qtrax which has been 'coming soon' forever, and deezer which is basicly a french clone of imeem and is currently suffering some legal challenges as to its legitimacy. Earlier in the year imeem was sued by Warner brothers for, but I guess that lawsuit is resolved now that Warner has signed a deal with them. I hear that one of the biggest challenges to imeem is the fact that myspace.com automaticly censors anyone mentioning 'imeem.com', much in the same way that they did with youtube, and photobucket.
So MTV networks appear to get it, but if you're interested in the whole 'free content to beat p2p story' you need to look at imeem.com and spiralfrog - both are allowing users free access to music. now I can hear the imagined caveats now
"It'll be low quality" - No - both sites deliver CD quality audio
"It'll be some crappy indie bands that nobody has heard of" - No both sites have signed deals with most of the major labels - Sony, BMG, Warner, EMI and Universal - this is on top of all the indie labels who sign on
"It'll be only a few free tracks - everythign else witll cost" - nope it's all free with a few exceptions (like the beatles) imeem even played host to the first legal Led Zeppelin video on the internet
"It won't be on demand - you won't be able to control what you listen to" - nope it's entirely on demand, I think the only restriction I see is the slow downloads from spiralfrog that force you to watch advertising
"It'll have tonnes of spyware/DRM/evil" - well no spyware as far as I can tell, imeem.com is streaming only and provides everything via a neat little flash player that works on any flash enabled browser. Spiralfrog however uses and active X control and windows DRM, so that's Windows/IE only
OK so why is this a bolder move than this story? Well TV shows primary channel is still considered to be broadcast, a TV show has to make money on its TV run otherwise it's not considered viable. However, music revenue has primarily been generated through sales of the media, radio broadcast earns the record labels nothing, in fact it may be costing them to get this free advertising.
In my mind the celestial jukebox that's offered by imeem is a hugely radical move by the record business, imeem has become the youtube for music that the tech bloggers keep talking about - except nobody in the tech blogging world has noticed it.
EMI is also one of the companies that instead of suing imeem.com for letting people share mp3's decided it was better to cut a deal with the company and let people share their music - like a youtube for mp3's - presumably in exchange for a cut of the advertising revenue that their music is making the site.
The music business is finally catching up to the changes that started a decade ago, EMI seems to be making some of the biggest moves in public.
Check out imeem.com project playlist basicly copied most of their 'ideas' from imeem with a few changes to try and avoid potential legal issues, imeem is the real deal in this case.
imeem - It's like napster 1.0 with a web interface - upload your music collection to their servers and listen to any piece of music from everyone else's collection - it has practically any piece of music you'd ever want to hear on there, and has even negotiated revenue sharing deals with a load of labels to pay them for people listening to their tunes.
The fact that they were so big meant people still used them even though every other site offered better quality. And the people running other sites had to deal with the fact that the content partners that understood youtube would ship them youtube quality videos, regardless of the site in question.
now if only youtube would let you upload mp3's directly like imeem.com they might get me insterested.
Slashdot Mirror
Immediacy: The problem is that many pirate downloads are available prior to the official release. Of course it's clear that early access to material is currently being used as a stick to pull people to media websites - I know my favourite site imeem.com has promoted the showing of at least one movie releases prior to the theatrical premier and plenty of 'exclusive' music from big name artists. The article does seem to be a little behind the times in terms of music accessibility "We'll pay Acme Digital Warehouse to serve us any musical tune in the world, when and where we want it" - right now you can get practically any piece of music for free via ad supported sites like imeem.com, deezer and last.fm. There's still room for paid services though, there are holes in these collections either content-wise or geographicly - imeem has the biggest catalog, but most of it is only in north america, last.fm and deezer have half the number of tracks, but are available in more countries, spiralfrog has the smallest catalog, but it's the only one to offer downloads.
And I can listen to any tune instantly, between imeem.com, last.fm, deezer and one of the other less legal sites one of them is bound to have the exact music I need. Downloads are of course needed so that the internet connection isn't continually active which will never scale.
From what I'm seeing elsewhere they're claiming to have deals which they don't have, supposedly Universal and Warner have yet to sign on to allow their music to be shared. I feel the fail gathering in the wind......
imeem is the youtube of music that's the best way to describe it (and it does video ad photos pretty well too ;-)
imeem is an odd site - it used to be a p2p im + social network + filesharing (hence the im part) but it changed and now it's one of the biggest music sites on the web, with a name which really doesn't have any hint at all about music. The funny thing is, now it's an established player there are a few music startups who're playing on their name (meemix.com is a good example)
At the start of the year I still thought the big labels hadn't figured out to work with the internet and were going to litigate my favourite websites into submission, but they've finally got it and made deals instead of suing potential business partners. At the start of the year I was steadfast in my opinion that music labels were going to collapse, by the end of the year I've got the feeling that they might just make it through.
And I know a lot of wierd things about his music, like his collaboration with Fatboy Slim - A Musical about Imelda Marcos
You've never looked at imeem.com then? It's youtube for music - upload music from your favourite bands and anyone can listen to them - a fraction of the ad revenue gets paid to the label and all of the major labels have signed on. So, I think they do get it, you just haven't been paying attention ;-)
How about 'clip is static image so I can upload a piece of music to a video site' - it annoys the hell out of me to find a reference to some piece of music and to think 'oh I never knew that had a video' only to watch it and realise that the uploader just wanted to share his/her mp3. These people need to find a site which lets them upload the music directly without trying to turn it into a video file.
All those major label videos are costing Youtube money to show, that's why embedding is disabled for many of those most viewed videos - because they have to pay a cut of the Ad revenue, and with embedded videos they're not getting any direct ad revenue. This is exactly why youtube wants to promote its 'alternate' list, because otherwise the bloggers won't be able to embed any of the top videos on their pages and drive traffic to youtube.
Deezer is just one of the many sites that saw imeem's explosive growth in 2006 and threw together a clone, their SACEM deal was announced in August - over a month after imeem's first major label deal, Warner Brothers in early July.
I dunno all the tracks are full length to me, are you actually signed into the site?
Now you can tell them on their imeem page http://ledzeppelin.imeem.com/
YOu're either a) Not signed in b) listening to something that isn't licensed for your country otherwise it would be full length. presuming you can answer a or b and rememdy the situation then you'll be able to listen to it whenever you want and you'll have your answer to why imeem beats last.fm
Last FM doesn't let you pick the exact tunes you want to listen to, you start out with some preferences and then it goes on its way serving you tunes guided by your preferences - imeem is completely on demand, you can play whatever you want, when you want, as many times as you want. Also, last.fm doesn't have any user supplied contents so you're not going to find things like nigerian kuduru (a cross between techno and booty bass)
Actually you haven't even tried the site, because if you look there's tonnes of stuff from all corners of the music industry, just because the PR people announced 4 major labels doesn't mean they don't already have deals with a load of indies.
Ultimately it's like youtube - somebody has to upload it, and a lot of people have been uploading it, so try the site before you criticise it.
"These services will never take off on a large scale. If I can't do what I want with the media, it's not really free. We need more free as in freedom. Free as in beer is great, but it should come secondary to the other." That's right people would much prefer to download a high quality video via bittorrent which they can watch on their iPod rather than going to a website and streaming it, and that's exactly why youtube will never be as popular as thepiratebay.... Oh well there goes that theory
Yes, it looks like imeem is the place for you, which means you have to confine your listening to about 9082359083920984 tracks.....
Oops sorry there, yes I got that wrong. In addition to imeem and spiralfrog there's also qtrax which has been 'coming soon' forever, and deezer which is basicly a french clone of imeem and is currently suffering some legal challenges as to its legitimacy. Earlier in the year imeem was sued by Warner brothers for, but I guess that lawsuit is resolved now that Warner has signed a deal with them. I hear that one of the biggest challenges to imeem is the fact that myspace.com automaticly censors anyone mentioning 'imeem.com', much in the same way that they did with youtube, and photobucket.
"It'll be low quality" - No - both sites deliver CD quality audio
"It'll be some crappy indie bands that nobody has heard of" - No both sites have signed deals with most of the major labels - Sony, BMG, Warner, EMI and Universal - this is on top of all the indie labels who sign on
"It'll be only a few free tracks - everythign else witll cost" - nope it's all free with a few exceptions (like the beatles) imeem even played host to the first legal Led Zeppelin video on the internet
"It won't be on demand - you won't be able to control what you listen to" - nope it's entirely on demand, I think the only restriction I see is the slow downloads from spiralfrog that force you to watch advertising
"It'll have tonnes of spyware/DRM/evil" - well no spyware as far as I can tell, imeem.com is streaming only and provides everything via a neat little flash player that works on any flash enabled browser. Spiralfrog however uses and active X control and windows DRM, so that's Windows/IE only
OK so why is this a bolder move than this story? Well TV shows primary channel is still considered to be broadcast, a TV show has to make money on its TV run otherwise it's not considered viable. However, music revenue has primarily been generated through sales of the media, radio broadcast earns the record labels nothing, in fact it may be costing them to get this free advertising.
In my mind the celestial jukebox that's offered by imeem is a hugely radical move by the record business, imeem has become the youtube for music that the tech bloggers keep talking about - except nobody in the tech blogging world has noticed it.
EMI is also one of the companies that instead of suing imeem.com for letting people share mp3's decided it was better to cut a deal with the company and let people share their music - like a youtube for mp3's - presumably in exchange for a cut of the advertising revenue that their music is making the site. The music business is finally catching up to the changes that started a decade ago, EMI seems to be making some of the biggest moves in public.
Lars now allows you to listen to everything that Metallica has recorded, for free, on imeem.com
Check out imeem.com project playlist basicly copied most of their 'ideas' from imeem with a few changes to try and avoid potential legal issues, imeem is the real deal in this case.
imeem - It's like napster 1.0 with a web interface - upload your music collection to their servers and listen to any piece of music from everyone else's collection - it has practically any piece of music you'd ever want to hear on there, and has even negotiated revenue sharing deals with a load of labels to pay them for people listening to their tunes.
The fact that they were so big meant people still used them even though every other site offered better quality. And the people running other sites had to deal with the fact that the content partners that understood youtube would ship them youtube quality videos, regardless of the site in question. now if only youtube would let you upload mp3's directly like imeem.com they might get me insterested.