After reading the predictions from both Rags Gupta and Hypebot on what they think will shakeout in the digital music space in 2007, I thought I'd throw some more of my thoughts out as well - in short, 2007 is going to be the year of the acquistion. In no particular order...
- eMusic gets acquired - either by Microsoft or Amazon
- Last.fm gets acquired - smart money is on Google, but if Real was able to dig up enough of their settlement cash from Microsoft, then a Last.fm/Rhapsody combination is an extremely compelling service
- Pandora gets acquired - gotta think this is Microsoft considering they have already partnered with them for the MSN Radio relaunch
- Mercora gets sued - the labels will need to make an example of someone that they think is violating DMCA, and Mercora looks like a great target
- SpiralFrog launches with a thud - the ad supported model may eventually work for downloads, but I don't think SpiralFrog will be the ones to pull it off
- Zune slowly starts to make inroads - this is the equivalent of Microsoft Windows Mobile (CE) vs. Palm OS battle of last decade.... MS will spend enough time and effort to make this work for them
- Apple iTV will get lukewarm response - remember the Mac Mini? It was supposed to be perfect for this application as well...
That's a bunch of the top of my head... I'll come back later and add some more.
UPDATE: I checked in on my predictions half way through the year. See how I'm doing.
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