Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Rhapsody mUrge-r Follow Up

More details came out late yesterday about the corporate and financial structure of the new "Rhapsody America". I've got to say that my hopes were that basically Urge subscribers would be rolled into Rhapsody and that Real's existing management team would run the business (similar to the way Napster acquired the AOL Music Now customers basically in exchange for a large ad-buy commitment). But, now I see that it is a true JV with new management team and it's own currency.

OK, I don't know Michael Bloom (announced as CEO of the JV) at all. He may be a genius and a hell of a guy that just got dealt a losing hand with Urge. But from afar, it seems odd to me that you take that guy that was running a failing service and make him the CEO instead of guys from the Real side who are running a (somewhat) successful business.

Is it just me?

And a parting thought.... what's up with that name?! I sincerely hope that is the name of the corporate entity and not the service's brand....

"Hey, did you get that new album on iTunes?"
"No, I got it on Rhapsody America!"

Ugh.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Totally agree on the Rhapsody America name thing. AWFUL.