State of (Part of) the Industry

Free Streaming and Social Music Sites:

The chart above includes Last.fm, Imeem, MySpace Music, Playlist.com, Pandora. While not on this graph, iLike's traffic has (according to Compete.com) now surpassed Last.fm's.

Above we show Lala, 8tracks, Hype Machine, Mog and Finetune.

Twitter-centric Music Services

Included are Song.ly, Twt.fm, Blip.fm, Twisten.fm and Twiturm.

MP3 Search Engines

Seeqpod (R.I.P?) and Skreemr.

Subscription Music Sites

Including Rhapsody and Napster.

Portal Music Sites:

Includes AOL Music, Yahoo Music and MSN Music.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Are Compete's Facebook Numbers Really That Far Off? (allfacebook.com)
• Another Round of Changes for Alexa (socialmediatoday.com)
• iLike No Longer Means I Listen (in full) (globallistic.com)
• HOW TO: Use Social Media for Sharing Music (mashable.com)
• The World's Top 10 Free Music Streaming Services (crenk.com)

Never Go Up Against a Sicilian When *Death* is on the Line!

Image from WikipediaVizzini vs. The Man in Black in "The Princess Bride"... one of the most quoted and memorable movie scenes of my generation. The battle of wits to the death comes to mind often when I sit and watch what is going on right now in the music industry. The labels are Vizzini... overconfident, over-thinking, but also over-looking (the obvious). The consumers are The Man in Black... practical, nimble and immune.

For those of you that watch the industry, you have seen a flurry of announcements lately about the new approaches the labels are taking, the partners that used to be defendants, and how everything is the next "iTunes-Killer". While hyperbole is aplenty, clarity is hard to come by when it comes to making bets on what happens next.

• Last.fm offering free streaming of millions(?) of tracks has also just announced that they will also offer streaming simulcasts of CBS Radio stations (sister division)
• imeem cutting deals with all the majors with other "gray" services being coerced into similar deals
• MySpace Music's announcement today about offering free streams (from 3 of the 4 majors) and selling both DRM'd and DRM free tracks
• Nokia's "Comes with Music" offering (aka "the hardware tax")
• Apple's rumored discussions around their own subscription plans ("hardware tax")
• Omniphone's music subscription as bundled with wireless plan service in Europe ("wireless tax")
  
• Universal Music Group's "Total Music" plan(s) that are still unclear ("hardware tax"?)
  
• Warner Music Group's announcement last week that they hired Jim Griffin to drive and promote a service offering that would be bundled with your ISP bill (aka "the ISP tax")
• MP3 Search Engines (aka "information retrieval tools") and online storage lockers, like Seeqod and MP3tunes, being sued by major record labels
• New playlisting and music services popping up daily (see Muxtape and Mixwit)
• Other services getting acquired (Foxytunes, Qloud) while others close up shop (Ezmo)
  
• XM & Sirius merging
• EMI hires ex-Google CIO to head up their digital division
  
• Yahoo and MTV shedding their subscription music services (to Rhapsody)
• Yahoo Music VP, Ian Rogers, decided to move on to a new job focused on the *creation* side of the industry... presumably because the consumption side is such a mess?
  
• AOL farming out their radio programming (and presumably royalty liabilities) to CBS Radio
  
• Amazon is now the second biggest digital music retailer, but iTunes is now the biggest music retailer (digital or physical) surpassing Wal-Mart
  

The list goes on and on. The good news is that there are a lot of smart and passionate people dedicated to trying to change the way the music business operates. The bad news is that most of the business models being pursued above can only succeed at the expense of all the other models.

I like the notion of making music "feel free" even if it's not. The problem is are you going to pay Nokia, Apple, Verizon and Comcast all an incremental fee for the same rights (all the music you can enjoy)? Some would say the labels have finally gotten smart by recently making some online bets after years of just trying to wish the internet away. Others would say that they are extorting the digital music companies, forcing them to make huge upfront deals and trade away big chunks of their companies in the name of self-preservation. Taken a step further, many claim the labels are moving towards extorting the consumers directly (after years of suing them) by trying to inflict an "optional" ISP music fee that basically buys you (and the ISP) immunity from being sued.


The only thing clear to me is that there is a nuclear bomb coming, and I'm not betting on any of them until the smoke clears. Any one of the (r)evolutionary models will send ripples throughout the music/tech community.... anointing new kings while massacring hundreds of others in the process.

That is, of course, if Steve Jobs decides to let any of it happen or not.

Qloud & iLike Talk OpenSocial

Everyone is talking about OpenSocial, and the music 2.0 services are no exception.

Toby Murdock - CEO, Qloud


Ali Partovi - CEO, iLike


The thing that most immediately strikes me is that iLike, Qloud and MySpace all have their own versions of an "artist page" within the same network. So, now the consumer experience is fragmented. "Did you see my post on 50 Cent's wall?!". "Uh, no. Which wall? The MySpace artist page, the iLike artist page or the Qloud artist page?". The same problem already exists in Facebook.

How does this all shake out?! I don't know yet. Any thoughts?

TechCrunch covers some of the upcoming battle here.

UPDATE: It turns out that Tim O'Reily is a bit disappointed with OpenSocial in general...

OpenSocial: It's the data, stupid: "If all OpenSocial does is allow developers to port their applications more easily from one social network to another, that's a big win for the developer, as they get to shop their application to users of every participating social network. But it provides little incremental value to the user, the real target. We don't want to have the same application on multiple social networks. We want applications that can use data from multiple social networks."

MySpace Getting Ready to Implode?

Interesting story below...

Deadline Hollywood Daily » MySpace Pair Looking To Loot News Corp: "Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson have made a very aggressive (some would term it rather fanciful) compensation proposal to owner News Corp for when their contract is up in October. They're asking Peter Chernin and Rupert Murdoch for a 2-year deal worth $50 million total. That comes out to $25 million each, or $12.5 million a year. Plus, the pair want a development fund of $15 million to invest in internet companies."

Is MySpace in trouble? It sounds to me that both DeWolfe and Anderson have one foot out the door. I think you have to not only be ready to, but expect to, walk out the door to make such a massive demand. I would imagine the thought process to be something like...

"I've had it with this place, let's get out of here before Facebook eats our lunch."

"Well, I'd stay as long as we get paid."

"Hmmm... yeah, for $25million in my pocket I'd be willing to go down with the ship."

"As long as they also pony up some money on top of that so we can find, and inflate, our life raft."

"Good point... let's get another $15 mil each that we can invest in the next thing - whatever that will be."

"Deal."

Don't get me wrong, I don't blame them for this approach... I just find it interesting. Who would run the place if DeWolfe and Anderson leave? I sure as hell hope it wouldn't be some old school TV exec. We are dealing with very fickle consumers where the switching costs from once service/network to another is relatively low - and lowering every day as more of these services expose open APIs. I've got to think someone is working on a simple "import all of my MySpace information" for Facebook as we speak.

Check out one of my earlier posts/predictions about MySpace.

It's MYspace, and you will do as I say!

Another day, another story about MySpace blocking 3rd party widgets and content from their site. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like I am watching a car wreck in slow motion. Everyone on the web is embracing openess, portability and interoperability... and MySpace is quickly heading in the other direction and building a closed ecosystem. I'm not sure if they are trying to model themselves after Apple in that regard or what, but in my opinion it is going to quickly backfire on them. They appear to be trying to turn themselves into AOL circa 1990. Meanwhile, AOL is trying to turn into MySpace circa 2005. What a strange time we live in.

So... another prediction (I need to keep trying because most of my others haven't amounted to anything yet). MySpace will become this generations' White Pages. It's not where people live, but a simple directory of where you can find out where they live. You'll go to Tila Tequila's MySpace page and it will just ssay "check me out at www.tilashotspot.com".

After the mass exodus - to places where users can do whatever they hell they want, and post whatever widgets they want - what's left for Fox?