FoxyTunes/Yahoo Deal Consumated

Congrats to Alex and the gang at FoxyTunes (and to Lucas et al at Yahoo)...

FoxyTunes Blog: "The FoxyTunes team will become a part of Yahoo! Music and will continue working on FoxyTunes, adding many great things to our products - you’ll see support for additional media players, integration with many additional music sites and services and much more! Our product roadmap and wishlist are quite long and very exciting, and being a part of Yahoo! will really allow us to make many of the things we’ve been planning a reality. Most importantly, Yahoo! are as committed as we are to preserving the Open spirit of FoxyTunes and embracing all the great music products and services out there."

Let's hope Microsoft doesn't screw the whole thing up....

Rhapsody Snags Yahoo Music Subscribers Before Microsoft

Further consolidation in the music market....

Yahoo selling music service to Rhapsody America - USATODAY.com: "Yahoo is selling its digital music subscription service to Rhapsody America — a partnership of Real Networks and MTV Networks — as it revamps its music strategy.

Yahoo Music will continue to offer music videos, Internet radio and music downloads. But customers of its monthly Yahoo Music Unlimited service will be migrated to Rhapsody. No firm timetable has been set. Yahoo, which expects the deal to close by the middle of year, did not disclose terms."

Now all that is left if for Rhapsody to buy Napster, and the subscription market has been weened down to Rhapsody vs. The World (save Last.fm's upcoming streaming subscription service).

This story talks about Yahoo keeping their Music destination (music.yahoo.com) and ... I definitely believe the former, but I still think the latter could be up on the blocks at some point.

I think this is a good play for Rhapsody, and sooner or later people *will* understand the value of subscription. When the do, they'll be the only game in town...

MicroHoo - Part 2

Yeah, this would be huge from the search and advertising perspective... but what about from the music angle?

MediaPost Publications - Microsoft/Yahoo Would Dominate Online Display, Rival Google In Search - 02/01/2008: "IN A DEAL THAT WOULD consolidate the Internet's No. 1 destination, Yahoo, and its fifth largest, MSN, Microsoft this morning made a bid to acquire Yahoo for a record-setting $44.6 billion. The deal, if completed, would mark the largest yet in the ongoing consolidation among the Internet's big bodied players, and would once again reset the playing field for online advertising industry. Regulatory considerations aside, the deal would seem to be a good 'take out' offer to Yahoo's shareholders. At $31 per share, Microsoft's bid represents a 62% premium over Yahoo's current stock value. Based on Thursday's closing price of $19.18 a share, Yahoo's market capitalization was $25.63 billion, according to Yahoo Finance."

I talked a bit about this last May when rumors first surfaced that a deal like this could be in the works. How would Yahoo's evolving music strategy fit with Microsoft's Zune/Xbox tact tactics?

Radio Adios

There is lots of talk about Yahoo's upcoming layoffs with many predicting that their Yahoo Music Unlimited subscription service going the way of the Dodo (perhaps selling off their subscriber base to Rhapsody). I agree with this speculation, particularly in light of their new strategy and their focus on "context" over "content". The other thing I think that may get hit in the downsizing is their radio product, LAUNCHcast.

Given the strategic shift taking place over there (particularly with their music products), as well as the ongoing SoundExchange negotiation debacle, I think they will cut-and-run on radio too. Radio is generally a loss-leader for the big portals and with the (unknown) future royalty rates the "loss" is going to get too much to stomach for most.

On a related note, look for AOL to dump their AOL Radio product as well (along with XM partnership) and replace it with a third party player/product. Probably from a larger terrestrial radio network... most likely related to the recent video advertising deal announced between CBS (owner of Last.fm) and Truveo (part of AOL). This would get AOL out of a money-losing content endeavor and more focused on being a cross-platform advertising network. Great for everyone. Well, except the consumers....

Yahoo to Snare Foxytunes?

Given what Yahoo has shown what they are up to with their new plans around music and their new web layer, this actually doesn't come as a surprise to me.

Yahoo May Be Looking To Buy Israel’s FoxyTunes: "Rumors popped up here in Silicon Valley that Yahoo is in negotiations to buy Israel-based FoxyTunes."

I mentioned in my previous post about Yahoo's new strategy reminded me a lot of Foxytunes' approach. Perhaps I was more right than I knew at the time...

Yahoo's New Play(er)

Yahoo just announced their new web player today and released it into the wild for us to play with.



Basically, it works as follows:

Here's what it does:

1. Link to MP3s in your web page. These can be anywhere on the web.
2. Add a line of code to insert our Javascript library. We host this, so you just have to point to our URL.
3. Working play buttons appear next to MP3s.
   

More information can be found here:

http://yahoomediaplayer.wikia.com
http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/archives/2008/01/post.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/08/yahoo-releases-browser-based-mp3-player/

My first impressions are very positive. As a blogger it will make my life easier since I just embed the player code once into the body of my page, and then just drop the MP3 links anywhere on the page and they automagically get a play icon (and get playlisted).

It also is supporting some open standards (under the covers) in the form of XSPF playlists - I assume in a future release I will be able to hit a page that uses this player and download the XSPF playlist file to take with me - where I can then decide to either have it continue to resolve to the original source files or to a catalog of my choice (e.g. a subscription catalog, my local library, etc.). Check out the work going on at OpenMediaWeb that Yahoo is also heavily involved in and this previous conversation around playlist portability.

Yahoo gets their piece by linking off to a Yahoo Search based on the metadata keywords.

All-in-all, it strikes me as a web-based client version of Foxytunes. I've always been a fan of Foxytunes, and you can see my previous coverage of them here. In fact, I would not be surprised to see Yahoo Search evolve to have "artist pages" that suck in related content from the artist from all over the web - photos from Flickr, videos from YouTube, free-range MP3s (similar to the way AOL just starting doing), Wikipedia-based bios, etc. very much like FoxyTunes Planet.

The downside? Well, if you are "playing a page" you are basically tied to that page as long as you want to keep listening. The easy way around that is to open a new tab instead of refreshing the current page you are on. Not a huge deal, but you may often find yourself accidentally turning the music off if you follow another link on the page that you are playing (if that link doesn't target a new browser window/tab). The other downside that I noticed when I first implemented it, is that in a heavily widgetized page, you may have to wait a while for the javascript to load.

I speculated about 6 months ago that Yahoo was up to something based on the previous Webjay work of Lucas Gonze. It looks to have evolved a bit since then, but I think understand where the are going and I applaud it.

In honor of this new player, I've got a new Song of the Day to share too.
Thanks to Redboy I just discovered The Big Sleep. This song is off their soon-to-be-released album, and I'm diggin' it.

Pinkies - The Big Sleep

Also check out one of the instrumental tracks from their previous album.

You Can't Touch the Untouchable - The Big Sleep

Roundtable: Portable Playlists & Catalog Resolution

One of my MyStrands partners-in-crime, Scott Kveton, was on a panel this past week about data portability, microformats and standards with respect to media. Others on the panel included Lucas Gonze, Tom Conrad and Tantek Celic.

Scott Kveton · Portable Playlist and other POSH-ibilities Meetup: "Before the panel both Tom and I were chatting about how there is really only one big problem that both Pandora and MyStrands face: catalog resolution. This is a huge problem that consumes quite a bit of developer time in both of our camps. Unfortunately, every playlist format out there simply punts on this problem. They point at some “resource” that is the catalog entry. Now, from a portability standpoint that’s great and I can appreciate the why’s of why you’d do that."

Follow the link to the full post, and then you can follow it up with Lucas Gonze's (creator of Webjay, author of XSPF and now part of Yahoo Music) post too.

the Wordpress of Lucas Gonze: "Or is the real problem still economic and not technical? Are there features which it would be profitable to support which entail portability? The problem isn’t how to enable portability, it’s why a business would want that. The status quo is lack of portability, with each music service an island. This sector as a whole hasn’t developed into a collective ecosystem, and businesses which do invest in portable identifiers don’t stand to gain any value until other businesses join them."

Also check out the comment threads on both posts too... the conversation continues there.

me*dia*or: Finally Gets Some Fixes

The relaunch of Tumblr finally forced me to clean up me*dia*or and I think it should be much more user-friendly now. Before I had just been using Tumblr to aggregate all of the "music 2.0" feeds that I pull (almost 100 now I think) - which is not really it's primary purpose, but it worked. Then a few months ago I reimplemented the me*dia*or tumblelog as more of it's own social network built upon Ning. Then I started using Yahoo Pipes to pull, filter and aggregate some more sources that covered a wider range of subjects (but I only wanted the music related ones). I then had a number of different uber-feeds and depending on which one you subscribed to, you got slightly different behaviors. Worst of all if you subscribed to the me*dia*or feed and clicked on a link, it took you to the same synopsis of that feed on my Tumblr site where you'd have to click again to get the full/original story. Yeah, a total frankenstein.

Tumblr's new build (launched last week) has some nice additions, but they have now implemented some new rules that limit users ability to use it in the manner I was. First of all, they have removed all the source attribution links. I had been asking the Tumblr folks if there was a way to make the sources *more* prominent (e.g. in the Title of each story) - but unfortunately they went the other way. I'm not sure if it is just a bug - but I have a feeling this is tied to the second TOS change they implemented... you are now only allowed to aggregate up to 5 RSS feeds into Tumblr (slightly less than the 100 I was using it for) and they state that any/all feeds you aggregate must be your own original content. OK, OK, I've got it.... you don't want me using your service the way I was. :-)

So, I went back and built a massive RSS feed splicer, filter, renamer thingamajig using Yahoo Pipes (which *is* exactly what it was meant for). I took the resulting Pipe feed and ran it through feedburner, then took that feed and sucked it back into my Ning site. Clear as mud?!

To make a short story long, all it means is that when you subscribe to the feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/Mediaor) you will now get nice clean links (with attribution in the title) that takes you directly to the source of the story - no need to make a superfluous stop on my site. If you want the more full experience - with community, jobs, photos, etc then you can still get it all at www.mediaor.com.

Any comments, suggestions, ideas? Just let me know. Hope you enjoy the new and improved me*dia*or.

Drowning Victims - Sink or Swim?

A couple of months ago a wrote a post (The King is Dead (and has no clothes). Long Live the King) about my coming to terms with the failures inherent in the current music subscription models. Or, more specifically, the failures caused by the convoluted DRM requirements inflicted by the major labels onto their partners and thereby passed along to the consumers. Well, the list of people that have been frustrated beyond repair by this short-sightedness is Ian Rogers - GM of Yahoo Music.

Ian just presented at Digital Music Forum West and had a wake-up call for the industry. Some good stuff in here... you should read the whole post.

Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses and Content vs. Context, a Presentation for Some Music Industry Friends at FISTFULAYEN: "I’m here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I’m not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I’ll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won’t let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don’t have any more time to give and can’t bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life’s too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out."

AOL and Yahoo *should* have been able to become the de facto destinations for play-on-demand music. Both companies are good corporate citizens - have ad supported and paid music services - and play by the letter of the law (generally speaking). But, by doing so they have both gotten surpassed by smaller start-ups that are willing and able to take some risks (see Imeem, Project Playlist, etc.) - choosing a path where they ask for forgiveness after the fact instead of permission beforehand. It's not like there aren't exceptionally smart people at these companies (AOL/Yahoo) that haven't been whiteboarding and spec'ing out these use cases for years... it's just been that these companies have been "playing nice" with the labels and are therefore getting dragged down with them as their failed business models fill with water.

I was reminiscing this week while on vacation about my lifeguarding days back when I was a teenager. The thing I learned then that had the most lasting impact was - if you go out to save a drowning victim, and they start to pull you under to the point that your life is endangered, extricate yourself as quickly as possible and leave them to drown on their own. Better to lose one life then two.

It is a sobering thought, but one whose time has come in this space. I hear you Ian... time to head back to shore until the labels are ready and willing to be rescued.

The Great Subscription Music Consolidation Continues

This one is not via acquisition, but attrition...

Heard on the Street - WSJ.com: "Its Yahoo Music service, which has about 250 to 300 staff, is among those expected to be trimmed and its fee-based subscription music offering overhauled or shuttered. Overall, the company plans to move staff around and freeze some positions, though significant layoffs aren't expected, people familiar with the matter say."

Since the Rhapsody/Urge merger a whopping couple of weeks ago, even more has happened. Sony Connect has been shut down and it appears that Napster is backing off of their freeplay strategy. This is of course good news for "Rhapsody America" (ugh) as the Yahoo Music Unlimited subscribers will now need to look for a new home.

Also, as of last week Apple announced that they will be rolling out WiFiTunes (my name, not there's) where users can buy any track and download over the air to their iPhone/iPod Touch and sync it back to their computer. Unlike the wireless carriers who thought that you would happily pay 2-3x for this convenience has now had that business chopped at the knees.

Now for my latest conspiracy theories around Apple...

1) iPod Touch has WiFi and Safari - how long until they introduce a VoIP client (Skype anyone) and turn it into a WiFi phone? It seems interesting in conjunction with the rumor that Apple may bid on some of the 700mhz spectrum that Google has been ogling.

2) Other news surfaced this week that iTunes has hidden error messages suggesting that a movie rental service is right around the corner. Of course... if you can do movie rentals, there is no reason you can't do a music subscription service. The fact that some of the earlier iPods didn't have a secure clock that would enable these models has be negated by the fact that Apple is rolling out an entire new *line* of iPods that I'm guessing have the secure clock that enables temporary license management.

What do you guys think?

Dell Buys Zing?

I've written about Zing a number of times. They have pulled together a very nice device and ecosystem - unfortunately it has been confined to being offered by Sandisk and only works in conjunction with Yahoo Music. Now word appears that Dell may be buying Zing:

Dell Buys Wireless Access Expertise, Plans Zing Purchase — Digital Music News: "Ahead of that shift, Dell is now circling around wireless media specialists Zing, a company that recently teamed on a WiFi media player concept with SanDisk and Yahoo. 'In a move that reflects the renewed interest and energy being directed at its consumer business, Dell plans to use Zing and its capabilities to continue improving the entertainment experiences it provides its customers,' the company declared in a brief announcement Monday."

That's great news for Tim Bucher and his team - but unfortunate for us consumers. Dell has proven themselves fairly inept at selling MP3 players (and other consumer electronics I believe). I would hate to see such a nice product as the one the Zing guys have made wither on the vine....

Yahoo's New Flash Player (Webjay Transformed)

I was looking at one of my old embedded Webjay playlists today and came across this...

Obviously, Yahoo has some new ideas on how they are going to leverage Webjay into the rest of their music offerings. And while the front door of Webjay says they are closed, you can deep link back into the rest of the site - I got to one of my old Webjay playlists here. The version that was surfaced to me had a SHOUTcast station URL in it. It will be interesting to see what's next....

My guess is a new playlist sharing site more deeply integrated into Yahoo music, where they leverage/support XSPF playlists of free-range MP3s and then link them back to Yahoo Music pages to generate incremental page views. Ian?

me*dia*or shower

Between vacation last week, and some work I've been doing on on me*dia*or - I haven't posted much lately. But, I think me*dia*or is getting pretty good. Well, at least *I* find it useful for keeping up with the news and dialog around "music 2.0".

I've turned what was once just a simple feed splicer into a full blown "river of news" feed aggregation network. I'm pulling about six dozen feeds right now - and using Yahoo Pipes to filter some of the feeds to just give me the music/media related posts from some of the more broad sources (e.g. Fred Wilson, TechCrunch, Mashable, etc.).

I've added a custom Google search box (that will search all of me*dia*or's sources), digital music job postings culled from Indeed, an embedded Meebo chat room (with the hope it will spawn real-time dialog among readers) and a Streampad widget that pulls the day's most popular MP3s from The Hype Machine (so you can listen while you read).

There are forums for quick access to on going discussions on particular topics. A secondary flash audio player where users can upload and/or point to MP3s across the web. The photo widget allows members to pull their Flickr photos directly into the network. Ning (one of the platforms used for me*dia*or - with Tumblr being the other) enables direct integration of those players and slideshows back into Facebook.

On my personal me*dia*or profile page, I've pulled in the feed from this blog as well as my Facebook status and Last.fm quilt.

Now the real question... will anyone besides me actually use it?

No Deal!

The WSJ is now reporting the rumored Microsoft/Yahoo deal is off the table again. But, I still think Rhapster/Napsody should be seriously considered by both parties. Remind me to go and register both of those domain names. :-)

Whoa, I just went to Napster.com and saw a new site design and the much more promient "Free Napster" offering. When the hell did that happen?

While I was there I figured I'd share one of my favorite songs of the moment from the Kings of Leon:

McFearless

Microhoo?!

While music is probably the last of their considerations in this rumored deal, it would certainly change the landscape.

BILL'S HARD DRIVE By PETER LAURIA and ZACHERY KOUWE - Business - New York Post Online Edition:
May 4, 2007 -- "Stung by the loss of Internet advertising firm DoubleClick to Google last month, Microsoft has intensified its pursuit of a deal with Yahoo!, asking the company to re-enter formal negotiations, The Post has learned.

While Microsoft and Yahoo! have held informal deal talks over the years, sources say the latest approach signals an urgency on Microsoft's part that has up until now been lacking.

The new approach follows an offer Microsoft made to acquire Yahoo! a few months ago, sources said. But Yahoo! spurned the advances of the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant. Wall Street sources put a roughly $50 billion price tag on Yahoo!. "

If this ever happened think of the mess of trying to reconcile all of the various music groups and products. Just off the top of my head, here is what I can think of that each would bring into a merger/acquistion:

• Yahoo Music Jukebox(media player)
• MusicMatch (whatever is left of it)
• Yahoo Music Unlimited (subscription service)
• Webjay (playlisting)
• Yahoo Launhcast (streaming radio)
• MSN Radio (powered by Pandora)
• MSN Music
• Zune Player (media player)
• Zune Hardware
• Xbox360 (as media center extender)
• Windows Media Player (Windows and Mobile)
• Windows Media DRM
• PlaysforSure Partners (both subscription service providers like Napster and device manufacturers)

There are probablly virutally dozens of other groups and products that I'm overlooking right now, but what a shakeout that would be. If that happens, then Rhapsody and Napster need to give each other a call and start making wedding plans. Rhapster? Napsody?

ACM Recommender Systems 2007

I have the honor of participating in the upcoming ACM Recommender Systems 2007 Conference as a member of the Industry Program Committee, which at this point also includes:

• Francisco J. Martin (co-Chair), MyStrands
• Todd Beaupre, Yahoo! Inc
• Rafael Camargo, Motorola, Inc
• Maikki Frisk, Nokia Corporation
• Jason Herskowitz, AOL Inc
• Kaushal Kurapati, Ask.com
• Dominic Pride, France Telecom, SA"

To learn more about it, or if you or your company is interested in particpating, you can find more info here.

Yahoo Music Shakeup

Industry shake-up.... Yahoo's Music group is undergoing a changing of the guard. It will be interesting to see what effect it has on their strategy and commitment in the subscription music space.

paidContent.org: The Economics of Content: "two of the longtime fixtures at Yahoo’s music group have resigned, and the company says it is for personal reasons. Dave Goldberg (VP) and Bob Roback (GM), both of whom came into Yahoo through Yahoo’s acquisition of Launch in 2001, are out, and Vince Broady, Head of Entertainment and Games at Yahoo, is overlooking the division now as part of his broader responsibilities. "

For the record, Goldberg has long been a proponent of abolishing DRM, and perhaps he just got tired of waiting?

UPDATE: Techcrunch is actually reporting that they are hearing rumors that Yahoo may be looking to divest of some/all of their music properties.

GigaOM » Price Hikes For Yahoo Music

GigaOM » Price Hikes For Yahoo Music: "On November 14, 2006, the cost of a new Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscription will increase from $6.99 to $8.99 per month. Despite this price increase, Yahoo! Music Unlimited will still offer the lowest price of any major subscription music service — now with a catalog of more than 2 million songs!"

Hmmm... Yahoo Music is struggling and Napster is rumored to be up for sale. The winds of change....

Yahoo MusicMatch on Media Center

Just when I was thinking that Yahoo was moving everyone away from their MusicMatch products (which they paid upwards of $160 million for), they go and launch a Radio and Music service branded with the old moniker within Media Center's "Online Spotlight". In addition to the fact that it requires you to install yet another media player (MusicMatch) on top of all the others, it had the nerve to crash my machine while doing it.

While a solid radio offering is a welcome addition to MCE, this seems to be a little bit of a contrivance.. Yahoo is pushing you to their new Yahoo Music Unlimited / Yahoo Radio (aka Launch) on your 2' PC UI, but a separate UI and infrastructure when you want to manage your music from the comfort of your sofa. That's just odd.

I work in this industry, and the current state of the market and messaging is confusing enough to me. How is the average Joe Schmo supposed to make heads or tails of which service to use on which device?!

Yahoo Music - First Look (UPDATED)

UPDATED: Yahoo and/or MusicNet obviously realized their false start this morning and have subsequently fixed many of the issues that I reported.

Conceptually, I like where they are *trying* to go. I've made no secret of my belief that community, IM integration and passive recommendations/playlisting as being the key to creating a compelling and differentiated music service. Yahoo seems to have all the pieces to make it work, particularly with the pending Yahoo! 360 service (see previous posts). But as of now, my list of issues with the service is that it simply doesn't work (yet):

* Requires a 30+MB client download that seems to effectively be just a skinned version of Windows Media Player.

* Requires a reboot after installation... I hate that.

* While I like that fact that it will import (and play) content downloaded from other subscription services (e.g. Napster to Go), there is no visual indication to help identify which content was downloaded from which service. This will be a user migration issue for those coming from Napster or Rhapsody since I don't believe the licenses for those files will get renewed once they stop the competitive subscription. Update: I take it back, they do have a field that identifies "subscription" versus "imported" music.

* Syncing doesn't work with my Audiovox SMT5600 ("Plays for Sure" smartphone) with any content that I downloaded from Yahoo. Interestingly, the YME (Yahoo Music Engine) software will transfer content that I downloaded with the Napster to Go service. Update: Fixed.

* Streaming (either from Yahoo or from my buddies' playlists) does not work. Update: Streaming seems to be working now.

* Playlist creation doesn't seem to be supported yet. Update: Now seems to be working.

* Downloading/playing content worked fine for me although others I know have reported license acquisition errors when trying to do so.

* I did have the application freeze on me a couple of times that required a forced application close to escape from.

The funny (or sad) thing is that most of these issues seem to be with their Musicnet backend system. As I dig further into it I will post again...