Is There Any Company At All Who Won't Launch Their Own Music Download Store?
from the no,-really... dept
Okay, someone make it stop. Last week I mentioned HP's plans to open their own music download store and wondered if there was any tech company that wasn't planning their own music download store. Apparently, I was too narrow in my focus. Coca-Cola has announced plans to offer a music download store as well. It's beginning to feel like the "feature" that everyone wants to add. "Oh yeah, our website has a spinning logo, a store locator, search functionality, customer self-service, and, of course, our own music download store." Of course, this will be like every other download music store with silly limitations and bad pricing, but that's the way things go. It's difficult to see what benefit an outfit like Coke stands to gain. It's way (way) out of the core competency, and most of these stores have been shown to act as loss leaders for other products (like music players). I'm not sure how music becomes a loss leader for soda. I'm sure there will be many more similar announcements before some sense of sanity is reached, and companies start shutting down or merging all of these download stores into just a few entities. Having all of these separate stores with different restrictions does no good.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Yeah, but what are we going to call it?
When 999 out of 1000 new music services open and fail within the first 6-12 months what are we going to call it?
DRM-bomb?
Music-bomb?
Napster-fallout?
We need to figure this out and soon so I can go register the corresponding domain name...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Is There Any Company At All Who Won't Launch Their
Mostly Microsoft ;-)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Is There Any Company At All Who Won't Launch T
Here it is: Microsoft Windows Server 2004, comes with ActiveMusicServer built in. It's part of Windows, you see, can't be removed, so don't ask. Also it's The Standard for digital music distribution, see, obviously because just about everybody likes it enough to have it on their computer (Media Player 2004, of course). And it's the choice the RIAA, too!
Someone please quote me, I'm brilliant.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Is There Any Company At All Who Won't Launch T
Office 95 Office 97
Windows 95 Windows 98 Windows 2000
And techdirt hasn't listed a music service, so not EVERONE has one.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Actually..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Actually..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Apple pitch...
...oh, wait, now I'm so confused.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]