How Dare You Make Our Service More Valuable! RealNetworks Shuts Down YottaMusic
from the not-allowed-to-make-things-more-valuable dept
It's sometimes amazing how shortsighted companies can be -- especially when they discover that others are making their own services better and more valuable. We've written about various threats and lawsuits against people who have made better interfaces for websites such as the Ellis Island listings and Odeon Cinemas' site in the UK. Now, as noted by Fred Wilson, it looks like the folks at RealNetworks have forced YottaMusic out of business for making Real's Rhapsody service a lot more userfriendly. TechCrunch suggests that there's some political reasons for the shutdown having to do with what APIs YottaMusic was using, but that's hardly an excuse for shutting down a popular site that only makes Rhapsody's service more valuable by creating an interface that many people prefer to Rhapsody's own interface. Users of YottaMusic still need to be Rhapsody subscribers, so it could only help to increase Real's subscriber numbers -- so it's hard to understand what the business rationale could be for shutting the site down.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.
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Filed Under: apis, music, value added services
Companies: realnetworks, yottamusic
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Huh?
Rhapsody sells music for download. YottaMusic comes along and makes some kind of skin or client to allow Rhapsody users to get their music - without having any negative impact on Rhapsody - and they get shut down?
Is that really the case?
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there could be one reason
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Re: there could be one reason
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Re: Re: there could be one reason
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Becasue people are
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amazing!
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Could be a stupid move as stated, could be stupid users made letting it continue a cost drain to Rhapsody. Who knows..
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Only a dumbass uses real player
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obviously
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