UK Internet users could be banned over illegal downloads

Here we go.  I am amazed that there is not more outrage about this.  Don’t people care about the civil liberties?  This is so over the top.  BPI says that ISPs should stop hiding “behind bogus privacy arguments”.  What is bogus about privacy?  It seems fundamental to democracy and the way we live.  And ISPs should show “corporate responsibility and partner with us to allow our digital creative economy to grow”.  Well, the digital economy has grown substantially in the last 10 years.  Witness Google, mobile phones and 1000s of startups.  Why is that the music industry is unable to make their “economy” grow?  Legislation has never helped to rescue industries facing major change.  It’s been tried with subsidies and more and it does not work.  Why do legislators do this?  There is a ton of demand for music products.  Evolve already.

Is free ad supported music the future of online music?

The Wall St Journal has an article this morning saying that Google will launch an ad-supported music service in China.  This is in part a response to Baidu’s lead in the Chinese market (where a large share of the searches are for music on the web) but could also be a harbinger of things to come in other geographic markets.  If this indeed has been blessed by the majors it is an interesting step for the music industry.  In some ways, the nature of the Chinese market may have forced them into this.  Note that the majors are also suing Baidu so the timing is a little strange here. 

However, the tracks that Google (together with Top100.cn) will be providing will be watermarked to allow download tracking although it’s not clear how this will work exactly.  Somewhere in the download chain something/someone will have to inspect the files for the watermark for this to work.  This therefore implies that whoever is providing the pipes will be inspecting all the content which seems like a serious problem.  As I mentioned before the music industry is already pushing for ISPs to snoop on internet users and this is most likely already going in China where the internet is not really open.  So while the business model here is interesting, I don’t much like what is going on behind the scenes:  Google (“do no evil”) and music labels using the fact that the Chinese government (“not open”) already is snooping on internet connections to further their own economic good.  Of course Google has already agreed to censor their searches in China so I suppose this move should not be a surprise.

I think Google and the majors could have been more innovative because the ad-supported music sales angle has legs.  But I don’t think it requires intervention by the government and ISPs of the world to work.  Perhaps I have this wrong but it does smell funny.  And lastly we should all work to prevent ISPs and our governments from routine 24/7 monitoring of our internet connections.  This is just plain wrong.  Additionally, when (not if because I think it will happen) someone comes up with a non-evil scheme for ad-supported music sales, it could potentially alter the internet music landscape in a big way.

Surprise: Microsoft has a plan

I suppose everything has already been said, however, 99% of it is hyperbole.  It’s refreshing to see some folks actually think about it before they write something.  Mark Cuban points out the following:

That’s a problem for Jerry. Building a world class Yahoo to be the best company it possibly can be using the management skills that Jerry and company have is a far different challenge than optimizing the stock price. Particularly when Google is your stock comp. Which is exactly why Jerry and David should sell to MSFT.

Which is a great point.  Teaming up with Microsoft will give the Yahoo businesses the staying power to compete with Google.  I don’t think they would on their own.

Marc Andreessen then points out that this merger does not necessarily mean that startups will be less likely to be acquired.  Another great point that seems to run contrary to popular opinion. 

Lastly, I think people are underestimating MSFT here.  It’s not like they did not think this through.  They are smart and have likely played out all the scenarios before making the offer (including Google’s effort to thwart the merger).  They have a plan.  You can argue about whether they can make their plan work or not but I do think they have a very deliberate plan. 

Yahoo sells music subcsription service to Real

Yahoo has apparently sold its music service to Real. This is obviously unrelated to the MS bid for Yahoo but as a subscriber to Yahoo’s music service it’s sad to see. It does beg the question whether music subscription services are heading for bit bucket. With the advent of DRM-free music being available I would tend to think that the convenience of DRM-free outweighs the subscription service convenience of having the 4 majors’ catalogs available. DRM will always have an associated hassle factor and that’s hard to get away from nor will it be solved any time soon.