Music industry watch

Loudeye and M$ cooperate on music downloads

Looks like Loudeye and M$ have teamed up to bring even more music downloads to the net. It's all based on Windows Media 9 DRM crap -- no surprises there.

What is surprising is that they want to offer a customizable store where any company can start offering its own cobranded music download site:

But the Digital Music Store lets any company interested in starting an iTunes-style service do so for a fraction of the cost, said Loudeye President Jeff Cavins.

. . .

"There is only one iTunes,'' Cavins said last week. "But there will be tens of thousands of outlets for digital music.''

At least those 10,000 stores will be compatible with one another, which is one saving grace. But it looks like Roj is on the money and these services will proliferate to the point where they will all have to compete on price, which of course drives the margins to near zero.

Jobs and M$ were right -- Jobs knows that the margins will drop to zero and M$ will make money off other sucker companies who start their own download service. It all becomes clear now.

Posted by Mayhem at December 15, 2003 11:12 AM