Two days ago, an article in the New York Times, titled “A Radio Station Just for You”, explained the growing popularity of “radio” (such as Pandora and Last.fm) on the internet among today’s generation.
New, up and coming websites were also mentioned in the article, including, Soundflavor.com, Goombah.com, and Mog.com.
These new websites are not only giving people new music to listen, but they are also connecting people to others with similar taste: Social networking and music (that you want to listen to) combined. Mog.com is even offering a video service: “Imagine if YouTube knew what songs were in your music collection”, a quotation from Mog’s chief executive, David Hyman.
Websites like these are exactly what people in Generation Y are looking for. They want to discover new music, and meet people with similar music tastes. However, will music based social networking communities be able to stay afloat in today’s heavily regulated copyright world? Recently, the Library of Congress announced a Web-radio royalty payment plan. Something like this poses a threat to the “fragile business models” of internet-radio companies.
One of these websites, Slacker.com, made licensing deals directly with the four big major labels in order to try and mediate the royalty issues. Slacker seems like a promising idea at first, but the one catch is that it is heavily supported by advertisements.
Online radio could be the next big thing. However, it won’t blossom into a success until deals with the major labels and advertising are worked out. There is still a long way to go, but companies are almost there in finding the key to Generation Y.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
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