Daily Archives: November 4, 2005

I can recall not so far back in the past, making fun of myspace.com for being a friendster knockoff. “Basically, they just stole the friendster idea, and improved where friendster falls apart” I said. I can’t say that I’m a philosopher, but many shared similar thoughts. The folks at myspace, “Tom”, decided to do just that. Make something better that what was available.

Musicians took a hold of that, and myspace welcomed them with open webspace. There’s approx 550,000 musicians/bands on myspace.com, with 35 million total registered users –yes I’m one of them.

So what does myspace do? Sell, keep things the same, and start a record label! Why not? A community of 35million is plenty enough to start up a record label. There’s also half a million bands just dying to get signed. Foreseeing this one was about as easy as foreseeing lance take the tour one more time, Steve showing us a video iPod, and me spending my next 4 paychecks at newegg.com, yet I’m surprised to hear this.

“Radio has become less and less important” –Chris DeWolf Myspace CEO

A fear years back, the internet was the scariest thing to the “big three” television networks. After all, file trading was about to ruin the music industry as fast as you coud download Napster. Except that Napster didn’t, and iTunes now is making a bundle. Earlier this week, NBC News announced the bright move (and reported on this web site) to allow their evening news cast to be seen in its entirety on its web site. I personally can’t wait because I often miss the news, and would definitely take the opportunity to see it over the internet later. The other networks are not standing by though.

ABC has episodes of “Lost” available for download from the iTunes store, and ready for the new Video iPod. I suspect that a fair chunk of the videos downloaded so far were this content. I like the show, but some folks are downright obssessed.

Now the latest is that CBS is offering episodes of their show “Threshold” for download off their website. This is kind of a surprising move, but then again, don’t they give it away when its broadcasted anyway?

I see this as timid steps in a brave new distribution model. Let’s hope this is profitable for them, because its great for folks. Maybe one day I can dump my VCR and just catch up on my shows via the internet!