The Year in Online Music

Recently I dug back through our archives to put together something of a retrospective looking at Bruce Houghton of Hypebot), and it should still be fun to reflect back on some of the events that have transpired. I hope you enjoy it. It's not quite the War and Peace sized novel that the video one was (although it’s not exactly a becoming the last major label to drop digital rights management (DRM). Shortly thereafter, Amazon announced a big giveaway with Pepsi to promote its digital music business.

Apple released an on-demand service, and Yahoo being sued by Warner, and U2's manager was Yahoo acquired FoxyTunes, while according to rumors. Meanwhile in Europe, the EU was counting major record labels while MySpace was exploring a possible deal with Sony BMG, Universal Music, Warner Music and EMI. In a somewhat fresh idea of a move, R.E.M. Amazon was the number 2 online music retailer, of course behind iTunes.

April

left Yahoo for a gig as CEO of Topspin Media. A study from Insight Research legitimate Kelly Clarkson songs leaking onto the Internet, much to the displeasure of Clarkson, and Radiohead's Thom Yorke was reported by Hollywood Reporter to have Metallica now welcomed the possibilities the Internet had to offer when it came to music. This attitude was a far cry from the infamous ways of teaming up with YouTube to interact with fans after the release of Martin Scorcese's Stones documentary "Shine a Light."

TuneGlue Live Nation partnered with AdBrite on tracking shows. A Federal Court iTunes reached the 5 billion song download mark, increase in digital sales.

struck a deal with Universal Music Group to make vintage concert performances available, and songs of American Idol artists became available for download on iTunes, with David Cook started pointing customers to Rhapsody, and BskyB to roll music promotion and monetization into one widget.

August

complained about the piracy of one of their songs, when in actuality, it was their own manager who leaked it to promote the band. Meanwhile, a released the Yahoo Music API to developers, and Google keeping their music off iTunes, and the iTunes store was predicting the demise of Pandora because of a federal panel ruling ordering them to pay twice the royalties to artists that they already were, which was really an issue Karaoke performances were in danger. The popular Muxtape was shut down, but an open source program similar in nature was anticipation and finally launched, exciting some and disappointing others. Amazonoffering album art applications.

Echoing reports from earlier in the year about Metallica embracing the Internet, drummer Lars Ulrich came out and said he looking more hopeful, and even Facebook was considering entering into the digital music business and becoming a streaming competitor to iTunes and MySpace. MySpace was improving its Karaoke service, by said that it wanted to go legit, similar to how Napster did. Amazon and iTunes downloads were announced to be launched a site for....music videos! What a concept from the network that basically introduced the world to music videos in the first place. They MySpace Music finally found a leader in Courtney Holt. Japan prefers Yahoo Music for their online music destination.

MySpace Music trying to cash in on "used" MP3s, while social bookmarking site Delicious has have been predicted to rise dramatically over the next five years, YouTube has pushing the concept of blanket music licensing at the ISP level.

Like I said, there is no doubt plenty more that happened in the online music industry over the past year that is worth talking about, but music isn't exactly the niche of Murdok, so we have not covered every nugget. You can surely find plenty more in