Amazon.com Widgets The Disappearing World of Online Music | Tired of School tired of school
Mar 10

The Disappearing World of Online Music

By TiredThomas
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Study Break
  • There seems to be a trend of online music companies going out of business.  A few weeks ago Ruckus(tm) unceremoniously closed its virtual doors.  This is a service I enjoyed (I even wrote an article about it a while back).  It was free streaming music for college students.  I even paid for the premium service so I could use it on my mp3 player.  Now if I want this same service I have to pay around $20 a month to one of the more well-known companies (such as Napster).  I won’t be doing that anytime soon; perhaps I was spoiled by Ruckus’ $5 a month for premium use.
  • Most recently, I discovered that BMG(tm) is also closing its normal operations.  This is quite a shock to me since I’ve been getting ads from them for decades (ahhhh, the days of stamp-sized CD cover mailings).  Granted, I rarely order from them and send back most of the CDs they ship out to me, but I did actually enjoy the service.  Sometimes it’s nice to be exposed to new music.
  • So, what is the future of online music?  I can’t be sure.  I don’t condone copying music, but if you want to hear a song free there is probably a YouTube(tm) video out there with your song as the sound track.  The iTunes(tm) store is also  doing booming business, but I don’t see many people being exposed to new music. Lack of exposure is likely to get worse if the music industry gets its way and makes radio stations pay to play their songs.  The upstroke of this legislation is that local stations will start playing more local music (garage bands that don’t charge to spin their tunes).  I am already hearing more local music on the radio where I am (check out The Republic Tigers).
  • All in all, I am not happy about this, but then again maybe someday I won’t have to pay tuition anymore and I’ll have more expendable income.
    • This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Study Break. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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