Josh Bruno

Universal, Sony, and Warner joined with Myspace to distribute online music. Apparently the new website will allow you to stream songs for free, download them for a fee, or pay a monthly fee to access them all. This is similar to what I said two days ago, not bad for a first post. EMI Group, who recently grabbed Google’s CIO, is not in on the deal although rumors say they may jump in.

This looks to be good news for us consumers. Especially those who already use MySapce. As far as the record companies, one of them should have taken the initiative and created their own site. The internet community would have flocked to a site that streamed full songs and was Record Company backed. Throw in a super bowl commercial, and they would have left the competition behind. Unfortunately for themselves, the record companies seem like four old men huddled around a computer trying to figure this “internet thing” out.

Overall, I’m not too excited about the new site because they’ll probably screw it up in the following ways:

1. Not all free streams will be full songs
2. Mandatory MySpace registration
3. Excessive DRM