A penny per play? Huh? Well... Imeem seems to have settled a lawsuit and agreed to pay 1¢ per each time a song is played! Yowsers! Now THAT'S what I call a death sentence!
So now the music industry is starting to finally license music for distribution through other channels. And ensuring the death of their customers? Doesn't make sense.
Microsoft goes to great lengths to try and ensure the health of their partners and to help them make money. After all, when developers make money creating for MS platforms, MS makes money too.
Doesn't seem like the music industry understands this though. They're killing Pandora and web radio stations like DI.fm. Jeez! What's wrong with these people? If they can't have the WHOLE pie, then nobody can?
Well, they're just going to encourage crappy distribution (like iTunes -- I'll skip my rant on how the iTunes store is VERY broken -- for now anyways...) and limit the amount that honest people are willing to spend.
Let's put it this way... Give me access to music at good prices and I'll give you access to my wallet. :) Really. I'd buy all kinds of stuff just to try it if I could get it cheap enough. I'm not going to jump through hoops to buy at the current prices though. (It's almost impossible for me to purchase music online, and the only way I can is to be deceptive in how I use the stores... And even then I can't even use the music that I'd be paying for -- it's all THAT broken...)
So -- what about that suit between Warner Music and Imeem? Well, Warner shares fell 12¢. Which by the way, is much closer to what I'd like to pay for a song...
Cheers,
Ryan