Dotcom's New Site "Megabox" Almost Ready 101
concealment writes "Dotcom confirmed to the Associated Press in a telephone interview that he has completed 90% the work on "new Mega" and "Megabox", a music site that he announced in June. Megabox will allow users to download music for free in exchange for accepting some advertisements, and 90% of the revenue will go to the artists."
nice idea (Score:2, Funny)
if Apple don't get wind and sue the pants off Dotcom for undercutting.
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In another DIMENSION, baby!
Re:Host country? (Score:4, Funny)
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Maybe he means the Danish island?
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New Sealand.
Re:Host country? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well if 90% of the revenue goes to the musicians then I doubt he'll be going through any of the major protection rackets and sticking to smaller/indie stuff. Otherwise there would be no way to guarantee that percent going to them.
Accidental plagiarism (Score:2)
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He is Kim.
He doesn't give a flying fuck about indie artists, he will go with whoever pays him money, because he likes showing off.
More likely, though, this is all vaporware and he was just pissed that his name wasn't in the headlines for a week.
Lawsuits (Score:5, Insightful)
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The Big Names are all signed with a label already, but all is not lost. One approach that might work is to focus instead on newcomers - all the people with a band practicing in the garage or writing music in their bedroom. The vast majority of it will be utter crap, of course - but there is potentially a great deal of it, so all you need is a good recormendation and social networking engine that can filter out the good stuff from the rest, and ensure only the former ever makes the front page.
Re:Lawsuits (Score:4, Interesting)
One approach that might work is to focus instead on newcomers - all the people with a band practicing in the garage or writing music in their bedroom. The vast majority of it will be utter crap, of course - but there is potentially a great deal of it, so all you need is a good recormendation and social networking engine that can filter out the good stuff from the rest, and ensure only the former ever makes the front page.
That's almost exactly what the original www.mp3.com was (circa 1998), and it was awesome. It was a very sad day when they were purchased / taken over / whatever and turned into a crap site.
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MP3.com was awesome, first place I ever heard 'Laziest Men on Mars' and the ever popular 'Terrible Secret of Space'
That said, they added a 'feature' that allowed people to use 'cloud' storage and the Evil Ones (UMG) demonstrated that somebody stored *gasp* copyrighted material there
The company was sued out of existence and was eventually taken over by Vivendi Universal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3.com [wikipedia.org]
Yep, delivering content directly from Artist to Consumer and not allowing the record companies to sequest
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You make the mistake of thinking that people decide what is good. That is now how the music industry works. The cartel tells the people what is good, and they buy it. How will people know what to recommend as good if they do not hear it on the radio and see the cute band members on TV?
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Easy: Dotcom makes his money taking payments from people to promote certain artists on the site... he than runs his own promotional gig ensuring those artists show up more often in people's searches, and provides them with kickbacks/extra tools to promote themselves on youtube/facebook/etc.
Seems like it might actually work, although it'll eventually end up in the same situation as the present cartel, just with new owners.
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That is basically what Bandcamp is. Anyone can upload their own music, set their own price, or even go with pay what you want. It's mostly crap, but you can find some decent stuff.
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One approach that might work is to focus instead on newcomers - all the people with a band practicing in the garage or writing music in their bedroom.
We have a great place here in Australia for this - http://www.triplejunearthed.com/ [triplejunearthed.com] . It has launched the career of many artists.
It is provided by the ABC, our state-owned media broadcaster, as part of their youth radio network Triple J. It is a fantastic service. I've gotten a lot of free music from them and exposure to really awesome bands.
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No, because IUMA was small enough to just supersede, which is what happened.
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We're getting into the territory where Kim Dotcom himself might end up dead and buried.
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A real artist would not sign a deal with an aggregator. You need a respectful label that is promoting, protecting and licensing your music. Megabox is supposed to be an answer to any of this?
The problem is, the 'big label' is farming out the promotion, distribution, and licensing of the real artists to wholey owned subsidies so that the label only shows losses on paper while the subsidiaries, doing business only with each other until it gets to the wholesalers, make the money while driving prices up for maximum profit. For protection, the labels turn to the lawyers, who have the label as their clients, not the artists. If some piece of litigation ends up being good for the artist, that's all
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well.. he announced this and then fbi but the hammer down on him after that. some said that it wasn't a coincidence..
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A technology that challenges the recording industry's firm grim on paying people to make music? A system that gives artists a big cut of the revenue made by monetizing their music? Something that might actually change revenue models? The lawsuits will not stop until this is dead and buried.
> When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.
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Lol, you fell for the trolling so hard, it must hurt.
Advertisement revenue per-view is tiny. Fractions of cents. Even per-click we are talking about a few cents at best, and probably less.
Put your stuff on iTunes and you'll get 70% of the sales price, that is a lot more in revenue.
Oh, unless you are with a major label, but guess what, then they control the distribution rights and you can't put your stuff on Mega-nonsense anyways.
Plus, why the fuck is this news? It's not like this was new in any shape or for
Re:the 90% (Score:5, Insightful)
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Because the definition of "complete" changes daily for 95% of the project's duration.
Re:the 90% (Score:5, Funny)
Software development is like a Microsoft progress bar. It jumps from 0% to 90% instantly, stays there a while, jumps to 99%, and then freezes.
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A friend and I spent sixty weeks developing a shop-in-the-box solution back in 1998-9, for fifty six of those weeks it was at the "90% done" stage.
Sweet! (Score:2)
Hope this isn't region-restricted like Amazon music store and Beatport! I could really use this!
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Indeed... I find that having iTunes accounts in multiple countries helps there, now that the DRM's gone. I tend to get most of the rest by listening to stuff off of youtube....
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
"Bitcoin or cash" (Score:2)
An open source appliance that [...] allows me to reward artists in realtime using bitcoin or cash for their efforts.
You had me up until BitCoin.
If you prefer a currency backed by taxation (e.g. USD) rather than cryptography (e.g. BTC), all you need to do is turn off Bitcoin support in your appliance and accept that a larger percentage of your smaller donations will go to the payment processors to pay transaction fees.
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Yet miraculously the music industry still continues to exist
Yes, unfortunately. This seems to be really a case where the old regime needs to be nuked, before something better can be build.
Burn down the old outhouse, instead of trying to install new plumbing in it.
But cockroaches can survive nukes . . . how about fire . . . ?
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You are of the mistaken impression that record labels actually produce music, or musical artists. They don't.
**AA and all the runty labels that bow before them haven't cared about music in many many years. They craft drama inducing characters involved in intertwined story lines of good looking people (for various definitions of good looking) loosely framed by their supposed ability to sing and play musical instruments (or just their ability to talk, in the case of rappers). Can a few of them actually sin
What kind of wrestling league would Dotcom start? (Score:2)
**AA is to music as WWE is to wrestling.
In this analogy, what's the more authentic alternative to pro wrestling promotions like WWE and TNA that will allow wrestlers to "(eventually) earn a decent wage"? Let me guess: you're thinking of the MMA circuit.
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Late on the reply here, but my analogy was more about the insipid and false nature of things. Neither the music produced by the **AA nor the death defying stunts performed in a ring are real. Fake, staged, rigged, dolled up to look real, but not real. Do you think wrestler A is REALLY hitting wrestler B with a steel chair at full swing? Or even really punching each other? Not a chance. Likewise, do you really think pop music stars actually sing their own songs, play their instruments or hit half the n
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Personally I don't care about these The Monkees copies a bit - why would I? Big labels can keep them for what I care, but *if* substantial number of real artists went from them to modern alternatives, like this could be, and most new artists would not even sign with big labels - well, that would be a truly great thing for people into real music :)
It'll happen sooner or later, the destruction of dinosaur business model the big labels depend on to remain big... I still hope there will be some market for obtai
Rough winds for record companies (Score:1)
When does the net get a new anarchy file host? (Score:5, Interesting)
I miss Megaupload for its entirely legal uses.
It just was the easiest way to share larger files with people who normally don't use any kind of file-sharing technology. If someone was challenged by a USB drive, or multiple email attachments, I'd sent them the megaupload link and say "download it here."
This was generally for non-sensitive information shared with a large decentralized group working on both for-profit and non-profit products. When does the internet get a new anarchy file host, where no one cares what you upload and they keep it around if it's popular?
Re:When does the net get a new anarchy file host? (Score:5, Informative)
You mean like:
- Dropbox
- Google Drive
- Amazon S3
- Evernote
- PogoPlug
- YouSendIt
And the countless other file lockers and document/ file distribution services that are out there?
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your preferred list of sites with the word "file" or "upload" in them have either click-through ads or captcha or 30-60 second wait times or all three. why would anyone prefer them over dropbox or google drive?
Free account limits (Score:2)
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Google Drive for the win though. Nothing beats Google for pure speed.
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I like Google Drive. 5GB and counting, baby!
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ooh! Worth looking at, then! :)
No naked cartoon characters in a SkyDrive (Score:2)
For one thing, SkyDrive is tied to a Microsoft account. According to "Prohibited Uses" in the Code of Conduct for a Microsoft account [microsoft.com], all drawings of cartoon characters must be clothed. Arthur Read and Simon Seville are OK, but Tigger and Spyro are not.
For another, "Your computer doesn't support the free SkyDrive app". Apparently, the only Linux distribution it supports is Android, and my laptop runs something based on Debian. I signed into the web version with my Hotmail account, and I got a confusing
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Have you looked at Mediafire or PutLocker? They offer good filehosting for free (on both the upload and download sides) the way MU did.
As for MegaBox... I'll believe it when I see it. :)
Re:When does the net get a new anarchy file host? (Score:4, Insightful)
oh so YOU were the guy who used Megaupload for legal uses. We were wondering who that was.
The rest of us used it to download Avengers and Call of Duty: MW3.
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oh so YOU were the guy who used Megaupload for legal uses. We were wondering who that was.
The rest of us used it to download Avengers and Call of Duty: MW3.
A lot of legal software publishers hosted the latest versions of their software on megaupload.
I know, I downloaded a bunch. Sure, i've downloaded some hard to find copyrighted stuff from there also, but most the time, I was downloading legal software from megaupload.
Shit, I used the public bus to go pick up marijuana, maybe we should shut down the bus system because it's used for illegal activities?
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Except that mega upload was a piece of shit for legit file sharing purposes and plenty of far superior services are available.
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It just was the easiest way to share larger files with people who normally don't use any kind of file-sharing technology.
There are many competitors in that area, and more convenient, too. Dropbox is my weapon of choice, and it integrates with the filesystem. How much more convenient than "cp MyFile.zip ~/Dropbox/public/" can you get? (or drag&drop for those who don't like consoles).
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I miss Megaupload for its entirely legal uses.
It just was the easiest way to share larger files with people who normally don't use any kind of file-sharing technology. If someone was challenged by a USB drive, or multiple email attachments, I'd sent them the megaupload link and say "download it here."
I miss it for the illegal uses also. For example there were lot's of manga scanlations available on megaupload. Scanlation is fan-based translation of japanese manga. Now when megaupload is gone, those files are wery hard or imposible to track elsewhere. With no official (legal) english translation available, those manga series are effectively lost to me.
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Just so you know, megabox is a also a middleman. Peace out.
Dotcom has GUTS (Score:3)
I give him a high-5 for not giving up.
90% of 0.01 cents is far worse than 1% of 99 cents (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me sell you this copy of Photoshop for $10.
It is OK because I give 90% to Adobe.
Let me sell you this perfectly forged $1 note for 90 cents. It is OK because I give the government 81 cents.
Micropayment processing (Score:2)
On the other hand, it is likely easier to get that 0.01 cent out of a customer than the 99 cents.
Even after the cost per transaction that payment processors charge?
MegaGrooveShark, then? (Score:2)
I'll be very surprised if the business model won't be similar to GrooveShark's - in which case you'd only get the 90% of 0.01 cents if you went into an agreement with with the service. Otherwise you'll be advised to talk to your legal team about drafting formal complaints about URLs leading to the infringed work. And then you get to do that over and over again as the work just gets re-uploaded by the users. So, you see, either you spend a lot of money on legal complaints, or you just let things be and ge
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Er, nobody is the forcing the artists to put up their songs on Megabox. So the point is moot.
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it's for artists to upload, not for you to sell your random mp3's. as such it's a spotify alternative for indie music sort of..
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Ill give you this copy of photo shop, and its ok as i copied it.
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No, i'm talking copying Adobe products without permission, as i don't acknowledge the concept of IP rights.
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Let me sell you this copy of Photoshop for $10.
It is OK because I give 90% to Adobe.
Let me sell you this perfectly forged $1 note for 90 cents. It is OK because I give the government 81 cents.
He's not selling illegal music.
He will be selling music that artists have signed up for. And he does have quite a few big artists with him on this.
You think he is so stupid that he's going to put up a service that is based off selling music he has no rights to? Seriously, during his court trial?
Let me guess, he killed you many times during MW3?
Because I keep seeing a bunch of statements that aren't even what is going on getting modded up. Like yours. It's not insightful, you are trolling.
MegaUpload Mk. II (Score:2)
Can't wait for that.
Build it from ground out so it is protected from 'legal' harassment from the MAFIAA and the US law enforcement authorities who think they own the world, and be sure to place servers etc. so they're completely unreachable and untouchable from those points of view. They should be well-conected network-wise of course and not hide that even the pirates are welcome to share files here.
After all, sharing cam-recordings or various rips just might not be illegal at all if the creator releases th
Radio, anyone? (Score:1)
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned that this sounds suspiciously like the business model of Radio. It will be interesting to see if they have the ability to keep track of where to send all the checks, unless they have a very small playlist.
Megakey (Score:2)
According to German IT news site heise.de[1] , to get the free music, users have to install a "megakey"-software on their computers, which acts like an ad-blocker for your browser, but instead of just blocking ads on websites, it will replace 15% of ads with Megabox ads.
Does anyone else see a problem with this? For me, that's a no-go.
[1]http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Neuseelands-Premier-entschuldigt-sich-bei-Kim-Dotcom-1718814.html [heise.de]