The End Of The Web 2.0 Boom?

From techcrunch – VC injection is slowing down.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/20/vc-deals-in-charts-q1-2008%e2%80%94welcome-to-the-slowdown/

It’s not quite as drastic as the crash of the original dotcom boom, but then again we haven’t really seen much in the way of dotcom IPO’s – most of the high profile stories have been about acquisitions – myspace, youtube, bebo (WTF were AOL thinking?), last.fm, photobucket etc etc

Facebook is the only big name out there that’s talking about the possibility of an IPO
So what’s going to happen now? Well startups can no longer rely on VC’s to keep them afloat while they grow market share, everyone is gong to have to focus on exit strategy.

Looking at the list of music sites in play there are a few which are clearly going to have their work cut out for them

imeem is the biggest site, with the most visitors, but of all the top sites it’s going to have the biggest outlays…. except perhaps for myspace music, which will be a high profile challenge to their core service. It also can’t help that bloggers are rallying like a cult around muxtape, a vastly inferior (or as the cult indoctrination has it ’simpler’) playlist sharing service. While imeem has the most users by a long way they’ve never managed the kind of explosive viral growth that muxtape is showing. imeem will probably be acquired before another VC injection.

projectplaylist is the next big company in play, but they’re going to have a legal fight if they want to avoid paying the record labels, and the regular content churn will keep driving users away to other sites. They’ll have to start hosting everything themselves if they want to compete with myspace and imeem, which means massive cash injections. That’s not going to happen and over time they will begin to slip from their position.

ilike.com will probably get acquired, they can’t compete with the big names but they complement them nicely.

mog.com doesn’t really seem to do anything well, it might be able to break even if it can hold onto its users.

ok bored…. this seemed more interesting when I started it.

Not Drinking The Muxtape Kool-Aid

The blogging world is going crazy over muxtape, this disappoints me because…

10 reasons why muxtape doesn’t deserve the response it’s getting

1. It’s not a new idea, imeem and projectplaylist have been doing this for over 2 years
2. It’s not legal, so it will get sued, things will change, your beatles tracks will get nuked from storage, you might even share some legal liability
3. imeem is legal and it’s making sure artists are getting paid, you might think you’re supporting your favorit artists by making a muxtape to promote them. but if you made the same mix at imeem then you’d be promoting them and getting them some extra cash.
4. 1 mix per account? WTF
5. 12 tracks per mix Limit
6. No tracks longer than 10mb, only mainstream pop/rock records fit into 10mb, no epic rock operas or 15 minute jazz odysseys
7. mp3 only, other sites have solved this
8. other sites let you embed the mix on other pages, muxtape lets you put a link that takes users to the muxtape site
9. Other sites let you use tunes uploaded by other users, with muxtape you have to upload your own copy regardless
10. it frequently fails to work on firefox.

muxtape is for schmux

In Rainbows

Courtesy of Radiohead’s page on meem.com

http://radiohead.imeem.com/playlist/F767ye8D/in_rainbows_music_playlist/

Oh… it looks like I can’t embed from imeem.com, which means this blog may have to die.

Anyone know of a blog hoster that lets me embed stuff from imeem.com?

Quick Things To Know About Me

I live in Palo Alto

I’m a geek, I hang out with geeks.

Favorite website is meem.com – imeem is youtube for music (yes I know it does video too, but the music is where teh awesum is) everyone should have an imeem account. I know people who know people who work there.

I hate myspace and all that it stands for.

Facebook is kinda ~meh~

(I hear both myspace and facebook are trying to clone imeem’s music features, I hope this doesn’t stop imeem becoming a real success)

I guess that makes me a music geek.

TV: Sci fi – BSG, Doctor Who, Star Trek etc
Films: Sci Fi, smarter the better, Blade Runner is one of the greatest visions of the future ever.

First Post

Well that was predictable.

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