The top 5 things in the digital music world that didn't happen in 2006

#3 Yahoo didn't buy last.fm - for a while it seemed that Yahoo was going to buy all of the Web 2.0 companies. They bought Flickr. They bought Deli.cio.us.  It seemed quite natural that the next thing they would buy would be venerable (in the web sense) Last.FM.  Last.FM is one of the first of the Music 2.0 companies - they have been collecting all sorts of really interesting data - social tags,  user song plays.  Over the last 4 years they've collected billions of data points about music taste.  This data can be used for all sorts of things: recommendations, identifying tastemakers , novel playlist generation, spotting the next breakout band.   So with Yahoo seemingly buying every Web 2.0 company it could, it seemed only natural that Last.FM would join the Yahoo empire.  But instead, there was the Peanut butter manifesto about Yahoo spreading itself too thin.  Yahoo was having a hard time figuring out how to monetize its Flickr and Del.icio.us acquisitions. The social music space was getting crowded with newcomers launching every other month.  At the end of the year, Last.fm was still an independent company - it still was the largest social music network with 5 million unique visitors per month.   Now  the maturing last.fm has to figure out how to use those eyeballs and all that golden data into to stay ahead of the pack - without the help of a company like Yahoo.

Posted on: Jan 07, 2007

Posted by: plamere

Category: music

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Peanut butter manifesto aside, Yahoo never seems to do the right thing. Last.fm would have been a great acquisition, instead they keep looking at companies like facebook, who they'd just drill into the ground.

Posted by Anita on January 07, 2007 at 09:18 PM EST #

These "Things that Didn't Happen" are all really good, Paul. I think that there are many of us in the Music IR community (others I've worked with over the years have confided similar thoughts to me) that collectively wonder why more of these things that we have been working on for years have not taken off yet. We all saw, years ago, the potential for this type of research and technology. And who doesn't like music, right? So why have the major players collectively failed to innovate in this sphere? I can only think that it has something to do with digital rights, though for the life of me I can't figure out what.. given that both Apple and Yahoo (and MS for that matter, though maybe to a lesser extent) all seem like they have a reasonable working relationship with the music companies. Perhaps there is some sort of analogy that could be made between MIR and cell phone applications? For years now people have been predicting the opening up of cell phones, for general applications, web browsing, etc. Yet to this day there remains little to no innovation in that sphere, too. My only guess is that the cell phone companies want to maintain their walled gardens, and can actively stifle any innovation that may arise. Maybe there is some similar stifling from the music companies towards Yahoo and Apple and MS. I know, it doesn't really make sense to me either, because you would think that technology that allows fans to discover more/new music would increase sales, and make the music companies happy. But maybe they are still too stuck on their old distribution models. Even though they would make more money with newer, long-tail discovery search technology, they fear the loss of control, and thus are somehow requiring anyone who wants to partner with them (Apple, Yahoo, etc.) to certain, limited discovery modes. I don't know. Thoughts? Do you have an analysis of why nothing has happened, again, in 2006? (I remember thinking 2004 was going to be the year it all took off). Would you post your thoughts, after you get to #5?

Posted by Jeremy P on January 08, 2007 at 12:41 AM EST #

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