eBay and UMG team up

Starting tomorrow, eBay becomes the latest "strategic online retail channel for UMG and brings eBay enthusiasts unprecedented access to music from the world's largest music company, as well as artist memorabilia and unique opportunities to meet UMG's artists".

You'll recall that eBay - the world's largest online auction house - started out as a Net community effort but grew into a vast, multi-national corporation with the ethics of a vast, multi-national corporation.

Lots of happy punters make lots of dollars from eBay's online auctions. But there's also a fast-growing legion of very unhappy people (members, as eBay calls them) who'd dearly love to go somewhere else. But eBay is, to all intents and purposes, a monopoly. As eBay dishes out, so must members swallow.

Be that as it may, UMG has acquired an eBay store to, "serve as a hub for large-scale weekly online sales and auction promotions, offering new releases, catalog music, artist memorabilia, including signed instruments, records, and lyric sheets, and exclusive experiential opportunities, such as concert tickets, backstage passes, and invitations to video shoots," say eBay and UMG.

"In addition to new release promotions, the store will also feature hard-to-find music from Universal artists that typically has not been available to fans through traditional retail channels."

Could this last be in reference to the fact more than a few file sharers go online to track down vintage and/or obscure music they can't find anywhere else?

The first promotion will feature, "an exciting mix of one-of-a-kind items," say the two in a breathless statement. "On the block over the next month will be Bon Jovi's signed guitars [howe many of them are there, anyway?] and handwritten lyrics, front row tickets to Jay-Z's upcoming performance at Madison Square Garden, and a personal drum lesson with Nickelback drummer Ryan Vikedal."

UMG will be able target eBay's 75 million registered users, "through prominent online promotion on the eBay site, and through numerous cross-marketing activities".

Like it or not, it's certainly one of the best ideas yet from a label on how to get something out of the Net, other than by suing file sharers.