p2pnet - rss feed: Tiscali Juke Box goes offline
p2p news / p2pnet: EMI, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and Sony BMG just don’t seem to be able to get along with anyone.
The Big Four are alienating their own customers in the hundreds and thousands with a warped sue ‘em all marketing scheme under which law suits are being used in a bid to frighten consumers into buying over-priced ‘product’.
Now, there’s a major problem with Tiscali’s ‘legal’ Juke Box, say the labels through one of their ‘trade’ associations.
According to Tiscali, the European recording industry [read the Big Four] is, “virtually impossible to work with”.
Either way, Juke Box is offline, says the BBC, going on, “Mercora, which was a partner in the Juke Box service, had been running the same service in the US for more than a year.”
But, “the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said Juke Box had offered a level of interactvity that breached its licence,” says the story, which has Tiscali.co.uk editor Richard Ayers saying it’s all very disappointing.
“We were trying to develop a new and innovative service in order to increase the appreciation of music, and indeed the purchasing of music. It was clearly working.”
He says he doesn’t understand, “why the European record labels appear to have a problem, whereas the ones in the US don’t,” the BBC states.
Here’s what Tiscali’s Mario Mariani has to say in an open letter >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It is with great regret that today we find ourselves forced to “turn off” our Tiscali Juke Box service, launched recently on 26 April 2006 in Italy and the UK.
When we launched Tiscali Juke Box our objective was to offer users the chance to legally listen to millions of songs through p2p streaming, selecting them by artist, genre, or simply by choosing predefined playlists made available by other users. This service was developed on Mercora’s platform which, for over a year, has been enormously successful in offering users the possibility to listen legally in the United States.
The service has now been judged by the major recording labels in Europe to be “too interactive” only because it allows users of the Internet (the most interactive of mediums) to carry out searches by “artist” in addition to genre.
It should be explained to the readers that online music rights are subdivided into two main categories: “non interactive rights”, which can be negotiated with the collecting societies, and “interactive rights” which must be negotiated with the individual recording labels.
After signing an experimental one-year Webcasting agreement based on the management of non-interactive rights, today, Tiscali has received a request by the recording labels to modify the service by eliminating the search by artist mode or, alternatively, to negotiate the so called interactive rights with the individual recording labels.
All this goes clearly against the spirit of our initiative which was to ensure that Tiscali is always at the frontline in promoting the legal online distribution and sale of music. Tiscali Juke Box represented an additional important step in our own policy to encourage the legal purchase of music through the Internet and the service proved extremely effective in achieving this as, since its launch, legal download sales of music through the Tiscali Music Club (integrated with the Tiscali Juke Box streaming service) recorded an increase of approximately 30%.
It is surprising that after just one month, despite the joint regular testing and fine-tuning phase carried out prior to the launch of the service, the major labels have decided to submit unexpected change requests. Even more surprising is the short-sightedness of the recording industry in not making any effort to understand either the basic needs or habits of music fans that choose to consume music via the Internet, or the acts directly benefiting from this promotion. In fact, a search tool without the function to identify songs at least by “genre” and “artist”, if not by single title, is hardly useful to an Internet user. Clearly the major labels don’t understand the business potential of a service like Tiscali Juke Box which, by acknowledging and paying the rights for all songs being listened to in streaming mode, safeguards the rights of the industry and the artists.
This is even more serious if one considers the fact that the same service with all the same functions disputed here, is being offered by Mercora in the United States and Canada, where it is deemed perfectly legal. We cannot ignore that the objections presented to Tiscali at this time represent, on the part of the recording industry, a clear attempt to discriminate between American and European music fans and Internet users.
Faced with this total lack of understanding and despite having put our best efforts into developing and testing the service in full transparency and cooperation with the recording industry, Tiscali today finds itself being forced to turn it off.
It is important to underline that this affair not only has an impact on Tiscali Juke Box but on the entire market for the legal online distribution of music. The industry’s conservative attitude makes any collaboration for the promotion and marketing of any type of legal, innovative service very difficult. It is unfortunate that once again the industry has demonstrated the complete rejection of online legal music based on open systems, and is to the full advantage of the proliferation of music piracy services.
We take note of this with enormous regret and only hope that this episode will serve to inspire further debate and thought.
Digg this story.
Also See:
BBC - PC makers bet on super-sized laptops, June 7, 2006
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June 7th, 2006 at 6:27 pm
“In fact, a search tool without the function to identify songs at least by “genre” and “artist”, if not by single title, is hardly useful to an Internet user.”
By that description, Napster’s webfront ’service’ is now illegal in the UK too then since it does the same thing… As is itunes and rhapsody.
Something just doesn’t add up with that release - must be more to it.
Just my 10 cents.
_-Jile-_
June 7th, 2006 at 11:58 pm
“…IFPI said Juke Box had offered a level of interactvity that breached its licence,”
“…online music rights are subdivided into two main categories: “non interactive rights”, which can be negotiated with the collecting societies, and “interactive rights” which must be negotiated with the individual recording labels.”
Guess if they want to include searchs by artist they have to obtain licensing directly from the labels. Damned if that don’t put the @$$ in asinine…
June 8th, 2006 at 12:54 am
just another example to show that if the cartels don’t like what they see, they are going try and make a living hell of a situation if it still exists
June 22nd, 2006 at 11:01 am
I am sure I’m not alone in being a Tiscali Jukebox customer who has been left high and dry,what is the easiest way of getting a refund for lost credits?