“Oboe” Ditigal music service
Xeni Jardin over at BoingBoing posted about a brand-new digital music service, by the former CEO of MP3.com. I’ve seen a few posts by people who are breathless with anticipation of this hot new thing.
Except it’s not really a new concept. In 2000, when MP3.com was getting sued by the RIAA, another company had already gone live with a digital music Locker service. That company avoided the lawsuits that plagued my.mp3.com, because they gave each user 3 gigs of individual storage space for their MP3s at a time when most people didn’t have hard drives much bigger than that. This competitor of MP3.com who beat Michael Robertson to the punch, launched a Locker, put in a playlist feature, and avoided getting sued at all? It was a company called myplay.
Sadly, the original digital music Locker company, myplay, was gobbled up by Bertelsmann, like Napster, and eventually was shut down by the parent company after the bubble burst. Myplay’s Locker service was finally shut down on December 13, 2002. I spent that night backing up my own myplay Locker in anticipation of the shutdown.
As a member of the original myplay launch team and someone who holds fond memories of my time there, I am excited to see the success of iTunes, the iPod, the proliferation of independent music sites, and the dizzying array of music available online. As far as the “Oboe” service goes, it just looks to me like another five-years-newer knockoff of the vision of Doug Camplejohn and David Pakman—a place where you could store your music collection and listen to it from anywhere. It just can’t be a Locker without the word myplay in front of it. This weekend, I’ll give the new thing a test spin and see if it measures up.
I guess it’s the time to dig the old ideas out (even those of former competitors) and find some way to bring them back. Good luck with that.
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