Ramsayings

Remember when music start-ups were such a source of frustration for me? Now I really enjoy some of them! Chief among them is ex.fm, which my friend Mark showed me just the other day. Possibly the most useful Google Chrome extension that doesn’t involve a Google product.

What does it do? It sniffs out all the mp3s on a page and stores them temporarily in the extension, which allows you to browse away from their source while you listen via a sleek player. I’ve been playing Mark’s blog like a mixtape thanks to it, as well as blogs like Songs from Treme and more.

Now if it could just travel back in time to 2003…

The answer’s easy: it doesn’t work for music. Unless you were living under a rock on Friday, you probably read Techcrunch’s post, “The Sorry State of Music Startups.” Without going into great detail, Arrington’s completely right, and for once, he doesn’t resort to the whole “music just wants to be free” argument so common among Web 2.0 types. Instead, he writes that “free streaming music” is about as sensible as trying to douse a burning pile of money with a gallon of gasoline.

With all due respect to Bruce Houghton at Hypebot and Andrew Dubber at New Music Strategies, the dream is over. It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee. (more…)