Re: What does it mean to you, to "release a record"?

["Per Boysen" <perboysen@gmail.com>]

I agree! Ten years ago I wrote a book on "Internet Music" and back
then it looked all good and evolving except that the web were in a
desperate need of cicerones to take over where the sacked A&R guys and
critics did a good job for the traditional record business. We thought
that would change within a couple of years, but it didn't. Around the
millennium there was an upstart business focusing on reviewing digital
music, Listen.com, but the company never reached break-even during the
sponsored period and went out of business. Many record labels
supported Listen.com in starting raphsody.com, trying to capitalize on
the reviewing by selling a listening subscription for $6 a month. That
wasn't a hit either and today the URL http://www.raphsody.com/ hosts
something completely different.

However, reviewing digitally distributed music is sort of implied in
some community based music sites that use recommendation engines.
Amazon.com was pioneering this and it seems iTunes still keeps it on
Job's to-do list. Non commercial sites/services I recall that also
make use of recommendation engines are Jamendo.com, Last.fm, iLike.
They may link "buy" buttons to web shops. Especially Jamendo boasts a
developed music reviewing community.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se (Swedish)
www.looproom.com (international)
www.ubetoo.com/Artist.taf?_ArtistId=6550



On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 2:11 PM, Ingo Ito <ingoito@itofarm.com> wrote:
> What I still miss on the web are sites (or better one "reference"-site 
>like
> Wikipedia) that do reviews of only downloadable music. I have contacted 
>many
> platforms that do reviews, but they all wrote back, that they do reviews
> only for physical CDs - I think thatīs a bit obsolete nowadays.
>
> Ingo Ito