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Weedshare blames Windows Media Player for its demise
By Mack Male | June 28, 2007 at 2:28 pm
The news that Weedshare has closed its doors isn’t new, evidently, but I just came across it today (more coverage lately for some reason). I remember hearing about it once before, but even I needed a refresher on just what the service was all about, so here you go:
Weedshare was a digital download platform that used “viral” DRM in combination with a multi-level marketing approach to sell content of indie musicians. Musicians could distribute Weedshare files through their own website, official download locations and P2P networks. Users could listen to a file three times before purchasing it.
Interesting idea, I suppose, but choosing to use DRM put the nail in the coffin right from the get-go. Weedshare used Windows Media Audio files, meaning that the music could only be played with software and devices that supported Microsoft’s DRM schemes. Many reports make it sound like Microsoft is responsible for Weedshare’s demise:
Weedshare was smoked by Microsoft, whose latest version of Windows Media Player was incompatible with Weedshare files.
There is no information on the issues and attempts of SML to convert or translate Weedshare files to be compatible with Microsoft’s latest software.
As with all things however, there is another side to the story:
CD Baby was supposedly Weedshare’s largest content provider, with 60.000 titles available at the end of 2004. Still, 15 months later, CD Baby artists had only made a total of 1348 dollars, which means that Weedshare sold less than 3000 songs of the CD Baby catalogue during that time.
Sounds kind of like Weedshare was going nowhere fast and simply blamed its woes on Windows Media Player 11. The lack of mainstream coverage would seem to support this.
Tags: DRM, file sharing, music, p2p, weedshare, Windows Media Player, wma
Topics: DRM, Windows Media Player |
July 3rd, 2007 at 8:48 am
The technology had other advantages as well.
Because the purchasing system was built into the file itself, it could be burnt onto CDs and sold at production cost or given away for free. Fans could then sample the tunes from an internet connected computer and buy what they liked.
It’s not the services fault as much as the bands themselves. The service isn’t responsible for selling the music… the bands still have to do the work themselves. The problem is Weed offered a free $5 for everyone setting up a new account. This was the real nail in the coffin, as it did not encourage anyone towards making a real effort in generating sales. Instead, it came off as a simple pyramid scheme and meant that Weed was just digging itself into debt.
The real joke is that music right now is already a pyramid scheme, with the record labels at the top of a very big, but short, pyramid. This was just an attempt at allowing the fans to participate in the revenue stream and allow for the wealth to be redistributed.
Incorporating the ability to strip the DRM from the tracks would have been a big bonus as it would create two products… the shareable weed file and a universal media file.
MS has already patented the technology. More information is available in my blog.