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Posts Tagged ‘Staring Down The Barrel’

RIM CEO claims we are staring ‘down the barrel of a capacity crunch,’ should all get BlackBerrys to prevent it

Capacity crunch, isn’t that a breakfast cereal? RIM’s Mike Lazaridis seems to have been a real grouch at MWC this week as apparently he hasn’t stopped talking about the doom and gloom awaiting mobile carriers over the next few years. Focusing on the bandwidth-hungry North American market, Lazaridis has criticized the apparently irresponsible network saturation growth, which he sees as being primarily driven by app-centric operating systems. If you’re wondering who he could possibly be referring to, let Mike clarify it — according to him, you could carry five BlackBerry devices for each iPhone on a network. As evidence of his firm’s focus on efficiency, he points us to that freshly demoed WebKit browser, which he claims uses a third of the bandwidth required by the competition from Apple and Google. If only he wasn’t implying that owning a BlackBerry would save the internet, Mike’s sales pitch would be rather compelling — those are mighty impressive numbers he is citing.

RIM CEO claims we are staring ‘down the barrel of a capacity crunch,’ should all get BlackBerrys to prevent it originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Feb 2010 03:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Grooveshark Signs EMI Deal: Staring Down the Barrel of a Gun?

Gainesville-based music startup Grooveshark just signed a major label agreement with EMI Music and EMI Music Publishing. While the company is unwilling to disclose the exact terms of the deal, Grooveshark VP of Marketing Josh Bonnain expressed that the agreement is fair and mutually beneficial. The surprise deal comes after EMI filed a June lawsuit against the company. While Grooveshark members gain access to EMI’s huge song catalogue including tracks from the Virgin, Blue Note and Astralwerks labels, it’ll be interesting to see if the agreement is actually a sustainable one.

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Although a number of music startups have established partnerships with smaller indie record labels, larger deals are rare as the cost of music licensing has proved prohibitive. For streaming music site Imeem, the road to signing major labels has been fraught with legal battles. Despite the fact that Warner music originally invested in Imeem, the company sued the startup to settle outstanding debt. In the end, it seems Grooveshark renegotiated licensing agreements while staring down the barrel of a gun. Due to the similar nature of the EMI / Grooveshark relationship, we can’t help thinking that this recent deal likely skews in favor of the labels and rights holders.

As ReadWriteWeb covered in August, Grooveshark recently launched a $3 per month ad-free subscription service and continues to build out its artist tools. Nevertheless, the site’s key revenue stream is its advertising. With seminal albums like Miles Davis’ Birth Of The Cool, Radiohead’s OK Computer and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, EMI will increase Grooveshark’s catalogue selection and popular draw. It will be interesting to see if the company’s revenue increase will be worth the licensing fees.

To try Grooveshark visit listen.grooveshark.com.

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