Wow, what a week to be in the media industry. Yesterday with Amazon picking up Audible, and today with Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo!. It’s consolidation-for-growth time.
Audible is Apple’s provider for Audiobooks. Having Amazon, a primary competitor to Apple, pick up the company makes for some interesting times ahead of us. Will Apple continue to use Audible as its audio backbone? How about Amazon’s plans for Audible content and its distribution? What is the industry response? The conversations amongst my team and co-workers didn’t stray far from those questions yesterday.
And now today, with Microsoft finally taking the plunge and offering real money for Yahoo!, Inc, we’re in for some more great questions. Yahoo! has more users than any other service on the Internet. That part is interesting and you’ll see plenty of articles on the sale being all about Microsoft trying to compete with Google, but I’m more interested in Microsoft’s use of Yahoo! Music and their massive amount of users for that service.
Ian Rogers heads up Yahoo! Music and is accurate and honest about the direction the music industry is headed. If Ian’s views are as accurate as I think they are, and if the rumors of Yahoo! Music moving towards offering music for free are true, there are certainly more game changers coming.
I’m excited as hell for this to come true (if and when it comes true.) iofy corporation is a technology company which builds the backbones for delivering content. These changes are going to offer great opportunities for us as a small and agile company.
What a great way to end the week!