A VC - Latest Comments in YottaMusic RIP

Re: YottaMusic RIP

fredwilson — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 09:31:01 -0000

I agree. Its also why one person making a stink about something on their blog can be powerfull. Witness jeff jarvis' experience with dell hell

Fred

Re: YottaMusic RIP

JJ — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:01:09 -0000

The attitude that "one person doesn't matter" is exactly the reason that this kind of behavior continues. The companies treat their customers like crap because they can. If I was a customer of Rhapsody, which I"m not, why would I be when Shoutcast is free?, I would leave.

Why reward a company like this by giving them more money?

I was walking on the beach with a friend one time and he bent down and picked up some piece of garbage and threw it in the trashcan. I said, "Why did you do that man? Look around. There's garbage everywhere. You didn't make a dent in it." He said, "If everyone did what I did, there wouldn't be any garbage."

Re: YottaMusic RIP

fredwilson — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 10:11:05 -0000

One lost sub is not nearly as painful as losing a constant and vocal supporter

Fred

Re: YottaMusic RIP

JJ — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 21:05:49 -0000

Ball up pansy. Stop using Rhapsody now. If you and everyone who loved Yottamusic stopped paying for Rhapsody, Rhapsody would learn their lesson and either let yottamusic come back or buy them.

When you call to cancel your service, say, "Because you closed down Yottamusic."

Re: YottaMusic RIP

Ben Rotholtz — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 14:58:01 -0000

Bijan, The TechCrunch piece was inaccurate. We never gave Yotta anything other than the public API’s. We worked for months with them to see if we could deliver any special APIs (or even modify our existing ones). Ultimately, we were unable to do so in a way that was acceptable to both parties. Again, we cannot and do not support any service or site that uses our content beyond what’s accessible through the API toolset we’ve provided for the reasons listed above.

Ben Rothotz, General Manager, Rhapsody Web Services & Syndication

Re: YottaMusic RIP

Jon Bischke — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 10:42:03 -0000

Definitely extremely lame. I'm on a Mac and last I checked the regular Rhapsody client wasn't available for a Mac (and what is available sucks). What will people on Macs use to access Rhapsody. Or will they all just start doing the same thing I'm doing...contemplate dropping their beloved subscription?

Re: YottaMusic RIP

bijan — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 23:30:08 -0000

Ben,

Here's the thing I don't get.

TechCrunch talked to Luke. According to Luke, Rhapsody gave him access to non-documented APIs.

Here's the post: http://tinyurl.com/2b2rjw

Then Luke built a killer service called YottaMusic.

Then Rhapsody changed their minds about supporting those non-documented APIs and Luke's player.

Then Luke had to shut down.

Did you guys give him access last year?

What did Luke need that you couldn't give him?

I haven't tried MOG in awhile. Do the MOG folks have to use the Rhapsody Player or can they use their own?

Thanks for the clarification.

Re: YottaMusic RIP

Ben Rotholtz — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:30:24 -0000

Fred:

As noted, we have a set of APIs that allow developers to create new digital music experiences with Rhapsody. These APIs expose both content we own and content we’ve licensed. There are Terms of Use to protect how that content is accessed and used. We worked with the guys at Yotta for several months to try to come up with a solution that worked for everyone involved. Unfortunately, the tools we’re able to offer won’t meet every developer’s needs.

As a service, we’ve put a lot of our music-related content out there for developers to integrate using the tools we provide. We’re confident that these tools are robust enough to enable some pretty cool integrations (as noted above, MOG.com is a great example). However, we cannot and do not support any service or site that uses our content beyond what’s accessible through the API toolset we’ve provided.

Ben Rotholtz, GM, Web Services & Syndication

Re: YottaMusic RIP

fredwilson — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 20:15:06 -0000

That's great ben and one of the many reasons I've been a big supporter of rhapsody. It can power all kinds of wonderful music services

But what was specifically wrong with yotta? What if I like yotta better than mog or rhapsody.com?

Why not work with yotta to fix what's wrong?

Yotta had a bunch of super happy users and now we are out in the cold and pissed off about it

Fred

Re: YottaMusic RIP

Ben Rotholtz — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:30:30 -0000

A bit of background: In the early spring of 2006, as part of our Rhapsody DNA platform initiative, we made available a set of APIs that gave developers deep access to Rhapsody content. In the spring of ’06 we even kicked off a contest to evangelize our APIs and we got some very creative submissions judged by a number of web luminaries, including Fred Wilson. Our motivation behind Rhapsody DNA was simple: Enable the web-savvy spectrum of bloggers to full-tilt developers to embed music and music content into their web pages, widgets and online experiences outside of Rhapsody.com or the Rhapsody PC client. We’re deeply committed to the Rhapsody DNA platform. The fruits of that commitment can be seen on sites such as MOG.

That said, and despite progress and refinements over the past two years, our APIs are not exhaustive and unlimited: As was the case with Yotta, the breadth and depth of our APIs do not match the needs of every developer. Additionally, we have guidelines and terms of use for our APIs that protect the legal reuse of our content and perhaps even more importantly honor our contracts and obligations with the labels. However, we do feel strongly – and the market has demonstrated – that it’s possible to create a deep Rhapsody integration that is fully within our terms of use (again, see MOG) and we actively encourage developers to party on our code to create new online music experiences.

Our ultimate goal with Rhapsody is to enable consumers to enjoy more music in more ways than ever before and we’re enthusiastic about pushing the envelope to work with developers to enable great new music experiences.

Ben Rotholtz, GM Web Services & Syndication

Re: YottaMusic RIP

fredwilson — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:09:02 -0000

Its certain headed that way with services like hypemachine, project playlist, etc

Fred

Re: YottaMusic RIP

scottythebody — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 15:16:56 -0000

I'm glad I never fell for their crap. I'll never, ever use a Real product ever again after the debacles of the 90s. Horrible company, really.

I'm convinced subscription is cool, but I don't think it will be a "service". It'll be a feed of feeds and a huge effin p2p network.

Re: YottaMusic RIP

Jon — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 10:40:58 -0000

Add me to the list of Sonos/Rhapsody users who have a large music collection. All of my music is in FLAC for Sonos, but we still use Rhapsody more.

I didn't use Yotta, but hate the Rhapsody UI. Clunky, often broken, with bizarre omissions (why on earth can you still not sort playlists?)

Re: YottaMusic RIP

fredwilson — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:45:02 -0000

Its not in a rhapsody branded player on sonos and there are no ads on sonos

How is yotta different than sonos other than being on the web

Fred

Re: YottaMusic RIP

joe shmo — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 00:48:03 -0000

i imagine their deal with the labels requires it to be in a rhapsody branded player. the ads served in the player offset the costs of the 25 free songs per month too.

this was too renegade. put rhapsody in an awkward legal position. blame the labels. not rhapsody.

Re: YottaMusic RIP

Guest — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 00:47:30 -0000

I agree with Fred, subscription music is the only way to go and I have a gigantic music collection. Collections of any kind are simply a chore to manage, I like the on demand model... I use it for as many services as I possibly can.

Re: YottaMusic RIP

david hyman — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 00:29:55 -0000

i have to agree. this ain't cool. dunno why this happened.

Re: YottaMusic RIP

fredwilson — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 23:20:04 -0000

I disagree with your first comment. I have a ton of friends who have simply walked away from music collections they've built up over thirty years when they got sonos+rhapsody

The issue with subscription music plans is you need an in home device to make them useful to the mainstream listener

I totally agree with yoiur second comment

Fred

Re: YottaMusic RIP

Nate — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 21:15:05 -0000

The subscription music model is just not attractive especially when you already own a lot of music. The fact that the subscription model seems to be dominated by the dumbest companies like Rhapsody doesn't help.

Nice job Rhapsody, you've just ensured that nobody will ever want to build anything with your API again.

Re: YottaMusic RIP

Erik Peterson — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 19:45:05 -0000

As far as replacements go, about a year ago I made a tool to submit Rhapsody information to last.fm. It is pretty simple, and it works. http://rhobbler.com/

If anyone is interested in twitter integration, I could probably add it, too.

Re: YottaMusic RIP

Hiren Patel — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 17:40:57 -0000

I've been getting more and more pissed at Rhapsody lately. I've used it for the last few months after reading about it on your blog but lately, it has been having a lot of issues logging into the server. Apparently, Real networks needs you to erase your history and cache periodically on all the browsers (I use flock, firefox, and once in a long time, IE) to get it to log in. So yeah, I can't wait myself until something better comes long. The integration between rhapsody and my Sansa has not been as great as it should have been.