{"id":3013,"date":"2005-06-08T01:48:36","date_gmt":"2005-06-08T05:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/2005\/06\/08\/mercoras-expansion-hype-legal-qs-etc"},"modified":"2005-06-08T01:48:36","modified_gmt":"2005-06-08T05:48:36","slug":"mercoras-expansion-hype-legal-qs-etc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/2005\/06\/08\/mercoras-expansion-hype-legal-qs-etc\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercora’s Expansion, Hype, Legal Qs, Etc."},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Via Postplay<\/a> comes this article<\/a>
\nfrom News.com about Mercora’s new web-based music search tool. 
\nLet me counter a bit of the hype: in terms of Mercora’s core features,
\nthis is unremarkable. It is merely a web-based version of the existing
\nMercora software.  The ability to search for and instantaneously
\nplay particular artists or songs is already available through the
\nMercora client. As in the software client, you can only access content
\nthat is at that very moment being streamed by one of Mercora’s
\nusers.  All this does is allow you to do so through a web
\nbrowser after you’ve already installed the Mercora software.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though SoundExchange’s John Simson states that they’re evaluating the
\nlegality of the new web-based service, the legal questions appear no
\ndifferent than for the software client. Mercora can provide these
\non-demand streams in a lawful way by ensuring that each individual
\nuser is following the DMCA guidelines<\/a>
\nfor non-interactive webcasting. So far as I can tell, Mercora violates
\nno law regarding on-demand streaming because they are not actually the
\nones streaming. They’re just providing a search engine for songs
\ncurrently being streamed by the myriad individual Mercora users.  <\/p>\n

This feature is fairly cool, at least for popular content.  Even
\nthough there are plenty of Mercora users with rarer tracks, the rarer
\nthe content the more unlikely it is to be webcast at the moment you
\nwant it.  Also, streams through Mercora can sometimes be slow and
\nof unreliable quality.<\/p>\n

News.com suggests that Yahoo! or other music stores might enter this
\narena, and that makes some sense. Rather than streaming mere 30 second
\nclips, music stores could allow customers to try out whole songs before
\nthey buy them.  Mercora currently provides links to Amazon if you
\nwant to purchase a song you’re currently listening; such a feature
\nwould be much more powerful if folded directly into a music
\nstore.  Of course, this assumes that most consumers remain purely
\nin a pay-per-download mode.  The more consumers shift over to
\non-demand services like Yahoo!’s and Rhapsody, the more these on-demand
\nMercora webcasts become irrelevant; in terms of quality and reliablity,
\nMercora’s on-demand streams are certainly inferior. You might sometimes
\nbe able to find a
\nstream on Mercora that you can’t find in Yahoo!’s music store catalog,
\nbut that only makes this a worse fit for the music stores, because then
\nthe streams can’t drive people to purchases  Then again, Rhapsody
\nand Yahoo! both have radio stations with content that can’t be found in
\ntheir on-demand streaming and downloads catalog, so, in that light,
\nincluding a feature like Mercora might still be worthwhile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via Postplay comes this article from News.com about Mercora’s new web-based music search tool.  Let me counter a bit of the hype: in terms of Mercora’s core features, this is unremarkable. It is merely a web-based version of the existing Mercora software.  The ability to search for and instantaneously play particular artists or songs is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}