Digital

Dropbox buys Audiogalaxy

By | Published on Friday 14 December 2012

Audiogalaxy

Holder of the dubious honour of being defendants in the first bit of litigation ever reported on in the CMU Daily, way back in issue one in 2002, Audiogalaxy yesterday announced that it had been bought by popular file-transfer and storage service Dropbox. So that’s two things for the company to be proud of.

One of the early digital music brands, the original Audiogalaxy – a file-sharing service – was sued by the American record industry, but settled in 2002. In doing so it agreed to limitations of its service that made it difficult to compete in the then buoyant file-sharing space.

Work began on a Warner Music-backed project to launch a licensed P2P service through the US colleges, and then the digital firm got involved in the earlier incarnations of Rhapsody, but none of the new projects really took off, and eventually all went quiet. Then, as previously reported, back in March Audiogalaxy relaunched as a cross between a music-based digital locker and streaming service.

Like the music locker services run by Google, Apple and Amazon, users can access their music collections via any net connected devices, though they do so by connecting to the MP3s actually stored on their own core PC, rather than by Audiogalaxy making a copy of all a user’s music files onto its own servers, as most other digital locker services do. Others bits of functionality including playlists and mixes were also available.

It’s not clear what the Dropbox acquisition means, though most assume that it’s a sign that the file-transfer company is planning on launching a music-specific locker offer, utilising the Audiogalaxy platform. In a blog post yesterday Audiogalaxy said it was no longer accepting new users, and that its mix service would be switched off at the end of the month, suggesting a revamped product will be announced early next year.

It was thought that the latest incarnation of Audiogalaxy was licensed in some way in the US via the collecting societies. The Audiogalaxy approach meant that no copying of files actually took place, though some labels and publishers would argue that the streaming and mix elements of the service required public performance licences. Whether Dropbox will seek to involve the music companies in any plans for a music locker service remains to be seen.



READ MORE ABOUT: |