Music Portals

Once the underground Napster movement started gaining national attention, the commercialised "I want to sell you something" version of online music premiered. The first two to enter the mp3 frenzy were sonicblue.net and mp3.com. They both offered free downloads of certain Mp3s, while others required payment. Sonicblue also offered artist information and tour dates, working with the MTVi group to do so.

From what I have seen, the intention of music portals has been to provide one central place that can provide all of the online music listeners want. Music portals are trying to offer everything, so that listeners do not need to go to other sites or use other services.

If you are interested in a simple way to experience online music with minimal software, music portals are good for you. But because most music portals have only satisfactory services, if you are willing to use a few seperate services then music portals are not the right thing.

My experience with music portals is that they are usually advertising portals more than music portals, and that many of the features they claim to offer are really just links to other sites which have them. This may not be the case with some portals, such as rapstation.com, but it is true with sites like farmclub.com, listen.com, and sonicblue.net.

I think that eventually, music portals will go out of business, because in the traditional music world, no one entity controls radio, video, distribution, and artist information. Listeners will eventually see that there are better services availible, and they will switch over to them. But in the meantime, music portals are still standing strong.

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