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Universal is going to be starting a new online music sales service called gBox. For this venture they have struck a rather large deal with Google for advertising.
What are they doing different to get noticed, they are offering up their tracks for the same price as everyone else, only DRM free. Oh and did I mention Google would be running the ad department for this venture?
Google isn’t prejudice enough to not include other online music retailers in their user’s search results, but there will likely be gBox ads all around the search results. I personally hope this venture goes well and they are able to actually offer a competing service to iTunes, not really so much because I want to see Apple fail, or Google/Universal succeed, but more so because strong competition sparks innovation, which is something we really need.
gBox hopes to challenge Apple’s iTunes Store through Google ads [via macdailynews]
How can Google be backing a site that serves non-Google ads?
How can Universal be backing a site that primarily sells non-Universal music?
Have you shopped on iTunes? Have you shopped on gBox? Case closed.
What innovation are your referring to?
- Selling music downloads for $0.99 (have you heard of iTunes)?
- Adding items to a Wish List (have you heard of Amazon)?
- Placing a widget on a social network (how about those thousands of Facebook apps)?
- Using ads to direct users to an online store (check stock symbol GOOG)?
the innovation, is the lack of DRM on the songs.
so no, nothing else is really all that new, but several of the would be purchasers of online music hate DRM with a passion, so to some, that is a huge selling point on its own. i think the last time someone tried selling DRM free music they charged more for it than the DRM’ed track, so the pricing being the same either way is kind of innovative as well.