One of the best things about web services is that they can be combined. This makes the web a richer place for us users. It also makes the web a better place to do business. Your service becomes better when other organizations provide complements to it.
For example, Yottamusic was a complement to Rhapsody. Rhapsody provides “music dial tone,” and also provides a couple of interfaces to that dial tone: its web site, and a downloadable client. I use the web site.
Yottamusic provided a different interface. I tried it and quite liked it, but not enough to use it regularly. Others liked and used it more: good for them, for Yottamusic, and for Rhapsody, I thought.
It seems that Rhapsody didn’t see Yottamusic as good. According to Bijan Sabet (a fellow Bostonian, I see), Yottamusic recently closed at the request of Rhapsody.
That’s really awful and poor judgement on Rhapsody’s part. The Rhapsody web site is quite unusable and YottaMusic is like a breath of fresh air. But for some reason they were considered some sort of threat. Blech.
Please join me and let’s together ask the Rhapsody team to let Luke [Matkins, Yottamusic founder] & YottaMusic live.
Fred Wilson seems to consider “poor judgement on Rhapsody’s part” to be an understatement. The fact that they’ve shut down yotta shows that they are old school luddites without a clue.
I have to agree. If Rhapsody treats providers of complements to its service like this, it’s in severe and well-deserved danger of joining the major record labels: on the critical list due to festering self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the foot.
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