Music

I've been playing with Sony BMG's Musicbox for a few month's now. I was immediately impressed with the potential of the site from the first time I saw it. Musicbox is a seemingly endless interactive catalog of music, videos, pictures, and anything else you could think of relating to artists in the giant Sony BMG catalog. The only problem was that the site tended to be really slow, so it wasn't as much fun to use. However, when I logged in yesterday, the site loaded quickly. I clicked on the first thing I saw, the latest Britney video, and it loaded in a snap. When the "Piece Of Me" video ended I was immediately transitioned into another Britney video. Just like TV, it never stops so you get sucked in.

On Musicbox, to the right of the playing video, is a fairly extensive list of other featured videos that you can choose from. If you want to see the entire catalog you just need to click on the "play all" button at the bottom of this list. After watching a short commercial you get access to what seems to be the entire catalog of the artist's videos. Just like before, the player continuously loops songs one after another. However, between each video is a short 15 second commercial. The functionality of the more complete catalog gives an indication of what Musicbox is going for in the long run, continuously playing music videos with short advertisements between every couple video. This will probably be a very lucrative business model and could easily become the MTV for the web generation.

Surprisingly, Musicbox doesn't seem to have all that many advertisers at the moment. Most of the ads are either Google ads or ads for Sony products. I'm guessing that Sony BMG has been slow to seekout advertisers, because they are making easy money on Google advertisements, which direct users back to resellers of Sony BMG cds and other products. That's a sweet deal! A one-two profit punch that makes up for the rather pathetic revenue that Google ads generally generate. In addition to fast loading videos and a huge music catalog, the key to the immersive Musicbox experience is the fact that the advertising doesn't get in the way of enjoying the site. I didn't find the 15 second ads in between videos anywhere near as annoying as the 30-60 second ads that I run into on most sites. I will leave you with a Bootsy Collins video from Musicbox. The video currently only has 3 views, so Market Anomaly readers are some of the first to see this gem.