Launch party
Sarah and I are going to Rhapsody's re-launch party tonight at Radio City Music Hall. Good Charlotte is playing.
The last digital music launch party I went to was for an ill-fated company called MusicBank in early 2001 - the dying days of the dot com age. MusicBank rented out the Warfield in San Francisco for a full-on James Brown concert - horns, dancers, backup singers - the whole works. There were sushi chefs out in the hallways and roast beef carving stations in the aisles. The beer was, of course, free. Before the show, the MusicBank CEO got on stage, thanked everyone for coming, and said their service would be launching the following morning.
A month later, MusicBank went out of business. They never launched a product. Inside sources put the cost of their shindig at just north of $100,000.
Hopefully, Rhapsody's new "to-go" service will fare better.
Frankly, it's a little bit disappointing that they're trying to replicate the pomp and circumstance that surrounded dot coms back in the day. And is it just me, or is their "change the face of digital music forever" setup a lame attempt at imitating the superhype of a Steve Jobs product pitch?
Rhapsody's old commander-in-chief Sean Ryan would have never done something like this. In fact, he didn't do something like this. When Rhapsody first launched in December, 2001, there was a relatively modest celebration in L.A. that featured a C-level band who was friends with one of the Listen.com biz dev guys. No Steve Jobsian rhetoric. No platinum-selling artist. I think the beer may have been free, but hey.
The question is, will the product live up to the hype? In 2001, it far surpassed it.
Sarah and I are going to Rhapsody's re-launch party tonight at Radio City Music Hall. Good Charlotte is playing.
The last digital music launch party I went to was for an ill-fated company called MusicBank in early 2001 - the dying days of the dot com age. MusicBank rented out the Warfield in San Francisco for a full-on James Brown concert - horns, dancers, backup singers - the whole works. There were sushi chefs out in the hallways and roast beef carving stations in the aisles. The beer was, of course, free. Before the show, the MusicBank CEO got on stage, thanked everyone for coming, and said their service would be launching the following morning.
A month later, MusicBank went out of business. They never launched a product. Inside sources put the cost of their shindig at just north of $100,000.
Hopefully, Rhapsody's new "to-go" service will fare better.
Frankly, it's a little bit disappointing that they're trying to replicate the pomp and circumstance that surrounded dot coms back in the day. And is it just me, or is their "change the face of digital music forever" setup a lame attempt at imitating the superhype of a Steve Jobs product pitch?
Rhapsody's old commander-in-chief Sean Ryan would have never done something like this. In fact, he didn't do something like this. When Rhapsody first launched in December, 2001, there was a relatively modest celebration in L.A. that featured a C-level band who was friends with one of the Listen.com biz dev guys. No Steve Jobsian rhetoric. No platinum-selling artist. I think the beer may have been free, but hey.
The question is, will the product live up to the hype? In 2001, it far surpassed it.
posted by isaacjosephson at 10:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home