MediaMaster, a free service for uploading and streaming music from any computer or compatible mobile device, will cease operations, the company said on its website, but it didn't go out without taking a swing at the music industry.
"Their lawyers have created such a swamp of legal complexity from the old days that just does not fit in the new world," a note on the company blog states. "Funders of businesses are afraid of funding them and big companies do not take a risk that they might succeed and give the labels a new model for revenue."
The blog post didn't elaborate much further, but explained that without a critical mass of users, it was impossible for MediaMaster to survive. There were only 95,000 users over the site's lifespan and "thousands" of active members at shut down.
"It is not possible to keep a service like this up for free without some sort of large scale userbase (> 500,000) to get ads to pay for it," the blog said. "Even then, the overhead is quite high."
In October 2007, PC World declared the service one of the ten best non-Google web applications. A month later, MediaMaster was the first to offer personal music streaming for cell phones, it claimed. But with so many other online listening options these days, it seems MediaMaster's novel concept couldn't break away from the pack. As an alternative for its users, MediaMaster is recommending Lala and MP3Tunes. The latter is a similar "media locker" service, but it's currently defending itself from EMI Group in a copyright lawsuit.
MediaMaster isn't the only online music service to feel some economic heat. Earlier this year, iMeem started charging users who exceeded upload caps, and Pandora is experimenting with the occasional advertisement. Last.fm, however, has managed to expand.
This may not be the complete demise of MediaMaster. The company blog says it could pop up again in some other form down the line, but with a pay-only business model.
