Previously I wrote: “If you happened to be a corporation that recognized market demand when you saw it, you’d find a way to promote and capitalize on emergent global Internet dissemination of music and politics.” Maybe something like Slacker:

At the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas today, Broadband Instruments launched the potentially disruptive “Slacker” music ecosystem, which combines interactive webcasts, satellite radio, and traditional MP3 playback in a next-generation device that could make Apple’s iPod – and even its upcoming iPhone — look, well, a little unconnected.

— Slacker Steals the Show at SXSW, Eliot Van Buskirk Wired Blogs: Listening Post, Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Hype? Maybe. But notice iPod and iPhone are the benchmarks, not Hollywood or ClearChannel or AT&T or cable TV.

And Broadband Instruments is working around the copyright pricing issues associated with SoundExchange and reflected in the recent Copyright Royalty Board decision:

These ambitious next-generation features present a complicated picture when it comes to the licensing of music. To this end, Broadband Instruments is doing an end-run around the SoundExchange royalty collection agency, which now infamously charges so much as to render most music webcasting financially impossible. Instead, Broadband Instruments is in the process of lining up deals with record labels directly. Sasse wouldn’t comment on how many tracks would be available upon launch, although labels that have already made deals with the service include Universal, Sony/BMG, Warner Music Group, and hundreds of indie labels, with a healthy dose of tracks to be added each week.

Maybe this will work, and maybe it won’t, but at least somebody is trying to work with combinations of old and new technologies to get music out there and pay the actual artists.

-jsq

PS: Seen on BoingBoing.