Starting tomorrow, eBay becomes the latest "strategic online retail channel for UMG and brings eBay enthusiasts unprecedented access to music from the world's largest music company, as well as artist memorabilia and unique opportunities to meet UMG's artists".

You'll recall that eBay - the world's largest online auction house - started out as a Net community effort but grew into a vast, multi-national corporation with the ethics of a vast, multi-national corporation.

Lots of happy punters make lots of dollars from eBay's online auctions. But there's also a fast-growing legion of very unhappy people (members, as eBay calls them) who'd dearly love to go somewhere else. But eBay is, to all intents and purposes, a monopoly. As eBay dishes out, so must members swallow.

Be that as it may, UMG has acquired an eBay store to, "serve as a hub for large-scale weekly online sales and auction promotions, offering new releases, catalog music, artist memorabilia, including signed instruments, records, and lyric sheets, and exclusive experiential opportunities, such as concert tickets, backstage passes, and invitations to video shoots," say eBay and UMG.

"In addition to new release promotions, the store will also feature hard-to-find music from Universal artists that typically has not been available to fans through traditional retail channels."

Could this last be in reference to the fact more than a few file sharers go online to track down vintage and/or obscure music they can't find anywhere else?

The first promotion will feature, "an exciting mix of one-of-a-kind items," say the two in a breathless statement. "On the block over the next month will be Bon Jovi's signed guitars [howe many of them are there, anyway?] and handwritten lyrics, front row tickets to Jay-Z's upcoming performance at Madison Square Garden, and a personal drum lesson with Nickelback drummer Ryan Vikedal."

UMG will be able target eBay's 75 million registered users, "through prominent online promotion on the eBay site, and through numerous cross-marketing activities".

Like it or not, it's certainly one of the best ideas yet from a label on how to get something out of the Net, other than by suing file sharers.

Good for UMG they have half a brain. Sell on ebay and make millions on unique opportunities, Personally I would never buy anyting form a RIAA member, but others may find this interguing.

I agree with mtekk. it's a good start for them even though it's too little and too late for me. If the industry would've done this all in the begining maybee this whole movement would not have gotten off the ground like it has. by the way, wasn't UMG the same one who tried to lower prices a couple months ago? Even though it's not much, they seem to be the only one of the big five who are trying to think their way out of their self made disaster.

As long as the rates dont go up and the thing isn't covered with twice as many adds.

I'll wait to see what they have to offer before I pass judgement. It better be good, anyway.

Agrees with scayf... though purfus makes a good point - maybe UMG actually looks at resumes before they hire?
We'll see what comes of it... for me, the boycott continues until the lawsuits stop and the DMCA is repealed or heavily amended. Kudos to UMG though for at least trying to take steps in the right direction.

Didn't UMG say forget about it?

And wasn't that drop in price only for big business, not little shopkeepers?

JC123 - the drop was only for Universal. they ended up making a drop in income of about 50 cents a CD, while the retailer has to drop like $5 off of their cut.

I don't care if they are on ebay, i will continue to sell.
Thanks for the info, but there are THOUSANDS of stores on ebay, so this is just a little piece of a huge pie. Ebay will not be the answer to there financial problems, they have already dug there own hole. I for one will not buy a single thing from them.

PLUS DO NOT FORGET THAT THEY ARE COMPETING WITH MILLIONS OF OTHER PPL, so WHO CARES!!

You know what'll happen, though. UMG will probably go and offer that "hard to find" stuff on CD-R, thus making it impossible for a buyer to resell it on eBay.

After reading an article on ebay about this, UMG will have to compete with other ppl fair and square, and if UMG is greedy, then in the end, they won't have the sales they want. Ebay is the land of the free, not ppl who want stuff anywhere near retail. CD's don't even approach retail, and used cd's is something they will have to deal with. It will be interesting to watch.

the article was on yahoo, not ebay

Ebay is already disliked for its policy on CD-Rs. It bans them completly. Even if the CD-R is produced and sold by the band which owns the relivent copyright, Ebay still wont allow it. The reason is at least understandable, its cheaper to ban CD-Rs entirely than to contect the copyright holder of every disc auctioned to confirm its an authorised copy.

I see nothing wrong with selling collectable music items on ebay, there are a lot of collectables already and it would be hard for Ebay to outdo itsself on CD-Rs anyway.

Hey, has anyone had peergaurdian up while looking on Ebay?? I get all kinds of hits from doubleclick and big champane while looking. Anyone know why Ebay or their "affiliates" is port scanning my computer?

I refuse to involve myself in anything associated with e-bay. There is a lot to be said about a company who has more lawyers than support personnel. A multi-billion dollar company that handles all business through e-mail and provides simply 'because we said so' solutions is simply a waste of space, in my book. I'm not a big fan of 'use at your own risk' services.

Might be a tad off topic but I'm one of legions of "members" who would like to go somewhere else. But as the article states, ebay simply crushes or buys any direct compition (half.com for example). If someone could come up with an alternative to ebay with the amount of traffic ebay gets, they would be heroes in my book.

I am now officially announcing that e-bay is on my boycott list. (They have been on it ever since GZ informed us about their CD-R restrictions. Never commented on it before now. This article reminded me to say something about it.)

I can understand and approve that e-bay can stop ya from selling a "mix-tape" of boybands and such... but NOT when selling YOUR OWN MUSIC!

Shmoo of Electric Gypsy
(And since I can't SELL you one of our CD-R's on e-bay, how bout I just GIVE you one!)
http://electricgypsy.iuma.com