BigShinyThing

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Via WOW.

According to Dealbreaker:

Viacom executives are in London negotiating the purchase of LastFM, the London based “online social music network” (read: internet radio station), according to a music business source familiar with the negotiations. The purchase price is said to be $450 million dollars.

Viacom has been reportedly looking to expand its online presence. Reports have claimed that Viacom executives were disappointed that they did not pickup YouTube. LastFM recently signed a deal with Warner Music Group giving the internet radio station the rights to play WMG’s entire music catalog. Shortly before YouTube signed its deal to be acquired by Google, the video sharing network signed several rights deals with video content owners. There has been some speculation that LastFM’s recent dealmaking might have cleared the way for an acquisition by a larger media or internet company.

Neither Viacom nor LastFM returned calls this morning seeking comment on the rumor.

We can believe this. LastFM is fantastic and for the owner of MTV to buy it makes perfect sense. Last.fm’s music recommendation model is a brilliant way to break new acts — in the way that MTV was waaaay back in the day. What’s more, the MySpace generation isn’t interested in shiny music videos any more — to them, it’s all about the music. Ironically, we may be seeing radio kill the video star.

Via Plasticbag.

The original music video channel is losing out to MySpace and must have been shaken to its soles by the news that YouTube is planning a bottomless music video archive. The music video success story of the 80s and 90s, MTV has done pretty well in the noughties with cheap-but-effective formats such as the Pimp My Ride and Crib formats, but can it survive the convergence revolution?

According to the Wall Street Journal, MTV has failed to migrate its viewers online. Its much flaunted online property, MTV Overdrive, attracts fewer than four million unique visitors a month, a minute proportion of MTV’s 82 million monthly US viewers. In contrast, MySpace gets nearly 55 million unique visitors in the US a month and YouTube draws 16 million.

The really devastating implication of this for MTV and other broadcasters is that its brand can’t seem to save it. In the shiny new world of fan-created and fan-consumed content, users couldn’t give a toss about who delivers their stuff — just that they get it. The other problem is how to keep up with a youthful audience shooting and distributing their own stuff faster than an MTV with its studios, producers, licensing, artist management and the rest.

MTV’s stumble has lessons for major media companies watching the explosion of video on the Web. In the closed confines of cable TV. where competition is limited, MTV has protected its niche by portraying itself as the iconoclastic outsider. But the Web is a free-for-all, and the roster of competitors grows every day. MTV, now part of the establishment and late to the game, wrongly assumed its famous brand name and product would have the same resonance online.

And — as many big media players have also found out to their horror — their big corporate structures and strictures won’t protect them either. The anarchic aspect of sites like YouTube and MySpace is precisely what makes them havens for teens. MTV and other Viacom properties are subject to the kind of censorship of content that saw CBS fined $500,000 for Janet Jackson’s ‘wardrobe malfunction‘ in 2004.

One 15 year old quoted by the Wall Street Journal reasons: “MTV is supposed to be ‘music television’, but they don’t really have the music part, they have a lot of reality shows.” And as we know, if you’re not speaking clearly and honestly in the new emergent world, then no-one’s listening. And, as a teen, if your options were MTV vs. the Land of Do As You Please which would you choose?