Will someone please tell Jason Olim to give it a rest? As much as I like CDnow, they are a doomed business. Olim keeps citing CDnow’s traffic as evidence that his business is not dead, but isn’t all of the marketing that created that traffic often cited as Cdnow?s biggest failure because it did not translate into enough sales? At least Olim owns up to the marketing mistakes in the article above. That said, he still wants to keep “leading the revolution”. Why is it that when companies start to tank they always reference some irrational, phony revolution?

CNET finally got around to covering DivX, which is a format for transferring video at MP3-like quality. Seamus McAteer, an analyst for Jupiter Communications, made some over-reaching statement about how DivX will not have the mass consumer appeal that MP3 has because of the size of a file is so large. I think he is HORRIBLY mistaken. Your thoughts?

With the Microsoft Monopoly case winding down, this law suit could be this year’s most entertaining legal battle. The RIAA is forcing major issues facing the music industry and new media to be resolved with the MP3 and Napster law suits. The results of which will set precedents for the future of digital music distribution. Personally, I’m pulling like hell for MP3.com. The Beam-It technology is the best development in digital music since Winamp.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Ziff-Davis is selling off its publishing unit to the private investment firm Willis Stein & Partners. The publishing unit includes PC Week, Inter@ctive Week and Yahoo! Internet Life. This begs the question: Is paper-based publishing really dying? Can having massive circulation, revenue and brand exposure really be a bad part of your business? Update by Mike: If you have problems with paying the WSJ for their news you also might want to check out the New York Times version of the story, or if you have problems even registering with the NY Times, then go read the press release.

Interesting article on the value of membership from the folks at ClickZ, specifically Greg Sherwin and Emily Avila. The idea of creating “switching costs” to retain users is interesting- if not becoming more necessary.

Webnoize.com reports that MP3.com has pledged to issue regular “warts and all” reports of its business activities. Well someone should break out the Wart Away quick before MP3.com hits a realistic valuation. Selling 15,600 compact discs sold on behalf of 26,700 artists is not that impressive. Your corner Wherehouse probably sold three times that this month with fewer artist titles, and I am pretty sure that store is NOT valued over $2 billion. But as Webnoize admits, the numbers are improving month over month. Also, you have to chalk one up for MP3.com for having the moxie to regularly publish their traffic and sales metrics. We’ll see…