AOL is negotiating with Microsoft

AOL announced yesterday that it would close the Winamp service next month, a music service that AOL acquired at $80 million a 1999 price from Nullsoft, which runs on Android and Windows. Shoutcast's developers are also Nullsoft, TechCrunch reported that AOL will announce the closure of the service next week. Reported that the two sides have not reached a final agreement, two companies are still in the negotiations on price issues.

AOL declined to comment on the news, and Microsoft has not yet commented. AOL did not disclose what it would do with Shoutcast when it announced yesterday that it would close the Winamp service.

TechCrunch, Gree Landen (Ingrid Lunden), said that if the news were true, it would be an interesting and bizarre "story". As far as AOL is concerned, the rationale for shutting down the two services is clear, and the rationale for selling the two services is equally self-evident. After acquiring both services, AOL has never really given strong guidance, while the digital music business is not easy to do, but other digital music companies have been expanding their user base and improving technology.

Previously, AOL had closed and sold other music assets in order to implement its strategic transformation plan, focusing resources on the core business of network publishers and rich media advertising network operators, and focused on advertising technology to improve their advertising delivery performance and effectiveness. AOL has content-related assets such as TechCrunch, Addiction Technology (Engadget), The Huffington Post (Huffington Post) and numerous other blogs. Music assets may be a good fit for such a strategy, but they seem out of place in the context of AOL's lack of financial and strategic investment.

For Microsoft, the company itself has suffered setbacks in the music world (RIP Zune). But recently, Microsoft has been betting on the Xbox Music service, which runs on Xbox 360, Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows Phone 8, iOS, and Android devices, providing free but ad streaming, subscription and download services.

Langdon wrote: "How will Winamp and Shoutcast match Microsoft's product mix?" I'm still trying to figure out what Microsoft can do with Winamp, but for Shoutcast, the service has a platform to serve as a portal to more than 50,000 radio stations, which may be what Microsoft wants to add to the Xbox music platform and what is missing from the platform, The goal is to supplement its personal broadcast capabilities similar to Pandora's. ”