• The New York Post, Thursday, October 19, 2006 12:15 PM

Universal Music Group, which just filed a copyright-infringement suit against video-sharing sites Grouper and Bolt, is launching a new Internet service that will give consumers legal access to the record label's catalog of artists. The move may be an assault on YouTube, since UMG just signed a deal last week. Rob Wells, the senior vice president of UMG International, described the subscription-based service, which launches in the UK today, as "a direct-to-consumer broadcast network which is completely under Universal Music's control."

Wells might want to note that "control" isn't the future of media, which is precisely why YouTube and MySpace are dominating media headlines while pundits continue to forecast the death of "old" media companies that are unwilling or unable to adapt to a Web-based, consumer-controlled future.

UMG is rolling out the service in the U.S. in December, but if everyone could just go to YouTube to access UMG's content, why should anyone bother? Still, UMG has hired a New York-based Web firm to build the new service, which claims it's struck deals with 70 content owners and is currently in talks with all the major record labels and movie studios. The idea, perhaps, is for old media to band together to fight a GoogTube/MySpace future.

Read the whole story at The New York Post »