Skype Journal called in January that Skype's ringtone relationships would lead to music, television, and movie distribution. Then with Warner Music,

"These guys are engineers," says Mike McGinley. "The last thing they need is to challenge the entertainment business. That gets you nowhere."

now with EMI Music Publishing.

Skype's interpersonal focus rocks, social commerce rules. Skype doesn't sell iPods but they have another competitive advantage. Skype's inherently social network will enable more sales than iTunes, assuming similar functionality. After buying a song, I should be able to gift it to a friend for $0.50, play it in a conference call, download automatically to my mp3 player, mix into a podcast (be sure to negotiate that license first), share playlists like mood indicators to specific users, even broadcast what I'm playing now via mood indicator.

Last, Skype must open publishing to Skypers like iTunes did with podcasting. 100 million people must have millions of artists among them, and they should be able to use Skype's store to distribute their contenet for free or fee to their peers. Edge-created content (MySpace, blogging, YouTube, Google Video, wikipedia, etc.) is both compelling and voluminous. The sooner Skype facilitates this, the better for Skype, eBay and PayPal.

more:

• HK's Page.
• Label:Life. "[Hmmm… Skype is the Phoenix rising from the ashes of Kazaa…. - Ed]"
• TechDirt:  from the okay,-but-why? dept
  

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