Infospace’s Troubles With Moviso Launch: Updated

Updated below:[by James Pearce] Moviso, the D2C website launched by Infospace last week, is a pale shadow of what it was intended to be, according to industry sources. It certainly doesn’t have all of the five key verticals — Womens, Urban, Extreme Sports, Latino and Family Values — that has been mentioned in the past.
Apparently the big problem has been getting the mobile rights to the content. The labels particularly are reported as being recalcitrant about licensing the rights for true tones to Infospace (which would just leave covertones, I guess). Another source points to some technical platform related troubles in offering the right kind of subscription packages, though I’m sure that’s a solvable problem.
“We are continuing to evolve our vertical strategy and will let you know when we will debut it,” said an InfoSpace spokesperson responding to questions, promising enhancements and new features in the coming months.
If the content providers are resisting efforts to license their content I don’t think it makes a lot of business sense, but perhaps there’s some strategy, like their own D2C efforts — certainly there’s been a lot of reports of other companies having difficulty licensing content for one reason or another.
Still, if the reports are correct it seems to have derailed what was a promising portal.
Updated: After speaking to some more people, we find out that the issue with truetones licensing was getting truetones to work under the flat-rate monthly subscription service, not truetones in pay per tone mode.
Related stories:
InfoSpace’s Mobile Plans
@CTIA — Infospace’s D2C Plans

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