Spinner.com queues up auctions
By Beth Lipton
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
April 9, 1999, 3:55 p.m. PT
Net radio firm Spinner.com next week will become the latest Web company to get
auction fever.
Spinner on Monday is planning to launch Spinner.com Auctions, where users can
buy and sell
music-related merchandise such as CDs, records, cassettes, audio equipment, and
memorabilia, the
company said. The auction feature is being offered through a partnership with
consumer Net auction
firm CityAuction.
Auctions are all the rage on the Net of late, with all manner of
sites--including portals such as Yahoo
and e-commerce sites such as Amazon.com--getting into the game, with varying
degrees of success.
All are hoping to get a slice of the revenue and traffic enjoyed by auction
firms such as eBay. Just
today, eBay chief executive Margaret Whitman joined the ranks of Net
billionaires as she exercised
options to acquire the company's skyrocketing shares.
For its part, Spinner has been busy signing distribution deals with sites such
as Cyclone, the site by
portal Snap that is designed for higher-speed Net connections. (Snap is a joint
venture between NBC
and CNET: The Computer Network, publisher of News.com.) Meanwhile, the
Webcasting space
overall is going through a number of changes; Spinner competitor Imagine Radio
in February was
acquired by Viacom, and Broadcast.com last week was bought by Yahoo.
"Our partnership with CityAuction is a reflection of our move toward cobranded
partnerships aimed
at offering our listeners content-related commerce," Dave Samuel, Spinner.com's
chief executive,
said in a statement. "We bring music enthusiasts together to hear great music,
get artist and CD
information, buy CDs, and now buy and sell with one another."
Under terms of the deal, Spinner.com carry CityAuction banner ads on its site
and music players as
well as running audio ads. It also will display links on various pages to
CityAuction music
categories.
