Kim Dotcom Teases The New Upcoming Megabox Plus A Look At The Original Megabox

Not content to sit back and relax after the successful launch of his Cloud Storage service MEGA,  Kim Dotcom has now started to reveal some screen shots for his next venture Megabox.

Megabox is set to be Kim Dotcom’s answer to the big music labels current business model, whereby artists only receive a tiny percentage of the profits of their hard work due to the record labels dubious accounting practices. With the new Megabox, content creators will instead receive 90% of earnings back with Megabox only keeping a small percentage.

So how will Megabox generate revenue for content providers?

Well, music and other content will be made freely available to people using Megabox, but in order to listen to music or watch content for free users will be required to install the Megakey application that will work similar to an ad-blocker. This will then replace a small amount of adverts with Mega’s own adverts. If people don’t wish to install the Megakey application then they are given the option to purchase the content instead.

Here is what the Megakey looked like when it was used for Megaupload:

The image below shows how Megabox’s home page will look like as well as some of the artists that are making their content available to users. You will note that the main sites that can be used to share content are Twitter, Facebook and YouTube with further options available by selecting the View More icon.

Image showing some of the feed that can be shared directly within the new Megabox platform

Here is a video that Kim Dotcom released last September that gives us a small look at how Megabox will work.

Now I found a video for the Beta version for Megabox that was uploaded to YouTube on 21st December 2011 (just 21 days before Megaupload was shut down) that showed a small demo of how the original Megabox would have looked and worked. I have taken some screen captures and will explain some of the functions that the new Megabox may have based upon the original design.

First of all you can see that the Megabox logo remains the same. The user in this instance obviously had his password saved in the browser because as soon as he accessed the site, the loading bar would start and give him access the site. Note the URL in the image is megabox.com and not the supposed megabox.co.nz. One would assume that Megabox and MEGA will be linked allowing users to easily switch between the two sites.

When you first get to the Megabox site you will see your home screen. Note that the most recent image that Kim Dotcom released on Twitter today (shown at the top of this article) shows a different home page image.

This is where you are able to access your albums, favourites, messages. You can also use this page to access the Megabox Shop or find artists.

Here is where you can access your profile or account settings etc

You can also use this main page to upload your music

So let’s take a look at how you can go about finding artists and start listening to their available tracks. In this example the video shows the user doing a search for Metallica.

When the initial search is complete you will land on the artists main page showing an overview for their works. You can also access their Biography and Discography here.

Selecting Discography will allow you to see what tracks and albums are available to play

Here is a capture showing Metallica’s Battery (Master of Puppets album) playing in Megabox’s inbuilt player. You will note that the user is also able to buy the track or album by clicking on the add-to-cart button that appears at the top of the window as well as to the left in the media player.

Here you can see that he/she is now searching for music by Adele. Again the ability to purchase the music straight away is clearly available

Again you can select their discography to see the available tracks. You can see in this example that Adele’s music was unavailable to play during the original beta for Megabox back in 2011. This will hopefully be available in the new version.

Now lets take a look at the Megabox Store. To access the Store simply select the Store icon on any one of the pages within Megabox

Here’s a slighty better look at the Store page

In this instance of the video, the user has selected Teenage Dream by Katy Perry to listen to

Having listened to the track to see if it’s the one they wanted, they can now purchase the track by selecting the Buy icon.

Now when you went to purchase content in the original Beta version of Megabox there were two options made available. Purchase the tunes via Amazon or 7digital. Whether there will be more options available in the new Megabox hasn’t been announced yet.

Upon selecting one of the sites in which to purchase the content, you will be sent to the specific store where you can buy it. In this case Amazon was chosen.

Looking back to the original Megabox, it looked like a pretty great place where you could find great music and content. Unfortunately the site never actually launched as all of Kim Dotcom’s sites were shut down by the FBI on January 19th 2012. Many believe that the launching of Megabox was one of the key reasons behind the raids due to the fact that it posed a huge challenge to the current music distribution methods run by the big labels. Megabox would have seen artists receive 90% of revenue generated from people accessing their content via Megabox which is a hell of a lot more than they currently receive. This would have given artists more control of their content as well as another way in which to distribute their stuff online.

There is no date as yet for when Megabox will officially launch, but hopefully we will see the new site fairly soon.

Here is the video showing how the original Megabox would have looked in the Beta stage