25 August 2009
MySpace officially announced its acquisition of music recommendation service iLike today, but said the platform and popular Facebook application will be expanded beyond music to other areas of the site, such as videos and gaming. more...
9 July 2009
[Forbes.com] Jay-Z pulled in an estimated $35 million over the past 12 months, topping our annual list of Hip-Hop Cash Kings. It's far from the $82 million he made last year, but more than enough to reclaim the crown from 2008's monarch, 50 Cent. The Queens native drops to fourth place with $20 million, down from $150 million a year ago. Both rappers had a hard time living up to prior yearly totals fattened by one-time mega-deals. For 50, it ... more...
26 June 2009
The Regional Court of Hamburg has ruled in favor of German collecting society GEMA, which had requested that the court issue an order prohibiting file-hosting service rapidshare.com from making around 5,000 music tracks available on the Internet. The court fined Rapidshare €24 million ($33.5 million). "The judgment states that the hosting service itself is now responsible for making sure that none of the music tracks concerned are distributed via its platform in the future. This means that the copyright holder ... more...
2 January 2009
> In 2008, 1.88 million vinyl albums were purchased, more than in any other year since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking LP sales in 1991. The previous record was in 2000, when 1.5 million LP albums were sold. More than two out of every three vinyl albums bought in 2008 were purchased at an independent music store, according to SoundScan. > > Vinyl record sales rose 14% between 2006 and 2007, from 858,000 to 990,000. In contrast, CD sales plummeted over ... more...
24 December 2008
from: Explanations of why certain speeds were chosen for certain types of phonograph recordings... The original gramophones used a steel sewing needle for a stylus. The stylus determined the size of the grooves in the record and the recordable frequency range limited by this groove size determined a speed between 70 and 90 rpm. This was standardized in the 1930s at 78rpm, although actual play speeds varied depending on the frequency of your AC mains : 77.922 rpm in Europe ... more...
9 August 2008
FT interview with Public Enemy: Chuck reveals that the band turned down a million-dollar advance when they decided not to re-sign with Def Jam. "In order for me to build something, I had to leave," he says. %u201CThey wanted to keep us around, but we would have been a token. And the advance would have been paid for with accountability, with them telling us how to spend it." ... “There’s definitely a concern,” says Johnson. “When the economy is not ... more...
17 July 2008
EU regulators ordered 24 music societies across Europe to modify or ditch their agreements that bar music services from selling or broadcasting music across borders, forcing those services to set up individual storefronts for each of the EU's member states that may or may not carry all the same content. Also struck down: members must be allowed to switch to another society. Musicians are allowed now to join any society in Europe, not just in their own country. This does ... more...
12 July 2008
Is Torture by Music a "Performance in Public"? Certain collectives are quick to collect money from those in nursing homes, hospitals, prisons etc. on the basis that these are "public" places. Never mind that the audience is captive and it's their home, like it or not. Well, it turns out that music is used at Guantanamo for torture purposes, according to the BBC. ... Leaving aside the legal niceties about whose law if any applies in that dreadful place, one ... more...
29 May 2008
Prices Jan 2009: http://Boomkat.com 99 p = $1.43 http://bleep.com €1.35 = $1.87 http://beatport.com €1.99 = $2.75 Was on May 2008 (Dollar having a "good day" at 1.55): http://Boomkat.com 99 p = $1.95 http://bleep.com €1.35 = $2.09 http://beatport.com €1.99 = 3.09 Boomkat, in my opinion is the by far the most pleasant place to shop since you really learn a lot about artists and its the best looking to spend time on. Good techno selection, great dubstep selection, great electro, "future ... more...
21 April 2008
Since 2003, at least 80 records stores have closed in Manhattan and Brooklyn. New York Times more...
28 March 2008
ASCAP demands $1000 from a small non-profit art gallery in Baltimore. Actually, it wasn't really a concert; it was more of a performance-art piece by Lee Connah involving "old recycled objects" and the playing of vintage vinyl records. ASCAP demands big money from a mostly world music non-ASCAP club. But the club gets caught playing a Madonna record one night and ... pays up. And as usual, all the money that ASCAP takes in it gives to artists that show ... more...
16 February 2008
You know I've never sold a single track through SNOCAP. Founded by Mr. Napster (who has now moved onto his new startup, a WOW social networking site), SNOCAP has been "struggling" for a minute. It seems nobody on Myspace actually buys any of those tracks. In a world of information overload, who has time to listen to all of these things, let alone buy any of them ? Imeem I quite like. They use advertising income to pay off the ... more...
6 February 2008
Wow, Warner's stock has gone down 73% in the last 18 months ! Today, Feb 6th 2008 they just plummeted 16% due to reporting losses. Of all the majors, I always liked Warner's the most. During the grunge years they didn't seem to interfere with the artist's choices of covers or track selection. Indie labels always get real involved and tell the artist what to do. The majors at that time knew to let those crazy kids do what they ... more...
6 February 2008
"Songfile" can be used by musicians who plan to make and distribute 2,500 copies or less of their recordings to obtain the necessary licenses for cover versions of songs. Licenses can be obtained for CDs, cassettes, LPs, or permanent digital downloads (DPDs). Customers can create an account with the Songfile service, search HFA’s catalog of almost 1.9 million songs, and complete their mechanical licensing transaction in minutes. Royalties are calculated at the statutory mechanical rate (currently 9.1¢ per copy for ... more...
28 January 2008
This is a model that I suggested and supported many years ago. There are many hurdles. Qtrax is having a go at it now. Its a windows/(mac-coming march 18th) P2P application with a built in web browser. It only shows files from labels that qtrax has licensing agreements with. Initially it uses the Gnutella network. It converts the files into an proprietary audio format 'MPQ', adds a windows DRM layer and plays the music only from within the application. It ... more...
23 January 2008
At the same time, Last.fm is launching an unprecedented "Artist Royalty" arrangement, whereby those artists not signed with a label who choose to upload their music to Last.fm will receive payment, directly from Last.fm, every time one of their tracks is played. Glad to hear it: our friends at Last.fm are doing quite well. btw. I wouldn't say "unprecedented" because Imeem already does this royalty sharing. So does Napster actually. I make small steady royalty money from Napster, but its ... more...
18 January 2008
Great article in the guardian. The key selectors have all switched to CD. The classic 7" vinyl market was primarily for US/European/Japanese collectors. The locals don't buy vinyl. Many tracks never got pressed to vinyl anyway. "The reduction in vinyl production in the West Indies has dramatically affected the way I access music," explains the legendary DJ - or selector - David Rodigan, host of the weekly Rodigan's Reggae show on London's Kiss 100 FM. "In a nutshell, vinyl has ... more...
5 January 2008
The new law on data retention requires telecommunication companies to store all telephone and Internet connection information for six months starting on 1 January, and to make this data available to the prosecutor's office upon request (to assist in the prosecution of terrorists). The music industry, backed by a number of political figures, had demanded access to this data to help pursue its claims for compensation against pirates. (Justice Minister) Zypries (SPD) rejected their demands. "The demarcation lines here are ... more...
3 January 2008
Nice one Jay. more...
24 December 2007
David Byrne, as intelligent as he ever was: Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context. Epic songs and ballads, troubadours, courtly entertainments, church music, shamanic chants, pub sing-alongs, ceremonial music, military music, dance music — it was pretty much all tied to specific social functions. This point is also brought up really well in Atalli's Noise. The recording age was an odd thing. It was this bizarre separation of the original social musical event ... more...
9 December 2007
Matador and other labels include coupons in record packaging that can be used to download MP3 versions of the songs. Matador's Patrick Amory called the coupon program "hugely popular." Numark sold more than 100,000 turntables in 2004. Pressing plants are said to be ramping up. But its still very small boutique stuff, let's be fair. The fact is, that the infrastructure needed to cut masters and replicate copies is falling apart. There are NO replacement parts available for the lathes, ... more...
8 December 2007
Rather than insist on a high per-song royalty and a load of antipiracy strictures, these deals let imeem's users freely share their copyrighted songs. That's because the labels don't make their money off the music itself, but by getting a cut of the advertising that imeem drums up for the site. Imeem CEO Dalton Caldwell says that roughly half of its revenue goes back to the content owners, on a pro rata basis. The more times a label's songs are ... more...
1 December 2007
"We're not going to continue signing artists for recorded music revenue only," Bronfman said during a conference call with Wall Street analysts. What I keep saying to all of my indie label friends : Indie labels also have to give up on just being labels. It doesn't work. The artists (especially more successful DJs) are making lots of touring money, but they never consider sharing that with the label. So the only model that is working is that where the ... more...
16 October 2007
Madonna signed up with LiveNation, the concert promtions company. This sounds the death knoll for The Major Labels, this marks the end of an era. I have been thinking for a while that Indie labels should follow this route right away. Today I was talking with a friend who runs a label. He puts out good releases by some very prominent names, but he just barely breaks even. The best indie labels are run by people who really are into ... more...
12 October 2007
Snocap, the music-licensing company best known for being the follow-up act of Napster founder Shawn Fanning, has cut its staff by 60 percent, a spokeswoman for the company said Thursday evening. That's funny, I only yesterday got my tracks up on SNOCAP. I think they would do much better if MySpace wasn't such an interface-peice-of-shit. They are what is stopping them from easily getting the tracks up. Eventually I just pasted the SNOCAP store directly into my profile. ((http://myspace.com/timeblind)) Anyway, ... more...
4 August 2007
CD sales have collapsed. Live shows, touring and merchandise income are robust. Prices for concerts are way up. Elton John charged a record $690 for top seats in Las Vegas. Gerd Leonhard, a music business consultant, predicts that by 2010, recorded music sales will make up only 30 per cent of a successful label's revenues. The rest will be generated by artists' extra-musical brand extensions. Like those $20 T-shirts. "Record sales as we know them are in long-term decline," says ... more...
18 July 2007
Those rock kids are getting back into vinyl. That's good for DJ music: it will keep the pressing plants in business. At the http://remixhotel.com/nyc/schedule/ panel series one of the panelists commented that VINYL will probably outlive the CD. CD will die because of downloads (and we hope because of better digital audio formats). Its basically just digits, just a basic carrier. We can download digits. Vinyl is an experience, it collects memories, it has a texture that draws you to ... more...
3 July 2007
"Everyone always focuses on the grand slam, but that's not a sustainable way to build an industry," Klein said. "There's a focus on licensing a tiny percentage of the catalog in a very complex way with prices in the stratosphere that have no basis in reality to a small number of people ... We want to simplify the process." I thought Pump looked pretty good. Good enough for Getty to buy them. The big music players are desperately trying to ... more...
2 July 2007
Those of us who are into dubstep and grime have a really hard time buying it on mp3. Those scenes tend to fetishisize exclusivity and small runs of vinyl. And then they wonder why they aren't selling outside of the UK. What happens is that people rip the vinyl right away and bit torrent it. I ACTUALLY PREFER to shop at an online store (versus P2P) because you can listen, fill your basket, remove things, read up, explore catalogs, discover ... more...
21 January 2007
The world's independent music sector, which has produced such artists as the Arctic Monkeys, has grouped together to launch an agency to secure licensing deals with emerging media such as MySpace and YouTube. This in regards to those special licensing deals eg. with MySpace and YouTube. ASCAP/BMI doesn't apply to them, film/TV style sync rights don't apply to them — its a new form of media, and the major labels have struck up direct deals these large companies (trying to ... more...
5 November 2006
The major four music labels today are "fucked", he says. Digital music pricing has been a scam where the consumer pays for manufacturing, distribution, and does all the work - and still has to pay more. Labels should outsource everything except finance and licensing. But he's also optimistic that for almost everyone else - indie labels, musicians, songwriters and budding entrepreneurs - as well as network providers - the future's going to be pretty bright. The Big Four know that ... more...
20 September 2006
This small article notes that licensing is a complicated and annoying process and how completely inappropriate it is for the kind of mass internet media events we are entering into. As she notes, the computer technology to bill anything is trivial, but the laws and business practices are a mess. There is money being made through advertising and yet the music licensing is not being paid simply because the procedure for payment is obsolete and ill-defined. And so the artists ... more...
3 September 2006
Due by the end of 2006: MySpace allows bands to sell downloads direct from their page, and more interestingly allows your "friends" to also sell those tracks from their page. I doubt your "friends" get a cut. Pricing is set by the artist. Format is good old mp3. Payment via paypal. more...
31 August 2006
http://SpiralFrog.com , which is set to launch this year from New York, is being backed by the world's biggest record label, Vivendi Universal. Between them they hope to give away music by some of the world's most popular artists, including Eminem and Kaiser Chiefs.Instead of copying Apple's iTunes store by charging customers to buy music, SpiralFrog says it will replace the traditional cost of downloading with money made from advertising. Audiences will have to sit through a short advertisement before ... more...
30 August 2006
Imagine a world where musicians keep the copyright to their music and make $5 or $6 per album sold instead the current $1 or $2. This is a model being proposed by Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk Music Group. more...
15 July 2006
The money would never reach the artists, would never reach smaller labels and the internet traffic would never be correctly analyzed. Other than that its a great idea. more...
8 July 2006
In Scotland for the T in the Park festival, Red Hot Chili Pepper Chad Smith lashes out at U2 and Black Eyed Peas for licensing their music to iPod commercials. Smith, 44, admitted that the decline of traditional radio stations has forced bands to consider new ways to promote their music, but that commercials shouldn't be the way to do it. "A lot of rock radio stations are gone so you have to find new avenues to get your music ... more...
23 June 2006
Licensing music for use in TV shows is a major new avenue for artists. ...even a middlebrow soap such as “One Tree Hill” has a far more varied playlist than the vast majority of FM radio stations. “TV is now driving radio,” Though television soundtracks don’t offer the massive payouts that top bands can get from ad campaigns, TV shows don’t carry the “sellout” baggage that ads sometimes do. More importantly, the best programs offer the kind of emotional engagement ... more...
9 June 2006
La la, which allows fans to trade music discs for just $1 plus shipping, pledges to give a fifth of its sales to all the musicians, including lesser-known session studio players, involved in the making of CDs exchanged on its site. In a move that is certain to stoke controversy with music promoters, the founder of the Silicon Valley startup said la la will circumvent traditional copyright and royalty payment systems to compensate identifiable working musicians. The site works something ... more...
9 June 2006
The music industry has a desperately slow and difficult licensing system. Its getting harder too, as copyright holders try to get as much money as they can to protect themselves against the loss of income from piracy. The mobile industry is clearly ready for digital music. It remains to be seen whether the music industry is. The music licensing regime arguably isn't. One song comes with a multitude of licenses for performance rights, broadcast, reproduction, etc, and the rights can ... more...
4 February 2006
In the UK you may not DJ in public using an mp3 even if you bought the original vinyl record. You need to get a license to permit the copy to be used in a performance setting. DigitalDJ and PPL will sell you this license. If a copy of a sound recording is made in order to play that sound recording in public, PPL controls the relevant copying rights and so can grant you a licence to ensure that your ... more...
21 January 2006
Psychologists monitored 346 people during two weeks to evaluate how they related to music. They found music had "lost its aura" and was seen as a commodity. "The accessibility of music has meant that it is taken for granted and does not require a deep emotional commitment once associated with music appreciation," said Dr Adrian North, who led the study. more...
20 January 2006
Global sales of digital music tripled to $1.1 billion in 2005 and the popularity of recordings on iPods and mobile phones will result in digital music generating 25% of worldwide music revenues by 2010, a music industry trade group said Thursday. Music for mobile phones now accounts for 40% of digital music revenues, the report said more...
15 January 2006
At a late-night session of parliament last month an ad hoc coalition of deputies managed to pass an amendment to a draft law on copyright. It would make France the first country to legalise the online sharing of music. The shock amendment – which would allow web-users to exchange as much copyrighted material as they want as long as it was for private use and they paid a few euros a month to a collective artists’ pot – has delighted ... more...
5 January 2006
Gracenote said at CES today that by midyear it will offer a product for online music stores that will let them make smarter music recommendations for their customers. The basic goal is to go beyond the names of artists and genres to help people find music they like, instead analyzing the properties of the music, such as its rhythm, tempo, and energy level. I think they need to look at tribal affiliations. Motown Pop and Psychedelic Pop may be similar ... more...
19 November 2005
Now, the reason the music recording industry wants different prices has nothing to do with making a premium on the best songs. What they really want is a system they can manipulate to send signals about what songs are worth, and thus what songs you should buy. I assure you that when really bad songs come out, as long as they're new and the recording industry wants to promote those songs, they'll charge the full $2.49 or whatever it is ... more...
13 November 2005
From an old Wired interview with the recently deceased Peter Drucker : We have to rethink the whole concept of intellectual property, which was focused on the printed word. Perhaps within a few decades, the distinction between electronic transmissions and the printed word will have disappeared. The only solution may be a universal licensing system. Where you basically become a subscriber, and where it is taken for granted that everything that is published is reproduced. In other words, if you ... more...
20 October 2005
Music Moz is an open source directory of music artists and music biz related things. more...
7 October 2005
Quotes and talk from Hank Shocklee and George Clinton about sampling, creativity, litigation. for all his gripes, though, shocklee had some pretty straightforward suggestions about how to improve the system. one of his repeated requests--a compulsory licensing system of sorts, or at least a more navigable, transparent, and consistent system of pricing--was an oft echoed call throughout the conference. even as shocklee urged the creation of such a thing, though, he acknowledged the inherent difficulties of setting it up. "is ... more...
3 October 2005
Recently, an Internet service provider in England struck a deal with Sony-BMG so that new broadband customers are allowed to use the pipeline to download movies and music from any source--iTunes, Grokster, legal, illegal--and they pay a monthly fee for the content as part of their bill to the Internet service provider. I've often thought that is a good solution. The problem is the only businesses who will get the money will be the majors. Of course they are losing ... more...
10 August 2005
Mobile ringtones sound flat note Crazy frog is a damp squib Ken Young, vnunet.com 01 Aug 2005 Ringtones are not the fast route to riches for mobile operators that they once were, according to analysts. A mixture of competition, alterative applications and a ringtone scams has brought an end to the boom times for ringtone providers, Canalys reported today. "There is a shift toward monthly offers rather than one of sales and more teenagers want music on their phones as ... more...
9 July 2005
Researchers at the Diffusion Group predicted this week that the U.S. podcast audience will climb from 840,000 last year to 56 million by 2010. By that time, three-quarters of all people who own portable digital music players will listen to podcasts, up from less than 15 percent last year, the digital entertainment research group said. zdnet via http://www.kurzweilai.net/ The FCC will probably try to classify them as broadcasts soon. That would leave them open to being licensed like radio. Which ... more...
6 July 2005
The Long Tail is about how our economy and culture is shifting from mass markets to million of niches. The term refers to the yellow part of the sales chart at left, which shows a standard demand curve that could apply to any industry, from entertainment to hard goods. The vertical axis is sales; the horizontal is products. The red part of the curve is the "hits", which have dominated our markets and culture for most of the last century. ... more...
24 June 2005
MADRID, Spain - One out of every three music discs sold in the world last year was pirated, with fake recordings outselling legal ones in 31 countries, an industry group said Thursday. The bootleg industry is growing in Latin America, India, the Middle East and eastern Europe, although around the world some countries are cracking down on copyright theft by shutting down illegal recording facilities, the International Federation of Phonographic Industries said in its annual report. more...
22 June 2005
Entertainment Media Research released a study stating that 35% of music listeners are using legal download services, and that the percentage will soon surpass illegal downloads, currently at 40%. Slashdot has also previously reported on services like iTunes gaining in popularity over P2P services. "The findings indicate that the music industry is approaching a strategic milestone with the population of legal downloaders close to exceeding that of pirates," said Entertainment Media Research chief executive Russell Hart.'" but read through the ... more...
21 April 2005
Indy is a music discovery program that learns what you like, and plays more of it. And it's free. Indy makes it easy for you to find great new independent music. Just download Indy and double-click: as it plays songs, you rate what you hear. windows only more...
19 April 2005
This guy has an apple-script/perl application that feeds and reads his iTunes collection and automatically pays the artists that he didn't legally buy the CD from. ..checks the Comment section for the track, which I maintain in a semi-structured format, for my private rights coding. Any track marked "Bought" came from a legally purchased CD or download, and so requires no further compensation to be issued. A track marked "Preview" is one I have acquired without the artist being compensated, ... more...
1 March 2005
Five major record labels have a monopoly that's bad for musicians and music culture, but now we have an opportunity to change that. We can use tools like filesharing to strengthen independent labels and end the major label monopoly. How do musicians get paid for downloads? Simple: collective licensing lets people download unlimited music for a flat monthly fee ($5-$10) and the money goes to musicians and labels according to popularity. This solution preserves the cultural benefits of p2p, gets ... more...
1 February 2005
Downloaders and Discounters Are Driving Out Music Retailers It's not just the indies, and it's not just the smaller markets. On Thursday the parent company of Tower Records, which has four stores in the Washington area and a few dozen more in major cities nationwide, was on the verge of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to news reports, having failed to find a suitable buyer. A recent study by Forrester Research, which examines technology trends, predicts that in five ... more...
25 January 2005
200 million downloads as online music sales take off JOHN INNES THE impact of the digital music revolution was revealed yesterday, with figures showing a ten-fold increase in legal downloads last year - to more than 200 million. The figure, for the UK, the United States and Germany, is published in a report which predicts that digital music could account for 25 per cent of total sales in five years. The number of legal online services from which music can ... more...
