According to a new study, of the 13m songs available for sale on the internet last year, more than 10m failed to find a single buyer.
The research, conducted by the MCPS-PRS's Will Page and Andrew Bud, brings us that much closer to proving Sturgeon's Law – that 90% of everything is crap. It also provides evidence for the famous old rock critic adage – your favourite band sucks.
More importantly, these findings challenge the "long tail" theory that diverse, specialised items – though individually less popular - will together outsell mainstream "hits".
Page is the chief economist at the MCPS-PRS Alliance, a not-for-profit royalty collection agency. According to his and Bud's research, 80% of all revenue came from about 52,000 tracks – the "hits" that powered the music industry. Broken down by album, only 173,000 of the 1.23m available albums were ever purchased – leaving 85% without a single copy sold.
"I think people believed in a fat, fertile long tail because they wanted it to be true," Mr Bud told the Times. "The statistical theories used to justify that theory were intelligent and plausible. But they turned out to be wrong."
"The relative size of the dormant 'zero sellers' tail was truly jaw-dropping," Page emphasised.
maandag 29 december 2008
Facebook Removes Project Playlist
Facebook today has also removed access to the Project Playlist service from the popular social networking site, citing a request from the RIAA. A Facebook statement says the company hopes to resolve the situation so that the Project Playlist service eventually can resume service on the site, but that it will block access until the proper label deals can be established.
Just days after getting banned from MySpace, Project Playlist has struck a licensing deal with Sony BMG. The deal gives Project Playlist users direct access to the Sony BMG catalog of both music tracks and videos. Financial details were not disclosed.
The major-label licensing deal is a big step forward for the playlist-sharing service, which is being sued by the other three major labels - Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and EMI Music - as well as the RIAA for copyright infringement. Project Playlist allows users to upload music to create playlists that other users can then stream, but until the Sony BMG deal has done so without paying labels a licensing fee.
On Friday, MySpace blocked the playlist-sharing service from the entire social network, citing requests from several major label partners.
"MySpace has received notices of infringement about Project Playlist at different times from several of the major music companies currently suing Project Playlist," reads a MySpace statement. "Per our policy of taking very seriously the requests of rights holders to block access to third party sites that are believed to be infringing, we have evaluated the requests of the major music companies and determined that it is in our best interest not to allow Project Playlist widgets on MySpace, and effective immediately, we will no longer be allowing these widgets within the MySpace platform."
While the service is now gone from MySpace, it remains active of competing social network Facebook. The company claims more than 40 million users.
If the music industry truly wants digital distribution to make up for falling CD sales, it needs to stop treating retail CDs as its primary revenue generator by this time next year, according to a recent Gartner research report.
In "Christmas 2008: The Last Year of the Retail CD" the analyst group recommends the music industry distribute music online first, through digital retailers, social networks and direct-to-fan models. It recommends limiting CDs to promotional items that can be sold or given away at concerts.
"By propping up the CD business, rather than fully investing in online distribution alternatives, the major labels and the larger music industry have neither succeeded in stamping out piracy nor done much to recreate the business models of the old 'record business,'" says Gartner research VP Mike McGuire in a statement. "Music labels should instead emphasize 'digital first,' making all new releases and catalog issues via digital services and moving CDs to an on-demand publishing mode."
McGuire points to the freefall drop in CD sales worldwide - from 91% of revenue in 2005 to 77% in 2007 - as well as the shrinking floor space dedicated to CDs by retailers as his rationale. Meanwhile, 77 million U.S. households will have broadband connections by 2012.
Just days after getting banned from MySpace, Project Playlist has struck a licensing deal with Sony BMG. The deal gives Project Playlist users direct access to the Sony BMG catalog of both music tracks and videos. Financial details were not disclosed.
The major-label licensing deal is a big step forward for the playlist-sharing service, which is being sued by the other three major labels - Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and EMI Music - as well as the RIAA for copyright infringement. Project Playlist allows users to upload music to create playlists that other users can then stream, but until the Sony BMG deal has done so without paying labels a licensing fee.
On Friday, MySpace blocked the playlist-sharing service from the entire social network, citing requests from several major label partners.
"MySpace has received notices of infringement about Project Playlist at different times from several of the major music companies currently suing Project Playlist," reads a MySpace statement. "Per our policy of taking very seriously the requests of rights holders to block access to third party sites that are believed to be infringing, we have evaluated the requests of the major music companies and determined that it is in our best interest not to allow Project Playlist widgets on MySpace, and effective immediately, we will no longer be allowing these widgets within the MySpace platform."
While the service is now gone from MySpace, it remains active of competing social network Facebook. The company claims more than 40 million users.
If the music industry truly wants digital distribution to make up for falling CD sales, it needs to stop treating retail CDs as its primary revenue generator by this time next year, according to a recent Gartner research report.
In "Christmas 2008: The Last Year of the Retail CD" the analyst group recommends the music industry distribute music online first, through digital retailers, social networks and direct-to-fan models. It recommends limiting CDs to promotional items that can be sold or given away at concerts.
"By propping up the CD business, rather than fully investing in online distribution alternatives, the major labels and the larger music industry have neither succeeded in stamping out piracy nor done much to recreate the business models of the old 'record business,'" says Gartner research VP Mike McGuire in a statement. "Music labels should instead emphasize 'digital first,' making all new releases and catalog issues via digital services and moving CDs to an on-demand publishing mode."
McGuire points to the freefall drop in CD sales worldwide - from 91% of revenue in 2005 to 77% in 2007 - as well as the shrinking floor space dedicated to CDs by retailers as his rationale. Meanwhile, 77 million U.S. households will have broadband connections by 2012.
Will the Apple-EMI Deal End DRM?
The music label's agreement to sell unprotected songs on iTunes has the industry abuzz about the future of digital rights management...
Of all the parties walking away as winners in the deal between Apple and EMI to remove copy restrictions from digital music, Tom Cullen is among those who worked the least, but benefited greatly. Sonos, a five-year-old company that sells a line of wireless devices that play digital music tracks around the home, has always suffered because it couldn't play songs purchased from Apple's (AAPL) iTunes store.
It was a common complaint from owners of Sonos' ZonePlayer products, who had spent several hundred dollars to unlock the music stored on their computers so it could be played on stereo systems around the house over a wireless network. "I wouldn't say we lost customers because of the lack of compatibility," says Cullen, a Sonos co-founder. "But we sure spent a lot of time explaining why the songs wouldn't work on support calls. We just blamed Apple."
No DRM for EMI
But now the problem is fixed—at least partially. Apple's plan to offer EMI's music via iTunes with no digital rights management (DRM) software to restrict the conditions under which songs can be copied will automatically give Sonos the compatibility it has wanted so long with at least some of the music sold on iTunes. Cullen says with luck, more labels will follow EMI's lead.
Sonos, like so many other companies that have long struggled with Apple's refusal to license its FairPlay DRM technology to any third parties—except Motorola (MOT) for the Rokr wireless phone—had approached Apple several times seeking some kind of cooperation. Apple's response was always the same: It didn't want to get into the business of supporting a bunch of hardware partners on behalf of the record labels.
This made the Apr. 2 joint announcement between Apple and EMI all the more surprising. When Apple CEO Steve Jobs formally suggested that recording labels should allow online music to be distributed without DRM protection, it seemed less likely that any would go along and more likely that DRM would remain a linchpin of digital music distribution for the foreseeable future. Still, some labels, including EMI, conducted market tests to see how unprotected songs would fare.
Interesting Timing
News of their agreement came just a few hours before European Commission regulators announced that they would launch an antitrust probe against Apple and the major recording labels. The Brussels body alleges that DRM rules—which are to be changed in about a month in Europe—under which the songs are sold through iTunes violate competitive rules. The regulators sent Apple, Universal Music (V), Warner Music (WMG), EMI, and Sony BMG (SNE) a confidential statement of objections outlining the charges last week.
News of the antitrust probe clouded what was otherwise seen as a winning play for Apple: The timing of the announcement suggests that Apple rushed to be ahead of the news of an investigation it knew was imminent.
Still, by cutting the chains of DRM, EMI and Apple are moving toward the day when a song sold from a digital store is as universally playable as a CD is today. And for some suppliers of MP3 players that don't bear the iPod name, the fact that soon they'll be compatible with at least some of the content sold in the iTunes Store will give them some added benefits to crow about.
Will Other Majors Follow?
Meanwhile, there's the issue of the other online music stores. Presumably they will in time be offered the same deal that iTunes has and will be allowed to offer DRM-free songs that are compatible with all portable players, including the iPod. One of the few who has been able to brag for some time that his music is already compatible with the iPod is David Pakman, CEO of eMusic, a New York distributor of DRM-less music produced mostly by independent labels.
He thinks the other majors will have to follow EMI's lead: "If you're a major that doesn't have DRM-free music, you look pretty challenged. This will put pressure on the other majors," he asserts. Pakman has been talking to major labels for years trying to convince them to distribute their music as unprotected MP3s to no avail. Suddenly, he says, the pace of talks on the subject has quickened. "Hopefully many other [online] retailers, including ourselves, will get licensed over time."
Rob Glaser, CEO of another Apple rival, RealNetworks (RNWK), which operates the Rhapsody online music subscription service, hopes to hear EMI knocking on his door soon. "This moves us closer than ever to the day when consumers will be able to buy their favorite music via Rhapsody and enjoy it on their iPod or any other music-playing device," he said in a statement. "We look forward to working with EMI and the rest of the music industry to bring DRM-free, interoperable music to consumers in the months ahead."
Testing the Waters
However, Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr., who has over the years criticized Apple's firm stance on pricing, is said to be firmly against dropping DRM anytime soon. One major-label executive who asked not to be named told BusinessWeek.com that he believes Apple's motivation has little to do with compatibility and is more about selling iPods and fighting off the complaints by European regulators.
"If Jobs really believed in interoperability, he would have licensed FairPlay from the start," says the executive. "So what does he do to shake off regulators in Europe? He goes after the weakest, most desperate music company to help him promote DRM-free."
In the meantime, Sony/BMG and Universal Music Group are understood to be testing the sale of unprotected MP3s. One music industry source familiar with the testing says that Sony and Universal are discouraged by the example set by Pakman's eMusic, which hasn't managed to turn a profit. They also worry that selling unprotected tracks might cannibalize sales to consumers using mobile phones, a fast-growing segment of digital music sales. Additionally they're concerned that selling unprotected tracks will only add to the perpetual problem of music piracy.
The World After DRM
Not everyone involved is so worried. Bob Kohn, CEO of RoyaltyShare, a San Diego concern that processes payments to artists and other rights holders, says today's Apple-EMI pact will "double or triple the size of the digital download business…. I think EMI realized they could sell a lot of their back catalog by doing this and I think they're right."
Some of the companies that might be helped in a DRM-less world include would-be iTunes rivals such as Rhapsody, Napster (NAPS), and Yahoo! (YHOO), all of which could in theory be granted the rights to sell iPod-compatible music. And iTunes could easily lose much of its market share.
That's likely of little concern to Apple. The company draws only a thin profit over and above its operational costs to run the online store, while the iPod generally attracts a 50% gross margin. Having sold some 90 million iPods over five years and some 2 billion songs since 2003, the average number of iTunes songs sold per iPod stands at about 30. If the iPod and upcoming iPhone were universally compatible with all the digital music sold online, few people would argue that sales of those devices wouldn't be even greater.
Of all the parties walking away as winners in the deal between Apple and EMI to remove copy restrictions from digital music, Tom Cullen is among those who worked the least, but benefited greatly. Sonos, a five-year-old company that sells a line of wireless devices that play digital music tracks around the home, has always suffered because it couldn't play songs purchased from Apple's (AAPL) iTunes store.
It was a common complaint from owners of Sonos' ZonePlayer products, who had spent several hundred dollars to unlock the music stored on their computers so it could be played on stereo systems around the house over a wireless network. "I wouldn't say we lost customers because of the lack of compatibility," says Cullen, a Sonos co-founder. "But we sure spent a lot of time explaining why the songs wouldn't work on support calls. We just blamed Apple."
No DRM for EMI
But now the problem is fixed—at least partially. Apple's plan to offer EMI's music via iTunes with no digital rights management (DRM) software to restrict the conditions under which songs can be copied will automatically give Sonos the compatibility it has wanted so long with at least some of the music sold on iTunes. Cullen says with luck, more labels will follow EMI's lead.
Sonos, like so many other companies that have long struggled with Apple's refusal to license its FairPlay DRM technology to any third parties—except Motorola (MOT) for the Rokr wireless phone—had approached Apple several times seeking some kind of cooperation. Apple's response was always the same: It didn't want to get into the business of supporting a bunch of hardware partners on behalf of the record labels.
This made the Apr. 2 joint announcement between Apple and EMI all the more surprising. When Apple CEO Steve Jobs formally suggested that recording labels should allow online music to be distributed without DRM protection, it seemed less likely that any would go along and more likely that DRM would remain a linchpin of digital music distribution for the foreseeable future. Still, some labels, including EMI, conducted market tests to see how unprotected songs would fare.
Interesting Timing
News of their agreement came just a few hours before European Commission regulators announced that they would launch an antitrust probe against Apple and the major recording labels. The Brussels body alleges that DRM rules—which are to be changed in about a month in Europe—under which the songs are sold through iTunes violate competitive rules. The regulators sent Apple, Universal Music (V), Warner Music (WMG), EMI, and Sony BMG (SNE) a confidential statement of objections outlining the charges last week.
News of the antitrust probe clouded what was otherwise seen as a winning play for Apple: The timing of the announcement suggests that Apple rushed to be ahead of the news of an investigation it knew was imminent.
Still, by cutting the chains of DRM, EMI and Apple are moving toward the day when a song sold from a digital store is as universally playable as a CD is today. And for some suppliers of MP3 players that don't bear the iPod name, the fact that soon they'll be compatible with at least some of the content sold in the iTunes Store will give them some added benefits to crow about.
Will Other Majors Follow?
Meanwhile, there's the issue of the other online music stores. Presumably they will in time be offered the same deal that iTunes has and will be allowed to offer DRM-free songs that are compatible with all portable players, including the iPod. One of the few who has been able to brag for some time that his music is already compatible with the iPod is David Pakman, CEO of eMusic, a New York distributor of DRM-less music produced mostly by independent labels.
He thinks the other majors will have to follow EMI's lead: "If you're a major that doesn't have DRM-free music, you look pretty challenged. This will put pressure on the other majors," he asserts. Pakman has been talking to major labels for years trying to convince them to distribute their music as unprotected MP3s to no avail. Suddenly, he says, the pace of talks on the subject has quickened. "Hopefully many other [online] retailers, including ourselves, will get licensed over time."
Rob Glaser, CEO of another Apple rival, RealNetworks (RNWK), which operates the Rhapsody online music subscription service, hopes to hear EMI knocking on his door soon. "This moves us closer than ever to the day when consumers will be able to buy their favorite music via Rhapsody and enjoy it on their iPod or any other music-playing device," he said in a statement. "We look forward to working with EMI and the rest of the music industry to bring DRM-free, interoperable music to consumers in the months ahead."
Testing the Waters
However, Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr., who has over the years criticized Apple's firm stance on pricing, is said to be firmly against dropping DRM anytime soon. One major-label executive who asked not to be named told BusinessWeek.com that he believes Apple's motivation has little to do with compatibility and is more about selling iPods and fighting off the complaints by European regulators.
"If Jobs really believed in interoperability, he would have licensed FairPlay from the start," says the executive. "So what does he do to shake off regulators in Europe? He goes after the weakest, most desperate music company to help him promote DRM-free."
In the meantime, Sony/BMG and Universal Music Group are understood to be testing the sale of unprotected MP3s. One music industry source familiar with the testing says that Sony and Universal are discouraged by the example set by Pakman's eMusic, which hasn't managed to turn a profit. They also worry that selling unprotected tracks might cannibalize sales to consumers using mobile phones, a fast-growing segment of digital music sales. Additionally they're concerned that selling unprotected tracks will only add to the perpetual problem of music piracy.
The World After DRM
Not everyone involved is so worried. Bob Kohn, CEO of RoyaltyShare, a San Diego concern that processes payments to artists and other rights holders, says today's Apple-EMI pact will "double or triple the size of the digital download business…. I think EMI realized they could sell a lot of their back catalog by doing this and I think they're right."
Some of the companies that might be helped in a DRM-less world include would-be iTunes rivals such as Rhapsody, Napster (NAPS), and Yahoo! (YHOO), all of which could in theory be granted the rights to sell iPod-compatible music. And iTunes could easily lose much of its market share.
That's likely of little concern to Apple. The company draws only a thin profit over and above its operational costs to run the online store, while the iPod generally attracts a 50% gross margin. Having sold some 90 million iPods over five years and some 2 billion songs since 2003, the average number of iTunes songs sold per iPod stands at about 30. If the iPod and upcoming iPhone were universally compatible with all the digital music sold online, few people would argue that sales of those devices wouldn't be even greater.
RIAA v. The People Turns from Lawsuits to 3 Strikes
The lawsuits are ending. It's about time.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the recording industry has halted its mass litigation campaign against music fans for Internet file-sharing, a campaign that has targeted more than 35,000 Americans over more than 5 years (for a complete history of the lawsuits, see our RIAA v. The People white paper).
Ending the lawsuit campaign is long overdue. The campaign has been, by any measure, a failure. The lawsuits have not reduced unauthorized file-sharing and have not gotten a single artist paid.
But the news today is not all good. First, the recording industry will continue to press the thousands of pending lawsuits, presumably pushing for the usual four figure settlements. How is it going to feel to be the last college student to settle in a fight that the recording industry has now admitted isn't worth the candle?
More troubling is the news that the RIAA is pressuring U.S. ISPs into adopting some sort of "3 strikes" approach, similar to those it's been seeking in Europe (see, e.g., the French "digital guillotine" proposal). According the the Wall Street Journal article:
[T]he Recording Industry Association of America said it plans to try an approach that relies on the cooperation of Internet-service providers. The trade group said it has hashed out preliminary agreements with major ISPs under which it will send an email to the provider when it finds a provider's customers making music available online for others to take. Depending on the agreement, the ISP will either forward the note to customers, or alert customers that they appear to be uploading music illegally, and ask them to stop. If the customers continue the file-sharing, they will get one or two more emails, perhaps accompanied by slower service from the provider. Finally, the ISP may cut off their access altogether.
This means more music fans are going to be harassed by the music industry. As Wired's Elliot Van Buskirk points out:
Due process has been prohibitively expensive for the RIAA. The organization has long sought a more efficient way to exert pressure on suspected file sharers, and these new agreements will grant it that wish, saving it money and allowing it to pressure far more suspected file sharers, all without filing a single subpoena.
The recording industry's efforts to push "3 strikes" legislation in Europe have been definitively rejected by the European Parliament and by Sweden. While UK ISPs have agreed to send notices for rightsholders, they've stopped short of automatic Internet disconnection. This leaves France as the sole European aberration.
The problem is the lack of due process for those accused. In a world where hundreds of thousands (or millions) of copyright infringement allegations are automatically generated and delivered to ISPs, mistakes are going to be made (just look at the innocents, 1, 2, 3, 4, who were swept into the RIAA litigation machine). Anyone who has ever had to fight to correct an error on their credit reports will be able to imagine the trouble we're in for.
And being added to a nation-wide "Internet blacklist"—like that in the pending French legislation—is a disproportionate punishment, even for those who are "caught" file sharing. By conservative estimates, 1 in 5 American Internet users is an active file-sharer. Does the recording industry really think that banning 20% of Americans from the Internet is the right answer? Do ISPs? Or will the millions of ISP "warnings" just give rise to more encrypted and anonymized file-sharing mechanisms, all the while getting no artists paid?
We still need a better way forward, that legalizes file-sharing and gets artists paid. So, while today's news is long-overdue, the more interesting development is the recording industry's recent willingness to discuss collective licensing with universities.
YouTube dispute underscores music labels weak hand
NEW YORK: First it was MTV, then it was Apple, and now it's YouTube.
The music industry, faced with declining CD sales, has repeatedly tried to find new income streams only to see its partners thrive with minimal benefit to the labels themselves.
So in the new battleground of online video, music companies are desperate to avoid past mistakes, but they are finding it tough to negotiate with a powerful new Internet partner.
Warner Music Group's decision to pull thousands of music videos from Google Inc's YouTube last Saturday, after the collapse of contract negotiations, shows just how far music companies may have to go to gain any leverage.
Some of the major labels are even considering forming a joint music video site to boost their bargaining power, said one music executive, as the dispute between Warner and YouTube underscores the limitations of relying on outside partners.
Such a joint venture could look similar to NBC Universal and News Corp's Hulu.com for putting TV shows online, and it could include YouTube in the partnership, said the executive, who declined to be identified as talks were still at a very early stage.
As CD sales plunge and the growth of digital songs slows, music labels increasingly consider online video to be key to revenue growth. But they do not have a strong hand in licensing negotiations with YouTube, which along with News Corp's MySpace.com, has become one of the most important music discovery tools for young fans.
Echoing the success of Viacom Inc's MTV Networks in the 1980s, or Apple Inc's iTunes since 2003, YouTube has in three years grown to become the largest online video site with more than 100 million U.S. viewers in October, according to Web audience measurement firm comScore.
"The first thing kids do when they hear about a band now is go on YouTube to find out more, according to our focus groups," said an executive at one of the major music labels, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Warner, the world's third-largest music company, was the first major media company to sign a licensing deal with YouTube in 2006, permitting the site to stream music videos from artists like Red Hot Chili Peppers and rapper T.I.
That deal, which expired months ago, was signed before YouTube was bought by the deep-pocketed Google. Warner's larger rivals, Vivendi's Universal Music Group and Sony Music, only agreed to deals with YouTube as it was about to be bought by Google, and would likely have brokered more favorable terms, industry insiders said.
0.5 cents per stream
Warner wants more money from YouTube for streaming rights, but YouTube has refused to budge from the previously negotiated terms, according to two people familiar with the talks.
YouTube pays record labels every time a video is streamed, or the label can get a share of advertising revenue around the video. The per-play fee is usually around half a cent per stream and the label gets paid the higher of aggregate per-play revenue or advertising revenue.
Warner has made less than 1 percent of its total digital revenue of $639 million in fiscal year 2008 from YouTube, according to a source close to the company.
Meanwhile, Universal Music, the world's largest music company, is likely to make just under $100 million from all its online video partners in 2008, said a person familiar with the company's plans. YouTube will account for "tens of millions" made in revenue by Universal, said the person.
"The labels have to find a balance between how much money they can make from YouTube itself or if they can make more money from promoting their artists on YouTube," said Ethan Horwitz, an intellectual property lawyer at King & Spalding.
Warner Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman faces extra pressure as his is the only publicly traded music company and will need to start showing shareholders a material return on deals with partners like YouTube. Warner's share price has fallen nearly 60 percent since the start of 2008.
Warner had thought that YouTube would be a significant advertising force by now, but instead the site has focused more on building audience than on increasing revenue.
"They made all these early promises of implementing audio fingerprinting while in the meantime we were losing revenues and they've been lagging behind other competitors," said a person close to Warner Music, pointing to MySpace and Time Warner's AOL as offering better rates.
The music industry, faced with declining CD sales, has repeatedly tried to find new income streams only to see its partners thrive with minimal benefit to the labels themselves.
So in the new battleground of online video, music companies are desperate to avoid past mistakes, but they are finding it tough to negotiate with a powerful new Internet partner.
Warner Music Group's decision to pull thousands of music videos from Google Inc's YouTube last Saturday, after the collapse of contract negotiations, shows just how far music companies may have to go to gain any leverage.
Some of the major labels are even considering forming a joint music video site to boost their bargaining power, said one music executive, as the dispute between Warner and YouTube underscores the limitations of relying on outside partners.
Such a joint venture could look similar to NBC Universal and News Corp's Hulu.com for putting TV shows online, and it could include YouTube in the partnership, said the executive, who declined to be identified as talks were still at a very early stage.
As CD sales plunge and the growth of digital songs slows, music labels increasingly consider online video to be key to revenue growth. But they do not have a strong hand in licensing negotiations with YouTube, which along with News Corp's MySpace.com, has become one of the most important music discovery tools for young fans.
Echoing the success of Viacom Inc's MTV Networks in the 1980s, or Apple Inc's iTunes since 2003, YouTube has in three years grown to become the largest online video site with more than 100 million U.S. viewers in October, according to Web audience measurement firm comScore.
"The first thing kids do when they hear about a band now is go on YouTube to find out more, according to our focus groups," said an executive at one of the major music labels, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Warner, the world's third-largest music company, was the first major media company to sign a licensing deal with YouTube in 2006, permitting the site to stream music videos from artists like Red Hot Chili Peppers and rapper T.I.
That deal, which expired months ago, was signed before YouTube was bought by the deep-pocketed Google. Warner's larger rivals, Vivendi's Universal Music Group and Sony Music, only agreed to deals with YouTube as it was about to be bought by Google, and would likely have brokered more favorable terms, industry insiders said.
0.5 cents per stream
Warner wants more money from YouTube for streaming rights, but YouTube has refused to budge from the previously negotiated terms, according to two people familiar with the talks.
YouTube pays record labels every time a video is streamed, or the label can get a share of advertising revenue around the video. The per-play fee is usually around half a cent per stream and the label gets paid the higher of aggregate per-play revenue or advertising revenue.
Warner has made less than 1 percent of its total digital revenue of $639 million in fiscal year 2008 from YouTube, according to a source close to the company.
Meanwhile, Universal Music, the world's largest music company, is likely to make just under $100 million from all its online video partners in 2008, said a person familiar with the company's plans. YouTube will account for "tens of millions" made in revenue by Universal, said the person.
"The labels have to find a balance between how much money they can make from YouTube itself or if they can make more money from promoting their artists on YouTube," said Ethan Horwitz, an intellectual property lawyer at King & Spalding.
Warner Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman faces extra pressure as his is the only publicly traded music company and will need to start showing shareholders a material return on deals with partners like YouTube. Warner's share price has fallen nearly 60 percent since the start of 2008.
Warner had thought that YouTube would be a significant advertising force by now, but instead the site has focused more on building audience than on increasing revenue.
"They made all these early promises of implementing audio fingerprinting while in the meantime we were losing revenues and they've been lagging behind other competitors," said a person close to Warner Music, pointing to MySpace and Time Warner's AOL as offering better rates.
This Endangered Business Model Will Survive
If the music industry is going down in a flaming digital holocaust like the dinosaurs, I think that its book-publishing cousin represents the crocodiles and feathered lizards that carried the torch through the dark times, and are still with us today.
What's so great about books?
On the surface, it's easy to dismiss traditional publishing even faster than you toss aside the music labels. Digital information hoarders like Wikipedia, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), and Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) News will kill magazines and printed newspapers, while BitTorrent and Amazon's (Nasdaq: AMZN) Kindle do the same to boring old books. Run far, far away from all of the publishing stocks!
- The recording publishing system is a few decades old, but book publishing can be measured in centuries. The difference between recorded sound and the written word is orders of magnitude. If the music system is outdated, then publishing must be positively antediluvian.
- It may be fairly easy to copy, rip, and burn music files from any old format -- but you could copy an entire digital book with a few keystrokes and email the full text to all your friends. This is piracy squared, dude!
- Most digital music files can at least get slathered in layers of DRM protection, making it a little bit harder to distribute and copy the stuff illegally. Have you ever seen DRM on a text file? Password-protected Word and PDF documents are about the best we've got, and passwords are darn easy to send out, too.
In short, publishers are facing the same problems a music maker would, only more so and with fewer defensive tools at their disposal. They're obviously doomed! Right?
Not so fast, cowboy!
Actually, no. It's true that e-book sales are growing like the figurative toddler they still are, while print media is dropping like a lead weight. But reports of the old medium's death have been greatly exaggerated. Books and the businesses that publish them will survive for a couple of reasons.
- The reading experience is unique and hard to copy even with the best digital tools of today. "Simply put, magazines and books are easy to get and easy to read," said publishing maven Bob Sacks in a recent duel over the digital future of books. "With ink printed on paper you're usually provided with a crisp, high-contrast, highly reflective substrate. And because it reflects light evenly in all directions, you can read it at almost any angle. Not bad for 600-year-old technology."
- The kicker: Bob was arguing in favor of e-books like the Kindle and Sony (NYSE: SNE) Reader. With enemies like that, who needs friends? Even foldable screens like the ones Universal Display (Nasdaq: PANL) is developing for the U.S. Army may find it hard to replace the visceral thrills of ink on paper.
- Big-time publishers like Encyclopedia Britannica and CBS' (NYSE: CBS) Simon & Schuster already understand how big of an impact the digital age will make on traditional publishing methods. They are fighting back with the appropriate tactics. Britannica's namesake encyclopedia used to charge big bucks for even casual use of its online material, but basic articles and searches are now free. A premium pass buys you access to a few more volumes, and drops the nag screens and advertising blurbs. Simon is big on e-books, audio books, and CD-ROM releases.
Old but progressive, kind of like Phish or Grateful Dead
Best of all, the most forward-thinking publishers make even open-minded record labels like Nettwerk look stale. Baen Books started giving away free e-book copies of its authors' works way back in 2000. Nowadays, the practice has grown to include the authors' entire back catalog on CD-ROMs stuffed into print editions.
"That's insane!" you might scream, but then you're thinking like a music executive. The Baen dudes understood early on that electronic reading is a poor substitute for holding a real book, so the e-books and chapter excerpts serve as awesome marketing materials.
Download an entire book, read enough to get hooked, and then you'll eventually get tired of staring at a stupid screen for hours. So in the end, readers who really want to read these books tend to plunk down a few bucks for the real deal. This theory may not work quite so well for rockers and crooners, but authors seem to have a real revenue source secured for years to come. The Kindle and such gadgets will ultimately just make us buy more books.
Give me a call when someone starts selling an e-book reader that smells like ink on paper, folds like a paperback, and gives me an occasional paper cut. Until then, good old publishing stocks may have been unfairly punished for the digital shortcomings of other media. CBS and McGraw-Hill (NYSE: MHP) have been losing to a losing market for five years or more, and their publishing divisions deserve more respect than they're getting.
Swim along, sweet crocodiles. You're gonna make it.
Is it End of the Road for Music CDs?
Researcher Gartner suggests that the music industry must move away from the retail CD as its primary revenue generator before Christmas 2009. It says that reliance on revenue from the sale of prerecorded CDs is hindering the music industry from fully embracing online distribution opportunities.
“By propping up the CD business, rather than fully investing in online distribution alternatives, the major labels and the larger music industry have neither succeeded in stamping out piracy nor done much to recreate the business models of the old ‘record business,’” said Mike McGuire, research vice president at Gartner. “Music labels should instead emphasize 'digital first,' making all new releases and catalog issues via digital services and moving CDs to an on-demand publishing mode.”
In 2007, online distribution represented about 23% of revenue in the U.S, and about 15% worldwide. Gartner said that while the music industry’s reliance on the disc worked well from 1985 though the U.S. market’s revenue peak in 2000, CD sales are now dropping rapidly in major markets worldwide and are unlikely to regain market share.
As a percentage of total revenue in the U.S. market, physical media (CDs, LPs, DVD-A and so on) have gone from 91% of revenue in 2005 to 77% in 2007 and there is also evidence that physical retailers are even reducing the physical floor space dedicated to CDs, says Gartner.
Enabling the transition away from retail music CDs toward online distribution is now in sight, given that 77% of U.S. households (a total of 96 million connections) will have broadband connections by 2012. Beyond these consumers, the alternative distribution afforded by Wi-Fi-enabled notebooks and rapidly improving media-enabled mobile phones pose opportunities that provide multiple paths for marketing, promotion, and distribution outside the consumer’s home.
Moreover, Gartner suggests that by eliminating the cost of the CDs through a new burn-on-demand model, labels could cut out the expense of trying to anticipate demand and reduce costs associated with shipping. Songs or albums would always be distributed online first, leveraging the burgeoning social network sector as awareness and promotional tools to drive sales at online sites, and the growing number of mobile music services.
“The industry's comfort with past marketing and promotional practices centered on CD launches is ingrained and difficult to give up. But the reality is that digital natives and immigrants are more interested in convenience and choice,” said McGuire. “This is not to say that the physical CD would disappear altogether. Rather, it could shift to being a promotional tool to be sold or given away at concerts for example.”
As well as the move toward ‘digital first,’ Gartner recommends that labels focus on the limitless ways digital content (that is, songs, videos, lyrics and communiqués) can be delivered, consumed and monetized. Gartner also advocates the development of comprehensive and flexible licensing regimes to fully optimize online services.
Stopping music piracy ...... or making it irrelevant
When 15 college students recently visited the Tribune editorial board, we asked them if they had committed a certain crime. They all eagerly pleaded guilty. They illegally download music on the Internet. A lot. This is so common that, one student said, "I kind of forgot that it was illegal."
Illegal—and common. The Recording Industry Association of America says 7.8 million U.S. households a month steal music online. That means singers, songwriters, musicians, producers and others don't get compensated for their work. The Institute for Policy Innovation, a pro-business think tank, says illegal music sharing costs the U.S. economy $12.5 billion a year.
The music industry's preferred method of fighting this—filing large lawsuits against a tiny percentage of downloaders—has earned the RIAA plenty of bad publicity, with little deterrent effect. The RIAA seems finally to have realized that. It announced last week that it would stop filing lawsuits against individual music thieves—in favor of other, more creative deterrents.
It's about time. These lawsuits don't work. Here's why.In the last five years, the RIAA has filed more than 30,000 lawsuits against people who share music online. Most of the targets, faced with the prospect of attorneys fees and ruinous financial judgments, settle and agree to pay. Cases almost never go to trial.
Most people who are caught pay settlements of a few thousand dollars. Last year, in the only file-sharing case that has gone to trial, the industry won a $222,000 judgment against a woman in Minnesota. Jammie Thomas had shared 24 songs on an Internet network. The judge, though, declared a mistrial based on errors he said he had made. The case may be tried again.
The net effect of all this action (or is it inaction?) in the courts is that . . . people who illegally download music don't worry about getting caught. In fact, the Thomas case may wind up encouraging people to keep stealing music. U.S. District Judge Michael Davis wrote that the judgment is "more than five hundred [his emphasis] times the cost of buying 24 separate CDs." He called that "unprecedented and oppressive."
Well, it does seem akin to the Chicago Police Department deciding that it's too much trouble to write parking tickets, so it will whack one person a day for $222,000 and see if everybody else gets the message.
Now, illegal downloading is not as harmless as illegal parking. It's the theft of someone's work. But if you file 30,000 lawsuits, you hit fewer than four-tenths of 1 percent of the estimated 7.8 million people who illegally download. The RIAA finally sees that it doesn't need a different enforcement model, it needs a different business model. It needs to make piracy "irrelevant," says RIAA President Cary Sherman.
So the group instead will work with Internet service providers to track the accounts that seem to be doing the most downloading: When the RIAA detects a serial downloader, it will notify the person's ISP. The provider will initially ask the downloaders to simply stop, eventually slow down their Internet service and, finally, cut them off.
Advertiser supported downloads, Internet radio royalties and ring tones make up growing revenue streams for musicians. In April, Apple's iTunes overtook Wal-Mart as the "number one music retailer" in the country. At that time, iTunes had sold more than 4 billion songs. Since then, it has sold a billion more. By selling songs at 99 cents—higher quality downloads go for $1.29—iTunes has found a price point at which many people will pay for, rather than steal, music.
As it finds new ways to compensate musicians and itself, the recording industry should drop its remaining lawsuits against illegal downloaders. Given that the RIAA already has abandoned the tactic, pursuing these lawsuits confuses the message that this is a new and better day.
The industry is smart to focus less on pursuing music thieves than on converting all but the most egregious of them to paying customers. Good solution—and nobody had to pass a law, start a program or bankrupt Britney Spears' fans.
____________________________________________________________________________
Your papa says he knows that I don't have any money
Oh, your daddy says he knows that I don't have any money
Well, tell him this is his last chance to get his daughter in a fine romance
'Cause a record company, Rosie, just gave me a big advance
That's how you did it if you were a musician in 1973, when Bruce Springsteen released "Rosalita." You hit it big when the record company let you make a record.
These days, the record company is optional. The English rock band Radiohead announced last year that it would let fans decide how much they would pay to download its album "In Rainbows." There was no set price. The message to the fans: It's up to you.
It was a four-word directive that removed the middlemen—record labels—from the relationship between artist and fan. If Radiohead was successful—if fans paid up—its experiment had the potential to diminish the power of record labels as tastemakers.
It looks like this idea has worked.
The band recently announced that "In Rainbows" has sold a stunning 3 million copies in its various formats in the first year of release. Some sales were of the pay-what-you-will download variety. When it was released in CD format three months after its online release, it rose to the top of the U.S. and the U.K. charts. The band even sold 100,000 boxed sets at $81 apiece.
Warner/Chappell, Radiohead's publisher, won't say how much the average downloader paid. But the company says Radiohead made more money from downloads of "In Rainbows" than it did from sales across all formats of its 2003 album, "Hail to the Thief."
So there's reason to believe that fans who could have gotten "In Rainbows" for free were actually willing to pay something.
Radiohead said "It's up to you" and fans set a fair price.
That raises a very interesting prospect for the music industry: Bands may no longer have to rely on record labels to get ahead if they can sell directly to their fans in a variety of formats and price points. The cost of production goes way down, and musicians can pocket 80 to 90 percent of their revenues rather than sharing money with producers, distributors, retailers and record labels.
Selling only 50,000 records will get you booted by a record label. Selling 50,000 copies yourself—well, you might not persuade Rosie to stay out all night, but you might be able to make a decent living.
Illegal—and common. The Recording Industry Association of America says 7.8 million U.S. households a month steal music online. That means singers, songwriters, musicians, producers and others don't get compensated for their work. The Institute for Policy Innovation, a pro-business think tank, says illegal music sharing costs the U.S. economy $12.5 billion a year.
The music industry's preferred method of fighting this—filing large lawsuits against a tiny percentage of downloaders—has earned the RIAA plenty of bad publicity, with little deterrent effect. The RIAA seems finally to have realized that. It announced last week that it would stop filing lawsuits against individual music thieves—in favor of other, more creative deterrents.
It's about time. These lawsuits don't work. Here's why.In the last five years, the RIAA has filed more than 30,000 lawsuits against people who share music online. Most of the targets, faced with the prospect of attorneys fees and ruinous financial judgments, settle and agree to pay. Cases almost never go to trial.
Most people who are caught pay settlements of a few thousand dollars. Last year, in the only file-sharing case that has gone to trial, the industry won a $222,000 judgment against a woman in Minnesota. Jammie Thomas had shared 24 songs on an Internet network. The judge, though, declared a mistrial based on errors he said he had made. The case may be tried again.
The net effect of all this action (or is it inaction?) in the courts is that . . . people who illegally download music don't worry about getting caught. In fact, the Thomas case may wind up encouraging people to keep stealing music. U.S. District Judge Michael Davis wrote that the judgment is "more than five hundred [his emphasis] times the cost of buying 24 separate CDs." He called that "unprecedented and oppressive."
Well, it does seem akin to the Chicago Police Department deciding that it's too much trouble to write parking tickets, so it will whack one person a day for $222,000 and see if everybody else gets the message.
Now, illegal downloading is not as harmless as illegal parking. It's the theft of someone's work. But if you file 30,000 lawsuits, you hit fewer than four-tenths of 1 percent of the estimated 7.8 million people who illegally download. The RIAA finally sees that it doesn't need a different enforcement model, it needs a different business model. It needs to make piracy "irrelevant," says RIAA President Cary Sherman.
So the group instead will work with Internet service providers to track the accounts that seem to be doing the most downloading: When the RIAA detects a serial downloader, it will notify the person's ISP. The provider will initially ask the downloaders to simply stop, eventually slow down their Internet service and, finally, cut them off.
Advertiser supported downloads, Internet radio royalties and ring tones make up growing revenue streams for musicians. In April, Apple's iTunes overtook Wal-Mart as the "number one music retailer" in the country. At that time, iTunes had sold more than 4 billion songs. Since then, it has sold a billion more. By selling songs at 99 cents—higher quality downloads go for $1.29—iTunes has found a price point at which many people will pay for, rather than steal, music.
As it finds new ways to compensate musicians and itself, the recording industry should drop its remaining lawsuits against illegal downloaders. Given that the RIAA already has abandoned the tactic, pursuing these lawsuits confuses the message that this is a new and better day.
The industry is smart to focus less on pursuing music thieves than on converting all but the most egregious of them to paying customers. Good solution—and nobody had to pass a law, start a program or bankrupt Britney Spears' fans.
____________________________________________________________________________
Your papa says he knows that I don't have any money
Oh, your daddy says he knows that I don't have any money
Well, tell him this is his last chance to get his daughter in a fine romance
'Cause a record company, Rosie, just gave me a big advance
That's how you did it if you were a musician in 1973, when Bruce Springsteen released "Rosalita." You hit it big when the record company let you make a record.
These days, the record company is optional. The English rock band Radiohead announced last year that it would let fans decide how much they would pay to download its album "In Rainbows." There was no set price. The message to the fans: It's up to you.
It was a four-word directive that removed the middlemen—record labels—from the relationship between artist and fan. If Radiohead was successful—if fans paid up—its experiment had the potential to diminish the power of record labels as tastemakers.
It looks like this idea has worked.
The band recently announced that "In Rainbows" has sold a stunning 3 million copies in its various formats in the first year of release. Some sales were of the pay-what-you-will download variety. When it was released in CD format three months after its online release, it rose to the top of the U.S. and the U.K. charts. The band even sold 100,000 boxed sets at $81 apiece.
Warner/Chappell, Radiohead's publisher, won't say how much the average downloader paid. But the company says Radiohead made more money from downloads of "In Rainbows" than it did from sales across all formats of its 2003 album, "Hail to the Thief."
So there's reason to believe that fans who could have gotten "In Rainbows" for free were actually willing to pay something.
Radiohead said "It's up to you" and fans set a fair price.
That raises a very interesting prospect for the music industry: Bands may no longer have to rely on record labels to get ahead if they can sell directly to their fans in a variety of formats and price points. The cost of production goes way down, and musicians can pocket 80 to 90 percent of their revenues rather than sharing money with producers, distributors, retailers and record labels.
Selling only 50,000 records will get you booted by a record label. Selling 50,000 copies yourself—well, you might not persuade Rosie to stay out all night, but you might be able to make a decent living.
Steve Jobs' Greatest Presentation
Our communications coach mines Jobs' introduction of the iPhone to offer five lessons for making an unforgettable pitch
By Carmine Gallo
After a gorgeous afternoon of golf a few days ago, my nephew seemed anxious to get home, even skipping out on my invitation to dinner. He's a graduating high school senior, so I assumed he wanted to hang out with friends. I was partly correct. He wanted to hang out with friends in line for the new iPhone.
By Carmine Gallo
After a gorgeous afternoon of golf a few days ago, my nephew seemed anxious to get home, even skipping out on my invitation to dinner. He's a graduating high school senior, so I assumed he wanted to hang out with friends. I was partly correct. He wanted to hang out with friends in line for the new iPhone.
Leave it to Apple AAPL Chief Executive Steve Jobsto create a frenzy that gripped every gadget fan in the country. The hype, however, started with what I consider Jobs' best presentation to date—the introduction of the iPhone at the annual Macworld trade show in January.
After watching and analyzing the presentation, I thought about five ways to distill Jobs' speaking techniques to help anyone craft and deliver a persuasive pitch.
1. Build Tension
A good novelist doesn't lay out the entire plot and conclusion on the first page of the book. He builds up to it. Jobs begins his presentation by reviewing the "revolutionary" products Apple has introduced. According to Jobs, "every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything…Apple has been fortunate to introduce a few things into the world." Jobs continues by describing the 1984 launch of the Macintosh as an event that "changed the entire computer industry." The same goes for the introduction of the first iPod in 2001, a product that he says "changed the entire music industry."
After laying the groundwork, Jobs builds up to the new device by teasing the audience: "Today, we are introducing three revolutionary products. The first is a wide-screen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary new mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device." Jobs continues to build tension. He repeats the three devices several times then says, "Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device…today Apple is going to reinvent the phone!" The crowd goes wild.
Jobs conducts a presentation like a symphony, with ebbs and flows, buildups and climaxes. It leaves his listeners wildly excited. The takeaway? Build up to something unexpected in your presentations.
2. Stick to One Theme Per Slide
A brilliant designer once told me that effective presentation slides only have one message per slide. One slide, one key point. When Jobs introduced the "three revolutionary products" in the description above, he didn't show one slide with three devices. When he spoke about each feature (a widescreen iPod, a mobile phone, and an Internet communicator), a slide would appear with an image of each feature.
Jobs also makes the slides highly visual. At no place in his presentation does the audience see slides with bullet points or mind-numbing data. An image is all he needs. The simplicity of the slides keeps the audience's attention on the speaker, where it should be. Images are memorable, and more important, can complement the speaker. Too much text on a slide distracts from the speaker's words. Prepare slides that are visually stimulating and focused on one key point.
3. Add Pizzazz to Your Delivery
Jobs modulates his vocal delivery to build up the excitement. When he opens his presentation by describing the revolutionary products Apple created in the past, his volume is low and he speaks slowly, almost in a reverential tone. His volume continues to build until his line, "Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone." Be an electrifying speaker by varying the speed at which you speak and by raising and lowering your voice at the appropriate times.
4. Practice
Jobs makes presentations look effortless because he takes nothing for granted. Jobs is known to rehearse demonstrations for hours prior to launch events. I can name many high-profile chief executives who decide to wing it. It shows. It always amazes me that many business leaders spend tens of thousands of dollars on designing presentations, but next to no time actually rehearsing. I usually get the call after the speaker bombs. Don't lose your audience. Rehearse a presentation out loud until you've nailed it.
5. Be Honest and Show Enthusiasm
If you believe that your particular product or service will change the world, then say so. Have fun with the content. During the iPhone launch, Jobs uses many adjectives to describe the new product, including "remarkable," "revolutionary," and "cool." He jokes that the touch-screen features of the phone "work like magic…and boy have we patented it."
I think speakers are so afraid of over-hyping a product that they go to the opposite extreme and make their presentations boring. If you're passionate about a product, service, or company, let your listeners know. Give yourself permission to loosen up, have fun, and express your enthusiasm!
Now please don't say, "This sounds great, Carmine, but I'm not as charismatic as Steve Jobs." Well guess what—Jobs worked at it and is far more engaging today as a presenter than he was many years ago. We all have room to grow and to improve the way we pitch ourselves and our products. Good luck!
E-Book Readers: Easier on the Eyes
Once merely interesting gadgets, they are maturing into useful products.
On a recent trip from New York to Washington, I settled into my seat on a packed train to discover that my reading light didn't work. Normally, I would have been peeved, but instead of my usual paperback I was carrying the latest Ken Follett potboiler on a new RCA REB-1200 from Thomson Multimedia (www.rca.com). With its bright, backlit display, I read all the way home, untroubled by the gloom.
Built-in lighting may not be reason enough to spend $699 on a gadget, but it's a nice benefit. More important, these electronic-book readers, once merely interesting gimmicks, are maturing into useful products, though I still see a serious problem with the cost of e-books and with the selection of what's available. The newest readers are the result of Gemstar-TV Guide International's acquisition last year of SoftBook Press and NuvoMedia. Gemstar worked out a deal with Thomson to handle manufacturing and marketing under the RCA brand. The color REB-1200 is the successor to the SoftBook Reader, while the smaller, monochrome REB-1100 replaces NuvoMedia's Rocket eBook.
The two readers work in much the same way. You download books directly from Gemstar using a dial-up modem (or direct Ethernet connection with the 1200). Storage for some 8,000 text-only pages is built in, with expansion available through flash-memory cards. A simple rocker switch flips pages back and forth, and a scroll bar moves you quickly through the book. Using the stylus, you can search for text, highlight it, or add handwritten notes.
SECURITY. I prefer the 1200, both for its larger screen and color display, which provides a brighter, higher-contrast image even if a book is all or mostly text. The published battery life for the 1200 is just five hours; I beat that by turning the screen backlight down. Also, it uses removable batteries, so you can always carry a spare. But the $400 premium over the 1100 is steep.
Good e-book software for PCs is available for free download from Adobe (bookstore.glassbook.com) and Microsoft (www.microsoft.com/reader/), both of which provide better text display than the RCA products.
So why buy a dedicated reader? The big reasons are ergonomic: You can hold it like a book and take it anywhere since it fits in a briefcase as easily as a paperback. Battery life is good, especially with the 1100, and the dedicated readers don't get uncomfortably hot to hold the way laptops do.
Dedicated hardware also offers publishers greater protection against unauthorized duplication than PC-based readers. Although you can retrieve a book you have paid for as often as you want, you can only download it to the same reader used for the original purchase, and the contents are encrypted using software hard-wired into the device.
Why should consumers care about security? Mainly, to encourage publishers to make e-books widely available. While the music industry continues to resist e-distribution, publishers (including The McGraw-Hill Companies, BusinessWeek's parent) view it as inevitable. But they remain wary about the risk of profligate copying.
Availability of titles remains the biggest challenge to the e-book business. Gemstar's online bookstore lists thousands of titles, but most are older, including many classics in the public domain; Jack London is particularly well-represented. Of the 15 titles on The New York Times best-seller list on Dec. 31, only 5 were available from Gemstar's online bookstore, at prices averaging 7% more than Amazon.com charges before shipping. You also can subscribe to several e-magazines, including Time and Newsweek; information services, such as Dow Jones; and such features as book reviews from The New York Times.
The new e-books represent a big advance in usability, although in good light I still prefer the feel of an old-fashioned paper book. E-books most likely will come into their own for reference materials, especially those that are frequently updated. And the big-money payoff of e-publishing is likely to be textbooks. Still, the hardware has gotten good enough that electronic readers deserve space on the bookshelf.
On a recent trip from New York to Washington, I settled into my seat on a packed train to discover that my reading light didn't work. Normally, I would have been peeved, but instead of my usual paperback I was carrying the latest Ken Follett potboiler on a new RCA REB-1200 from Thomson Multimedia (www.rca.com). With its bright, backlit display, I read all the way home, untroubled by the gloom.
Built-in lighting may not be reason enough to spend $699 on a gadget, but it's a nice benefit. More important, these electronic-book readers, once merely interesting gimmicks, are maturing into useful products, though I still see a serious problem with the cost of e-books and with the selection of what's available. The newest readers are the result of Gemstar-TV Guide International's acquisition last year of SoftBook Press and NuvoMedia. Gemstar worked out a deal with Thomson to handle manufacturing and marketing under the RCA brand. The color REB-1200 is the successor to the SoftBook Reader, while the smaller, monochrome REB-1100 replaces NuvoMedia's Rocket eBook.
The two readers work in much the same way. You download books directly from Gemstar using a dial-up modem (or direct Ethernet connection with the 1200). Storage for some 8,000 text-only pages is built in, with expansion available through flash-memory cards. A simple rocker switch flips pages back and forth, and a scroll bar moves you quickly through the book. Using the stylus, you can search for text, highlight it, or add handwritten notes.
SECURITY. I prefer the 1200, both for its larger screen and color display, which provides a brighter, higher-contrast image even if a book is all or mostly text. The published battery life for the 1200 is just five hours; I beat that by turning the screen backlight down. Also, it uses removable batteries, so you can always carry a spare. But the $400 premium over the 1100 is steep.
Good e-book software for PCs is available for free download from Adobe (bookstore.glassbook.com) and Microsoft (www.microsoft.com/reader/), both of which provide better text display than the RCA products.
So why buy a dedicated reader? The big reasons are ergonomic: You can hold it like a book and take it anywhere since it fits in a briefcase as easily as a paperback. Battery life is good, especially with the 1100, and the dedicated readers don't get uncomfortably hot to hold the way laptops do.
Dedicated hardware also offers publishers greater protection against unauthorized duplication than PC-based readers. Although you can retrieve a book you have paid for as often as you want, you can only download it to the same reader used for the original purchase, and the contents are encrypted using software hard-wired into the device.
Why should consumers care about security? Mainly, to encourage publishers to make e-books widely available. While the music industry continues to resist e-distribution, publishers (including The McGraw-Hill Companies, BusinessWeek's parent) view it as inevitable. But they remain wary about the risk of profligate copying.
Availability of titles remains the biggest challenge to the e-book business. Gemstar's online bookstore lists thousands of titles, but most are older, including many classics in the public domain; Jack London is particularly well-represented. Of the 15 titles on The New York Times best-seller list on Dec. 31, only 5 were available from Gemstar's online bookstore, at prices averaging 7% more than Amazon.com charges before shipping. You also can subscribe to several e-magazines, including Time and Newsweek; information services, such as Dow Jones; and such features as book reviews from The New York Times.
The new e-books represent a big advance in usability, although in good light I still prefer the feel of an old-fashioned paper book. E-books most likely will come into their own for reference materials, especially those that are frequently updated. And the big-money payoff of e-publishing is likely to be textbooks. Still, the hardware has gotten good enough that electronic readers deserve space on the bookshelf.
Companies tune in for a musical rival to YouTube
MUSIC companies are working on plans to launch their own video site, in direct competition with Google’s YouTube. The move comes as Warner Music pulls all its videos from the site after the two firms failed to agree on a new contract.
YouTube has dropped thousands of videos from artists including James Blunt, Madonna and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Warner is also insisting that YouTube pull any video featuring songs to which it owns the rights. Warner Chappell, the music firm’s publishing arm, owns classics such as Happy Birthday to You and Winter Wonderland as well as the rights to Cole Porter and music by Eric Clapton, Dr Dre, Led Zeppelin and REM.
Google, founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, is in talks with the other three big music firms – EMI, Sony and Universal. Warner executives have said it made negligible amounts from the site. But Universal, the largest music group, has said it makes “tens of millions” from its contract.
Most of the money the labels make is from a “pay-per-play” fee YouTube gives them each time a video is watched. The video firm would now like to cut that fee and offer a greater share of ad revenue.
YouTube has had difficulty selling ads against its content, homemade “user generated” video that often features music owned by the big labels. The plans being discussed by the music industry are modeled on Hulu, a video website that allows people to watch TV shows including Family Guy, Saturday Night Live and Heroes after they have seen a short ad.
Hulu was launched in March by NBC Universal and News Corporation, parent company of The Sunday Times, and now hosts more than 1,000 TV shows from more than 130 content providers, including Sony Pictures Television, MGM Studios, Lionsgate and Paramount Pictures and PBS.
The blogosphere was sceptical about Hulu. Knockers dubbed the site “Clown Co”. But Hulu, still only available in the US, has been a hit. Comscore, the market-research company, pegged its unique monthly visitors for October at 24m. On average, a visitor watches 10 videos on Hulu in a month. It is now getting about a quarter as many unique viewers as YouTube despite having less content and no presence outside the US.
“Boy, did we have to eat crow,” Michael Arrington of the influential blog Techcrunch.com wrote recently. “I was wrong. Hulu rocks. Despite ridiculous odds, the company was able to pull off a joint venture between two humongous parent media companies and provide users with a compelling, sexy product.”
Talks over a musical Hulu are in the very early stages. Some media executives argue that Hulu is not really a threat to YouTube and they doubt that a music version would seriously harm the Google-owned company, even if it was successful. “Hulu offers premium content only, and for that market it works,” said one.
“YouTube is very different and has a different demographic. It’s a different person who wants to watch clips and amateurish stuff made by fans from the sort of person who will sit back and watch a half-hour show.
“I think it’s a mistake to hold Hulu up as an alternative, it’s not. It’s an additional service.”
He said Universal had done well from its YouTube deal because it had “a lot of content that people want”. “Warner is not a company in great shape. I don’t hear advertisers getting worried about this. Who would you rather be with – Warner or YouTube?” he said.
Music-industry executives believe they can put pressure on YouTube to cut a more favourable deal. YouTube is dominated by musical content and the big companies own the soundtracks to many of the sites’ most watched clips. YouTube dominates online video but the rise of Hulu and MySpace Music (also owned by News Corporation) has increased competition.
“Why should we accept less from YouTube when there are better offers with Yahoo, MySpace, MTV and AOL,” said one executive. He said that the irony was that music lovers would end up using Google to search for their artists anyway.
“They just won’t be watching those videos on YouTube. There have been other hot brands on the internet before. What’s Napster worth now? But these names come and go. Catalogues like Led Zeppelin or Madonna are more enduring.”
donderdag 18 december 2008
Coldplay Vs Satriana
2008-12-10 02:26:04 Artist: Coldplay and Joe Satriana Author: Paddy Murphy Source: http://www.drop-d.ie
Well as most of ye will know by know, genuine real-life-guitar-hero Joe Satriani is upset with Coldplay who have, by they way, announced that they will be boring people to tears in the Phoenix Park next summer.
Drop-d can sort out this argument once and for all.
Well as most of ye will know by know, genuine real-life-guitar-hero Joe Satriani is upset with Coldplay who have, by they way, announced that they will be boring people to tears in the Phoenix Park next summer.
Drop-d can sort out this argument once and for all.
Rolling Stone Magazines Top 50 2008
2008-12-10 20:41:21 Artist: Rolling Stone Magazine Author: Paddy Murphy Source: http://www.drop-d.ie
More lists for you here again, this time from Rolling Stone once seen as the bastion for rock music now seen as the magazine that had Britney, the Jonas Bros., Orland Bloom and Richard Gere, well at least they never had Abba on the cover......
50 No Age - Nouns
49 Hot Chip - Made In The Dark
48 Raphael Saadiq - The Way I See It
47 Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping
46 The Academy Is... - Fast Times at Barrington High
45 Be Your Own Pet - Get Awkward
44 The Raconteurs - Consolers of the Lonely
43 Nas - Untitled
42 David Byrne and Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
41 AC/DC - Black Ice
40 Jonas Brothers - A Little Bit Longer
39 Taylor Swift - Fearless
38 Ra Ra Riot - The Rhumb Line
37 Nine Inch Nails - The Slip
36 The Hold Steady - Stay Positive
35 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!
34 Stephen Malkmus - Real Emotional Trash
33 Ne-Yo - Year Of The Gentleman
32 Jamey Johnson - The Lonesome Song
31 MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
30 Duffy - Rockferry
29 Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
28 The Knux - Remind Me in Three Days...
27 Brian Wilson - That Lucky Old Sun
26 Mudcrutch - Mudcrutch
25 The Magnetic Fields - Distortion
24 Girl Talk - Feed The Animals
23 Conor Oberst - Conor Oberst
22 Jackson Browne - Time the Conquerer
21 Kaiser Chiefs - Off With Their Heads
20 Kings of Leon - Only By The Night
19 Erykah Badu - New Amerykah, Part 1 (4th World War)
18 Lucinda Williams - Little Honey
17 B.B. King - One Kind Favor
16 Randy Newman - Harps and Angels
15 The Black Keys - Attack & Release
14 Ryan Adams And The Cardinals - Cardinology
13 Blitzen Trapper - Furr
12 Guns N Roses - Chinese Democracy
11 Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
10 Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
09 Metallica - Death Magnetic
08 Beck - Modern Guilt
07 Coldplay - Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
06 Santogold - Santogold
05 John Mellencamp - Life, Death, Love and Freedom
04 My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges
03 Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III
02 Bob Dylan - Tell Tale Signs:The Bootleg Series Vol. 8
01 TV on the Radio - Dear Science
More lists for you here again, this time from Rolling Stone once seen as the bastion for rock music now seen as the magazine that had Britney, the Jonas Bros., Orland Bloom and Richard Gere, well at least they never had Abba on the cover......
50 No Age - Nouns
49 Hot Chip - Made In The Dark
48 Raphael Saadiq - The Way I See It
47 Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping
46 The Academy Is... - Fast Times at Barrington High
45 Be Your Own Pet - Get Awkward
44 The Raconteurs - Consolers of the Lonely
43 Nas - Untitled
42 David Byrne and Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
41 AC/DC - Black Ice
40 Jonas Brothers - A Little Bit Longer
39 Taylor Swift - Fearless
38 Ra Ra Riot - The Rhumb Line
37 Nine Inch Nails - The Slip
36 The Hold Steady - Stay Positive
35 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!
34 Stephen Malkmus - Real Emotional Trash
33 Ne-Yo - Year Of The Gentleman
32 Jamey Johnson - The Lonesome Song
31 MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
30 Duffy - Rockferry
29 Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
28 The Knux - Remind Me in Three Days...
27 Brian Wilson - That Lucky Old Sun
26 Mudcrutch - Mudcrutch
25 The Magnetic Fields - Distortion
24 Girl Talk - Feed The Animals
23 Conor Oberst - Conor Oberst
22 Jackson Browne - Time the Conquerer
21 Kaiser Chiefs - Off With Their Heads
20 Kings of Leon - Only By The Night
19 Erykah Badu - New Amerykah, Part 1 (4th World War)
18 Lucinda Williams - Little Honey
17 B.B. King - One Kind Favor
16 Randy Newman - Harps and Angels
15 The Black Keys - Attack & Release
14 Ryan Adams And The Cardinals - Cardinology
13 Blitzen Trapper - Furr
12 Guns N Roses - Chinese Democracy
11 Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
10 Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
09 Metallica - Death Magnetic
08 Beck - Modern Guilt
07 Coldplay - Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
06 Santogold - Santogold
05 John Mellencamp - Life, Death, Love and Freedom
04 My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges
03 Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III
02 Bob Dylan - Tell Tale Signs:The Bootleg Series Vol. 8
01 TV on the Radio - Dear Science
Download Adrian Crowley’s “Long Distance Swimmer” for free
This time last year, Adrian Crowley released his fourth album, “Lost Distance Swimmer”. The album received rave reviews, got shortlisted for the Choice Music Prize and gave him a mighty push. Sure, we even pressganged him into penning a few on-the-road diaries for this blog.
To mark the album’s anniversary, Adrian is giving “Long Distance Swimmer” away for free for one week via On The Record - you can download the album here.
At present, Adrian is finishing work on album number five which will be released on April 24 next on Tin Angel. To coincide with the giveaway, we also have a brand new song, “The Wishing Seat”, from that as yet untitled album - the video is below. Enjoy!
If you want to see Adrian live, he will be supporting Cathy Davey this month at Dolan’s, Limerick (17); Electric Avenue, Waterford (18); Cyprus Avenue, Cork (21); Tripod, Dublin (22) and Roisin Dubh, Galway (27). In January, he will be supporting James Yorkston at dates in Crawdaddy, Dublin (22), Speakeasy, Belfast (23); Roisin Dubh, Galway (24) and Cyprus Avenue, Cork (25).
To mark the album’s anniversary, Adrian is giving “Long Distance Swimmer” away for free for one week via On The Record - you can download the album here.
At present, Adrian is finishing work on album number five which will be released on April 24 next on Tin Angel. To coincide with the giveaway, we also have a brand new song, “The Wishing Seat”, from that as yet untitled album - the video is below. Enjoy!
If you want to see Adrian live, he will be supporting Cathy Davey this month at Dolan’s, Limerick (17); Electric Avenue, Waterford (18); Cyprus Avenue, Cork (21); Tripod, Dublin (22) and Roisin Dubh, Galway (27). In January, he will be supporting James Yorkston at dates in Crawdaddy, Dublin (22), Speakeasy, Belfast (23); Roisin Dubh, Galway (24) and Cyprus Avenue, Cork (25).
Digging deep for a good cause
It’s the season for music fans to put their hands in their pockets for various good causes.
While there are some truly terrible charity records and tunes doing the rounds, there are a handful of releases which do merit repeat plays.
The Ray Darcy Show on Today FM has already put together a number of cover version albums to aid various charities. The latest is Even Better Than The Disco Thing with Cathy Davey, Lisa Hannigan, Jape (video below), Republic Of Loose, The Blizzards, Duke Special, Director and many more getting on down.
All proceeds go to the National Children’s Hospital and Barretstown.
While there are some truly terrible charity records and tunes doing the rounds, there are a handful of releases which do merit repeat plays.
The Ray Darcy Show on Today FM has already put together a number of cover version albums to aid various charities. The latest is Even Better Than The Disco Thing with Cathy Davey, Lisa Hannigan, Jape (video below), Republic Of Loose, The Blizzards, Duke Special, Director and many more getting on down.
All proceeds go to the National Children’s Hospital and Barretstown.
Can Pink keep the music in black?
Live music promoters will be hoping that loads of people will wake up to find tickets under the tree on Christmas Day.
Today, tickets go on sale for Franz Ferdinand (Limerick’s Dolan’s on February 28th and Dublin’s Olympia on March 1st) and Pink (Dublin’s 02 on October 14th and Belfast’s Odyssey on October 17th).
Coldplay fans can start contributing to Apple Martin’s college fund from Monday when 40,000 tickets for the band’s Phoenix Park date on September 14th are released. We’re certain that capacity will grow in size if the gig sells fast.
Tomorrow, tickets go on sale for Bob Dylan’s second show at Dublin’s 02 on May 6th. It’s a long way from the days when His Bobness couldn’t pull a half-decent crowd for his Irish shows during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Today, tickets go on sale for Franz Ferdinand (Limerick’s Dolan’s on February 28th and Dublin’s Olympia on March 1st) and Pink (Dublin’s 02 on October 14th and Belfast’s Odyssey on October 17th).
Coldplay fans can start contributing to Apple Martin’s college fund from Monday when 40,000 tickets for the band’s Phoenix Park date on September 14th are released. We’re certain that capacity will grow in size if the gig sells fast.
Tomorrow, tickets go on sale for Bob Dylan’s second show at Dublin’s 02 on May 6th. It’s a long way from the days when His Bobness couldn’t pull a half-decent crowd for his Irish shows during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Live from the trenches
There are certain rituals which only occur at this time of year. I know Christmas is on its way when Old Moore’s Almanac appears in the shops (dude tells us that next summer is going to be a hot one and he hasn’t been wrong since 1947) and when the Countryman’s Christmas CD lands in the letterbox from the wild, wild west (this year, Nero’s festive compilation bigs up Erykah Badu, Fuck Buttons, Lykke Li, The Black Keys, Spook of the Thirteenth Lock and “The Thing” from Urbs and Cutex). Then, there are also a couple of event gigs on the agenda, live shows where, for one reason or another, it’s all a bit special and festive and a cut above the normal jib. We had a couple of them this weekend in this dirty old town and I’m sure you can add your own to this list.
On The Record’s Pricewatch-esque Christmas special
@ 9:16 am by Jim Carroll
Lets start with a no-strings-attached present for yourself in this time of give, give, give. Have you downloaded Adrian Crowley’s “Long Distance Swimmer” yet? Our free offer is good until Thursday so get clicking. Big thanks to Damien, Una, Ruan and Ronan for plugging this - I am very surprised that my fellow music bloggers have not got around to mentioning this yet (especially - cough - the ones who pestered me to get on the blogroll here or - cough - have asked me to plug stuff for them in the past). (UPDATE My gentle reminder seems to have worked wonders - will update post with everyone later)
(Oh and that reminds me - congratulations to Ciaran who was the winner of our 30 of the Best Albums of 2008 competition. Well done to him and big up to the lovely people at PIAS Ireland for the prize).
Anyway, the real purpose of this mail is to get the On The Record readers and bargain hunters to recommend good deals and highlight rip-offs when it comes to DVD box-sets, CDs and books. I know this is the time of year when everyone is hitting the shops (hell, I even ran into some of you yesterday - howya Johnnie!) so what we’re trying to do is highlight where you can get the best prices for some of the stuff you may be after.
For instance, the box set with all seven seasons of The West Wing is retailing in HMV on Henry Street in Dublin (and probably other branches too) for just €80. That would set you back €140 on Play.com so, for once, the bricks and mortar price is better than going online. (UPDATE Per OTR reader Turtle, it’s €65 in Zavvi in the Dundrum Shopping Centre or, per JD, £49 (roughly €55) on Amazon).
That said, you are probably better off buying that complete deluxe box-set of The Sopranos from HMV online (£90, which is about €100 or thereabouts) than paying the €140 which HMV are charging for it.
Likewise, Wire fans looking for the special DVD set of all five seasons of the show should hit Play.com (€125 including delivery) instead of paying €160 for it in Tower.
That’s what we’re looking for - the bargains, the deals and the ones to avoid. Over to you.
Lets start with a no-strings-attached present for yourself in this time of give, give, give. Have you downloaded Adrian Crowley’s “Long Distance Swimmer” yet? Our free offer is good until Thursday so get clicking. Big thanks to Damien, Una, Ruan and Ronan for plugging this - I am very surprised that my fellow music bloggers have not got around to mentioning this yet (especially - cough - the ones who pestered me to get on the blogroll here or - cough - have asked me to plug stuff for them in the past). (UPDATE My gentle reminder seems to have worked wonders - will update post with everyone later)
(Oh and that reminds me - congratulations to Ciaran who was the winner of our 30 of the Best Albums of 2008 competition. Well done to him and big up to the lovely people at PIAS Ireland for the prize).
Anyway, the real purpose of this mail is to get the On The Record readers and bargain hunters to recommend good deals and highlight rip-offs when it comes to DVD box-sets, CDs and books. I know this is the time of year when everyone is hitting the shops (hell, I even ran into some of you yesterday - howya Johnnie!) so what we’re trying to do is highlight where you can get the best prices for some of the stuff you may be after.
For instance, the box set with all seven seasons of The West Wing is retailing in HMV on Henry Street in Dublin (and probably other branches too) for just €80. That would set you back €140 on Play.com so, for once, the bricks and mortar price is better than going online. (UPDATE Per OTR reader Turtle, it’s €65 in Zavvi in the Dundrum Shopping Centre or, per JD, £49 (roughly €55) on Amazon).
That said, you are probably better off buying that complete deluxe box-set of The Sopranos from HMV online (£90, which is about €100 or thereabouts) than paying the €140 which HMV are charging for it.
Likewise, Wire fans looking for the special DVD set of all five seasons of the show should hit Play.com (€125 including delivery) instead of paying €160 for it in Tower.
That’s what we’re looking for - the bargains, the deals and the ones to avoid. Over to you.
Live music in the dock
December 16, 2008 @ 1:59 pm by Jim Carroll
Two interesting stories in this morning’s paper relating to live music comings and goings in this country.
The first is the case of MCD v Prince. The concert promoters are looking for Prince to cough up €1.6 million on the back of that cancelled show in Croke Park last June.
The news report notes that there doesn’t appear to have been any actual contract in place between the promoter and the act for this show:
“While there is no actual written contract with Prince, it is claimed the e-mail correspondence between MCD director Denis Desmond and Mr Goldring (Prince’s agent) makes it “abundantly clear” a concluded contract was entered into by both parties”
The second is the case of IMRO v POD Concerts, again arising from events last summer.
Yesterday Mr Justice Peter Kelly warned POD Concerts that they face “serious consequences” if they fail to honour “all aspects of its agreement with the Irish Music Rights Organisation (Imro) over royalty payments for live music events” by next Thursday.
(Comments currently disabled as these cases are still before the courts)
Two interesting stories in this morning’s paper relating to live music comings and goings in this country.
The first is the case of MCD v Prince. The concert promoters are looking for Prince to cough up €1.6 million on the back of that cancelled show in Croke Park last June.
The news report notes that there doesn’t appear to have been any actual contract in place between the promoter and the act for this show:
“While there is no actual written contract with Prince, it is claimed the e-mail correspondence between MCD director Denis Desmond and Mr Goldring (Prince’s agent) makes it “abundantly clear” a concluded contract was entered into by both parties”
The second is the case of IMRO v POD Concerts, again arising from events last summer.
Yesterday Mr Justice Peter Kelly warned POD Concerts that they face “serious consequences” if they fail to honour “all aspects of its agreement with the Irish Music Rights Organisation (Imro) over royalty payments for live music events” by next Thursday.
(Comments currently disabled as these cases are still before the courts)
Ireland's best band plan mini tour
Ireland's premier post rock band God Is An Astronaut will be playin 2 home dates during their massive tour to promote their 4th album.
It's been out since early November and sees the Glen of the Downs threesome in a more experimental mode than previous albums and it's wonderful.
They play Galway 6th Feb and 7th in Dublin
Here one of their new tunes, Echoes, it's not a proper video but fear not the music is savage
It's been out since early November and sees the Glen of the Downs threesome in a more experimental mode than previous albums and it's wonderful.
They play Galway 6th Feb and 7th in Dublin
Here one of their new tunes, Echoes, it's not a proper video but fear not the music is savage
Download Prodigy's new song for free
Well we had it here a few weeks ago that their next record will be out in March but as a preview to what the album's gonna be like those friendly fellows have released the title track Invaders Must Die as a download on their official website.
jesus lizard
If 2008 was the year of reunions then one of the best was left until last
welcome back Jesus Lizard, well kinda, it's only a "fleeting reunion" other words a cash in and only a few yanks will get to see them.
Boo!
Ah well here's hoping that it goes well and they make it over here.
welcome back Jesus Lizard, well kinda, it's only a "fleeting reunion" other words a cash in and only a few yanks will get to see them.
Boo!
Ah well here's hoping that it goes well and they make it over here.
kings of leon
Another new GREAT site for the ever musically starving individual
It's a new kind of last.fm, more 'social' oriented technically speaking. It has a very clean uncluttered layout, yummy features for the listener and the artist both. Main feature is you cant just favorite ur song, you can comment and then bump it so other like minded individuals can listen to it. Internal mp3 of the site its the best Ive seen yet, it must have been done in AJAX or something like that. Apart from strictly technical details, you can browse the site and do things without interferring with the player which keep on going and never loses the playlist. The player is always kept in the main window no popups and no frills. You can play songs on demand, look up for them by style or play suggestions without hassle. Bad things is dubstep is not on the genre tabs (as well as many other styles) so lets invade that place and lets bump!
Hootie and the Blowfish will resurface in spring
DETROIT (Billboard) – Reports of Hootie & the Blowfish's demise in the wake of frontman Darius Rucker's country music success this year have been greatly exaggerated, according to Rucker himself.
"To be honest with you, we're not even split up right now, and we're not really thinking about splitting up," Rucker told Billboard.com. "We have four shows coming up in March. But it was more the group wanted to stop touring every summer, to not go on the road every summer just 'cause we can. People wanted to do other things with their lives.
"We're still a band. Even if something were to happen and we didn't play for years, we would still consider ourselves a band. We've been doing this more than half of our lives."
Rucker also predicted that the Blowfish, whose last album, "Looking for Lucky," came out in 2005, would "make a record some time down the road. It's not going to be this year or next year, but I'm sure we will."
The band achieved massive stardom in 1994 with its chart-topping album "Cracked Rear View," but subsequent releases sold relatively poorly.
The singer, meanwhile, has plenty on his plate thanks to "Learn To Live," his second solo album and first country venture, which spawned the hit "Don't Think I Don't Think About It," the first country chart-topper by an African-American artist since 1983. Rucker, who prepared 60 songs for the project, said he can't wait to start working on the follow-up.
"I'm ready to start writing and ready to record," Rucker said. But, he added, Capitol Nashville label, "has a lot of single ideas for this record, so we're just gonna play it by ear. I'm just gonna keep putting out singles as long as they want and stay on the road."
Reuters/Billboard
"To be honest with you, we're not even split up right now, and we're not really thinking about splitting up," Rucker told Billboard.com. "We have four shows coming up in March. But it was more the group wanted to stop touring every summer, to not go on the road every summer just 'cause we can. People wanted to do other things with their lives.
"We're still a band. Even if something were to happen and we didn't play for years, we would still consider ourselves a band. We've been doing this more than half of our lives."
Rucker also predicted that the Blowfish, whose last album, "Looking for Lucky," came out in 2005, would "make a record some time down the road. It's not going to be this year or next year, but I'm sure we will."
The band achieved massive stardom in 1994 with its chart-topping album "Cracked Rear View," but subsequent releases sold relatively poorly.
The singer, meanwhile, has plenty on his plate thanks to "Learn To Live," his second solo album and first country venture, which spawned the hit "Don't Think I Don't Think About It," the first country chart-topper by an African-American artist since 1983. Rucker, who prepared 60 songs for the project, said he can't wait to start working on the follow-up.
"I'm ready to start writing and ready to record," Rucker said. But, he added, Capitol Nashville label, "has a lot of single ideas for this record, so we're just gonna play it by ear. I'm just gonna keep putting out singles as long as they want and stay on the road."
Reuters/Billboard
Morrissey signs U.S. deal with roots label
NEW YORK (Billboard) – Morrissey has signed with Nashville-based roots label Lost Highway for the U.S. release of his new album, sources told Billboard.
"Years of Refusal" will be released on February 17, and will be supported by a U.S. theater tour that kicks off February 28 in Boca Raton, Fla., and runs through April 15 in Albuquerque, N.M.
The project marks the follow-up to the former Smiths frontman's 2006 set "Ringleader of the Tormenters." It will come out internationally on February 2 via Universal, which bumped the album from a fall 2008 release for unspecified reasons.
Lost Highway is an intriguing destination for Morrissey, as it is most commonly associated with roots- and country-leaning acts such as Ryan Adams, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett and Lucinda Williams. The label is also the U.S. home for Van Morrison and Elvis Costello.
Morrissey's last few releases were handled by Sanctuary Music Group, whose U.S. recorded-music operations were shuttered last year after Universal bought the ailing firm.
"Years of Refusal" was previewed for media last week in London. The first single is "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris," and guitar legend Jeff Beck guests on "Black Cloud."
Reuters/Billboard
"Years of Refusal" will be released on February 17, and will be supported by a U.S. theater tour that kicks off February 28 in Boca Raton, Fla., and runs through April 15 in Albuquerque, N.M.
The project marks the follow-up to the former Smiths frontman's 2006 set "Ringleader of the Tormenters." It will come out internationally on February 2 via Universal, which bumped the album from a fall 2008 release for unspecified reasons.
Lost Highway is an intriguing destination for Morrissey, as it is most commonly associated with roots- and country-leaning acts such as Ryan Adams, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett and Lucinda Williams. The label is also the U.S. home for Van Morrison and Elvis Costello.
Morrissey's last few releases were handled by Sanctuary Music Group, whose U.S. recorded-music operations were shuttered last year after Universal bought the ailing firm.
"Years of Refusal" was previewed for media last week in London. The first single is "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris," and guitar legend Jeff Beck guests on "Black Cloud."
Reuters/Billboard
Neil Young unleashes raw power at New York show
Play Video Music Video: Scientists record music composed by fish, ants AP
Play Video Music Video: Gig Guide for 12/17 FOX News
Play Video Music Video: Jamie Foxx Has Good 'Intuition' ABC News
NEW YORK (Billboard) – As strange as it is to see a band with its own huge live draw play an opening set, Wilco were the perfect choice to prime the crowd at Madison Square Garden on Monday for Neil Young.
In fact, watching Jeff Tweedy and company cruise through their abbreviated set (a breakneck nine songs that left the crowd palpably desperate for more) illustrated the fact that they could very well become the Neil Young of a younger generation.
Their songs are intricately written but still accessible, their live shows are raucous and they reference early rock and country without stealing from it. After a playing a set filled with incredible songs like "Jesus Etc.," "I'm the Man Who Loves You," and "Spiders (Kidsmoke)," there were still dozens of others in their catalog that the audience was dying to hear.
The floor of the Garden was almost completely cleared of seats to accommodate a standing audience, and the thousand fans who were devoted enough to stand for four hours straight were rewarded with an experience so intimate it seemed unreal. When Young finally took the stage in a paint-splattered blazer and Frank Zappa t-shirt, diving immediately into a fuzzed-out, energized of "Love and Only Love," it felt like being transported back in time to a crowded club.
Young, 63, clearly has no intention of resting on his laurels. Besides blasting through noisy, wild and achingly sincere versions of classics like "Cinnamon Girl," "The Needle and the Damage Done," "Old Man" and "Heart of Gold," Young packed the set with recent and brand new tracks like "Off The Road," "Hit the Road and Go To Town," and "Get Behind the Wheel." He even egged the crowd on to make a big stink about his newer songs because his new record label executives were in the audience.
Pure fearlessness poured out of Young's signature gigantic Magnatone cabinet as he leaned on his whammy bar, distorting the tunes in the style for which he's become famous. He tore into "Rockin' in the Free World" before the encore, leaving the audience to wonder what was left to finish the show. He then defiantly returned to the stage to howl through "A Day in the Life," a track even the Beatles never played live (and Paul McCartney flubbed when he tried to do it this summer). Young finished the song in a swirl of noise, angrily ripping strings from his guitar and grinding them together for maximum chaos.
Between the nostalgic and mournful vocal harmonies of his '60s and '70s hits and the ear-bleeding (not to mention politically charged) shows he puts on in the 21st century, Young seems to have done the impossible: capture the zeitgeist of two generations.
Reuters/Billboard
Play Video Music Video: Gig Guide for 12/17 FOX News
Play Video Music Video: Jamie Foxx Has Good 'Intuition' ABC News
NEW YORK (Billboard) – As strange as it is to see a band with its own huge live draw play an opening set, Wilco were the perfect choice to prime the crowd at Madison Square Garden on Monday for Neil Young.
In fact, watching Jeff Tweedy and company cruise through their abbreviated set (a breakneck nine songs that left the crowd palpably desperate for more) illustrated the fact that they could very well become the Neil Young of a younger generation.
Their songs are intricately written but still accessible, their live shows are raucous and they reference early rock and country without stealing from it. After a playing a set filled with incredible songs like "Jesus Etc.," "I'm the Man Who Loves You," and "Spiders (Kidsmoke)," there were still dozens of others in their catalog that the audience was dying to hear.
The floor of the Garden was almost completely cleared of seats to accommodate a standing audience, and the thousand fans who were devoted enough to stand for four hours straight were rewarded with an experience so intimate it seemed unreal. When Young finally took the stage in a paint-splattered blazer and Frank Zappa t-shirt, diving immediately into a fuzzed-out, energized of "Love and Only Love," it felt like being transported back in time to a crowded club.
Young, 63, clearly has no intention of resting on his laurels. Besides blasting through noisy, wild and achingly sincere versions of classics like "Cinnamon Girl," "The Needle and the Damage Done," "Old Man" and "Heart of Gold," Young packed the set with recent and brand new tracks like "Off The Road," "Hit the Road and Go To Town," and "Get Behind the Wheel." He even egged the crowd on to make a big stink about his newer songs because his new record label executives were in the audience.
Pure fearlessness poured out of Young's signature gigantic Magnatone cabinet as he leaned on his whammy bar, distorting the tunes in the style for which he's become famous. He tore into "Rockin' in the Free World" before the encore, leaving the audience to wonder what was left to finish the show. He then defiantly returned to the stage to howl through "A Day in the Life," a track even the Beatles never played live (and Paul McCartney flubbed when he tried to do it this summer). Young finished the song in a swirl of noise, angrily ripping strings from his guitar and grinding them together for maximum chaos.
Between the nostalgic and mournful vocal harmonies of his '60s and '70s hits and the ear-bleeding (not to mention politically charged) shows he puts on in the 21st century, Young seems to have done the impossible: capture the zeitgeist of two generations.
Reuters/Billboard
Aretha Franklin to sing at Obama inauguration
WASHINGTON – Aretha Franklin will sing, the Rev. Rick Warren will pray and more than 11,000 U.S. troops will be watching over inauguration ceremonies in case of an attack during President-elect Barack Obama's swearing-in on Jan. 20.
As many as 4 million visitors are expected to be on hand when Obama takes the noontime oath from Chief Justice John Roberts on the steps of the Capitol.
Some 4,000 local police, 4,000 police from around the country and security agents from other government agencies will be on hand, taking direction from the Secret Service. About 7,500 active duty military and 4,000 National Guard troops also will participate. That includes a contingent on alert to respond to a chemical attack.
A "big chunk" of active and guard units will perform ceremonial work involving parades, reviews and honor guards, the U.S. commander in charge of domestic defense said Wednesday.
Planners are working under the assumption a terrorist or rogue element might try to interrupt the event, said Gen. Gene Renuart, head of the U.S. Northern Command. "So it's prudent for us to plan for the possibility of that kind of event, and to be prepared either to deter it or to respond to it," he said in a session with defense writers.
Also Wednesday, officials announced the list of participants for the inauguration.
The program is to feature poet Elizabeth Alexander; the Rev. Joseph Lowery, a veteran civil rights leader; the U.S. Marine and Navy bands; and the San Francisco Boys Chorus and the San Francisco Girls Chorus.
"So it's prudent for us to plan for the possibility of that kind of event, and to be prepared either to deter it or to respond to it," he said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, said the day would be "an event of historic proportion."
"It is appropriate that the program will include some of the world's most gifted artists from a wide range of backgrounds and genres," she said.
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman, pianist Gabriela Montero and clarinetist Anthony McGill will perform a new work composed by John Williams, who also provided music for Obama's election night rally in Chicago's Grant Park. The committee did not release a title for the work by Williams, who is best known for his film scores such as "Star Wars" and "Jaws."
Vice President-elect Joe Biden will take his oath from Justice John Paul Stevens.
Others on the schedule were a nod to Obama's election as the country's first black president.
Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King, Jr., was scheduled to offer the event's benediction.
Franklin, a living legend with 21 Grammies, performed for President Bill Clinton in 1993, but this would be her first Inauguration. During a Labor Day weekend rally in Detroit, Obama sang a bit of Franklin's "Chain of Fools" to her.
Alexander, a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist and Yale University professor, centers her poems and essays on race relations and social movements.
She is only the fourth poet to have a speaking role at a presidential Inauguration. Robert Frost, who was 86 at the time, wrote a poem for Kennedy's inaugural in 1961 but couldn't make out the words of the poem in the sun's glare. Instead, he recited an earlier work. Clinton chose Maya Angelou to write a poem for his first inaugural in 1993, and Miller Williams read "Of History and Hope" at his second inaugural.
Liberal groups criticized the inclusion of Warren, whose "Purpose Driven Life" books and lectures have made his church among the largest in the country. People For the American Way President Kathryn Kolbert said Warren's support for California Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage, should have blocked his invitation.
A popular figure among evangelicals, Warren remained publicly neutral during the presidential campaign. He invited both Obama and his Republican rival John McCain to his Saddleback Church in Orange County for a forum on faith and public service.
As many as 4 million visitors are expected to be on hand when Obama takes the noontime oath from Chief Justice John Roberts on the steps of the Capitol.
Some 4,000 local police, 4,000 police from around the country and security agents from other government agencies will be on hand, taking direction from the Secret Service. About 7,500 active duty military and 4,000 National Guard troops also will participate. That includes a contingent on alert to respond to a chemical attack.
A "big chunk" of active and guard units will perform ceremonial work involving parades, reviews and honor guards, the U.S. commander in charge of domestic defense said Wednesday.
Planners are working under the assumption a terrorist or rogue element might try to interrupt the event, said Gen. Gene Renuart, head of the U.S. Northern Command. "So it's prudent for us to plan for the possibility of that kind of event, and to be prepared either to deter it or to respond to it," he said in a session with defense writers.
Also Wednesday, officials announced the list of participants for the inauguration.
The program is to feature poet Elizabeth Alexander; the Rev. Joseph Lowery, a veteran civil rights leader; the U.S. Marine and Navy bands; and the San Francisco Boys Chorus and the San Francisco Girls Chorus.
"So it's prudent for us to plan for the possibility of that kind of event, and to be prepared either to deter it or to respond to it," he said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, said the day would be "an event of historic proportion."
"It is appropriate that the program will include some of the world's most gifted artists from a wide range of backgrounds and genres," she said.
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman, pianist Gabriela Montero and clarinetist Anthony McGill will perform a new work composed by John Williams, who also provided music for Obama's election night rally in Chicago's Grant Park. The committee did not release a title for the work by Williams, who is best known for his film scores such as "Star Wars" and "Jaws."
Vice President-elect Joe Biden will take his oath from Justice John Paul Stevens.
Others on the schedule were a nod to Obama's election as the country's first black president.
Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King, Jr., was scheduled to offer the event's benediction.
Franklin, a living legend with 21 Grammies, performed for President Bill Clinton in 1993, but this would be her first Inauguration. During a Labor Day weekend rally in Detroit, Obama sang a bit of Franklin's "Chain of Fools" to her.
Alexander, a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist and Yale University professor, centers her poems and essays on race relations and social movements.
She is only the fourth poet to have a speaking role at a presidential Inauguration. Robert Frost, who was 86 at the time, wrote a poem for Kennedy's inaugural in 1961 but couldn't make out the words of the poem in the sun's glare. Instead, he recited an earlier work. Clinton chose Maya Angelou to write a poem for his first inaugural in 1993, and Miller Williams read "Of History and Hope" at his second inaugural.
Liberal groups criticized the inclusion of Warren, whose "Purpose Driven Life" books and lectures have made his church among the largest in the country. People For the American Way President Kathryn Kolbert said Warren's support for California Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage, should have blocked his invitation.
A popular figure among evangelicals, Warren remained publicly neutral during the presidential campaign. He invited both Obama and his Republican rival John McCain to his Saddleback Church in Orange County for a forum on faith and public service.
Gomez, Hilton among MySpace friends' leaders
NEW YORK – Zach Braff, Kim Kardashian and Selena Gomez have more in common than their celebrity status: According to MySpace, they're among the stars with the most friends on the social network.
Also on the list: Paris Hilton, Ashton Kutcher, Jenna Fischer, Criss Angel, Hayden Panettiere, Shanna Moakler, Travis Barker and Lauren Conrad.
The movie "Twilight," Jennifer Hudson, Beyonce, Lil Wayne and Taylor Swift are among the five top-searched terms on MySpace.
Swift led the list of musical artists most searched for on MySpace Music since it launched on Sept. 25. The most streamed artist is T.I., and the most streamed song belongs to him as well: "Whatever You Like."
Also on the list: Paris Hilton, Ashton Kutcher, Jenna Fischer, Criss Angel, Hayden Panettiere, Shanna Moakler, Travis Barker and Lauren Conrad.
The movie "Twilight," Jennifer Hudson, Beyonce, Lil Wayne and Taylor Swift are among the five top-searched terms on MySpace.
Swift led the list of musical artists most searched for on MySpace Music since it launched on Sept. 25. The most streamed artist is T.I., and the most streamed song belongs to him as well: "Whatever You Like."
dinsdag 16 december 2008
Come Online to Sing With The King
Sony Music Entertainment is calling Elvis Presley fans to sing a Christmas duet with The King of Rock 'N' Roll. The Elvis Presley viral holiday e-card will allow you to record your own version of Presley's classic 'Blue Christmas'.
The e-card uses the same technology that allowed country superstars like Martina McBride, Carrie Underwood, and Sara Evans to sing along with Presley on the "Elvis Presley Christmas Duets" CD, reveals Sony. At SingWithTheKing.com, fans can watch the new Elvis Presley and Martina McBride 'Blue Christmas' video, record their own version of 'Blue Christmas' with Elvis and then send it to friends and family along with a personal message in the form of a holiday e-card. Elvis Presley, says Sony, is a premiere-selling artist every holiday season and his releases populate the holiday charts year after year. Despite the fact that he only recorded 20 Christmas songs, Presley's various holiday albums, according to Sony, have sold over 25 million copies in the US. Sony Music Entertainment, in partnership with Elvis Presley Enterprises, Inc., released the "Elvis Presley Christmas Duets" CD on October 14, 2008. It is the first Elvis Presley duet recordings album and the first Christmas compilation of its kind ever produced, claims Sony.
Reselling MP3s: The music industry's new battleground?
A new digital music service is getting lots of attention for proposing to help consumers sell their used MP3s in much the same way people once unloaded second-hand albums. Bopaboo has generated splashy headlines recently for coming up with what on the surface seems like a good idea. Music fans have always exercised their first-sale rights, which under copyright law, allows them to sell their unwanted CDs, tapes, and albums without permission from the copyright owner. Why can't they do the same with digital music?
But there are dramatic differences between physical and digital music. For this reason, Washington, D.C.-based Bopaboo appears to be careening toward a head-on collision with the recording industry. According to Bopaboo CEO Alex Meshkin, he will soon meet with executives from the major labels and execs there will no doubt ask why they shouldn't set their attorneys loose on the service. They may also inquire about the controversy that dogged a then 23-year-old Meshkin when he was owner of Toyota's NASCAR team.
As for the legal questions involved with MP3 resales, Meshkin, 28, argues that the law allows consumers to sell digital media files in the same way they do physical media. That's not all together accurate. Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that supports Internet-user rights, says to the best of his knowledge, the issue has never been addressed in court.
Even von Lohmann, a well-known champion of the technology sector, sees potential problems with Bopaboo's legal argument. He says while its true that under the first-sale law people are allowed to sell CDs and other physical goods, it hasn't been established whether the law covers digital media. The good news says von Lohmann is that Bopaboo could raise the public's awareness about what may one day be an important issue for digital music.
"We shouldn't lose our first-sale rights just because the second-hand stores involved are online," von Lohmann said. "Up to now, there hasn't been a huge opportunity for people to spend large amounts of money on digital music, but as time goes on some music fans will have thousands of dollars invested in their digital libraries or audio-book collections. It would be a big change if you weren't allowed to sell them."
For Bopaboo to survive, the company will likely have to avoid a legal fight with the top four recording companies. For other digital-music services that have devised new ways to exploit music, the choices have always come down to partnering with the labels or getting sued. Meshkin said he will soon meet with music-industry representatives in New York and has already met with other important players in the sector. "The talks so far have been positive," Meshkin told CNET News on Wednesday.
One label executive I spoke with disputed Meshkin's version of the negotiations. "There haven't been any talks," said the executive. "They have asked to meet and we responded. That's it." A spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) declined to comment.
To say that Meshkin has a tough job selling his idea to label honchos is an understatement. Bopaboo's service works this way: sellers register and are given an MP3 store where they upload the music they wish to sell. Music protected by digital rights management software isn't allowed. Bopaboo makes money by taking a percentage of sales.
The main difference between selling physical goods, such as a CD and selling a download is that a seller of physical goods loses possession of the merchandise after it's sold. That is not the case with digital files.
A person could transfer numerous copies of the same song file as long as it was free of DRM. But Meshkin says his company can prevent repeat sales of the same song. Bopaboo has developed song-identification technology that prevents individuals from uploading more than one copy of the same song to the site regardless of how the file might be altered, Meshkin said. A copy is always produced when MP3s are transferred and that is retained on a computer's hard drive.
Meshkin didn't have any technological solution for that. He said that in such harsh economic times the music industry must accept a few risks. After all it was they who allowed their music to be sold without DRM in the first place.
"Obviously, MP3s are very easy to duplicate," Meshkin said. "It's very difficult to tell the difference between a so-called new copy and a so-called old copy."
The label guys are unlikely to just shrug their shoulders at this kind of set up, said von Lohmann.
"If you buy a song from iTunes' (DRM-free) store you can immediately go and sell a copy of the song on Bopaboo," von Lohmann points out. "You would be assured of getting a discount on your iTunes purchase. There is no doubt that the first-sale law was drafted with physical objects in mind. There's no question that you are allowed to sell books or CDs. But when it comes to selling MP3s, it's an untested legal question."
Another problem for Bopaboo, says von Lohmann is that some digital music stores specifically forbid the resale of songs. At Amazon.com for example, the terms of use agreement says customers must agree to "copy, store, transfer and burn" digital music for personal-use only. Customers also agree that they won't "redistribute, transmit, assign, sell, broadcast, rent, share, lend, modify, adapt, edit, sub-license or otherwise transfer" the music.
I spoke with two label representatives who declined to comment for the record but told me they thought the resale of DRM-free songs could be the music industry's next big legal battleground.
Patrick Ross, executive director of the Copyright Alliance, a watchdog group made up of artists, producers and other content creators, chuckled when I explained Bopaboo's business model.
"Clearly a first-sale defense won't apply here," Ross said. "In the case of a book or any other creative work, you no longer possess the work once you sell it...It's also hard for me to imagine the model succeeding because if somebody wants to pay for works they will pay for it at a legal site and see that creators are compensated. If they are willing to break the rules, they would just go on (P2P service) Lime Wire and get it for free. I hope (Bopaboo) crashes and burns before it gets sued. It seems like a flawed business model as well as an illegal business model."
If the business model isn't a hard enough pitch to make to the music industry, Meshkin has the added burden of trying to explain his past.
In a February 2005 story, BusinessWeek questioned some of the claims Meshkin has made about his background and highlighted the controversy surrounding his oversight of a NASCAR racing team for Toyota at the age of 23.
According to the story, Meshkin was sued by one former executive with Bang Racing, his NASCAR team, and accused by some investors of misleading them about his personal wealth and ability to operate a racing team. Meshkin is quoted in the magazine denying the accusations. Toyota eventually pulled its support.
In-the-works videogames cater to music fans
With more than $1 billion in sales and 50 million tracks downloaded between them -- on a base of only about 350 songs -- the "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" videogame franchises emerged this year as serious moneymakers for the music industry. But are they bringing in enough per track?
During a quarterly earnings call in August, Warner Music Group chairman/CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. said he wants more money from music games like Activision's "Guitar Hero" or he'll stop licensing music. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick fired back in an interview, suggesting that labels should pay his company for promoting their music.
Next year's big-money showdown is between "Guitar Hero" and MTV Games and EA's "Rock Band," but there's plenty of action on the undercard. Among the other titles competing for music industry support and gamers' dollars are Nintendo's "Wii Music," Disney's "Ultimate Band," Acclaim's "Rockfree" and XS Games' "PopStar Guitar."
The winner of this competition may be labels and artists, who will have opportunities to feature their music more prominently than they would be able to in the big two games. The Plain White T's scored an exclusive spot on "Ultimate Band," for example, while 3 Doors Down is a featured act on "PopStar Guitar."
THE PARTNERSHIP
Amazon teamed up with the makers of the hit game "Grand Theft Auto IV" to let players tag any song on the soundtrack with a virtual mobile phone used by the game's protagonist. Those who did received an e-mail with more information about the song and artist and accessed a custom playlist on Amazon where they could then purchase the track.
Almost 700,000 players tagged more than 2 million songs, according to "Grand Theft Auto IV" publisher Rockstar Games, although Amazon won't divulge how many resulted in sales. But it's the first time a console game has integrated digital music purchases, and it has given other developers plenty of ideas.
THE DARKHORSE
When Sierra Entertainment unveiled details of its "Brutal Legend," online gamer forums went crazy with excitement. But the reaction among music executives was tepid at best -- perhaps because the game isn't about music simulation but the story of a roadie sent back in time when heavy metal gods ruled the world.
Drawing heavily on Nordic mythology and metal imagery -- and featuring voice acting from the likes of actor/musician Jack Black, Motorhead's Lemmy Kilmister and heavy metal singer-songwriter Ronnie James Dio -- the game has the names and the potential soundtrack to win big among hardcore gamers and metal fans alike. The game remains in limbo, though, as Sierra Entertainment parent company Vivendi Games and Activision complete their merger.
THE BEATLES
They're not available on iTunes or any other digital music service. But the Fab Four made headlines when MTV announced that it would be making a videogame featuring the group's music, history, images and characters.
Exactly what the game will look like or do is under wraps until its release in 2009. But it's expected to be an interactive product similar to "Rock Band." And the development will lay the groundwork for ways that iconic artists like the Beatles can work with games to introduce their music to new fans and let older ones experience it in a new way.
Reuters/Billboard.
Piracy: Same as it ever was in the music industry
For those struggling musicians worried by rampant piracy and the subsequent difficulties in earning a living, Tim Blanning has news for you: it was ever thus.
Writing in The New Statesman, Blanning traces the history of the music industry, finding "Modern musicians' lot compares very well to that of their predecessors." Indeed, Blanning points out the very bane of modern musicians' existence - the ability to record (and, hence, copy and distribute) music - is also the very reason that musicians have an opportunity to generate outsized returns on their musical investments.
Until music could be recorded, the only revenue available to the musician was from performances of that music. "Not even as great a virtuoso as Paganini or Liszt had a back catalogue."
The result? Today, good-but-not great bands like Coldplay can make tens of millions while the great composer Richard Wagner died a comparative pauper. With all the flaws of the modern system from pirates and ensuing economic uncertainties, we should be cheering the modern system and its digitization of musical content, even when some profit is lost to piracy.
There are no easy answers for the music industry, but in its quest to capture all possible digital revenue, let's not forget that digitization has introduced dramatically more available revenue than ever before. A little "leakage" hurts, but not nearly as much as it would to go back in time and earn one's keep by performance alone.
Writing in The New Statesman, Blanning traces the history of the music industry, finding "Modern musicians' lot compares very well to that of their predecessors." Indeed, Blanning points out the very bane of modern musicians' existence - the ability to record (and, hence, copy and distribute) music - is also the very reason that musicians have an opportunity to generate outsized returns on their musical investments.
Until music could be recorded, the only revenue available to the musician was from performances of that music. "Not even as great a virtuoso as Paganini or Liszt had a back catalogue."
The result? Today, good-but-not great bands like Coldplay can make tens of millions while the great composer Richard Wagner died a comparative pauper. With all the flaws of the modern system from pirates and ensuing economic uncertainties, we should be cheering the modern system and its digitization of musical content, even when some profit is lost to piracy.
For composers...copyright protection is very much a creation of modern times. Until deep into the 19th century, piracy of the most flagrant kind was the norm....In the course of the 19th century, ever-growing markets, bigger spaces for music and better communications allowed many more performers to make much more money....
...[Even so] for every Bono and his countless millions, there is a host of modestly paid session players, 90 per cent of whom earn less than [$22,500] a year....It will come as no consolation to them to know, if they do not know it already, that it was ever so.
Ever since musicians emerged from the servile but cosy world of aristocratic patronage into the harsh daylight of the public sphere, the musical profession has been a pyramid with a broad base and a sharp top. The new opportunities brought by every major technological shift have also left many casualties among musicians unable or unwilling to adapt.
There are no easy answers for the music industry, but in its quest to capture all possible digital revenue, let's not forget that digitization has introduced dramatically more available revenue than ever before. A little "leakage" hurts, but not nearly as much as it would to go back in time and earn one's keep by performance alone.
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