Reaction is coming in on the Myspace decision to sell non-DRM MP3s from unsigned bands registered on the site.
The Register: “We reckon it’s the record companies that should be more woried about MySpace than Apple at the moment, though. If so-called “MySpace phenomena” such as the Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen continue to emerge through self-promotion and are given unprecedented direct selling access to their MySpace-addicted audience, where do the big guys fit in exactly?”
The New York Times: “… for the four major labels, which must approve each retailer that sells digital versions of their music, the new store could represent a challenge. The MySpace store would let labels set their own prices for songs, which they have complained that iTunes does not let them do. And all of the major labels have put their catalogs into Snocap’s database, which uses an audio fingerprinting technology to prevent people from selling songs they do not own. The MySpace store will sell music in the MP3 format, however, which allows them to be played on the Apple iPod but does not offer any copy protection… For each track it sells, MySpace will charge a band or label a fixed fee of around 45 cents, which it will share with Snocap.”
Business Week: “Unlike iTunes, where all tracks are 99 cents, musicians set their own prices. MySpace and Snocap say they will take a cut just large enough to cover the costs of the materials and provide a tiny profit; the lion’s share of the sale goes directly to the artists. That’s a sweet deal for independent bands like The Format, a Phoenix pop band that participated in a test of the storefront. The band has listed 12 songs for sale at 79 cents each. Already, lead singer Nate Ruess says he has received loads of e-mail from fans saying they appreciate that they can get the music directly online. “We got burned by our old label, and you realize you don’t need these things when you have something like Snocap,” Ruess says.”
Technorati Tags: Musicbites
MySpace is to sell songs from nearly 3 million unsigned bands, reports Reuters. Thats’non-DRM’d MP3s, by the way. The bands will be able to set the price for each track, with MySpace and tech partner Snocap taking a cut of the sale, reports Wired. However, the move probably won’t affect Apple, as CNN and MySpace itself seems to think. As tbites points out – guess what – MP3s can be loaded onto the the iPod and iTunes software. Apple will make far more out of the hardware sales. Kerching!
Technorati Tags: Musicbites
Spiral Frog will make us watch adverts before downloading the music track to one PC and two portable devices, while remembering to log in at least once a month, in order to retain access to the music we've already watched adverts in exchange for. MusicBites thinks this sounds a bit like all those dumb businesses during the late 90s which tried to play 15 second to 30 second adverts at callers in exchange for free or cheaper calls. Do ANY of those companies still exist? No. Will you really want to watch an ad EVERY TIME you want to download a track? No. I predict the sacking of a number of Universal executives and a relaunch in under a year.
Technorati Tags: Musicbites, Spiralfrog
The mbites.com podcast this week looked at how digital music is impacting both on music fans and the artists themselves. The guests (pictured) were Laura Lee Davies, former editor of Time Out magazine in London and a music journalist of 20 years experience, and Ben Drury, founder and managing director of 7digital.com, which provides digital downloading services to many leading brands and artists’ web sites.
Download the MP3 file here (approx 18MB, 20 minutes long) or subscribe to the podcast feed and download it automatically into your favourite podcasting software and/or mobile media player device (ok, iPod then), or even subscribe direct from iTunes.
This is the third in a series of regular mbites podcasts, hosted at London private members club, Adam Street.
If you’d like to be a guest on the next Bitecast, where we’ll be documenting some of the most interesting new developments in digital and mobile media, contact Mike Butcher.
Coldplay#039s X&Y album has problems with DRM. In that is has a LOT of DRM. Mac User has the story.
MusicBites put together a panel of experts for its end of year review of the digital music business, the recording of which can be downloaded here (Note: 49MB file).
It took place at one of London’s best private members clubs, Adam Street, which is rapidly becoming the hub of entrepreneurs and media/digital businesses in the UK’s capital city.
The panel discussed some of the big moves made this year by the likes of Apple, the major record labels and most recently Microsoft. And we looked to the year ahead – making a few predictions along the way… (Click here to download)
Participating were:
Paul Sanders, Co-founder of Playlouder MSP, the ground-breaking subscription music ISP.
Nick Watt, Director with New Media Knowledge and In The City, the annual music conference.
Helen Keegan, Founder and Managing Director of Beep Marketing, the mobile marketing agency and a specialist in mobile music.
The discussion was chaired by Mike Butcher, Editor and Publisher of MusicBites.com
(To listen to the podcast please click to download. It’s a large file (49MB), lasting 50 minutes, and hence we wanted to give Podcast subscribers the opportunity to check this file size before downloading).
Some interesting new research from Jupiter:
Jupiter thinks the European music industry is facing “a demographic time bomb”. In its report “European Music Consumer Survey, 2005″ it says that European consumers who download music from illegal file sharing networks currently outnumber those downloading from legal services such as Apple’s iTunes Music Store by a factor of three to one.
Some 15% file share while just 5% pay to download. Uh oh.
Jauntily upbeat however, Jupiter says “there is solid demand for paid downloads”, with 10% of European consumers willing to pay, rising as high as 31% in Sweden.
But file sharing penetration in Europe is highest among younger consumers (34% of 15-24 year olds) and is impacting the way they value music with many having little concept of music as a paid commodity. Among the 46% of European online 15-24 year olds who use the Internet to consume music, the CD is becoming increasingly irrelevant: 40% do not consider the CD to be a good value for money and 43% prefer to copy rather than buy CDs. Unless these consumers are encouraged to develop music purchasing behavior soon they may never develop meaningful music buying habits.
In a release Mark Mulligan, Analyst at JupiterResearch said: “Illegal activity is a key threat. The Digital Youth of today are being brought up on a near limitless diet of free and disposable music from file sharing networks. When these consumers age and increase spending power they should become key music buying consumers. But unless the music industry can transition these consumers whilst they are young away from free consumption to paid music formats, be they digital or CDs, they may never develop music purchasing behavior and the recording industry could suffer long-term harm.”
Public Enemy’s New Wireless Order: Public Enemy (which pioneered using MP3s) is getting into wireless. On Nov. 28 the group will make the music from its new album, New Whirl Odor, available through wireless phone networks using distribution technology from privately held m-Qube. “It’s like the Internet in ‘98, but with a business plan,” says Walter Leaphart, who manages Public Enemy leader Chuck D.
Today Lefsetz rants about…how music labels had the media on their side “but, by not coming up with a reasonable alternative to P2P, or authorizing it, and SUING traders, they’ve lost all their good will.” The next email was effectively spam, forwarded from a firm touting for people to call video shows requesting songs. Talk about outsourced pluggers. Next email today (three so far, and counting) was about how he discovered some decent tracks on Kate Bush’s Ariel album, but it took random events to find them, since he didn’t round to listen to the final tracks: ” After all, these albums don’t come with instruction booklets, which track to play first, to get hooked. After all, these albums are supposedly works of art… But in a world where the history of recorded music is available at one’s fingertips for free, one needs an introduction, one needs to be shown the way, it’s not like the old days, where you spent fifteen bucks and PLAYED the damn album, since you had so much invested.”
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