Snapshot 5/21/07

Music company EMI takes $4.7B offer from private group
http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2007-05-21-emi-takes-deal_N.htm?csp=34
Music company EMI Group, home to the Beatles and Coldplay, said Monday it had agreed to a 2.4 billion pound ($4.7 billion) takeover by private equity group Terra Firma Capital Partners.
Analysts speculated that the offer could flush out a higher one from Warner. EMI's shares soared on the news, which was made just before the closing bell on the London Stock Exchange. The stock finished 8.5% higher at 269 pence ($5.30).


Music Licensing Online: YouLicense
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/19/music-licensing-online-youlicense/
An online music licensing marketplace, YouLicense enables artists and those seeking musical content to conduct business directly without the need to deal with music companies.
Content is indexed and easily searchable. YouLicense provides standardized contracts so that both buyer and seller immediately know the legalities of a deal, allowing for a quick and easy transaction.


Video-on-demand to be a `must have' for telcos
http://www.contentagenda.com/articleXml/LN615262111.html?nid=3038
VIDEO-ON-DEMAND (VoD) revenues is expected to be worth US$2.7 billion (RM9.45 billion) worldwide this year, and will reach US$12.7 billion in 2011, making it one of the fastest-growing digital content services over the forecast period. According to analyst and consulting company Ovum, this is driven by the rise in the number of telcos across the globe that will launch their ondemand content propositions, moving themselves into content distribution. "VoD is not a revenue generator at the moment but a `must-have' vision of the future in terms of both cashflow and telcos' content business survival," said Ovum's content and media analyst Aleksandra Bosnjak.


How To Live an Open-Source Musical Life With Ogg Vorbis
http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2007/05/playogg
In an effort to rally support for the underdog media format, the Free Software Foundation has launched PlayOgg.org, a website promoting awareness of the Ogg format. It's an educational primer for playing Ogg Vorbis audio files and Ogg Theora video files on Mac and Windows desktops.

Unlike the more popular MP3 and AAC audio formats, Ogg Vorbis is free of licensing and patent restrictions, so anyone can code up a software player or hack together an Ogg-enabled hardware device without paying a fee to patent owners.


Profit margins sway the mobile hit parade
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/21/mobile_music_profit_parade/
Mobile operators have been crowned as the future kingmakers of digital music so many times, the coronet must be getting pretty greasy by now. But how do operators choose what goes on the coveted, and extremely limited promotion space on a mobile music site's home screen?
Mobile users will only get to see 10, or at most 20 picks because of limited screen size and bandwidth. So to that end, Orange was developing sophisticated recommendation engines based on pinpoint demographics, he said. Afew minutes later, he augmented this with an answer that might be somewhere nearer the truth. He admitted: "Yes, placement is based on the margin we get from the labels."