snapshot 7/30/07

Labels eye online social networks as retailers
Record labels big and small are working toward the goal of turning every social network profile, blog and fan site into a digital music storefront. Their ultimate objective is an environment where music fans could stream their favorite music from their personal Web pages and post a "buy" button next to each track. If every site's visitor could, with the click of a button, place that same buy button on his or her own site as well, every fan could become a point of purchase and a channel for promotion.

Yet early results show promise. While the company declined to provide specific numbers, Snocap said the number of consumers registering for MyStore accounts -- necessary to buy tracks via the service -- has increased 50 percent month over month since the service went live in December, and the number of a la carte downloads is rising by 40 percent per month.


Music sharing hits all-time high
Illegal music downloading is at an all-time high and set to rise further, according to a report out today. In its annual Digital Music Survey, Entertainment Media Research found that illegal music file sharing remains widespread, despite concerted attempts to curb it. Of the 1,700 people questioned, 43% said that they are downloading music using P2P networks, up from 36% last year.


Treatment of Longer Songs by eMusic
For tracks lasting more than seven minutes, eMusic gives extra credit for each download of the song, with a minimum "bonus" of half a track and a maximum of two tracks. For example, a song lasting 7 minutes 20 seconds would count as 1.5 downloads and any track over 20 minutes in length would count as three downloads.


The future of radio will be an "experience"
Products such as music players or portable video players, which connect to a computer to access songs or video clips from the Internet, could be built with WiMax chips that allow users to bypass the computer and download new content from the back seat of a car or in a Metro tunnel, for example.