snapshot 8/28/07

TVs, PCs fight for living room space at tech fair
Internet TV, mobile TV and video on demand may be the talk of the technology sector but when it comes to buying decisions at this week's IFA electronics fair, television sets are set to be bigger business than ever. In time, though, televisions, hi-fis and other analogue equipment are expected to be replaced by PC-based systems. Gartner estimates this will take another three to four years. By that time, most market researchers expect TV set sales to begin falling.


CD Baby Now Selling Digital Downloads
Online retailer/distributor CD Baby is giving its retail website a long-overdue update (the current bare-bones look is supposedly a transitional design that will change later this week). But the big news is that CD Baby now sells mp3 versions of the albums in its catalog. It looks the pricing for the download version of an album (mp3s and album art in a zip file) is the same as that of the physical CD -- here's the page for one of our CDs. That makes it variable, as each musician/label in the catalog sets its own retail price. There's currently no option to purchase single songs and I couldn't find any details on bit rates for the mp3 files.And no details yet on the how the money for direct download sales will break down for the self-released musicians in the CD Baby catalog. As a distributor, CD Baby takes a 9% cut from the revenues it receives from digital retailers -- iTunes, eMusic, Napster, Rhapsody, etc.

I bought an album to see what they were offering - MP3s are 256kbps, album art is 800X800 JPEG, liner notes are text.


Mocha and music as Starbucks serves up a record label
The signing earlier this month of James Taylor to Hear Music, the record label owned by Starbucks Entertainment, completes a triumvirate of “heritage” artists that includes Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell. Hear Music has made a hot start, with McCartney’s Memory Almost Full album, released in June, already boasting global sales of more than 1m. About half of its 500,000 US sales have been in Starbucks stores.

As music companies struggle with the economics of declining footfall at retail, Hear Music is an attractive proposition to such veteran acts. A partnership between Starbucks Entertainment and the Beverly Hills-based Concord Music Group, it has far lower overheads than a major label and an umbilical link to its own distribution network: Starbucks’ 13,000 stores worldwide and their 44m customers a week.


Dialogue with eMusic CEO Pakman
The average iTunes customer buys one song per month, spends about $10 a year on iTunes. The average eMusic customer buys 20 songs per month and spends $168. Is this model for everybody? Of course not. But we’re not trying to appeal to everyone.

The number of people in our focus and demographic is at least 5-10 million right now. ... (But a current study of baby boomers who retailers don’t really cater to) shows that 33% of boomers spend $50 on music a year. That’s 25 million people, and they are becoming increasingly tech savvy. If you are focused on selling music to a teen audience, that market is shrinking. For 2007 so far, people 25 and younger represents only 27% of music sales. We’re focused on the other 73%.


INgrooves' One Digital Adds Film & Video
Digital distributor INgrooves has launched a film & ideo division and signed several high profile content and Ingroovesjpgretailer relationships. The new division, to be headed by President & COO Adam Hiles, will leverage the distribution capabilities of INgrooves’ ONE Digital software platform to automate all administration functions for its film & video clients.

At launch the service represents over 2,000 films and videos from IndiePix, Media Vision Entertainment Group, Pistol Digital and Capistrano Films. INgrooves Film & Video will also distribute content to several of its current music retail partners who are beginning to sell video including iTunes, Rhapsody, Yahoo Music, AOL Music and MediaNet. Additionally, INgrooves will distribute through multiple mobile outlets including, Mobile Streams, Zingy, Jamster, and Moderati.


MySpace Streams Projekt Revolution, Grabs Million-Plus Viewers
MySpace has evolved into an incredibly important music industry player, thanks to a combination of user-generated and produced content. On the user-generated side, MySpace now claims more than three million band profile pages, a number that continues to grow. On the produced side, MySpace has been building its profile with secret shows, album previews, and other goodies. Just last week, the social networking destination streamed a star-studded Projekt Revolution tour, and drew one million viewers to the flame.

The tour, headlined by Linkin Park, was featured as part of the larger MySpace Live series. Others on stage included My Chemical Romance and Taking Back Sunday, and the total performance lasted six hours. The action, filmed from Michigan, also incorporated live footage from fans carrying ComVu PocketCaster Nokia N95s. The show was sponsored by State Farm Insurance, and available on myspace.com/nowwhat.


MySpace Debating Allowing Users To Start Commerce/Selling On Their Pages
After holding out for long and being the subject of some controversies along the route, MySpace (NYSE: NWS) is debating on whether to allow commerce between its members, reports LAT. Till now, its reasoning was that it didn’t want to jeopardize the corporate advertising that accounts for the vast majority of its profit. But with Facebook and other social nets allowing it, and with some amount of success, it is now thinking about it. The users are already doing it, and policing that has been a hard task for the small staff enforcing the rules, hence the possible change of mind.


Hewlett-Packard promotes benefits of content digitization
After successfully getting a DVD of Barry Bonds’ record-breaking 756th home run to fans two days after the historic event, Hewlett-Packard and Ascent Media Group are offering their digitization services to the broader Hollywood community. Following successful initial results with studio partners Sony Pictures Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, among others, H-P and AMG are showing suppliers how a digital network of their content can save significant money when transitioning an analog library into digital files for delivery to various media platforms, such as DVD, broadcast, mobile and broadband.

“We are committing to 50% cost reduction in automating these [digitization] processes,” said Tom Kuehle, VP of digital content services at H-P. “These are processes that have been mostly tape-based. Once assets are digitized, it completely lubricates their distribution.”


New Creative Player Does iTunes Tracks
Creative's newest Zen player is the first from the company to support AAC music and iTunes Plus tracks from the iTunes Music Store, the company said.