Wednesday, October 17, 2007

snapshot 10/17/07

US Patent Office rejects Amazon one-click patent
While we just scratched our head and laughed, blogger Peter Calveley went and did something about it. He filed a re-examination request last year. And now that the patent office has taken another look at the one-click patent they've rejected a large number of claims made by Amazon. In other words, while Amazon has a chance to respond, there's a good chance this patent will be revoked.


Musicians find a fast-track to iTunes
TuneCore's Jeff Price says he'll get anybody's album on Apple's music store for the cost of a 'six-pack and a pizza,' reports Fortune's Devin Leonard.


The Hole In Apple’s iTunes Price Cut
Two days after Apple (AAPL) began cutting the price of its DRM-free music for new customers, from $1.29 a song to 99¢, the company is still charging the higher price for existing customers. The fact of the 30¢ price cut was confirmed yesterday by Steve Jobs, although the company denied that the move was in response to competition from Amazon, which charges 89¢ to 99¢ per song, or Wal-Mart, which charges 94¢. “It’s been very popular with our customers, and we’re making it even more affordable,” both Jobs and spokesperson Natalie Kerris insisted.

But the price cut was not applied across the board. The discrepancy arises in the Upgrade My Library feature, which is still charging existing customers 30% extra for DRM-free songs.


Optimal Media Production Premiers VinylDisc - Half CD, Half Vinyl Record
Optimal Media Production, a German concern, has developed a new CD format dubbed, VinylDisc, that contains a CD on one side, and a vinyl recording on the other. The CD side can hold 70 minutes of music, while the vinyl side, due to the dimensions of the compact disc, can only hold about 3 minutes. As a promotional play, it’s a very cool idea for dance music labels. Fightstar, a rock band on the Gut label, will be the first band to release a single on the VinylDisc format.


iTunes Plus Now Offers Over Two Million Tracks at Just 99 Cents
Apple® today announced that it has expanded its iTunes® Plus offering to over two million tracks and lowered the price of all iTunes Plus tracks to just 99 cents. All iTunes Plus tracks feature DRM-free music with high quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings (www.itunes.com). The iTunes Plus catalog is now the largest DRM-free catalog in the world, and includes artists from Sub Pop, Nettwerk, Beggars Group, IODA, The Orchard and many others, along with EMI’s digital catalog.


Amazon gives bloggers a sweeter deal for selling its MP3s
Amazon today is pulling out the small guns as it positions its new MP3 download store to grab market share from Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes. And Amazon has a lot of small guns. In this case, “The small guns” refers to the Amazon.com Associates Program, one of the retailer’s lesser-known online marketing vehicles. Through Amazon Associates, bloggers and other online publishers can showcase Amazon products in an advertising window on their sites. In return, they earn a cut of the sale – usually 10 percent.

To give a boost to its MP3 store, though, Amazon today sent an e-mail to Associates members that sweetens the deal: Through the end of the year, Amazon will give a 20 percent cut to members who get people to download songs from the Amazon store.


Universal Music puts its faith in memory cure for sliding sales
Universal Music, the world’s biggest music company, is to release singles on USB memory sticks this month, in an attempt to arrest the decline in music sales.

The Vivendi-owned company plans to charge about £4.99 for USB singles starting on October 29 with releases from piano rock band Keane and Nicole, the lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls. That compares with £2.99 for a typical CD single. However, the hope is that fans will be willing to pay extra because the extra storage capacity on a USB allows the addition of videos and other multimedia.


Victoria's Secret to sell 'Spice Girls' album
The newly reunited British girl group's CD will be available starting Nov. 13 at Victoria's Secret stores and on the company's website in the U.S., Capitol Music Group said Tuesday.


Lime Wire to Sell INgrooves Music in Upcoming Digital Music Store
Lime Wire LLC announced today that it signed a deal with digital media company INgrooves to sell DRM-free MP3s in the LimeWire Store, opening this holiday season. The INgrooves catalog includes approximately one hundred thousand quality independent music titles. "INgrooves supports and encourages all digital download retail models that fairly compensate artists as outlets for its independent artists and labels. LimeWire, with its existing loyal and music-savvy customer base, is an ideal destination for music fans to purchase MP3s," said Robb McDaniels, the CEO of INgrooves.


Nettwerk Music, PassAlong Networks and Digonex Technologies Partner to Launch Music Industry's First Variable-Pricing Model Pilot for MP3 Music Downloads
PassAlong Networks(TM), Nettwerk Music and Digonex® Technologies today announced the launch of a joint variable-priced MP3 pilot, the music industry's first offering of fully variably priced downloadable music. Using patented Digonex pricing technology, PassAlong is able to adjust retail pricing on a weekly basis for Nettwerk Music's MP3 catalog.

Album prices are adjusted up or down according to the consumer demand-driven Digonex pricing engine, which systematically changes pricing based on Internet economics and consumer behavioral principles. Most album prices fluctuate between $3.30 and $9.99. Singles are dynamically priced at one of three possible price tiers: $.33, $.66 or $.99.


Resnikoff's Parting Shot: Behemoths in the Vacuum
Once upon a time, consumers started a dramatic shift in the way they discovered, acquired, and accessed media. In the music realm, albums shifted to discrete downloads, release dates shifted to now, and prices shifted to zero. And all across the land, a vacuum started to form, and a battle emerged for the next-generation music industry.

For those tied directly to recordings, this is anything but a rosy fairy tale. For everyone else, this story is still in its early chapters, and full of lucrative possibilities. And for well-funded, well-placed companies like Live Nation, the opportunities couldn't be any richer.

Major labels are losing ground at an unprecedented rate, and on a number of levels. The CD album is receding, and bread-and-butter superstars are searching for an entirely different lily pad. MVPs are plotting or executing post-label career moves, and younger artists are considering do-it-yourself options.


Yahoo! Q3 2007 Earnings Call Transcript
For example, we have de-emphasized our focus around subscription music in favor of advertising supported music.

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