Chris Anderson has compiled stats showing that, if declines in CD sales are set aside, every other aspect of the music industry is growing.
- Concerts and merchandise +4%
- Digital tracks +46%
- Ringtones +86% last year, but single-digit growth this year
- Licensing for commercials, TV shows, movies and games. Warner Music saw licensing grow $20 million last year.
- Vinyl singles sales more than doubled in the UK
- If you include iPods in the music industry, as Anderson argues we should, they are up 31% this year
SpiralFrog signs licensing agreement with Sony/ATV
Ad-supported music service SpiralFrog said on Monday it had signed a licensing agreement to offer compositions from Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC via its Web site.
AT&T to deliver Napster songs directly to phones
AT&T, which already lets Napster subscribers transfer music from their personal computer to their cell phone via a cable or a storage card, said it would sell Napster music directly on its phones for $7.49 for a bundle of five songs, or $1.99 for a la carte purchases, beginning in mid November.
About 10 million U.S. consumers are expected to download about 70 million songs to their phones in 2007, according to technology research firm IDC, which expects 44 million U.S. consumers to buy songs directly on their phones by 2011.
SanDisk to debut USB drive, video service
Flash memory maker SanDisk Corp. on Monday will debut an online video service and a USB flash drive that can carry television programs and videos from a computer for playback on TVs. The Sansa TakeTV video player — an ensemble of an oversized USB drive, remote control and a small dock that connects to a TV — and its accompanying video service, Fanfare, marks the latest attempt by a company looking to bridge content between the PC and the television.
Similar to using a USB drive to store and move data files, users of TakeTV can drag-and-drop video files stored on their computer — Fanfare downloads, home videos or other unrestricted video content from the Web — onto the device. Users can then plug it into the cradle connected to a TV. A simple menu appears on the TV to scroll through the files for playback.
The TakeTV player is $99.99 for a 4 gigabyte model and $149.99 for an 8 GB one that can hold up to 10 hours of video. Fanfare, in a test stage, offers premium TV shows for $1.99 per download — roughly the same price as rival services, but SanDisk says it hopes to ultimately provide a broad mixture of free and ad-supported content as well as pay-per-download videos.
Penguin Audio Ends EMusic Deal
Last month eMusic, the company that gives Apple’s iTunes the most competition in song downloads, announced that it would go up against the market leader on another front: audiobooks. But eMusic has been dealt an early blow. Penguin Audio, one of the five publishers that signed on initially, has bailed out, withdrawing 150 titles over concerns about digital piracy.
Major labels targeted by iTunes rival
Music download store eMusic is hoping the changing attitude of big music labels to copyright protection will mean their tracks could soon be available on its website. The world's second biggest digital music store already carries 2m tracks from independent-label artists but it is hoping that it will soon be able to add songs from at least one of the world's four major labels, Sony BMG, Universal, Warner and EMI.
New Zunes actually confirmed for November 13th
Whereas before all we had to go on was Amazon's purported release date for the new Zunes, Microsoft's gone ahead and confirmed it for us by way of old school paper magazine print ads, which confirm availability on (or at least around) the 13th of November.
Virgin Mobile USA Debuts Streaming Music Handheld
Virgin Mobile USA is now offering a phone that supports streaming music, a first for the pre-paid carrier. The Kyocera device, called the "Wild Card," also features a full QWERTY keyboard and a full range of entertainment and communication capabilities. On the music end, Virgin is spinning a subscription feature called "Headliner" for $2.49. That offering includes regular tour updates, music news, artist information, music charts and access to a streaming music catalog. Consumer are required to pay 25-cents per each song streamed, a fee that could create issues for heavy listeners. The Wild Card is currently available across major US-based retail outlets, and carries a price tag of $99.
Video of the TiVo/Rhapsody Music Streaming Team-Up
Remember when we told you TiVo and Rhapsody had joined forces to allow the streaming of Internet radio stations and Rhapsody's online music catalogue to broadband equipped TiVo boxes? Here's a video of the new feature, which will allow users to search through music catalogues and Rhapsody charts via their TVs. If you are already signed up with TiVo, you will receive a free 30-day trial. Thereafter, the added content/functionality shall cost $12.99/month. Check out the short run-through of the UI, which seems to flow smoothly. Just how we like it. [TiVo via Osegundochoque, video via TiVo Blog]
New details on Snocap's CD Baby breakup
When Snocap and music retailer CD Baby ended their partnership earlier this month, Snocap made like it pulled the plug. But today CD Baby president Derek Sivers put out numbers that show why it's no surprise Snocap had to lay off 31 of its 57 employees. Its partnership with CD Baby only generated $12,000 in revenues.
But the pain felt necessary, because Snocap, with its deal to distribute music over MySpace, was expected to pay-out big. That little fantasy died when Snocap came to CD Baby with numbers, Sivers writes:
“$12,000 total sales for the 8 months they'd been active. Since we keep a 9% cut, that's $1080 for us, total. Ouch.As a curiosity, I quietly enabled MP3 sales on cdbaby.com, without telling anyone. A "buy MP3" button showing up next to the "buy CD" button.In 3 weeks, with no announcements, we sold over $110,000 in downloads. Hm.”
Apple earns $904 million on sales of $6.22 billion, sells 2.16M Macs
The Company sold 10,200,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 17 percent growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone sales were 1,119,000, bringing cumulative fiscal 2007 sales to 1,389,000.
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