snapshot 12/04/07

Nokia in free music pact with Universal
Nokia Oyj said on Tuesday it has agreed with the world's largest music group Universal to offer free 12-month access to Universal artists' music for buyers of Nokia's music phones. The world's top cellphone maker said it has signed up Universal Music Group International, owned by French media giant Vivendi, for its new "Comes With Music" offering and is eyeing similar deals with other labels before the offer starts in the second half of 2008. Nokia said the new offering would differ from other packages on the market as consumers can keep all the music they have downloaded for free during the 12 month period.


MySpace may compete with record labels for distributing new music
The social networking site is looking to draw users by offering exclusive video and audio content from artists, and is offering incentives for those artists to, in effect, "sign with MySpace."


Universal Music Restricting Music Streaming On Certain Sites
Universal Music Group, the largest music label, has implemented a new online streaming policy for its artists: each song for its artists will be limited to either 90-second clips or full-songs that contain promotional voice-over messages, reports Billboard. Excluded are any online services that UMG has a commercial licensing deal with, which means it is getting compensated for each stream. The policy applies to MySpace (which UMG is suing for violation of copyright law) and others. The story says UMG is concerned that users won’t buy the track or album if they get free streaming of full songs.


Live Nation Teams with Costco for Ticket Sales
For the upcoming 2008 amphitheatre concert season, Live Nation is selling general admission lawn tickets at 263 Costco price club stores nationwide, as the company continues its push to grow its own ticketing identity before it splits with Ticketmaster. The deal with Costco marks the first time Live Nation has extended its ticket distribution channel into the national retail arena.

Called the Amphitheatre Concert Pack card, the pass retails for $39.99 and includes two general admission lawn tickets to any 2008 concert in amphitheatres owned and operated by Live Nation, subject to availability. In addition, music fans will get six MP3 downloads from the Live Nation music download page supplied by Puretracks, Inc.


MySpace Unplugged
Today, MySpace launched a new part of its Website called Transmissions that will feature candid session videos and recordings of musicians. The only thing on the page right now are a few session recordings from James Blunt and a video interview of him sitting at a piano. The page has a bunch of sliders like on a stereo equalizer that you can move around, but don’t seem to actually do anything. The level indicators are nice, though. Five songs for $14, though, seems a bit steep. (Songs are purchased through a partnership with Lala.com).

MySpace obviously wants this to become the MTV Unplugged for today’s music fans. Session recordings are perfect for MySpace because of their intimate nature and immediacy. Fans can get involved by leaving comments or going to the forums. Soon it looks like they will be able to vote for their favorite songs in each session, and request musicians to be featured in upcoming “transmissions.” This would be great for live performances as well.


Music Recommendation Service MyStrands Adds $24 Million to Second Round; $12 Million ‘07 Revs
Another huge raise for music recommendation engine MyStrands… the company has announced a $25 million investment led by Spanish Bank BBVA, which comes just six months after it raised $24 million from Spanish media mogul Antonio Asensio. Also participating in this round is previous investor Debaeque. All told, the company has now raised $55 million. The Corvalis, OR-based company offers its Social Recommender Engine, which can deliver context-sensitive recommendations to a user across a range of devices, including computers and mobile phones. In the release, the company claims to have already done $12 million in revenue in 2007. The company says the funding will be used for product development and business expansion. Release.


Mobile Music A $11 Billion Industry By 2011
Music delivered to mobile phones will account for almost 30% of global retail music values by 2011, according to a report released Tuesday. Understanding & Solutions has forecast that mobile music will bring in $11 billion by then and begin to make up for some of the decline in music revenues. The industry now accounts for about 14% of global retail music revenue, according to the report.


Hollywood Records Licenses DRM-Free, Starts Multi-Store Push
Hollywood Records is now spreading MP3s to Wal-Mart, Amazon, Passalong Networks, and other digital takers, according to details shared with Digital Music News on Monday. Marisa Kurtz, manager of Digital Sales at the Disney-owned record label, confirmed DRM-free releases from Atreyu, Marié Digby, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, as well as content from the Mammoth catalog. But the move does not include the iTunes Store, which has yet shift into a broader, DRM-free sales mode.


Black Friday a CD Sales Turkey, Broader Declines Continue
Despite a soggy economic backdrop, American consumers recently surpassed post-Thanksgiving Day purchasing expectations. The Black Friday rush, the beginning of the all-important holiday spending period, benefited from healthy crowds and loose wallets. That buoyed a number of segments, though CD sales were not among the winners.

For the week ending November 25th, which includes Black Friday, album sales (physical and digital) dropped 18 percent compared to the comparable week last year. And year-to-date, cumulative album sales are lagging 14.4 percent, according to figures published by Nielsen Soundscan.


MP3 Blogs Offer File Sharing Even the RIAA Could Love
Although the term "file sharing" has all sorts of ugly connotations, it's not necessarily a bad thing. In some cases, it's even a win-win-win situation for the recording industry, music lovers -- and Google.

There are countless MP3 file-sharing sites that don't look anything like BitTorrent or Lime Wire. They're low-key, homegrown blogs that don't host illicitly copied music, but do provide links to third-party sites, or storage lockers, such as Megashare, where pirated music is stored. These bloggers do it for the love of the music, they say, but it doesn't hurt that they make a little money from advertising along the way.