Friday, February 1, 2008

snapshot 2/1/08

Keeping track of digital music
While Qtrax claimed to have done deals with all the major music labels, Sony Ericsson has completed a deal with 10 labels, including three majors, that will see an additional five million tracks added to its PlayNow Arena service. Initially launching in Scandinavia, Irish music lovers should be able to download music, games, ringtones and wallpaper directly from the service sometime before the summer. Sony claims its service differentiates itself by ensuring "the majority of the content is DRM free". DRM, or digital rights management, is the software that limits copying of digital music in order to protect the interest of the copyright holder. It is, however, a major irritant for people who listen to digital music they have bought on multiple devices.


Although PlayNow Arena has been around since early 2004, like all mobile music services that facilitate "over the air" downloading, it has failed to catch the imagination of consumers. The backing of labels such as Sony BMG, Warner Music, and EMI could change that. Games will be provided from publishers such as EA Games, Gameloft, THQ, Glu, Digital Chocolate, while PlayNow Uncut will feature new and emerging acts. Access to the PlayNow WAP portal will be automated from new handsets. They will also feature the TrackID function, currently only available on Walkman and other high-end Sony Ericsson handsets.


Quality doesn't equal popularity
The more interesting finding was the complete randomness of the songs that became popular in each group. There was almost no connection between "objective quality" (as measured by the control group) and popularity--the song "Lockdown" was ranked number 26 in terms of quality, but its popularity in the other groups ranged from number 1 to number 40. True, the very bad songs almost never finished near the top, and the best songs seldom finished near the bottom. But overall, finishing in the top five in quality only guaranteed a 50% chance of finishing in the top five in popularity in any given group.

Record company executives and marketers hated the study because it seemed to invalidate their genius at picking hits. But it's great solace for the countless talented songwriters and musicians who've received little reward apart from the music itself.


Digital-download tax legislation gaining momentum
Legislation that would impose a sales tax on downloaded music, movies and audiobooks is picking up steam in the Indiana General Assembly. Other e-tailers, such as Amazon, do not charge sales tax on digital downloads and may be affected if the legislation becomes law.


PassAlong Networks and Signifi Partner to Bring Millions of New Music Titles and the 'On Demand Digital Content Experience' to Consumers at Retail Stores
PassAlong Networks™ today announced a partnership with Signifi Solutions Inc.™, developers of Digital Kiosk Solutions, including QuickTUNES™ for digital music at retail, to bring the 'digital content experience' to retail stores. The partnership combines the powerful Signifi QuickTUNES retail music solution and PassAlong's deep catalog of licensed content. Consumers can choose from PassAlong's catalog of more than 3 million songs and by using an intuitive user interface, they can browse, select and buy mixed content and full albums and then download the content to their device or create a custom printed CD with attractive labeling. The same content is available for downloads online.


In Other News: RealNetworks Lays Off About 10 Employees In Music Division: Confirmed
Has been confirmed by RealNetworks music PR...offices affected are Seattle, New York and San Francisco. These layoffs happened two weeks ago, and affects about 10 people, not 20 as we reported earlier.


Vimeo Co-Founder Planning Online Music Venture
Vimeo co-founder and self-portrait artist Jakob Lodwick is planning some sort of online music venture called Normatism. The American record industry is in bad shape. It's not that bad, yet. But I don't want to wait around for it to crash. I don’t want to watch it get worse. Instead, I intend to capture the spirit of rebuilding. I want to pretend that the major labels were each hit with a hydrogen bomb, and now all these musicians are standing around, asking, "What do we do now?"

It also means that if you want to make money from music, you're going to have to pull your weight, or you will be left behind. In the old model, a small number of artists created a living for hundreds of label employees. When those artists realize they can split the money with a couple of partners instead, will they? I'm betting the answer is yes, and every musician I talk to seems to agree with me. I'm going to keep quiet about what I’ve accomplished so far, except to say that I've already signed one artist.


Vinyl Frontier: Left-for-Dead Music Is Resurrected for the Digital Age
Sure, iTunes has millions of tracks, but don't go looking there for obscure or out-of-print treasures like, say, the seminal stoner-rock stylings of Sir Lord Baltimore. Fortunately for music geeks, help is on the way. Keith Abrahamsson, an A&R rep for New York-based indie label Kemado Records, recently launched the first all-digital reissues label. At prices similar to those of Apple's square mass-market store, Anthology Recordings offers high-fidelity (320 Kbps), DRM-free rips of supercool, ultrarare titles — from late-'60s Swedish psych-rock to British postpunk and early-'80s dub.


A guided tour of the new AppleTV

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