The Zune Social may be winding down. One big retailer, GameStop, has decided to stop selling Microsoft’s digital music players because of a lack of demand. From TheStreet.com :
"We have decided to exit the Zune category because it just did not have the
appeal we had anticipated,” said a GameStop spokesperson. “It (also) did not fit
with our product mix."
Sony BMG Dives Into Controversial MP3 Sales Model (requires subscription)
In selling MP3s directly to U.S. retailers, Sony BMG Music Entertainment is testing a controversial business model. Since it switched away from digital rights management to the open MP3 format earlier this year, Sony BMG is providing its content to Amazon through what is know as an "agency" or "commission" model, sources say and Sony executives privately confirm. In this model, Sony BMG is actually the seller and sets all retail prices on its content while Amazon acts as Sony BMG's agent and gets a commission on the sale.
But so far Amazon is the only merchant that has agreed to it. In fact, sources say the agency model is a point of contention in the negotiations between Wal-Mart and Sony BMG, which is why the latter is the only major that has not yet achieved a signed MP3 deal with the giant discounter. Some familiar with the Amazon deal say that if Sony BMG can't convince other retailers to accept the model, it would have to revert to the wholesale model for Amazon.
Adieu to the true audiophile?
And it's not because they don't like music. Quite the opposite, actually. The popularity of online streaming music sites, rise of music blogs, and skyrocketing digital music sales from places like iTunes, Wal-Mart.com, and Amazon.com show that young people are voracious music consumers.
Home audio sales have been in decline for the past half decade, and have drooped even lower in recent years. Home CD player sales totaled $36.2 million last year, but that's 35 percent below 2005 sales figures. Home speaker sales are down 2 percent, but home shelf systems sales are down 40 percent in the same time period, according to data gathered by the NPD Group.
Napster to expand reach to 6 million AT&T customers
Napster, the pioneer in online music downloading, said its subscription service will become available to between 5 million and 6 million AT&T mobile phone customers in June. "When AT&T turns this on, we will have access to 5 million subscribers virtually overnight," Napster Chief Executive Officer Christopher Gorog said Thursday in an interview. AT&T will inform subscribers about the Napster service in "a couple of weeks," he said. Los Angeles-based Napster, is focusing on increasing subscribers through deals with mobile carriers such as AT&T in the United States and NTT DoCoMo in Japan. Although AT&T announced it would offer Napster service last October, Gorog said few mobile phones capable of downloading music were in use at the time.
Should Music Startups Give Equity to Copyright Holders?
Online music startups have two options in the race to profitability: They can get permission from all relevant copyright holders before uploading a single song, or they can rely on a combination of luck and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act until they are either acquired or earn enough to pay for proper licensing.
Copyright holders occasionally sue new businesses into the ground or, as is growing more commonplace, use legal pressure to force maturing startups into surrendering an equity stake. MySpace seems to have agreed to exactly such a deal, cutting the major labels in on an equity level, partially in return for Universal Music Group dropping its copyright-infringement lawsuit against the company.
CinemaNow comes to Windows Media Center
And then we got a friendly email from CinemaNow letting us know that starting today you could access the service through Windows Media Center, which is actually kind of awesome. You'll need to register for a CinemaNow account to use the service. And of course, you'll need Windows Media Center, which is built into Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate. You should be able to find the CinemaNow icon in the More TV section. If you don't see it, go into your Media Center settings and force your computer to download updates.But with CinemaNow making its 3400 feature length films, 3000 TV episodes, and 2900 music videos available, we're going to say better late than never.
Update: As we've been reminded, this is not the first time you've been able to access CinemaNow from Windows Media Center. The company released a plugin for earlier versions of MCE which you could download and install in order to watch movies using the media center "10 foot interface." To our knowledge, this is the first time CinemaNow has been available to all Windows Vista MCE users without a separate download though.
Trans World Posts Q1 Loss, Music Sales Slide
Trans World, which operates f.y.e., Suncoast and other retail chains, posted a $11.8 million first quarter loss. Total sales dropped 19% to $233 million and same-store revenue dropped 6%. Same-store music sales dropped 23% on a comp basis while sales from the top 50 titles dropped 30% on a comp basis. CD sales accounted for 37% of revenue, down from 44% the year before.
The company has been searching for success with in-store digital kiosks. It will soon test a music download service at stores in Albany, NY and the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN. The service, which has yet to have tracks from all four major music groups, will reportedly download music to iPods and other portable music players. Although the article does not mention formats, the implication is the service will offer MP3 files. Trans World has tried to get its Mix & Burn kiosks off the ground for a number of years but has appeared to have little to no success. A year ago the company said the kiosks were showing "promising, but still inconclusive results." Monday's article in the Albany Business Review says the Mix & Burn kiosk at the Albany store "was shrunk and moved to a corner as part of a recent downsizing of the store."
The Marginal Value of the Long Tail
Just how often would I delve further than five million tracks into a download store's catalog? To find out I selected 16 albums to compare at five stores: Amazon.com MP3, eMusic, iTunes, Napster and Wal-Mart. The albums were a mix of titles I recently purchased (both CD and digital), CDs randomly pulled from a rack next to my computer and a couple local artists from Nashville that have independently released EPs.
Of the stores that carry major labels, Amazon.com had the lowest prices, followed by Napster, iTunes and then Wal-Mart.
The Latest from Lala: The Return of the Dime Store
I received an e-mail today from Lala.com, touting the new features it will roll out next week as part of a site redesign. You can preview it here. The big one is the new "a la carte" streaming option, where you pay 10 cents for the right to stream a single track as many times as you want:
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