snapshot 5/27/08

Rock acts ringing up sales via video games
Games like "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero III" have proved their ability to breathe new life into classic rock sales. But can they do the same for new music? Last month, Motley Crue decided to find out. The band placed its new single, the title track from "Saints of Los Angeles," for sale as a downloadable track on "Rock Band" well in advance of the album's release date, which has been pushed back to June 24. The only other place to obtain the track was iTunes.

According to data provided by the band's management, Tenth Street Entertainment, the track was downloaded more than 47,000 times via the Xbox 360 version of the game alone in the first week after it became available. By comparison, the same track received slightly more than 10,000 downloads via digital services like iTunes and Amazon, according to Nielsen SoundScan.


Aloha, Mr. Hands: What I would do with EMI’s new music business
In a nutshell: With the disappearance of advantaged label competencies such as superior production, distribution, and marketing, reconfigure your labels to be based around affinities and focused narrowly enough to serve roughly the same audiences from release to release. The labels would be very small teams responsible for fan cultivation, focused and direct marketing, and A&R. They would rely on EMI for service, support, and tools (generic marketing would happen on the EMI mothership, for example).


Borders Group reopens its independent online bookstore
Despite the overwhelming dominance of Amazon and Barnes & Noble in the online bookstore space, Borders Group today opened its own independent retail store on the Web. The launch of the new Borders.com takes place a little over two months after Borders announced it might put itself up for sale.

Borders, however, will reportedly move ahead with its next generation Web site -- along with related plans around integrating technology into its brick-and-mortar stores -- regardless of whether an acquisition takes place. A BetaNews check of all three major online book retailers this morning revealed Borders offers one feature that's prominent on Amazon and that B&N appears to still lack: audiobook downloads. Check out this example, which includes a prominent "WMA" download option.


Liberty Pulls Back from Vongo Internet Movie Service
In the race to figure out how movies will be delivered over the Internet, one of the more promising efforts, Vongo from Liberty Media’s Starz Entertainment group, has floundered. Liberty said it will still offer the standalone Vongo service, but will now focus its marketing efforts on a version, called Starz Play, through existing cable and satellite operators.

For $9.99 per month, Vongo gives its users unlimited streaming of movies over the Internet. Because it has access to the films on the Starz cable channel, its movies tend to be a little older than the $3.99 pay-per-view titles on Apple’s iTunes and Amazon’s Unbox, but much newer than the films on the Netflix Internet streaming service. (Vongo also has a pay-per-view option for newer films.)


Creative scraps Wi-Fi player, focuses on design
Creative has for now shelved its plans to develop a Wi-Fi capable player, the company's Nordic product manager Jan Hvidberg has revealed in an interview. The senior official confirms the one-time existence of the ZEN Share but says that there were "technical complications" developing the player that prompted the company to drop the project. The executive doesn't rule out the possibility of a future player with wireless but for now shelves hopes of an immediate release.


Korean music format MT9 tries to replace MP3 - with a karaoke twist
MT9 was developed by South Korean engineers at Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) in association with venture company Audizen, and the format has been dubbed "Music 2.0." Its creators hope to see MT9 replace MP3, but that lofty goal will likely be replaced by one more attainable: becoming the standard for karaoke.

The main difference between MT9 files and other commonly-consumed audio formats like MP3, WMA and AAC is that MT9 is essentially six channels of unmixed audio packaged within the format's own mixer. The advantage is complete flexibility in playback, enabling players to adjust -- or remove -- any channel independently. Vocals, chorus, piano, guitar, bass and drum each have their own track contained in the MT9 audio file. Like MP3, the format has no digital rights management built in.


Apple still has biggest slice of the MP3 pie
Apple remains high atop the list of portable media player makers as measured during the first quarter of 2008.
· Apple 71%
· SanDisk 11%
· Microsoft 4%
· Sony 2%
· Creative Labs 2%


MP3 players losing muscle
The MP3 player industry - otherwise known as the iPod market - seems about to go from being a rock star to a has-been. While still strong, sales have slowed and even begun to decline in some markets. Prices, particularly on the low end, are plunging, typically an indicator of slacking demand.