Thursday, June 19, 2008

snapshot 6/19/08

France clamps down on Internet piracy
France moved Wednesday to clamp down on Internet piracy with a bill that would set up a new agency to track down cybersurfers who illegally download music, videos and movies from the web. The legislation would set up a new administrative body that would receive complaints from the music and film industry and track down offenders through Internet service providers. An e-mail warning would be sent to suspected downloaders followed by a registered letter. After two strikes, offenders would risk losing their Internet subscription for up to a year.


Apple has Sold Over 5 Billion Songs on iTunes
Apple announced today that they had sold over 5 billion songs on iTunes. According to data from the NPD Group, iTunes remains the number one music retailer in the US. iTunes features the largest online music catalog with over eight million songs. Apple also reveals that customers are buying and renting over 50,000 movies every day making iTunes the most popular online movie store as well. iTunes now houses over 20,000 TV episodes and over 2,000 films including over 350 in high definition.


Amazon Brings ‘Gold Box’ Sales Initiative To Online Music Store
In an effort to promote their MP3 Download store, Amazon has developed two initiatives for MP3 album downloads. The Friday Fives promotion will discount five select titles to $5 per album. Amazon will then experiment on various price points for other albums, some will be reduced to as low as 99-cents, which has been dubbed Russian Pricing based on the now-defunct AllOfMP3 model. That is part of a fresh sales experiment, one that complements already-discounted tags on a number of albums.

The second part of the promotion features specialty pricing on selected titles, often to bargain bin levels. For example, Coldplay’s X&Y recently dropped to $1.99. This new strategy, developed to build some excitement to downloaded music in the same manner the Gold Box brought to general junk merchandise, will complement their already-discounted tags on a number of albums.


A brief history of the album's recent decline in value
Mired in what will soon be an eight-year downturn, the music business has not only struggled to sell CDs, but has failed to find a consistent price point for new albums. Amazon.com is bringing the cost of an album to new lows, having publicized Tuesday its sale price of $1.99 for a piece of Coldplay's catalog.

Less than 10 years ago, it was common for albums to cost $15 and above. Apple helped redefine what the price of an album could be in the minds of consumers, but Steve Jobs' company is far from the only reason that albums are costing less and less.


Israelite Confirms Royalty Rates Breakthroughs
The publishers, record labels and digital music providers have hammered out a settlement on two of the five royalty rates currently scheduled to be set this October by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), according to National Music Publishers' Assn. president/CEO David Israelite. But the details will remain confidential until they are presented to the three U.S. judges sitting on the board, who must approve and set the rates, Israelite added at the trade association's annual meeting, held in New York at the Marriott Marquis on June 18.

So far, the three sectors have reached an agreement on the rates for limited downloads and Internet streaming, but they could not reach a settlement on the other three rates: digital permanent downloads, physical product and ringtones. Consequently, each sector will file briefs and documentation supporting their respective stances by July 2, with closing arguments expected to be made by July 4. Then, the three U.S judges on the board are expected to announce the new rates for the next five years in October, according to a slide that accompanied Israelite's presentation.


DEG identifies solutions in DVD supply chain
The Digital Entertainment Group’s first study on the state of the DVD supply chain highlighted a number of areas where retailers and studios can work together to achieve a smoother and more profitable flow of product to store shelves. Theodore Garcia, media and entertainment lead at management consultant Capgemini, which conducted the study for DEG, said the exercise had several goals, including to take cost out of the supply chain, leverage investment in I.T., speed adoption of new technologies such as RFID and learn from other industries.

Underscoring the importance of supply chain improvement is the statistic, cited by Garcia, that returns of unsold product to studios from retailers has been as high as 25%. The final report identified 17 opportunities for “collaborative improvement” between retailers and studios, Garcia said. Among them: on-hand inventory accuracy, forecasting, packaging, shipping, score-carding and merchandising.


A Day After 'Launch,' Major-Label Tunes Scarce on Qtrax
The wait for Qtrax's free, legal P2P service continues, as over 24 hours after the site was scheduled to launch with music from EMI and Universal Music Group, a great deal of music from both labels continues to be unavailable for download from the service and an apparent network bug is causing the player to crash when trying to play the music that is available.

No comments: