snapshot 11/7/07

iLike Adds Features To Streamline Social Music Marketing
Music-based social networker iLike just made marketing music via a multitude of web sites a lot easier and faster with new services that enable single source updating. iLike has:

• "pre-created" pages for 160,000+ artists, so that the artist doesn't have to go through the irritating hassle of uploading all their content again to create yet another new band profile
• opened a "Universal Artist Dashboard" so and artist can control their presence across many channels from single place - i.e post a new concert and reach fans across iLike.com, Facebook, iTunes/WMP desktops and soon thanks to Google's OpenSocial platform on Bebo, orkut, MySpace, Friendster and scores of other sites
  

Ticketmaster, iTunes expand music + ticket offerings
Ticketmaster and the iTunes Store have announced a plan to offer digital album sales directly alongside Ticketmaster.com concert tickets. The expanded offerings let users purchase tickets to an artist’s concert along with their music in a single transaction on Ticketmaster.com. Users purchasing tickets at Ticketmaster.com to live performances by participating artists will be given the option of adding a digital album to their purchase, and through the end of 2007, a special dollar-off discount will be applied to every album sold. Ticketmaster.com will provide a direct link that will take the user to the iTunes Store to download their album in full.


The Eagles Top Billboard Chart
The Eagles beat Britney Spears for the top spot on the Billboard 200 Top Albums chart this week. The band's new album "Long Road Out of Eden" debuted at No. 1 on the chart by selling 711,000 copies during its first week of release, Billboard.com reported Tuesday. Spears' album "Blackout" sold 290,000 copies.

Even though Wal-Mart gave Long Road Out Of Eden a good online push, digital downloads accounted for about 0.5% of total sales via Coolfer


Red Bull Pushes Music Initiative, Taps Label Executives
Red Bull is now pushing a serious music initiative, according to numerous sources to Digital Music News. The initiative has been underway for a considerable period of time, and already involves executive placements and the construction of a studio facility. The exact nature or charter of the group remains unclear, and may be fluid, according to one source. A stand-alone recording label appears one possibility, though a broader, 360-degree concept that integrates into larger Red Bull branding seems more plausible.


Fans shafted as Major League Baseball revokes DRM licenses
Major League Baseball has deactivated a DRM license server used to verify your worthiness to play back video of games you purchased online. Due to an earlier decision to switch DRM providers, MLB's new content and old content are managed by different license authentication servers. After making the switch, MLB has arbitrarily decided it has no intention of honoring its earlier commitments to fans who purchased downloaded games under the old system, thereby rendering many fans shut-out.


Testing Vinyl CDs: Groovy Up Top, Optical Down Below
Since CDs have a hole at their center that's too large to fit on a vinyl spindle, you'll need to use the little rubber adapter that comes with each disc to center the disc on your record player; otherwise, it'll go off-center and you'll hear the music speed up and slow down with each revolution.

As for the overall sound quality, I just finished giving the vinyl side of a Sonic Kollectiv VinylDisc compilation a spin, and it sounded decent -- not as good as 180 gram, but certainly good enough to warrant consideration from bands and labels looking to offer something new to their customers: a CD that everyone can play, with a secret bonus track in the grooves on top for those who have record players.

Apple and Starbucks iTunes WiFi integration hands-on

• Connecting iTunes through Starbucks is eminently simple: connect to the T-Mobile AP. That's it. It's all done behind the paywall, so you don't have to fork out $10 to get online to use the service. (You can also visit apple.com behind the paywall, but not .Mac services.)
• As soon as you connect to the Starbucks T-Mobile AP with your iPhone / iPod touch / desktop machine running iTunes, you'll see Starbucks music show up in your iTunes Store interface. (Hit the gallery to see how it works.)
• Downloading a track was reasonably fast, but the WiFi kept dropping with both our iPhone and MacBook Pro, leading us to believe there were some issues with the T-Mo hotspot. The download recovered fine through multiple disconnections, but it took us a little over 7 minutes to grab a single 8.5MB iTunes Plus track -- so be careful before grabbing an entire album.
• Apple is also now selling iTunes Digital Releases at Starbucks -- basically iTunes cards for select albums that let you grab the entire album on iTunes as well as a bunch of bundled extras like music videos and a digital booklet. We got two to check out: KT Tunstall's Digital Release is $15; Eddie Vedder's is $12 (but with a lot fewer music videos).
• In addition to showing users what song is being played in the store via iTunes, Starbucks is also installing TV which show current track information.
• The music piped to each Starbucks is dynamic and is not being broadcast to all other locations; the music (and data) is moved through T-Mobile's data centers to each wired Starbucks location.

Facebook’s music effort is live
It [Discography] is apparently live and available for musicians or bands that want to market themselves by using Facebook’s “Pages” feature, or pages where advertisers feature their wares.

It is significant because it comes directly from Facebook, not from outside developers. One fear is that Facebook might market it at the expense of others, though its not clear yet whether this fear is justified. It’s true that a mass of third-party efforts could be effected: There are 318 third-party applications on Facebook that are experimenting with music in some way, listed by Facebook here. The Facebook application says it helps let fans track the history of a band’s records, and see a listing of albums as well as the tracks. It can’t be used on normal profile pages.

snapshot 11/6/07

Preview Albums Before You Buy @ Spinner
Ever wish you could hear an entire CD before you buy it?
There are a growing number of ways to preview full CD’s on the net, but one of the easiest is AOL’s Spinner free Full CD Listening Party. Just hit play and sit back. Current offerings include full new releases by Sugar Rus, Joy Division & Nas. Listen here.


PassAlong Networks Bolsters MP3 Catalog with Content from Sub Pop, Epitaph, Saddle Creek and Downtown Records
Media distribution developer PassAlong Networks™ today announced the addition of 30,000 MP3 tracks to its digital music catalog from leading independent labels including Sub Pop, Epitaph, Saddle Creek and Downtown Records. The new content, provided by the labels’ U.S. distributor, Alternative Distribution Alliance (ADA), will be available on all online music stores powered by PassAlong’s StoreBlocks™ technology, including Trans World’s f.y.e. – for your entertainment online store, joining PassAlong’s MP3 catalog of more than 2 million tracks and total catalog of more than 3 million tracks.


For Radiohead Fans, Does “Free” + “Download” = “Freeload”?
2 out of 5 Downloaders Willing to Pay an Average of $6 for “In Rainbows” Album. U.S. Downloaders Willing to Pay More than International Counterparts

snapshot 11/5/07

On-demand program revives out-of-print discs
Classical fans are used to frustrating searches for albums that have long gone out of print. Those days may be over. ArkivMusic.com has agreements with all four major-label groups -- Universal Classics, EMI Classics, Sony BMG Masterworks and Warner Classics -- as well as two dozen indie labels to produce discs on demand under the ArkivCD program. These titles include sets with massive booklets, such as operas with lengthy libretto texts and translations. By year's end, about 5,000 such titles will be available.


Q&A: Reznor, Williams up digital ante with $5 album
Having just fulfilled his contract with longtime label Interscope, Reznor is upping the digital ante in tandem with activist/musician Saul Williams. Williams' Reznor-produced concept album, "The Rise and Fall of Niggy Tardust," which went live October 31 via the Fader label, can be obtained in three download formats: 192 kbit/s MP3, 320 kbit/s MP3 and free Lossless audio codec (FLAC).

The lower-quality MP3 is free, while the high-quality MP3 and FLAC cost $5. In a twist on the "name your own price" scheme that Radiohead employed for its recent album, "In Rainbows," fans will not be allowed to pay more than $5 for "Niggy Tardust." Billboard spoke to Reznor and Williams about the implications of their sales model, what this might mean for future Nine Inch Nails releases and why people should be willing to pay the same amount for music as they do for a good cup of coffee.


Gresso To Release Jennifer Lopez’s Brave Album As USB Flash Drive Necklace
Gresso have announced a deal with Sony BMG Music to sell Jennifer Lopez’s “Brave” album packaged as a African Blackwood USB drive necklace. The USB flash drives has specific “Brave” branding with J. Lo’s signature engraved in the luxury wood. Gresso’s J. Lo Flash Drive Album will reportedly sell for $70 bucks. More information on Gresso.


The Nokia Music Store video review -- hint: a "doddle" is good
Unless you're living in the UK, it's hard to get your hands dirty with Nokia's new Music Store. Unless you're living under rock, you know that it's Nokia's intention to take the service global as it vies for dominance over digital downloads. Fortunately, a quickie, video review from Nokia's new N81 has been posted by NokNok.tv. They claim that "hunting out tracks is a doddle, as is downloading." A good thing, apparently, judging by the 4 / 5 stars awarded. Check the action after the break.


Why record labels matter now more than ever
The Internet may help bands get their music out, but it's a crowded arena. That's why most acts still need a label behind them.


AT&T'S MULTIFACETED MUSIC PLANS
In a few short months, AT&T has gone from having no wireless component for its digital music service to having the largest wireless download platform in the industry. Last month at CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment, the carrier unveiled a new deal with its yearlong partner Napster to create a full-track download service bringing 5 million tracks to its network - 3 million more tracks than Sprint and Verizon Wireless, its competitors in the wireless music space. That builds on a similar deal AT&T signed a month before with eMusic, covering another 2.7 million songs from artists on independent labels.


Sonos leaps into leased music market
t wasn't long ago that the CD player was the number onesource of music in a multi-room audio system. That was lastmillennium. The question for custom installers in the 21st centuryis, will physical media play any role in the housewide musicsystem? http://www.sonos.com/'addition last week of the Napster music service to its list ofonline content partners--and TiVo's recent partnershipwith Rhapsody--point to a future of virtual, leased musiccollections that live beyond the PC realm.

That's a step past today's established iTunes modelof downloading music to own for playback via the iPod, Apple TV, oron any of the countless iPod digital media adapters that have comeout over the past couple of years. Whether it's music fromiTunes, Best Buy, Amazon or Urge, will consumers feel they have toown music at all when they can just rent it?


Executive Duo Hangs Shingle, Parlays Rights Expertise
A pair of digital music executives are parlaying their rights expertise into a startup consultancy. The group, called RightsFlow Entertainment Group, is headed by ex-Orchard members Patrick Sullivan and Ben Cockerham. The company, which first bubbled last week, is aiming to assist companies lost in the licensing weeds. "With the advent of a myriad of new music industry business models, there is a striking need for clarity and guidance in the matters of creating and obtaining proper licenses as well as practically implementing those licenses," said Sullivan.
The New York-based group also aims to assist companies in other developmental areas, including mobile operations, online retail and streaming, advertising and branding. The RightsFlow advisory group includes Steve D'Onofrio, president of D'Onofrio & Associates; Chris Hoerenz, former CMO of eMusic; Mathew Dunn, PhD, founder of Socratech; Cedric Deniau, CTO of eMusic; and Noreen Springstead, director of Fundraising & Marketing at WHY (World Hunger Year).


Amoeba Records releases two-disc Flying Burrito Brothers set
Still, she is exactly the type of customer that the excitable co-founder of Amoeba Music, who already runs three successful record stores in California, is hoping to reach with a new music label and soon-to-arrive digital download site that he fully expects to topple Apple's iTunes store. ("They know how to sell machines," Prinz sniffs, "not music.")


Bearishness Continues on Warner Music, Downward Pressure Ahead
Warner Music Group continues to suffer on Wall Street, and recovery prospects remain dim. On Friday, investors left WMG shares at $9.08, another sub-$10 finish for the label group.

Late last week, noted analyst Richard Greenfield of Pali Research issued an incredibly bearish opinion on Warner. The analyst changed his recommendation back to sell, and targeted a $7.50 share price. "No matter how many people the RIAA sues, no matter how many times music executives point to the growth of digital music, we believe an increasing majority of worldwide consumers simply view recorded music as 'free'," Greenfield noted.


Google to enter mobile phone market with software
Google Inc on Monday spelled out long-rumored plans to enter the mobile phone market in 2008 by building software that could help the industry make the Internet run more easily on phones. German mobile network powerhouse T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom's mobile unit, plans next year to start selling Google-software-based phones, while China Mobile Ltd, the world's largest mobile carrier, and top carriers in Japan said they would offer Google-based handsets.


The Era of Bottom-Up Brands (requires subscription)
If you've ever entered a given term and "wikipedia" in Google to bring the Wikipedia page to the top of your search results, you've summarized bottom-up branding rather succinctly. Odds are you became aware of these sites not because of some big marketing campaign, but by repeatedly encountering bits and pieces of them through search engines -- until you began to think of them as entities in their own right.


NPR Launches Its Ambitious Music Site
NPR has launched its rather ambitious music site, after a long time in development: NPR Music is being launched along with 12 member stations, and will have on-air and online content gathered from NPR and the participating stations as well as original content, including interviews, reviews, blogs and live performances. The site covers all the music genres that are found on public radio, including Rock, Folk, Jazz, World and Classical, reports FMQB. Additional stations and producers will join in the coming months.

Also launching is a new NPR media player, which allows users to create a playlist for video and audio (dating from May 2005 to present) on the site and makes recommendations for related content depending on a user’s selections. Lots more details here and in FAQs here.


EMI Selling WAVs of Radiohead's Back Catalog for a Mere $167
Now EMI, their old label, is looking to hop on that bandwagon of goodwill by offering a set of all of the band's past studio albums and one live album in a number of formats, including uncompressed WAV files on a custom Radiohead Bear USB drive.

The first way to buy it is in a set with all seven discs in digipacks with original artwork. That'll set you back £40, or about $83, which isn't much of a discount (thanks mostly to the insane exchange rate). The next option is to buy all seven albums as digital downloads, all encoded as 320kbps MP3s, along with digital artwork. The price for this is an unforgiving £35, or $73. The last option is probably the most appealing to Radiohead die-hards, as it comes with a limited-edition USB drive. The 4GB drive will come loaded with the seven albums encoded as uncompressed WAV files as well as digital artwork. The price for this "strictly limited edition" piece of hardware? £80, or $167. Yes, $167 for a thumb drive loaded up with WAV files.


The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada
However, our analysis of the Canadian P2P file-sharing subpopulation suggests that there is a strong positive relationship between P2P file-sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file-sharing increases CD purchasing. We estimate that the effect of one additional P2P download per month is to increase music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year (based on estimates obtained from the negative binomial model in Table 4.3). Furthermore, we find indirect evidence of the 'market creation' effect of P2P file-sharing in the positive coefficient on the variable 'Not available elsewhere' (Table 4.3).

snapshot 11/1/07

SanDisk lets you see video from PC on TV if you're patient

Before you can transfer such shows as CSI: Miami and Penn & Teller from the Fanfare site, you plug the stick into a USB port on a Windows XP or Windows Vista PC. TakeTV doesn't work with Macs. The software to install Fanfare is included on the TakeTV thumb drive. Minor hassle: I had to separately download a couple of extra components to make this work, including the latest Adobe Flash add-on for my browser, plus Microsoft's. Net software technology for helping manage the service.

Moving shows onto TakeTV inside Fanfare is easy. You position your mouse over the episode you want to add and click on a "+" button; to free up space, you click on "-." I wish there were a "time remaining" indicator to tell you how long the process will take. A progress bar helps only a little. It took about 15 minutes to load a 33-minute episode of Showtime's Fat Actress. You can transfer more than one show at a time.

Steve Case Launches New Music Service

Steve Case is at work once again, this time on a music service that is built on top of the Facebook platform and connects to a user's iTunes playlist to stream it to others. Backed by case's Revolution LLC, Qloud (pronounced "cloud") also has the backing of several labels and music industry luminaries. It intends to help the user share his or her iTunes library with friends through the social network Facebook.

Since the service was first made publicly available three months ago, it has gained some one million registered users, and has totaled over 120 million plays, according to the company.

How digital sound works

Among audiophiles, the analog vs. digital debate rages without end. I, like a lot of other musicians and music fans, have my own preferences--I own many more LPs than CDs, and have paid dearly to record some of my bands' music onto 2-inch tape instead of direct to hard drive. But included in those preferences are some preconceptions. You've heard it before: digital music sounds "colder" or "cleaner" or "more sterile" because it's delivering a stream of 0s and 1s, instead of a pure sound wave. Or something like that.

Audio professionals don't use terms like these, largely because they're subjective and imprecise, and sometimes inaccurate. Recently, one of these professionals presented the best explanation of analog vs. digital sound that I've ever heard. Here's a super-condensed version of an already simplified explanation.

The Cure For The Music Industry's Blues - New Wireless Technology Increases Bottom Line For Record Labels & Artists SONGboost, a provider of software solutions to the music industry, is pleased to announce it's forthcoming Fan-Artist Trading Decks (FAT Decks), which enable musicians, record labels, and media companies to quickly create and syndicate digital music assets that can be shared by fans across any Internet-enabled device including mobile phones, desktop computers and set-top boxes. Based on combination of SONGboost technology, and technology licensed from SQGO, a technology firm also based in Boston, FAT Decks provide consumers with a mechanism to legally consume and share "decks" of digital music assets, while at the same time ensuring that the integrity of the digital assets remains intact.

snapshot 10/31/07

Review: Free tunes service carries price
For one, I couldn't download more than one song or video at a time. Users can fill a queue with tracks, but must go back to SpiralFrog's home page and click a button after each song is transferred to start the next. This meant that to download an entire album I had to stay near my computer. And while I'm often stuck there anyway, it's a pain to interrupt whatever I'm doing to click through to the next song. I tried beating the system by setting up two queues on two different Web browsers, but SpiralFrog was wise to my game: The site interrupted both downloads.


Songbird, a browser-integrated media player, received $8M last year
Although we reported in October 2006 that Songbird had taken $1 million from Atlas Ventures and Sequoia Capital, it apparently only took another two months for the company to land another $8 million. The funding in December 2006 came from the same two funds, according to TechCrunch. It remained unreported, until now.

Songbird works within Mozilla Firefox as an open platform that developers can use to integrate a customized media player into their own website. By working within Firefox, the company adroitly avoids the need for consumers to download and install applications, which people tend to avoid. The player’s main value to other companies seems to be in providing developers with an easier way to build music-focused websites than coding their own platform. We’re not so sure how the company plans on making money, although there may be some options for revenue sharing with online music stores.


Facebook Music is Coming!
The new platform is set to be announced at ad:tech in New York City next week. Leading up to this announcement Facebook has been holding top-secret meetings with high-level representatives at each of the four major music labels. Major and independent label artists and will register their sub-domain name through Facebook. Like “www.facebook.com/insertbandnamehere” for example. On this page Facebook users will be allowed to become “fans” of the artist and connect to the media hosted on the “artist page.”

In the first generation of Facebook Music “fans” will be allowed to listen to artist’s music, watch videos, upload pictures, add music to their page, receive tour information and interact with other fans. Online music moguls, be warned. Future generations will come quickly and allow unprecedented targeted marketing, ad buys and media promotion. Facebook is developing artist specific sales widgets to allow for music sales through the site as well.


Creative MP3 Player Share Falls 24% Over Last Year
"Creative Technology, the Singapore-based company that's a distant third behind Apple (AAPL) in the MP3 player market, full further behind last quarter. The company, which delisted from the Nasdaq earlier this year, posted Q1 sales of $185 million. That's down 24% y/y, while Apple saw iPod revenues increase 4%, and unit sales increase 17% in its last quarter. About the best you can for Creative is that it still has a larger market share (something in the single digits, according to NPD data) than Microsoft's Zune."


Indie rock struggling to make money in digital era
Box stores largely ignored indie records during the last 10 years because it didn't make sense to stock a product that wouldn't move a significant amount of units. That obviously isn't a concern in the virtual marketplace.

Is $7 an album enough to keep an indie label in the black? Not according to Rian Murphy, sales manager at Drag City Records. Murphy's label decided to pull its catalog from digital subscription service eMusic because it had to sell three times the amount of songs to make the slim profit iTunes already provided. The service provides plans that can whittle the price of a song down to 27 cents — appetizing to consumers but nauseating for artists.


Passalong Beefs MP3 Offering, Grabs ADA Catalog
Nashville-based Passalong Networks recently expanded its MP3-based catalog, thanks to a deal involving the Alternative Distribution Alliance (ADA). The catalog of roughly 30,000 tracks comes from high-profile labels Sub Pop, Epitaph, Saddle Creek, Downtown Records, and others, a group eager to embrace DRM-free formats. Passalong, a white label service, is offering the protection-free content to its clientele. That includes the download store for retailer f.y.e., owned by Trans World Entertainment.


MTV Reports One Million Britney Streams, Posts Record
MTV Networks has now streamed one million previews of the upcoming Britney Spears album, a positive indicator for the troubled artist. Just last week, MTV positioned the album, Blackout, as a streaming exclusive across its numerous online properties. The latest tally, shared with Digital Music News by network executives on Tuesday, represents a record for the company and its program, "The Leak." It also indicates a considerable level of demand for the album, which just hit retail outlets.


Free Music Now! Lala.com's Plan to Give Songs Away Could Upend the Industry
Starting in November, according to Nguyen, Lala will offer unlimited on-demand streams of music from two of the four major labels (the company's still negotiating with the other two). That music doesn't come free to Lala — the company expects to pay more than $160 million in licensing fees to the labels over the first two years. Rhapsody has a similar arrangement, but it charges users a subscription fee of about $15 per month. Lala won't charge users a penny. Instead, the company intends to recoup those costs through music sales. It hopes to pull in $120 million in the first two years, which works out to roughly $5 of revenue per user per month, Nguyen says. In addition to brokering trades among members, Lala will deal downloads, sell physical CDs, even hock vinyl — and he says more revenue streams are on the way.


Happy Halloween!

snapshot 10/20/07

Best Buy teams with Mydeo on video service
Electronics retailer Best Buy Co launched an online service in partnership with video hosting site Mydeo on Tuesday, through which its customers can store and share home movies and videos via the Internet.

The move was spurred by a rising demand for video services that offer privacy and ad-free sharing, particularly among families with children, said Best Buy Vice President Kevin Winneroski. "Through Best Buy Video Sharing, customers can safely store their videos and share them only with the friends and family they choose," Winneroski said in a statement.


Zazzle to follow Snocap to MySpace glory
Selling music on MySpace worked out so well for the now-downsized Snocap. Now, Zazzle.com is giving it a go, helping sell music merchandise through MySpace. According to reports, Zazzle and MySpace reached an agreement to allow MySpace bands to sell customized T-shirts for $15 to $20. Some day, MySpace might open a platform for third-party developers and let them make money independently as promised, but not today.


Hear Music Signs Hilary McRae
Hear Music, the label started by Concord Music Group and Starbucks, has signed Hilary McRae as the company's first developing artist. While the full album will not be available until spring 2008, Starbucks customers will be able to download McRae's song "Consider Me Gone" on November 1 as part of Starbucks' "Download of the Day" program.


Who’s Bucks: The Who Launch For-Fee Subscription Site
Gearing up for what they no doubt hope will be both a lucrative holiday season and a bank account-enhancing 2008, the Who have their Amazing Journey: The Story of the Who (Universal) DVD issued on November 6, while a day earlier, Nov. 5, they launch TheWho.com, a for-fee subscription site.

For $50 a year, you can become a “Wholigan” and be privy to all sorts of goodies — term used in the relative sense — that the unwashed masses won’t be able to view, listen to, talk about with other fans, and otherwise (cough) decide whether or not they want to pay even more money for. (e.g., tickets to concerts: the band has already been doing this with folks who signed up at TheWhoTour.com—which includes a “community” section of fan message boards—but that site is currently not taking any more registrations).


Big retailers launch HD DVD price war
A pre-holiday retail skirmish in high-definition DVD players has begun. Just days after Wal-Mart (WMT) slashed its in-store price on the Toshiba HD-A2 to $198, Circuit City (CC) and Amazon (AMZN) followed suit by offering the player online for $197.99.
Consumers seem eager to buy the HD-A2, which had been selling on Amazon for $230 and as much as $280 elsewhere. The Toshiba player, which had been one of several top-selling DVD players on Amazon before the price cut, has quickly become the favorite: On Monday morning it was the 24th most-purchased electronics item on Amazon’s site. The next closest DVD player ranked 46.


Can Google-Powered Phones Connect With Carriers? (requires subscription)
Google Inc. is close to unveiling its long-planned strategy to shake up the wireless market, people familiar with the matter say. The Web giant's ambitious goal: to make applications and services as accessible on cellphones as they are on the Internet.

In a move likely to kick off an intense debate about the future shape of the cellphone industry, Google wants to make it easier for cellphone customers to get a variety of extra services on their phones -- from maps to social-networking features to video-sharing. To get its way, however, the search giant will have to overcome resistance from wireless carriers and deal with potentially thorny security and privacy issues.

snapshot 10/29/07

Walgreen sees movie-burning DVD kiosks at stores
Walgreen plans to put kiosks that can make DVDs of popular movies in drugstore photo departments next year, using a new system that would increase selection while avoiding piracy. Recent change in copy-protection rules governing DVDs have freed Walgreen and other retailers to tap this new movie market by letting consumers burn digital copies onto blank discs at stores, industry watchers said.


Brick-and-mortar stores eye new music formats
In the latest attempts, iTunes digital download album cards highlighting specific titles are getting high marks in the early part of the rollout. Meanwhile, merchants await the introduction of the "ringle" -- which aims to revive the CD single in the physical world and allow brick-and-mortar merchants to participate in the ringtone phenomenon.

Retailers pay nothing for the cards, which are not activated until paid for at the register. So far, "people are pleasantly surprised by the results," Sony BMG Music Entertainment senior vice president and general manager of U.S. digital sales Adam Mirabella said. The Vedder card comprises 6 percent of overall scans for "Into the Wild," which has scanned 95,000 units, according to Nielsen SoundScan -- including 36,000 in digital downloads, 5,720 of those from the digital cards.


Mobile subscription services not yet phoning it in
Mobile phones were meant to revolutionize the subscription music business. But if that revolution were to be televised today, it would consist of nothing but dead air.


Indie bands go online to seek funds from fans
The most recent, and perhaps most well-known, exemplars of the trend are seminal German industrial band Einsturzende Neubauten, which has funded its past three records using donations from a group the act refers to as "supporters." Neubauten charged between 35 and 65 euros ($49.50-$92) for the ability to interact with the band via webcast during the recording process as well as a copy of the finished product.

A number of smaller unsigned bands have also used the Web to raise money for recording expenses from fans and strangers. Two sites, Sellaband.com and Slicethepie.com, enable listeners to "invest" in unsigned bands, with the investors betting that the acts eventually will sell enough records to make them a profit. Investors are also granted access to the band and free copies of the records.


When Pigs Fly: The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide
via CrunchGear
Rob over at Demonbaby is pissed. At the music industry, at the takedown of OiNK - everything is driving this guy mad. Hence why he took to his blog and decided to really let the public know the state of today’s music industry. Rob used to work for the big labels from the late 1990s into the 2000s and knows a thing or two about how they work and what they loathe. In the end, as you probably expected, it’s all about profit and money.
Most of us are like Rob in ways. We loathe the RIAA and the big labels that nearly force us to pirate due to exorbitant prices on the music they both sell. The newspapers adapted to the age of the Internet, so why can’t the labels? Ultimately, Rob suggests boycotting the RIAA by purchasing non-RIAA music, pirating, writing to labels and even contacting your congressman. The post is one of the longest reads around on the issue, but is by all means necessary. I highly recommend taking a 20-30 minutes out of your day and reading it. It’ll change the way you view and hear your music.


EMI And imeem Partner For Viral Song & Video Streaming
Music centric social networking site imeem and EMI today launched free ad supported on-demand full song and video streaming of EMI's global digital catalog. Sony, Warner and a number of indie labels already have similar deals with imeem.

Members can upload their favorite music, video and photos for streaming, create customImeem playlists and slideshows, and share them with friends and fans on imeem as well as on Facebook and personal blogs.


If It’s Retail, Is It Still Rock?
The barriers are changing and we as artists are making less and less money, and we have to get creative,” notes Mr. McKagan, whose new band has licensed its music to a Victoria’s Secret commercial and movie soundtracks, formed partnerships with entities like the music video simulation game Guitar Hero, and appeared in ads for the clothing designer John Varvatos. “Fifteen years ago, it would have been totally not cool. You would have been selling out.” BAND branding appears to know no bounds. The Black Crowes market rolling papers, Bon Jovi offers $1,000 signed canvas art prints and Mötley Crüe peddled Mötley Brüe, a carbonated drink. Celebration Cellars, a California winemaker, teamed up with several rockers, including Bon Jovi, Kiss, Madonna and the Rolling Stones, to issue special-edition wines that feature band logos and sell for $100 or more a bottle.


Bootleg Yourself
So why don't more acts do it? First of all, a system will cost between $5,000 and $10,000 - and burn towers have a two-year shelf life. Co-written songs create copyright issues, major labels tend to keep a tight grip on their product and touring the larger venues requires lots of paperwork and/or favors.


Life in the vast chain
"This just makes business sense," says Don Henley. "With the disappearance of large record store chains, Wal-Mart is now the largest CD retailer in the world. And if people don't want to buy from Wal-Mart, they can buy directly from us at the website."

Eight years ago the Eagles created Eagles Recording Co. and contemplated releasing an album online, but ultimately decided it wasn't the route for them. "The Internet is a wonderful thing, but as a tool for distributing music, it doesn't matter if you can reach the whole world if your fans can't find you," Henley says. "The Internet has not worked out on a large scale for anyone I know. So some people are going with indie labels, which for the most part are distributed by majors. And some have gone with certain large coffee companies."


BlackBerry hops on digital music bandwagon
Research in Motion's BlackBerries will come with a cheap, unlimited music service from next month for the first time, marking the latest foray by a handheld device maker into a burgeoning music arena. Rob Lewis, CEO of British mobile music provider Omnifone, told Reuters on Tuesday his firm had signed a deal to supply the BlackBerry with unlimited tracks from their MusicStation service, sounding the latest challenge to Apple's iTunes for the newly launched iPhone.


Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD's Coffin
As counterintuitive as it may seem in this age of iPods and digital downloads, vinyl -- the favorite physical format of indie music collectors and audiophiles -- is poised to re-enter the mainstream, or at least become a major tributary.

Pressing plants are ramping up production, but where is the demand coming from? Why do so many people still love vinyl, even though its bulky, analog nature is anathema to everything music is supposed to be these days? Records, the vinyl evangelists will tell you, provide more of a connection between fans and artists. And many of today's music fans buy 180-gram vinyl LPs for home listening and MP3s for their portable devices.


NBC chief says Apple 'destroyed' music pricing
NBC Universal chief executive Jeff Zucker on Sunday urged colleagues to take a stand against Apple's iTunes, charging that the digital download service was undermining the ability of traditional media companies to set profitable rates for their content online.


Zune Album Art Goes High Rez
With no announcements or fanfare, Zune Marketplace appears to be improving the resolution of their album art. Users are noting that new albums looks better, while numerous old albums are momentarily dropping from the service only to be replaced by bigger, more beautiful versions—all available for free re-download. One Zune owner reports that their 1680×1050 monitor was filled by one of these new covers, meaning that the Zune's 320x240 screen should be fairly pleased with the situation—right along with Zune owners.


Converged Mobile Music Grows, Storage Remains Important
Consumers are increasingly interested in converged mobile music experiences, yet storage remains a gating factor. In a recent survey published by PriceGrabber.com, 58 percent of consumers felt that phones carrying MP3 players are "valuable," while 54 percent of purchased devices offered embedded music capabilities. Meanwhile, the LA-based comparison shopping destination noted that 85 percent of its top 20-selling phones carried MP3 player capabilities, a 31 percent jump over similar figures from last year.

Mobile manufacturers are stuffing more and more features into their devices, including camcorders, cameras, GPS navigational systems, and of course, music playback. By default, that rising tide of options means more music functionality, and a growing threat for stand-alones like the iPod. Still, storage remains a barrier, though PriceGrabber noted that 45 percent of its top-selling devices have at least 60MB out-of-the-box. And a large percentage of those devices can be easily upgraded.

Still, one-third of respondents noted that bigger storage is still attracting them to dedicated MP3 players. Meanwhile, other factors may also be at play. Stand-alone MP3 players also offer dedicated interfaces, and that means easier access to songs, playlists, and other features. And even though a consolidated device offers all-in-one convenience, a lost device means everything is gone. PriceGrabber canvassed 2,535 consumers for the report.


Amazon MP3 Download Store Now Blocking Non-US Customers
Amazon.com is now using geographical targeting to filter out everyone outside the USA. For the first month or so, as long as you had a US-based billing address (even if it was fake), you could buy MP3s from Amazon.