Archive for the ‘Digital Music News’ Category
Previously here on RouteNote we have talked a little about musical iphone or ipod touch applications such as the Ocarina, and here is a new one, the iDrum.
The iDrum lets users remix a bunch of classic club tracks with more than 300 samples to play with, tapping the screen to build up layers of bleeps and beats.
There are 3 different apps available in the iTunes store.
Ministry of Sound version – 
Club edition –
Hip-hop edition –
The prices vary depending upon your country, but check it out!!
Even though there has been a big decline in CD sales, which is expect to continue, Warner Music Group managed to actually meet analysts’ expectations and remain strong.
2008 fiscal year revenue grew 3% to $3,491M, and declined 2% on a constant-currency basis. 34 revenue totaled $854M a decrease of 1% from the prior-year quarter or 5% on a constant-currency basis.- 2008 digital revenue rose 39% to $639M or 18% of total. Q4 digital revenue was $167M or 20% of total revenue up from $166M in the third quarter of fiscal ’08 and up 28% from the prior-year quarter. Full-year 2008 digital revenue rose 39% to $639M or 18% of total revenue.
- Operating income from continuing operations declined 20% to $66 million.. in the quarter compared to $83 million in the prior-year quarter. Prior quarters had benefited from a $17M legal settlement and been dragged down by whopping $9M in expenses during the failed aquisition of EMI.
- Operating income before depreciation and amortization from continuing operations fell 8%. (more)
WMG’s saw revenue fall 3.7% with weakness in the U.S. offset by sales in Japan, France and Italy. Major sellers included Metallica, Kid Rock and Mariya Takeuchi.
Sources: Billboard, MusicAlly, Hypebot
Universal Music Group and Meebo have partnered with relation to adding ad-supported videos to Meebo. The partnership launches with Kanye West, Ludacris and The Killers.
The deal is similar to ad revenue sharing deals that many major labels have with YouTube and others. Until recently, most record labels viewed artist videos as promotional, but now days this seems to be turning around. 360 deals are coming to the floor and new revenues streams need to be found and nurtured.
Japan’s Internet music market saw healthy growth in the third quarter of this year but a collapse in the once-mighty ringtone market led to mixed results for the cell phone sector of the country’s digital music industry, according to figures released on Friday.
Total downloads over the Internet and on cell phones totalled 118 million during the July to September period, down 3 percent compared to the same three months of 2007, while revenues grew 11 percent to ¥22 billion, the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) said. The group collects data from most of Japan’s major music publishers.
Growth was strong in the Internet download portion of the market where downloads jumped 30 percent to 10.6 million and revenue surged 49 percent to ¥2.3 billion. The relatively new music video download market more than doubled in size but was still small at 391,000 downloads.
Courtney Holt, an MTV exectuive, is rumoured to be named as the new president of Myspace Music as early as today.
MySpace Music is the digital music service formed by News Corp. and the four largest recording companies. Some observers say that MySpace, with a well-established history of offering music, could emerge as a competitor to Apple’s iTunes.
There has been a rumour that 10 out of the 89 employees at Buzznet have been laid off. Thus, 15% of the Buzznet staff are leaving. Is this because of the economic downturn?
I found it interesting that all this was done on a Friday, not good timing from an employee point of view.
Today Nokia has announced the launch of its new Italian digital music store, http://music.nokia.it. Nokia has already been able to grab 4 million songs for its catalogue.
Nokia has signed agreements with Universal Music Group, SONY BMG ENTERTAINMENT, Warner Music Group and EMI Group, and independent record labels and aggregators including, The Orchard, IODA, Kiver, Made In eTaly, Wondermark and with local record labels such as Sugar, Carosello, Universo, Edel.
Nokia Music Store focuses on the local market, strongly associated with the consumer, as more than *54% of the music that is sold in Italy is local.
Source: Dailymobile.se
In the last year or so it has been tough times for the major record labels. The majors have not really been moving into the digital as fast as they should, whilst at the same time not understanding the digital business models.
Whilst this still remains the case Universal have released their lastest quarters results, and they seem very surprising to me.
- $3.97 billion revenue for first 3Q’s of ’08
- + 3.5% without currency fluctuations
- + 33% for digital sales which “”more than offset” lower CD sales
- Earnings 21.8% to $516M before deduction of interest, tax and amortization
- Net is lower due to restructuring costs
- Full press release
After spending months in public beta and lots of changes to the ad supported music service, We7 is about to launch out of beta with a bang.
We7 have launched with a “Big Listen” campaign. This new service has some great new features including Free on-demand, unlimited access to full tracks and albums, “Search, Click & Play”, A ‘Celestial Jukebox’ with several million track, ‘Play Anywhere’ – a link and play system for blogs and websites, Users can create playlists, share with friends and buy mp3′s, Payments to rights owners and artists.
The first thing you will notice with the new site is that they have a completely new design. Other new additions include a Magazine, Blog and a much improved list of advertisers. Im sure we will be hearing a lot more from We7 in 2009!
In 2007 P2P music downloads were worth a staggering $69 billion, and all other forms of movie/television piracy are on the rise.
Techcrunch has been talking a lot about using music online as a free promotion tool, because eventually music will be free online. If record labels do use music online as a free promotional tool then they need to have other revenue stream. Warner Music is signing their new artists to 360 deals, in which allows them to have all revenues streams.
Somebody over there needs to put their thinking cap on, quit screwing around and just give the damn music away for free with no lawsuit strings attached.
