RouteNote Blog http://routenote.com/blog The World of Music Licensing and Distribution Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:13:10 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 Pink Floyd Suing EMI Over Digital Royalties http://routenote.com/blog/pink-floyd-suing-emi-over-digital-royalties/ http://routenote.com/blog/pink-floyd-suing-emi-over-digital-royalties/#comments Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:13:10 +0000 Finchy http://routenote.com/blog/?p=2994 pink floyd

It has been reported that Pink Floyd is currently in a contractual dispute with EMI. Members of Floyd are disputing a number of analog-to-digital extensions. “It was unclear whether record companies would be selling direct to the consumer or through retailers,” attorney Robert Howe noted, while also noting that the iTunes Store had not yet arrived at the time of the contract.

Howe is contesting moves by EMI to ‘unbundle’ music into a-la-carte singles, dismissing claims that de-coupling only applied to physical formats.  Also under dispute is what royalty percentages should be assigned to new, digital formats.  The case is being heard by the High Court in London.

Related Articles

]]> http://routenote.com/blog/pink-floyd-suing-emi-over-digital-royalties/feed/ 0 Billboard’s Big Earners Of 2009 http://routenote.com/blog/billboards-big-earners-of-2009/ http://routenote.com/blog/billboards-big-earners-of-2009/#comments Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:42:29 +0000 Dashiel http://routenote.com/blog/?p=2990 Who earned most in the US music industry last year? Here’s a rundown of the top ten, from Billboard (read the rest of their list here)

10 Metallica
$25,564,234

The release of “Guitar Hero – Metallica” backed up solid tour and back catalogue income for these vintage rock legends (their biggest selling track in 2009 was released in 1991!).

9 Kenny Chesney
$26,581,141

Country’s biggest star sold a lot of physical product and live tickets as well as 500,000 ringtones to achieve this total. Absolutely zero exposure this side of the pond though…
8 Coldplay
$27,326,562

$24 million in touring revenue, but only $1 million in album sales… still, not bad for a band so bland they have to rip off Joe Satriani.

7 Jonas Brothers
$33,596,576

Riding the Mouse train all the way to the bank.
6 Pink
$36,347,658

Pink is another artist who did well touring last year, with revenues of $35 million from live shows bolstered by lots of TV airtime and healthy album sales.
5 Britney Spears
$38,885,267

More touring, more album sales, more breakdowns, more wierd haircuts. I think it’s probably worth it for almost forty million dollars a year. She can retire before she’s 30 and just think about taking care of the kids…
4 AC/DC
$43,650,466

Over a million album sales last year, coupled with guess what? The 4th biggest grossing tour last year put these Aussie lads very firmly back in the black.
3 Madonna
$47,237,774

Leather skinned Yogi Madonna pulled the biggest tour of her career under her Live Nation deal.

2 Bruce Springsteen
$57,619,037

Making more money than ever before in his career, with highlights including a headline slot at Glastonbury and a performance at the Superbowl, Mr. S. shows us what the long tail really means.
1 U2
$108,601,283

A clever new 360 degree stadium stage setup means that the biggest earning band of last year could pack even more bodies into their stadium tour.

Related Articles

]]> http://routenote.com/blog/billboards-big-earners-of-2009/feed/ 0 OK GO’s New Viral Video – This Too Shall Pass http://routenote.com/blog/ok-gos-new-viral-video-this-too-shall-pass/ http://routenote.com/blog/ok-gos-new-viral-video-this-too-shall-pass/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:41:53 +0000 Dashiel http://routenote.com/blog/?p=2987 The Oxfam-chic has been abandoned in favour of boiler suits in their latest web outing – a huge Heath Robinson (OK, since they’re from Chicago, Rube Goldberg) contraption to rival the one in Honda’s Cog advert. Ironically, given the fuss they’ve been making about revenues from embedding their previous treadmill viral super-hit, the video wasn’t embeddable, but sponsorship from a certain insurance company means that we can now save you the trouble of clicking all the way over to YouTube for this little beauty:


Related Articles

]]> http://routenote.com/blog/ok-gos-new-viral-video-this-too-shall-pass/feed/ 0 Does Music Streaming Cost Music Sales? http://routenote.com/blog/does-music-streaming-cost-music-sales/ http://routenote.com/blog/does-music-streaming-cost-music-sales/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:09:12 +0000 Dashiel http://routenote.com/blog/?p=2984 2 centsCan music streaming ever be a viable alternative to hard copy and download music sales? WMG’s Edgar Bronfman has his doubts, and looking at some of the figures being published in the media they might seem reasonable. Increases in the number of users on services that provide on-demand music streaming (where you pick the track you want to hear like MOG, Spotify, and Grooveshark) correspond to decreases in music sales, while increases in use of radio’ streaming services [Last.fm, Pandora] seemed to drive more sales. There doesn’t seem to be any mystery as to why this might be; Spotify’s and MOG’s users no longer have any reason to buy music from other sources once they’re signed up (particularly as they can put their playlists on their iPods and other mobile devices if they buy a premium account), while Pandora and Last.fm’s customers have no guarantee of getting a particular track on their playlist again, so they have to buy it to hear it whenever they want. This might seem to be an open and shut case for the record labels; one service drives sales, while another cuts revenue – but it’s not quite as simple as that. Spotify has massive customer appeal, as the hordes that try and sign up every time they re-open user registration prove, and it also drives a lot of interaction with listeners; according to Spotify’s own figures the average use playlists around 15,000 tracks. The vast majority of Spotify’s users might be on the free-to-listen ad supported plan, with only single figure percentages signed up to their £10 a month premium package, but it’s clear that the proposition is incredibly attractive to consumers. The premium users represent a healthy annual income for the record labels to share with the platform; £120 a year is not an insignificant spend, and the potential for fledgling on demand platforms to increase their advertising revenue so that even the non-paying customers are generating profits for the record labels is proportional to the platforms’ desirability and popularity,

On demand services are what the consumer wants, and are proven to reduce the incidence of file sharing and online music piracy, something that unequivocally costs the music industry. Cutting off support for such services would surely drive a proportion of users back to illegal, non-revenue-generating, methods of consumption. Assessing the profitability of on demand against radio streaming will have to be done over the coming years as the platforms mature and adjust their business models, but it seems unlikely that killing off the most eagerly recieved of the net’s music biz babies just as they’re getting established would be a rational strategy for the industry.

For our part, we’re seeing tangible revenues come back for our artists from on demand services, and we’re happy to be able to help independent artists get music up on Spotify and in other online stores.

Related Articles

]]> http://routenote.com/blog/does-music-streaming-cost-music-sales/feed/ 0 Mark Thompson’s Defence, Plus Have Your Say http://routenote.com/blog/mark-thompsons-defence-plus-have-your-say/ http://routenote.com/blog/mark-thompsons-defence-plus-have-your-say/#comments Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:34:23 +0000 Dashiel http://routenote.com/blog/?p=2980 Mark ThompsonThe Director-General of the BBC has come under a lot of fire this week for his proposals to axe two radio stations and drop a lot of content from the website in order to redirect funding to improve the quality of programming across the rest of the BBC’s network. The stars of music and media have been laying their scorn on the DG’s plans, and the vast bulk of comments on the “putting quality first” blog post he put up on the BBC’s site were resoundingly negative, chastising him for contradicting himself by taking down some of the best, highest quality content, and defending what are clearly their own favourite services.

For my part I can’t help feeling that any announcement of cutbacks is going to provoke complaints from the people who are negatively affected. There are definitely great programmes on 6 Music and the Asian Network, but if the stations are to be closed, there’s no reason the good bits can’t be cherry picked and put on the other stations with a broader reach, swapping out for worse shows, gaining listeners and improving the quality of service for the great unwashed that haven’t discovered the newer stations, or simply don’t have DAB radios. That said, there are certainly other places the budget could have been cut from, Graham Norton’s salary, for one.

A leaner, sharper BBC that provides an alternative to, instead of adding to the morass of commercialised drivel on the increasing number of other stations is something that I fully support. Whatever your views, Auntie is listening; you can log into the BBC Trust’s website and contribute to their public consultation here.

Related Articles

]]> http://routenote.com/blog/mark-thompsons-defence-plus-have-your-say/feed/ 0 More Gorillaz Content – Murdoc’s Favourites http://routenote.com/blog/more-gorillaz-content-murdocs-favourites/ http://routenote.com/blog/more-gorillaz-content-murdocs-favourites/#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:41:00 +0000 Dashiel http://routenote.com/blog/?p=2976 Since Damon Albarn and Jamie ‘Tank Girl’ Hewlett’s collaborative cartoon band Gorillaz were nice enough to give YouTube an exclusive on the video for their new track ‘Stylo’, YouTube have let their fictional bassist Murdoc Niccols curate a post on their Celebrity Playlist section. The mask slips a little bit, and Murdoc’s voice betrays him as an excitable 40 year old man, rather than a sharp-toothed ego-bass-maniac. Some of the videos are nice, like the clip from Jacques Cousteau’s ‘Silent World’, and others are revealing, like the dressing room rehearsal of “Hip Hop”, by Mos Def and my favourite colliery band/rap mashup group, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble (who you should definitely check out on dino-space here). Anyway, here’s the clip – and no, Charlie Bit Me isn’t on there, odd, considering the teeth thing.


Related Articles

]]> http://routenote.com/blog/more-gorillaz-content-murdocs-favourites/feed/ 0 Stopping Scalping http://routenote.com/blog/stopping-scalping/ http://routenote.com/blog/stopping-scalping/#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:22:24 +0000 Dashiel http://routenote.com/blog/?p=2960 ScalpingDigital Music News are carrying this story about online ticket scalping – a case in which an LA based company calling themselves ‘Wiseguy Tickets’ employed a ring of Bulgarian computer programmers to buy up all the best tickets to high profile, high demand concerts and resell them online for a huge mark-up. Perhaps parting with more than six times the face value of the ticket is painful for whoever buys the ticket second hand, but presumably no-one is twisting their arm as they click ‘confirm bid’, and as far as eBay is concerned it’s perfectly legitimate (at least in the UK – some US states have laws against it).

So who is at fault here? Blocking the public from buying tickets wholesale with highly organised, bulk buying and reselling operations seems pretty underhand and unsporting, but the scalpers are taking the risk that people will purchase the inflated tickets, so isn’t it just the normal exercise of a free market? Are the promoters missing a trick in the first place? A staggered ebay auction style release of tickets by the promoter, with say 25% of total tickets released 12, 8, 4 and 2 weeks before the gig, with prices starting at a reasonable face value would surely have the same free-market effect. There’s the strong argument that this competetive model would be a disservice to the less affluent fans, but promoters would have the same chance of selling out a venue at the starting price, and could only benefit from any uplift if the tickets ended up being worth more to a punter than the original price – if they were bid up by competing punters, and this would make it harder for scalpers to get hold of tickets in the first place, as to get them they’d have to compete with Joe Public in the first place, paying the elevated prices themselves. It would also go some way to eliminating their profits – why buy from an unofficial auction when there’s an official one happening, and could potentially make more money for the promoter, venue and artist if the ticket revenue is split out between them.

What do you think, internet people? Is sclaping fair practice, or callous parasitism? Would selling online like this just be a way for promoters to benefit at fans’ expense, or would it be a neat way of cutting scalpers out of the loop and rationalising ticket prices for the rest of us?

ebay mumford and sons

Related Articles

]]> http://routenote.com/blog/stopping-scalping/feed/ 0 When You’re On A Roll… Black Keys Release New Album http://routenote.com/blog/when-youre-on-a-roll-black-keys-release-new-album/ http://routenote.com/blog/when-youre-on-a-roll-black-keys-release-new-album/#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:02:57 +0000 Dashiel http://routenote.com/blog/?p=2956 black keys brothersNot content with the 3 albums they’ve released over the last 12 months (BlackRoc, Auerbach’s solo album – Keep It Hid, and Carney’s Drummer), the Black Keys are dropping another album on the 18th of May, with a tour to accompany it, obviously.

A track listing doesn’t mean much withouth accompanying sounds, so make some grungy blues noises in your head as you read this:

Brothers

01 Everlasting Light
02 Next Girl
03 Tighten Up
04 Howlin’ for You
05 She’s Long Gone
06 Black Mud
07 The Only One
08 Too Afraid to Love You
09 Ten Cent Pistol
10 Sinister Kid
11 The Go Getter
12 I’m Not the One
13 Unknown Brother
14 Never Gonna Give You Up
15 These Days

Related Articles

]]> http://routenote.com/blog/when-youre-on-a-roll-black-keys-release-new-album/feed/ 0 New Gorillaz Video – Stylo http://routenote.com/blog/new-gorillaz-video-stylo/ http://routenote.com/blog/new-gorillaz-video-stylo/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:31:45 +0000 Dashiel http://routenote.com/blog/?p=2952 gorillaz styloThe new Gorillaz album, plastic beach is out next week, and the video for ‘Stylo’, the first single to be drawn from was posted on YouTube yesterday – featuring an El Camino driving, sunglass toting, Bruce Willis. Bruce proceeds to chase the 3D animated crew across the California desert in a Mad Max style chase ending in true Hollywood style. We can’t embed the video, but you can watch it here, and check out the intro to their Plastic Beach concept below:


Related Articles

]]> http://routenote.com/blog/new-gorillaz-video-stylo/feed/ 0 BBC Cutting Services, Investing In Content http://routenote.com/blog/bbc-cutting-services-investing-in-content/ http://routenote.com/blog/bbc-cutting-services-investing-in-content/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:07:58 +0000 Dashiel http://routenote.com/blog/?p=2949 bbc original logoThe BBC is reviewing its channel and programming lineup across all media, and looks set to cut some TV, Radio and Web services to focus its budget on making “fewer things better”. The highest profile services in line for the axe are digital/online only stations 6 Music and the Asian Network, with teen-aimed services Blast and Switch also in the firing line. The Corporation is also looking at cutting chunks out of its main web services, dropping sections with poor online audiences wholesale to reduce costs. The narrowing of services is aimed at freeing up more of Auntie’s budget to be focussed into the content on the remaining services; making less, but better content.

Strong feeling is evident among the Asian Network and 6 Music’s listeners, who are relatively few in number, but passionate about saving their stations and have already started campaigns against the cuts. Their views are not shared by everyone; Peter Bazalgette, creator of Channel 4’s “Big Brother”, applauded the cuts, and called for the BBC to retreat from more programming areas to make room for independent production companies, who have been hard hit by the recent recession. Mark Thompson conceded that some of the audiences, particularly the Teen sector that Blast was aimed at, were being better served by Channel 4 and other independent and commercial providers.

The BBC has struggled with its public service remit over recent years, trying hard to find a balance between its need to create unique, informative and educational programming as per its charter, and calls to justify the license fee with which it funds itself by making more entertainment programmes with a wider appeal. In this blogger’s opinion, a refocussing on excellent rather than broad programming is a very positive step, and a return to the values that make the Beeb so precious a national treasure.

Related Articles

]]> http://routenote.com/blog/bbc-cutting-services-investing-in-content/feed/ 0