RouteNote Blog » Digital http://routenote.com/blog The World of Music Licensing and Distribution Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:51:17 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.2 HMV To Launch Digital Music Download Store In The Next Two Weeks http://routenote.com/blog/hmv-to-launch-digital-music-download-store-in-the-next-two-weeks/ http://routenote.com/blog/hmv-to-launch-digital-music-download-store-in-the-next-two-weeks/#comments Fri, 16 Jul 2010 08:10:48 +0000 Finchy http://routenote.com/blog/?p=4183 Before the end of July its rumoured that HMV will be launching their own digital download store. HMV has been a main player in the world of CD sales, now they have noticed the rise of digital and want part of that market.

HMV have been running hmvdigital.com for serveral months now, but on in a beta sense. Prices are currently £0.99 per single and around £7.99 for an album. These prices seems very similar to iTunes, so why would anyone think of purchasing on HMV instead of iTunes?

HMV will only be launching their download store in the UK, but Im sure over time they will hit all the other major music markets.


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]]> http://routenote.com/blog/hmv-to-launch-digital-music-download-store-in-the-next-two-weeks/feed/ 0 Tesco To Launch a Digital Music Locker Service http://routenote.com/blog/tesco-to-launch-a-digital-music-locker-service/ http://routenote.com/blog/tesco-to-launch-a-digital-music-locker-service/#comments Wed, 16 Jun 2010 21:14:14 +0000 Finchy http://routenote.com/blog/?p=3932 We have received a tip that Tesco’s is currently working on a digital locker service which is built on the cloud. The aim for Tesco’s is to bring CD and DVD sales in-store to digital version available online.

“The way it would work practically is that when you buy a disc in store or online, that title would be put up into your Digital Locker which would immediately be accessible from devices registered to that locker,” explains Blueprint Digital CEO Richard Bron, whose company is working with Tesco on the scheme.

October is pegged as the likely launch date.


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]]> http://routenote.com/blog/tesco-to-launch-a-digital-music-locker-service/feed/ 0 Digital Economy Bill To Be Whipped Through Parliament http://routenote.com/blog/digital-economy-bill-to-be-whipped-through-parliament/ http://routenote.com/blog/digital-economy-bill-to-be-whipped-through-parliament/#comments Wed, 31 Mar 2010 07:57:10 +0000 Dashiel http://routenote.com/blog/?p=3135 lord peter mandelsonThe digital economy bill has been a fairly hot potato, with the legislation being criticised heavily by one or other group whatever is proposed, added or amended. Whatever shape the bill takes, it’s either going to limit the rights of the consumer (including you, me, everyone buying stuff on iTunes, and everyone ripping it off from the Pirate Bay) or of the content and service providers (record labels, software companies, ISP’s etc). With an extremely close election coming up, everyone in the House of Commons is walking on eggshells, hugging babies, being nice to small dogs that hump their leg etc. in case they lose a vote, and the last thing they want to do is offend anyone, or have any difficult bits of legislation to do in the beginning of a new Parliamentary term.

This being the case, the complex, much amended bill is now likely to be hustled through the usual process of open debate in the commons, with only minimal discussion and a directive being issued by the leaders of the political parties for their MP’s to vote it into law quickly, without too much ugly fuss, so they can get on with the process of smarming up to the voters, slagging each other off like schoolboys and making sure they can pay their nannies and keep the moat full of Cabernet Sauvignon next year.

The directives thus issued are enforced by party ‘Whips’ that go round and make sure that MP’s are doing what they’re told and not acting [heaven forfend] on the basis of their individual opinions, hence the title…

This whipping will not prevent any of the increasingly acrimonious public discussion outside the halls of Government: it just means that we’re going to be lumped with an improperly discussed and refined piece of law governing one of the most important and fastest growing sections of the UK economy. I’m voting Green, in case anyone wondered…

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]]> http://routenote.com/blog/digital-economy-bill-to-be-whipped-through-parliament/feed/ 1 Spotify Growing Fast – Product and Territory Expansion Slated http://routenote.com/blog/spotify-growing-fast-product-and-territory-expansion-slated/ http://routenote.com/blog/spotify-growing-fast-product-and-territory-expansion-slated/#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:44:39 +0000 Dashiel http://routenote.com/blog/?p=3076 Spotify currently boasts 7 million users, all of them in Europe. Not bad for a product that was only released in October 2008 – this figure does only relate to the number of people on their free service, but their £10 a month premium service is also gaining traffic at a remarkable rate; they had “more than 250,000″ premium users on 23rd Jan ’10, and are now boasting 320,000 paid subscribers, (as of the 17th March ’10), and increase of 28% in under 3 months, and an extra £8,400,000 a year into the coffers. Spotify still needs to up their percentages though, according to UMG’s [Universal Music Group's] SVP [Senior Vice President] Rob Wells [and they would know, because they've taken shares in the business], they need to have around 10%-12% of their users as premium subscribers [they're currently at about 5%] to have a viable business in the long term. This might change as more and more advertising dollars go online though – as both Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek and industry analysts Kantar Media are saying:

kantar media advertising[Table via TechCrunch's article on the same]. Other interesting facts are that 15% to 18% of the Swedish population use Spotify – and the Swedish music industry’s revenues are up, and that Spotify’s p2p based system is actually using more interwebs than the whole nation of Sweden. There are rumours of a Spotify set-top box and/or home stereo system, a bit like that Sonos thing, but running off your Spotify premium account.

Other signs of Spotify’s ambition came from comments about Apple – Ek described them as having a freemium model like Spotify’s, as everyone (in his opinion) downloads a lot of free stuff and then buys the stuff they really like on iTunes:

“The vast majority of people’s libraries are free from Limewire or trading through friends. And then there’s a small portion of tracks that they’ve bought… I really believe that if music could be legally available on any device that you wanted… I think the music industry would be radically bigger than what it is today”.

He also thinks that Apple will change the way that iTunes works, to allow remote access from anywhere to your iTunes music account on a cloud: “People want to share, to access independently. I think it makes a lot of sense for them to do something in that area.”

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]]> http://routenote.com/blog/spotify-growing-fast-product-and-territory-expansion-slated/feed/ 0 New Jimi Hendrix Album, Rock Band Game Feature http://routenote.com/blog/new-jimi-hendrix-album-rock-band-game-feature/ http://routenote.com/blog/new-jimi-hendrix-album-rock-band-game-feature/#comments Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:17:58 +0000 Dashiel http://routenote.com/blog/?p=2883 Jimi HendrixIn an interview with the LA Times, the guitar burning rock idol’s stepsister Janie Hendrix said that not only will there be a new album released this year, named “Valleys of Neptune” (based on recordings made in the early months of 1969), but that much more of his back catalogue has been licensed to feature in the next version of the game Rock Band. For some this is enough to suggest a full out branding exercise after the manner in which the Beatles were splashed all over the previous edition.

The game’s creators, Harmonix, were more reserved in their statement to Joystiq;

“While we have not made any official announcements regarding Jimi Hendrix and Rock Band, we are excited to say that we are in discussions to bring more of his music to our platform,”

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]]> http://routenote.com/blog/new-jimi-hendrix-album-rock-band-game-feature/feed/ 0 Death of the CD? http://routenote.com/blog/death-of-the-cd/ http://routenote.com/blog/death-of-the-cd/#comments Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:03:29 +0000 Dashiel http://routenote.com/blog/?p=1563 Flogging a dead horse?Paul Resnikoff of  Digital Music News today posted this article on his blog, making the radical suggestion that the majors should seriously consider ditching CD’s as a major sales format, and concentrating on digital, thereby divesting themselves of the whole distribution network necessary to sell them. If they just stopped pressing CD’s all the shops, warehouses, trucks, box packers and smiling counter staff would suddenly become obsolete, bad for the truck drivers, and bad for the record companies in the short term, as they’d lose that income stream – but would such a ruthless move be good for the majors in the long run?

Looking at the storage formats that have waxed and waned over the history of recorded music, the eventual demise of compact discs seems inevitable; from wax cylinders to minidiscs, everything is replaced by a more convenient alternative. Even though this shift from physical to digital is a big one for the human mind to wrap itself around “But where is my actual music? My computer looks just the same as before” This will hold true of the CD just as it did of the horse-drawn carriage; people will stand around scratching their heads for a while and bemoaning the loss of work for farriers and the fall in the price of oats, but eventually we’ll all get used to having our music stored in a cufflink, or beamed into our brains from our mobile phone or whatever else is in store for us, and the CD will become what vinyl is now – a charming reminder of a less convenient, more physical age. Those companies that accept the decline of physical media and look towards maximising the advantages of digital music distribution (minescule distribution costs, instant worldwide availability, no cumbersome physical infrastructure etc. etc.) will be the ones that dominate the new era, and those that keep clinging to the old technology, will lose out in the future, no matter how strongly entrenched the current hardware seems.

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]]> http://routenote.com/blog/death-of-the-cd/feed/ 1 Spotify Raises $50 million in Funding on a $250 million Valuation http://routenote.com/blog/spotify-raises-50-million-in-funding-on-a-250-million-valuation/ http://routenote.com/blog/spotify-raises-50-million-in-funding-on-a-250-million-valuation/#comments Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:21:42 +0000 Finchy http://routenote.com/blog/?p=940

Has European music startup Spotify finally worked out the online music business? Rumors surfaced today that the company is raising a new round of financing of $50 million or so, at valuation of $250 million.

The new financing will bring in new “strategic” investors, which include rights holders in other geographic locations, according to our source. And while new investors are balking at the $250 million valuation, strong demand from venture capitalists is supposedly driving this deal to a close.

The company has yet to launch in the U.S., but boasts 2 million UK users, its biggest market. They are also launched in Germany and Sweden. Users can listen to music for free on a downloaded application with advertising, or pay a premium fee to remove the ads. Some labels are supposedly making more money now from Spotify than iTunes in the markets the service is available.

We have previously reported on the U.S launch as well as their upcoming iphone application.

Other sources that are confirming the investment include: techcrunch, venturebeat, paidcontent, arcticstartup and musically.

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]]> http://routenote.com/blog/spotify-raises-50-million-in-funding-on-a-250-million-valuation/feed/ 3 US Physical Music Sales Will Continue To Decline until 2013 http://routenote.com/blog/us-physical-music-sales-will-continue-to-decline-until-2013/ http://routenote.com/blog/us-physical-music-sales-will-continue-to-decline-until-2013/#comments Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:47:45 +0000 Finchy http://routenote.com/blog/?p=834 It has been reported that US sales of recorded music will drop to $5.52 billion in 2013. This downward trajectory will extend a pattern that began in 2000, when physical sales started to decline after rising dramatically during the heyday of the CD.

music-sales-usus-music-growth

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]]> http://routenote.com/blog/us-physical-music-sales-will-continue-to-decline-until-2013/feed/ 0 iTunes Releases Variable Pricing Model http://routenote.com/blog/itunes-releases-variable-pricing-model/ http://routenote.com/blog/itunes-releases-variable-pricing-model/#comments Tue, 07 Apr 2009 09:21:17 +0000 Finchy http://routenote.com/blog/?p=663 The anticipation is now over, as music fans everywhere can now pay more for their favorite tracks on the iTunes Store. On Tuesday morning the iTunes store switched over to a variable pricing scheme with price points now at $1.29, 99 cents and 69 cents. This pricing model is aimed at increase the price of the most popular tracks on the iTunes store while at the same time decreasing the tracks that arent so popular.

Unsurprisingly, a number of top-ranked songs are now saddled with $1.29 tags.  That includes the top-three most-downloaded songs, specifically “Boom Boom Pow” by Black Eyed Peas, “Poker Face” by Lady Gaga, and “Right Round” by Flo Rida.  But a large number of popular tracks are retaining their 99-cent stickers, at least upon initial inspection.

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]]> http://routenote.com/blog/itunes-releases-variable-pricing-model/feed/ 1 SpiralFrog Goes Under http://routenote.com/blog/spiralfrog-goes-under/ http://routenote.com/blog/spiralfrog-goes-under/#comments Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:17:19 +0000 Finchy http://routenote.com/blog/?p=640 There have been a lot of reports over the weekend about the demise of SpiralFrog. SpiralFrog was an ad supported music streaming and download service that never really took off.

Having raised as much as $12 million in VC and debt funding, the company made a splash in August 2006 (after 2 years in operations) when Universal Music made their entire music catalog available for free download through SpiralFrog, joined by EMI a month after. About a year after, SpiralFrog started handing out private beta invitations (what took them so long?)

Attorneys representing defunct music service SpiralFrog have notified investors not to expect any returns. Whatever money comes from liquidating assets will go to a group that loaned the company an “amount exceeding $34 million.”

Is this going to be the start of more ad supported music download and streaming services moving towards the deadpool? I can see Qtrax is going to now have a lot of trouble is this economic environment and Im sure they will be the next to be closing.

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