We’re big fans of Fink, one of Ninja Tune’s artists – if you are too, then you’ll be interested to see that he’s got a free, previously unreleased download of a B-side track that didn’t make it onto ‘Sort Of Revolution’ up on his site at the moment. You will need to swap him your email for it though…
Hypebot have revealed in a blog post that We7 are set to launch a paid-for premium plus service, over and above their £3.99 ad-free service, that will compete more directly with services like Spotify and Napster. No more information has yet been released either on Hypebot or on We7’s own site, so the rumour that the service will launch on the 1st of Feb may be overstated. We’ll keep an eye out.
Tunespro is a new music download store that I just came across and its seems to be to good to be true. A few years ago there was a music download store called Allofmp3.com which operated out of Russia and offered top music from the major labels at hugely discounted rates. Of course Allofmp3 was not backed by the major labels and was soon sued and taken down. Tunespro seems to be the next Allofmp3.
Tunespro has a great design and has some of the newest tracks from all of the biggest artists worldwide. However, Im sure that the major labels would like to hear that their music is being sold at only $0.19 per single and $2.99 per album. Compare that to iTunes who sell their tracks at approximately $0.99 per single and $9.99 per album.
Looking at Tunespro there is completely no information about the company running the service and the only way to get in touch is via their very basic contact form. Its shouting illegal!
Napster, the pioneer of digital music, today announced subscribers can now access their account at m.napster.com from most web-enabled phones, regardless of carrier. Subscribers can now browse, search, preview and use account credits to download tracks “over the air” from Napster’s library of more than nine million songs.
Napster customers currently receive five MP3s and unlimited listening on the PC for $5 per month. Beginning today, they can redeem credits and download tracks “over the air,” as well as receive a back-up MP3 copy for their PC – at no additional cost. Consumers can also create a new account or add credits to an existing account directly from their phone using a Napster prepaid card.
“Napster subscribers can now discover and download music at anytime on more phones from just about any carrier,” said Brad Duea, Napster president. “This is one of the strongest steps we’ve made to date toward our goal of making Napster and music accessible anytime, anywhere.”
To promote the debut of m.napster.com, and celebrate September as “Music Month,” Best Buy will offer $15 worth of Napster music (15 songs to keep and three months of unlimited listening on the PC) at no charge with the purchase of any contract mobile phone.
“Mobile phones are becoming the focal point for how people connect with their world, and music is a big piece of that,” said Jude Buckley, chief marketing and merchant officer for Best Buy Mobile. “Our customers want to be able to download and listen to music no matter where they are, and now Napster makes it accessible and simple to get music on any type of mobile phone.”
Today’s debut of m.napster.com is the first of many initiatives coming from Napster in the near future that exemplify the company’s strategy of making music instantly available from everywhere one might be.
Today the radio 4 programme “today” debuted Radiohead’s new single Harry Patch(in loving memory of) who is the last remaining veteran of world war one.
The importance of the song is the main driving force behind it and the inspiration for it will remain a major influence for the many individuals who have been touched by Harry’s story, including Thom Yorke. Thom was inspired to write the sombre tribute after hearing Patch talk about his 
experiences of Passchendaele in an interview entitled “The last tommy”. The song is available for download only at Radiohead’s website an all proceeds will be donated to the Royal British Legion, a charity dedicated to former and serving British armed forces.
We are always looking for new markets for our artists and the gaming market has been on a list for a while now. Tap Tap Revenge is one of the biggest games on the iPhone and Tapulous the makers of the game have an ever growing network. Currently Tapulous has released Coldplay and NIN versions of their game in which they sell for about $4.99 in the iTunes app store. Tapulous has now announced that they have signed Universal Music Group to their roster and will be soon releasing more and more versions of Tap Tap Revenge.
Tapulous chief Bart Decrem admitted that purchases of premium versions of the game were quite modest. However, Decrem has been scaling the concept through the delivery of free apps, a familiar startup model that mostly pushes the monetization puzzle to a later date.
Lady Gaga is rumoured to be the first artist from Universal that will get their own game and im sure it will be released at about $4.99.
It would be great if Tapulous actually released lesser known artists in their free game and even becoming a tool for users to find new unsigned and independent artists, while at the same time releasing premium versions of better know mainstream artists.
A few days ago it was reported that eMusic has come to a deal with Sony to add their catalogue. However, there has been a lot of reaction from this new deal for eMusic, because this is the first major record label eMusic has added. Hypebot has a great preview of the service and then some interesting reactions that have been voiced on the eMusic message boards.
Jellybones: Thank you eMusic. Its been a good run here for me. I love emusic, been here over 5 years. But I can’t afford my tracks to be cut by 2/3 for the same price.
90 downloads will become 35. Sorry, not worth it for the selection. I can go buy a couple albums (maybe only 2 instead of 3) but I can get exactly what I want.
Kez RE: I feel sold out. It seems eMusic is enraptured with the dazzle of their future customer-trolls and have cast aside their loyal member base.
From the UK xtrev: As noted down in the bowels of the ‘Major label…’ thread, the new more expensive price plans have appeared on site today. Including Booster prices. Damn.
Don’t think I’ll be buying many more 50 track boosters at 20.99 UK pounds. That’s a HUGE increase over the previous 14.99. If this is an example of what it means to have major label content here, then frankly they can shove it.
btx: Except for very rare circumstances, I’m not particularly interested in giving my cash to the major labels, that’s why I come here. If it is going to cost me more for their presence [even if I should choose not to download their stuff], that may be the end for me.
d.w.: “Effective Jul 6, 2009, your plan will change to the new eMusic Plus plan which gives you 37 downloads for $14.99 every 30 days.
We’re sorry that we’ve had to retire your current plan, but we’re confident that you’ll find even more music to love among the many new additions to the music catalog. And of course, you can always choose a different plan by visiting the Plan Options page within Your Account.”
My current plan is (grandfathered) 65 tracks per month for $14.99. This means that your Sony deal results in a 100% per track price increase over what I’m paying currently.
I appreciate(?) that you’ll be adding a lot of music from major labels that I could frankly not give a crap about (Alicia Keys — really?), but literally halving the amount of tracks I get on my current plan is a bit much to take. I’ve been a subscriber since 2000, but I am seriously considering canceling at this point.
eMusic is one of our great partners here at RouteNote and I would have rather seen the service stay with the indie industry and not attach themselves to the major labels, but now it seems like there is a new opportunity in the market for another indie service.
RouteNote partner Amazon has launched their ever popular music store Amazon Mp3 in the UK. Amazon Mp3 contains over 5 million DRM free tracks. On an individual track basis, the store has variable pricing, with songs starting at 59p, but other categories for tracks costing 60p-69p, 70p-79p, and over 80p. Albums are more variable, although £6.49 appears to be one popular price point for new albums. However, I have noticed at the moment they are pushing out major track downloads for only £0.29.
Amazon Mp3 for the UK was launched on Wednesday of last week without any press although British-based music blog MusicAlly was the first to spot it.
The increased competition brought about by a heavyweight like Amazon stepping into the ring may already have had an effect on music pricing in the United Kingdom. MusicAlly reports that as Amazon MP3 launched there, Apple dropped its prices on key albums in the British version of iTunes, including those by Oasis and Fleet Foxes, to under $6.
7Digital and Spotify have announced a new partnership that will see 7Digital purchasing links in the Spotify platform. This partnership is aimed to help Spotify increase revenues in this very difficult economic situation that is heavily affecting online advertising revenues.
Beginning with the UK, France, Spain and Germany, the deal enables Spotify users to purchase 320kbps MP3 downloads from 7Digital’s 6M track catalog along with a selection of FLAC downloads. Sweden, Norway and Finland will follow in a few weeks. In the future, users will be able to purchase playlists that have been created within Spotify at a discounted price. Future improvements will include closer integration including one click downloads.
The Spotify deal follows a similar 7Digital partnership with open source media player Songbird using 7digital’s API which allows integration with 7digital’s catalog and commissions on sales.
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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