A lot of people are talking about how a weak economy is affecting advertising revenues and from my experiences this is definitely the case. However, because advertising is suffering some journalists also expect that to have an effect on ad-supported music startups, such as Spiral Frog.This is definitely not the case, mainly because they provide royalties as a percentage of their revenues.
For Spiral Frog that have now reached a new milestone in terms of their catalog size, over three million songs are now available through their service.Music videos for download also increased to almost 5000 and registered users have grown to 2.3 million according to the company.
SprialFrog believes this is the largest total number of registered users on any legal, free music download site, but offered no details as to how active the users are.
According to Joe Mohen, founder and chairman, “With the current economic turmoil and the potential threat of a recession looming, the offering of free music is very attractive to budget conscious consumers.” SpiralFrog’s biggest competition isn’t paid downloads, however, it’s free pirated mp3′s via P2P. It is also unclear how the economic downturn will effect the advertising revenue that all ad-supported sites require.
Over at Crenk, they have posted an article about Amie Street and how they have just signed the Beggars Group to their catalog. The Beggars Group consists of labels such as XL, Rough Trade, 4AD, Matador Records and Polyvinyl Recording Co. This means a further 15,000 tracks to the Amie Street catalog.
Here at RouteNote we have had Amie Street on our radar for over 6 month, but it is hard to determine if DRM free Mp3s are in the best interest of the record industry or not. I realise they are totally in the best interests of the consumers, but will signing up to a service like Amie Street mean we arent able to sell as many mp3s, because all the consumers are deliberately heading over to their site. Thus, they know they only have to purchase the track once and then can share it.
These are the types of questions that are very hard to answer at this point in time!
It is now official the world’s largest retailer of independent music and the world’s second largest digital music retailer overall, with over 2 million tracks from more than 13,000 independent labels, has joined forces with RouteNote. Once RouteNote is launched all artists signed up will be able to opt-in to sell their music on eMusic. This is a great opportunity for our artists to distribute to a huge audience that loves to purchase all types of music.
eMusic is a subscription-based service that allows consumers to own, not rent their music, eMusic is the largest service to sell tracks in the popular MP3 format—the only digital music format that is compatible with all digital music devices, including the iPod®. eMusic targets and successfully direct-markets to consumers who are interested in music outside the commercial mainstream, dramatically expanding the sale of catalogue typically known as “the long tail.” Since Dimensional Associates acquired eMusic in 2003, the company has more than tripled its subscriber base.
A lot of people are talking about how a weak economy is affecting advertising revenues and from my experiences this is definitely the case. However, because advertising is suffering some journalists also expect that to have an effect on ad-supported music startups, such as Spiral Frog.This is definitely not the case, mainly because they provide royalties as a percentage of their revenues.