Poor old Myspace – everyone loves to hate them these days. Even before it was assimilated into Newscorp’s Dark Empire, it was beset with a hideous, clunky user interface, a messaging system only slightly less cumbrous than training a carrier pigeon to take your messages, some of the slowest load times on the internet and that’s all without mentioning the millions upon millions of scene-teens that infested the site like so many gnats, their sparkly, buggy, eye-scorching profiles and six-figure friend counts repulsing the mind at every click. What it did have going for it was content. You could click over to a band’s profile and see a neat summary of news and information about them and maybe listen to a song or two. Then came Facebook, and Grooveshark, and Last.FM, and Spotify, and suddenly Myspace was wondering where all the traffic had gone. Then it’s spiritual heart got cut out when Tom got bought out and booted, its got decapitated twice [DeWolfe, Van Natta], and now it looks set for an implosion of hideous proportions, as when all of its management staff and key programmers get their bonus paycheques in June, a lot of them are going to abandon ship.
With an owner that’s rooted in old media, and known for his rapacious treatment of his conquests, is there any hope for Myspace?
TechCrunch reports an offer from Dimensional to buy all outstanding stock of our digital music distribution competitor The Orchard, whose operation currently has offices in 25 countries, and is losing $17.5 million dollars a year. The purchase offer is for $2.05 per share of common stock, valuing the company at $12.8 million, about 28% of their annual revenue of $45 million. Rumours also abound of a merger between The Orchard and eMusic, which would see the vertical value chain completed, from artist to store – seemingly a simple and sensible synergy, but since eMusic is also rumoured to be for sale predicting where the chips will fall may be difficult. Private owners of The Orchard will have a lot of cost cutting to do whatever the case, so look to see a lot of those international offices closed down, and a consolidation of revenue streams and staffing before long.
The RIAA have loosed another volley against the filesharing contingent that they believe are bleeding the profitability out of the music industry. The arguments are pretty solid: those who choose to download music illegally instead of paying for it through legal physical and digital channels are not enjoying the fruits of the people working in the industry without contributing to their livelihood. Bad people, right? Not proper music fans, right? Theft is insupportable, but there are questions of degree to be considered… From the RIAA’s press release:
According to SoundScan, the top 10 albums in 2009 sold a total of 21 million copies, and the top 10 tracks totaled 36 million paid downloads. But the top 10 albums in 1999 totaled 55 million in sales. Even with digital track sales factored in, those top sellers fell by more than 50%. In the last 10 years, the major record labels’ direct employment in the United States fell from about 25,000 people in 1999 to less than 10,000 today – a drastic reduction of over 60% in people who enable the creation and development of new music.
In the music industry, it takes the investment of many peoples’ money, effort, and time to create the songs and albums we all get to choose from and enjoy. Since most acts never even reach the breakeven point in sales, music labels need to operate like venture capitalists and count on the successes to subsidize the continued development of many artists and releases that may never break out of the red. And it’s easy to ignore the harm being done when you’re only stealing one copy.
Stealing music is wrong. This is undeniable, but there is something about what the RIAA say – it’s easy for a punter to ignore the criminality of nicking one album at a time ‘just to hear it’, and so the solution to the problem has to be slightly more nuanced than cutting off the consumer’s internet connection, or suing individuals for vast damages in high profile cases. Legal, profitable channels of consumption have got to compete directly with the illegal, risky, but free-to-consume-unless-you-get-caught methods like filesharing and illegal streaming.
Picking on individuals makes the recording industry look like the aggressor rather than the victim, which they are not; they’re just trying to safeguard their sources of income, and their jobs. It’s hard to think of Edgar Bronfman’s kids going hungry, or Puff Daddy having to sell his jet to make the mortgage payments, but there are real people doing good work whose livelihoods are on the line. That said, progress is inevitable (see the video at the tail of the post), and the music industry has got to roll with the punches and capitalise on the massive innovation that’s happening in the digital sector if it is to thrive as it has in the past.
Another thing to consider is how much this piracy actually costs the industry. If the pirates couldn’t get hold of the music easily and for free, would they bother getting hold of it at all? Does the money not spent on records all get spent on eyepatches, stuffed parrots and WOW subscriptions, or does some of it come back to the music industry in other ways? Concert revenues are certainly up over the last few years, and some artists are making money against the trend of decline by using clever andnon-traditionalmarketing methods, selling coolphysicalproducts, and using new outlets like Spotify and eMusic (to whom RouteNote will happily distribute your music, by the way) to boost waning physical revenues. Is it better then, for the industry to put a death-grip on sometime pirates who may also be gig-goers and box-set-buyers, and look backwards at the fantastic success they had with physical formats, or to look forward to an era when everything is digital and try to maximise it’s readiness and thus it’s profitability? Perhaps we’ll see things go full circle, and recorded music sales will tail off completely as we all go back to being regular concert goers, just like in the 1800’s…
A report from business analysis firm Ovum says they think UK based Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) could bundle a silver bullet with their broadband contracts by adding a digital music service to their offerings. They argue that this would increase customer loyalty (Ovum call it reducing consumer churn), generate additional revenue per customer, reduce online music piracy and increase music industry revenue. They estimate (and they don’t say how they arrived at the figure) that direct revenues from selling music-inclusive deals could be around £103 million by 2013, representing 41% of 2009’s market.
Commenting on the report earlier this week the BPI’s Geoff Taylor said “It’s increasingly clear that it isn’t smart to be a ‘dumb pipe’. This report shows that the revenue potential of digital music services alone makes sound economic sense for ISPs.”
Fair enough. But take note that Universal Music Group sponsored the report, the same UMG that are desperately worried about the collapse of their revenues, and the same UMG that are invested in Spotify, a music service that could very easily sell premium subscriptions bundled with an ISP package. This is by all indications a great idea, and would go a long way to helping the ISP community appease big music – who are accusing it if not of complicity then at least negligence in the article of stopping access to copyright infringing sites and torrent trackers like the infamous Pirate Bay – but an awareness of possible bias might encourage conservatism when looking at Ovum’s estimated numbers. There are a lot of solutions vying for the fast growing digital music dollar, it’s a market in which we’re currently diversity and innovation, and a big move like the one the BPI are advocating could seal the future of music online.
Just a bit of fun, but since we’re based in Cornwall, we thought it might be of interest to our users to know that there’s a Cornish version of Wikipedia. Click here, and 1,000,000 bonus points to whoever writes RouteNote an entry!
We posted a while back about Gil Scott-Heron’s forthcoming album, and it’s proven to be a very interesting piece of work. Utterly heartfelt and honest, you can hear the age and frailty in his voice as he recounts deeply personal experiences. His sense of meter and rhythm are unfaded, and the quality of his writing has lost some of its agression, but none of its fire. Strongly reccomend pouring a long drink and sitting down to listen to this one.
You can listen to the album it right here thanks to the wonders of the internet:
It’s been literally decades since the progenitor of hip-hop released anything, so we’re interested to see how this new work is received.
From the luxurious position of having a major label deal with his main band, Blink 182, singer and guitarist Tom DeLonge can afford to experiment with his other project, Angels And Airwaves. The band are releasing their third album, imaginitively entitled “Love”, without the support of a label. The first two A&A albums were put out through Geffen, and sold in the hundreds of thousands, but “Love” will be offered as a free download, with premium versions comprising extra tracks and bonus material available to buy. The band will also be touring and selling $6.95 a month ‘memberships’ on their website. The hope is that these and other efforts will compensate for the recording and promotion costs of the album. DeLonge told Billboard in an interview that they’re hoping to get 20 million downloads of the album, and that:
“If only 5% of that 20 million came back and interacted with the Modlife platform that powers our Web site, the revenue would far exceed anything we’d make from a major label, in any way, shape or form,”
In this blogger’s opinion a 5% response rate is very optimistic, but it’s great to see bands pioneering different propositions in the modern digital-heavy marketplace. Presumably the album won’t be available on iTunes, or any of the other music stores RouteNote distributes to, which will mean that a lot of music users will not be able to access it through their normal channels, a closing of avenues which may cost a lot to replace in terms of product awareness.
Deezer is a French business, but has agreements with all 4 major labels to stream ad-supported music to their 9 million registered users across 35 different countries. In the three years since its launch, Deezer has been voted the most innovative website of 2007 by readers of 01Net, ahead of both Facebook and Dailymotion. Deezer also won the 2008 Red Herring award, for Europe’s most innovative web companies, among various other awards. The proof of their success is really in the number of people listening to music through their service, which keeps on growing. In addition to their music streaming service, Deezer also offers:
- Access to radio channels: Hip Hop, Rock, Electro, Jazz, Live, French Scene, Disco etc.
- Surfing intelligent online radio
- Information about artists, albums, tracks, introducing subscribers to new music
- Sharing playlists, chat and musical tastes with friends via the community of ‘Deezernautes’
- Watch videos
Napster was the first cat among the digital pigeons with it’s peer to peer service, but they’ve come a long way since their rebellious beginnings, and now their subscription service offers both unlimited streaming and a number of DRM free downloads per month, available online and on smartphones in Europe and the USA.
Thumbplay is the largest mobile content provider in the U.S. Operating both web based and mobile services, including licensed music, video and games. They have deals with all the majors, and several independent labels and artists, and now you can get access to their services through RouteNote. Hundreds of millions of cellphones in the US are waiting to download your music.
To get your music live with these music stores and all our other online music partners, sign up for our music distribution service, and get our new music upload tool. You can have your tracks online in minutes, and earning you money in a matter of weeks.
Jammie Thomas-Rasset may have caught a break, depending on whether the US courts can agree with one another on the amount of damages appropriate to each breach of music copyright. Originally, the consortium of record labels was awarded damages of $80,000 per track involved in their case (the plaintiffs only sought damages for 24 out of an alleged 1,702 tracks – $136,160,000, before you get your calculator out), but this was redacted by a certain Chief Judge Davis to a mere $2,250, reducing the total damage payment from $1.92 million to $54,000.
Despite the fact that this reduction is at odds with a statute that imposes a much higher limit of $150,000, it seems that this isn’t good enough for the defending legal team, and they’ve moved for a new trial. This exposes them to a new award for damages, which in turn would be subject to the same sort of adjustment… This repeating, ‘Wheel Of Fortune’ style allocation is bound to go on for a while, depending on the pressure from the recording industry, who have equal determination to, and presumably deeper pockets than the defendant, but whatever sum the clicker stops on, it will have very far reaching repercussions for the future of the fight against piracy in the States.
Vevo was born of the collaboration between YouTube and the major labels, after the long argument about revenues from YouTube’s streaming of copyrighted music and videos. Vevo has been streaming music video since December ‘09, and in that one short month, has overtaken Myspace music as the No.1 music video site in the US. Techcrunch reports the following figures, with a more detailed analysis.
Top U.S. Music Services On The Web (in unique visitors, December, 2009)
Vevo: 35.4 million
MySpace Music: 33.1 million
AOL Music: 29.0 million
Warner Music: 23.3 million
MTV Networks Music: 17.6 million
Yahoo! Music: 16.4 million
Jango Music Network: 9.6 million
ToneFuse Music Network: 8.3 million
MSN Music: 6.6 million
Rhapsody: 6.5 million
Most of the traffic on Vevo was driven there from YouTube, and the service isn’t available outside the States yet, but given the warm reception Vevo has recieved, look for roll-out into Europe and Asia in the near future, as well as startled reactions from their competitors.
Poor old Myspace – everyone loves to hate them these days. Even before it was assimilated into Newscorp’s Dark Empire, it was beset with a hideous, clunky user interface, a messaging system only slightly less cumbrous than training a carrier pigeon to take your messages, some of the slowest load times on the internet and that’s all without mentioning the millions upon millions of scene-teens that infested the site like so many gnats, their sparkly, buggy, eye-scorching profiles and six-figure friend counts repulsing the mind at every click. What it did have going for it was content. You could click over to a band’s profile and see a neat summary of news and information about them and maybe listen to a song or two. Then came Facebook, and Grooveshark, and Last.FM, and Spotify, and suddenly Myspace was wondering where all the traffic had gone. Then it’s spiritual heart got cut out when Tom got bought out and booted, its got decapitated twice [DeWolfe, Van Natta], and now it looks set for an implosion of hideous proportions, as when all of its management staff and key programmers get their bonus paycheques in June, a lot of them are going to abandon ship.
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