Archive for: music downloads

Digital Distributor RouteNote Signs 3 New Online Music Stores – Deezer, Napster, Thumbplay

Good news for all you RouteNote artists out there: today we go live with music distribution to three new music stores – Deezer, Napster and Thumbplay Mobile.

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.

Current Music Environment: Music Marketing Demographics

Nice little article over at Hypebot (who are up to their necks in Midem at the moment) on some top line music market trends: according to a survey of more than 8,000 music consumers, 45% of listeners are happy to listen to an advert in order to fund a download of a track, and 41% to fund a stream of a song. Here is a run down of the stats:

• 8500 interviews in 13 countries
• 63% are passionate about music
• 14% would listen to music every minute of the day if they could.
• Streaming a favorite delivery method for 21%
• 29% admit to downloading without paying
• 30% bought a CD in the last month
• 11% bought a download within the month
• Video via mobile growing fastest in emerging markets
• 42% went to a concert last year
• 16% bought a concert DVD in last year
• 19% bought t-shirt / merch.
• Many OK with listening to an ad to download (45%) and stream (41%)

UK Digital Bill Will Raise ISP Subs by £25 Per Year

A lot of poorly substantiated figures are being thrown around regarding what online music piracy costs the industry. Illegal digital downloads of copyrighted material like music, movies and games has been one of the hottest political topics of the last year, with everyone from Peter Mandelson to Lily Allen weighing in on the subject, but no-one can come up with a definitive figure on how much of the market value the music industry has lost over the last ten years is attributable to pirates stealing music rather than buying it from music download stores like iTunes and Emusic. The BPI’s contention that “Jupiter estimate that losses to online music piracy amounted to £180m in 2008, and predict they will rise to £200m in 2009″ is seemingly based on the idea that one illegal download equals one lost sale, but that’s not really true; bacause someone is prepared to pinch something to listen to it, doesn’t mean they are necessarily prepared to pay full price for a copy. This is certainly the opinion of BT consumer boss John Petton, who called the BPI’s claims “melodramatic”, and estimated that the cost of enforcing the measures that the UK government proposes to deal with online piracy will cost around £365m ($583.4m) a year [!].

Scoffing ensued from rights agencies after this announcement from BT, but now government ministers have revealed that the costs will be more like £500 million annually. According to the Times – “Impact assessments published alongside the Bill predict that the measures will generate £1.7 billion in extra sales for the film and music industries over the next ten years, as well as £350 million for the Government in extra VAT.” These figures are presumably based on the assumption that everything that is stolen would otherwise be bought, which is pretty optimistic… What is certain if the current bill is enacted, is that the majority of law-abiding consumers will end up paying a vast amount to police the actions of the few – if the wild estimates we report are true, more money than is lost by the music industry to pirates annually by a factor of two. Hardly an equitable proposition.

What should be remembered is that this explosion of piracy has been driven by consumer demand, and the convenience offered by online piracy. Rather than focusing on punishing the minority responsible for the piracy, it would seem more appropriate for the music industry and rights bodies to direct their efforts towards making the convenience and level of ’service’ provided by file sharing legally and financially viable. If we are being expected to pay £25 extra a year each for our net connection, more than double what the music industry says it’s losing to pirates, then surely it would be better to provide extra services to the average consumer for that money, than to spend it on persecuting people who probably wouldn’t be pirating in the first place if what they were after was more readily available online.

MadTracker – VST Plugin Resource

All too frequently there comes a moment during the production of a track when you just can’t get the sound you’re looking for. You’ve played all the juice out of the package you’re using and you need a new toy to mess around with – unfortunately, most Plugins are rather expensive as inspiration. Fear not, gentle reader, a solution is at hand, provided by MadTracker: a directory of free, and downloadable plugins for various production platforms. Don’t spend a penny, just rifle through this little cornucopia of free goodness and see what you can find to get you moving again. Don’t thank us – we do it because we love you…

http://www.madtracker.org/plugins.php

UK Digital Music Market Trends

The UK has seen record levels of digital sales in 2009, with 10 trading weeks and the Christmas period still to come. 117 million singles have been sold so far, with 98.6% of these sales in digital formats.

Not only has the singles market more than doubled in the number of units sold sine ‘02, but it’s almost entirely divested itself of the physical media. This growth is not reproduced in the album market (old figures here), which in 2008 saw a shallow (compared to predictions) decline of between 3.2% and 6% depending on who you listen to, despite 68% year on year growth in digital (read people shifting over to buy digital formats rather than physical).

This is encouraging news for the music industry in the UK – despite the panic that filesharing and online piracy keeps sending through the motley ranks of the big execs, there’s not that big a downturn in sales. Music piracy is a massive phenomenon; according to the IFPI, 95% of music downloads are illegal, but is it really hurting the industry if sales are staying firm in the face of this explosion in Piracy. The BPI’s Chief Exec Geoff Taylor stated “That singles have hit these heights while there are still more than a billion illegal downloads every year in the UK is testimony to the quality of releases this year and the vibrancy of the UK download market.  Consumers are responding to the value and innovation offered by the legal services and these new figures show how the market could explode if Government acts to tackle illegal peer-to-peer filesharing.” His implication is clearly that all the pirates out there would be forced to buy their music instead of getting it free  – but I think this is something of a false premise: just because people like getting something for free, doesn’t mean they would be prepared to pay for it. I’ve been introduced to a lot of bands by people burning me CD’s or sending me tracks over the net, even way back when my teenage girlfriends used to make me mix tapes it was the same sort of piracy, but the upshot of that was that I’ve discovered more bands, been to more gigs and bought more CD’s, vinyl and downloads than I ever would have if I’d not been so freely able to share music. I strongly feel that bands should profit from people’s enjoyment and sharing of the great music they make, but it should be directly related to the cost of time effort and money involved in getting that particular piece of music to that particular person.

I would pay more for an LP than for a download because I’m getting more. Not just intangible 1’s and 0’s but a real lump of plastic and paper and design as well as the music. MP3 stores cost money to run, tech guys, ISP’s, designers and even marketing people (sadly) have to be paid, but those costs aren’t there with file sharing networks, or at least they’re not paid for by the guys in the music industry. If the site makes money, that should be shared equitably with the artists whose work they exploit, but artists should take into account that they’re not just losing download sales, they’re also gaining fans through these channels, fans that will buy tickets and albums and merchandise and write about you on their blogs and tell their friends about you, if you’re good enough, and you give them a reason to buy. *deep breath* Sorry. Rant over.

What will always be true is that supply must follow demand; if people want new ways of getting music cheaply online, the traditional market and online music stores must adapt to provide them, or fail in the competition with less legitimate routes of supply.

Spotify Music Included In Phone Tariff

Mobile Phone operator 3 UK have launched a new package/subscription bundle with Spotify on the new Android Hero Handset.

Surprisingly its the first bundle of its kind. Customers will pay £35 per month and will take advantage of 750 minutes, unlimited texts to other 3 phone numbers, mobile data and a premium subscription to Spotify’s streaming service worth $9.99 per month. Faisal Galaria, Global Head of Business Development at Spotify is understandably positive: “This is a very exciting deal for Spotify. We’re intent on offering people a high quality, simple yet powerful portable music experience at a fair price and we’re thrilled to be working with 3 to bring Spotify to UK music fans.”

The HTC Hero will be the first Android handset to launch on 3, coming out the November. Billed as an iPhone killer, it has a touch screen, five megapixel camera, personalisation features and access to thousands of applications from Android Marketplace.

Disclosure: RouteNote is a partner of Spotify