iTunes has just gone live in South America. These new stores only launched today and they will be announced in the next few hours. This is an amazing move by iTunes, which Im sure will bring them great success.
RouteNote is an iTunes official partner and our full catalogue will be available in South America. As an artist you dont have to do anything!!
Spotify released a major update to their service today, integrating a massive set of social and functional features, including the ability to linkn your Facebook and Spotify accounts, and the option of using to play all the music on your computer’s hard drive.
The new features will be available to free and premium subscribers alike; full list after their little introductory video. All of this new functionality makes Spotify an even stronger contender in the battle for dominance in the online music market, which will be put to the test if and when they launch in the US later this year, going up against already established services like MOG, Sirius and Pandora.
Social
Connect to Facebook: you can connect to Facebook inside of Spotify, instantly adding all your Facebook friends who’ve selected the same feature. Your friends’ profiles will appear in a new ‘People’ sidebar at the right of the screen, with your personal profile at the top.
Add usernames: you can also add people by typing their Spotify username, should you know it, into the Spotify search field. For example searching ‘spotify:user:username’ will bring up their profile (if their profile is published).
Publish your Spotify profile to the web: easily publish the link to your Spotify profile on your blog, Facebook page, website or anywhere else on the web and allow others to follow your musical journey. For example here’s a link to the official Spotify profile.
Inbox: a new ‘inbox’ folder on Spotify’s left sidebar lets you send tracks to friends directly within the platform, simply by dragging and dropping a track to their name in the People sidebar. Alternatively, just right click on the track and select the new ‘send to’ option.
Facebook feed: music your friends have posted on Facebook will be visible on the Spotify ‘What’s new’ page and via a new ‘Feed’ tab.
Popularity count for playlists: all playlists will show how many other Spotify users are currently subscribed to that playlist. By clicking on the number, you can even see the usernames of those who added the playlist.
Track playlist changes: see who and when a track was added to a playlist with the new ‘Added’ and ‘User’ columns in playlists.
Library
Local files: missing any music in Spotify? Now you can import a link to all the music files stored on your computer with a simple click of a button.
Gracenote: As with any good music media player, if you have missing or incorrect track information you need software to check those files and automatically correct them so that you can better organise and link them to our catalogue. Gracenote does just this.
Local file linking: we will check your local files and see if we have that track/artist/album in Spotify. If we do, we’ll make the file linkable so you can easily go from that file into an artist or album page. This allows for better sharing of playlists that contain a mix of your own music and Spotify’s.
Starred: every track and album on Spotify can now be ‘starred’ – allowing you to tag all your favourites into a special sub-folder.
Wireless sync: you can copy your music files to your mobile without connecting a USB cable with our new wireless sync feature.
Filter bar: the library has a permanent filter-bar at the top so you can easily type in what you’re searching for. In all other lists the filter bar is visible when pressing cmd-f (mac) or ctrl-f (windows).
Additional features
Mosaic images for playlists: the artwork from the first nine tracks in a playlist will create a cool mosaic image for your playlist
New toolbar in headers: Sharing music to Facebook/Twitter and your friends is much simpler. Easy to subscribe or unsubscribe to a playlist as well as view information about how popular a playlist is.
A share icon in ‘Now playing’ artwork: makes sharing what you’re currently listening to much easier.
Automatic track replacement: Spotify will now automatically try to find a replacement for any track you can’t play. So if a friend in another country sends you a playlist with tracks you can’t play or a local file, we’ll search our catalogue and link to a playable track when possible. A ‘link’ icon next to the track name represents replaced tracks.
Social
* Connect to Facebook: you can connect to Facebook inside of Spotify, instantly adding all your Facebook friends who’ve selected the same feature. Your friends’ profiles will appear in a new ‘People’ sidebar at the right of the screen, with your personal profile at the top.
* Add usernames: you can also add people by typing their Spotify username, should you know it, into the Spotify search field. For example searching ‘spotify:user:username’ will bring up their profile (if their profile is published).
* Publish your Spotify profile to the web: easily publish the link to your Spotify profile on your blog, Facebook page, website or anywhere else on the web and allow others to follow your musical journey. For example here’s a link to the official Spotify profile.
* Inbox: a new ‘inbox’ folder on Spotify’s left sidebar lets you send tracks to friends directly within the platform, simply by dragging and dropping a track to their name in the People sidebar. Alternatively, just right click on the track and select the new ‘send to’ option.
* Facebook feed: music your friends have posted on Facebook will be visible on the Spotify ‘What’s new’ page and via a new ‘Feed’ tab.
* Popularity count for playlists: all playlists will show how many other Spotify users are currently subscribed to that playlist. By clicking on the number, you can even see the usernames of those who added the playlist.
* Track playlist changes: see who and when a track was added to a playlist with the new ‘Added’ and ‘User’ columns in playlists.
Library
* Local files: missing any music in Spotify? Now you can import a link to all the music files stored on your computer with a simple click of a button.
o Gracenote: As with any good music media player, if you have missing or incorrect track information you need software to check those files and automatically correct them so that you can better organise and link them to our catalogue. Gracenote does just this.
o Local file linking: we will check your local files and see if we have that track/artist/album in Spotify. If we do, we’ll make the file linkable so you can easily go from that file into an artist or album page. This allows for better sharing of playlists that contain a mix of your own music and Spotify’s.
* Starred: every track and album on Spotify can now be ‘starred’ – allowing you to tag all your favourites into a special sub-folder.
* Wireless sync: you can copy your music files to your mobile without connecting a USB cable with our new wireless sync feature.
* Filter bar: the library has a permanent filter-bar at the top so you can easily type in what you’re searching for. In all other lists the filter bar is visible when pressing cmd-f (mac) or ctrl-f (windows).
Additional features
* Mosaic images for playlists: the artwork from the first nine tracks in a playlist will create a cool mosaic image for your playlist
* New toolbar in headers: Sharing music to Facebook/Twitter and your friends is much simpler. Easy to subscribe or unsubscribe to a playlist as well as view information about how popular a playlist is.
* A share icon in ‘Now playing’ artwork: makes sharing what you’re currently listening to much easier.
* Automatic track replacement: Spotify will now automatically try to find a replacement for any track you can’t play. So if a friend in another country sends you a playlist with tracks you can’t play or a local file, we’ll search our catalogue and link to a playable track when possible. A ‘link’ icon next to the track name represents replaced tracks.
MGMT’s new album, Congratualtions found it’s way onto the file sharing ecosphere over the weekend, so in a striking move to make the best of a bad situation, Columbia and MGMT decided to put the whole thing up to stream for free on the band’s website:
Hey everybody, the album leaked, and we wanted you to be able to hear it from us. We wanted to offer it as a free download but that didn’t make sense to anyone but us.
Which is a pretty cool way of going about things, if you ask us. Bound to generate interest in the band and their music, and more of a gift to their fans than a capitulation to the pirates. Music has changed so drastically that bands are having to combat leaks and pirates in new ways, and we really hope this strategy pays off for the band. Go visit the site, get a t-shirt, buy the album in legit music stores, and stream it on Spotify, and let’s make sure they get their dues.
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.
Can music streaming ever be a viable alternative to hard copy and download music sales? WMG’s Edgar Bronfman has his doubts, and looking at some of the figures being published in the media they might seem reasonable. Increases in the number of users on services that provide on-demand music streaming (where you pick the track you want to hear like MOG, Spotify, and Grooveshark) correspond to decreases in music sales, while increases in use of radio’ streaming services [Last.fm, Pandora] seemed to drive more sales. There doesn’t seem to be any mystery as to why this might be; Spotify’s and MOG’s users no longer have any reason to buy music from other sources once they’re signed up (particularly as they can put their playlists on their iPods and other mobile devices if they buy a premium account), while Pandora and Last.fm’s customers have no guarantee of getting a particular track on their playlist again, so they have to buy it to hear it whenever they want. This might seem to be an open and shut case for the record labels; one service drives sales, while another cuts revenue – but it’s not quite as simple as that. Spotify has massive customer appeal, as the hordes that try and sign up every time they re-open user registration prove, and it also drives a lot of interaction with listeners; according to Spotify’s own figures the average use playlists around 15,000 tracks. The vast majority of Spotify’s users might be on the free-to-listen ad supported plan, with only single figure percentages signed up to their £10 a month premium package, but it’s clear that the proposition is incredibly attractive to consumers. The premium users represent a healthy annual income for the record labels to share with the platform; £120 a year is not an insignificant spend, and the potential for fledgling on demand platforms to increase their advertising revenue so that even the non-paying customers are generating profits for the record labels is proportional to the platforms’ desirability and popularity,
On demand services are what the consumer wants, and are proven to reduce the incidence of file sharing and online music piracy, something that unequivocally costs the music industry. Cutting off support for such services would surely drive a proportion of users back to illegal, non-revenue-generating, methods of consumption. Assessing the profitability of on demand against radio streaming will have to be done over the coming years as the platforms mature and adjust their business models, but it seems unlikely that killing off the most eagerly recieved of the net’s music biz babies just as they’re getting established would be a rational strategy for the industry.
For our part, we’re seeing tangible revenues come back for our artists from on demand services, and we’re happy to be able to help independent artists get music up on Spotify and in other online stores.
Speaking at the World Mobile Confgress in Barcelona, Daniel Ek said that the average Spotify user has 15,000 tracks lined up across all their playlists – a huge number, showing a really deep engagement with the platform from its users. OK, adding tracks to playlists doesn’t cost anything, but it takes time and effort to build them… Spotify hasn’t had any problems gaining users, or with the enjoyment those users get out of the service, but they’re still struggling to get more of their users signed up to the premum subscription service. As it stands, their users aren’t making them enough money per head to make a fully open launch an option, and Spotify has had to limit their intake of new customers to stop their streaming and royalty costs down. Advertising revenues are rising though, and as revenues and subscription customers increase so will the long term viability of the platform. They must be champing at the bit to launch in the US, as their competitor MOG is making good inroads into the American market.
Just as consumers are increasingly purchasing their music in digital form, from online music stores like iTunes, Amazon and eMusic (a trend digital music distributors like us rely on for the future of our business), radio audiences are moving online. A study published recently by Bridge Rating, company that:
“provides guidance services to media companies and investment firms seeking immediate and timely behavioral data related to media use.”
covering consumer use of satellite radio, Internet radio, MP3 players, Podcasting and mobile media consumption. They forecast that online ‘radio’ audience will grow to 77m by 2015. Their figures draw from both online only stations like Pandora and Yahoo Music, and simulcast stations (those that also broadcast over the airwaves) – see their graph for comparative growth rates.
So why are users migrating? The cost of a radio is minimal, compared to the cost of a computer, or even to a broadband subscription, and anywhere you can pick up the internet, you can pick up an FM signal. If it were the case that people were just using their computers as a convenient method of accessing the radio content, because their speakers are hooked up to it, signal is poor or they’re out of range, then simulcast stations wouldn’t be seeing a stagnation of or negative growth. Instead it seems likely that users are usign alternative music streaming services becaused of the greater interactivity and enhaned services like forums and playlist sharing that surround the musical core of the online channels, just as they surround music stores like Spotify (which runs it’s own nascent radio platform). If it is this rather than the inherent quality of the radio content itself that is drawing users online, then what does the future hold for premium airwave radio providers like Sirius XM? Will their hold on the car dashboard be enough to save them from their competitors? Not if Pandora have anything to do with it, as their contract with Ford to build in-dash controls to interact with their service shows. The increasing prevalence of smart phones and mobile internet devices also means that anyone with a stereo jack cable can use their existing car stereo to access their own music collection and playlists.
HMV is increasing it’s investments in the live music business. Having entered into partnership with Luminar to cross promote between live venues and their music store, and having operated a joint venture with MAMA in the same manner for just over a year, they have succeeded in obtaining just over 56% of shares in MAMA, giving them a controlling stake, and another place to promote their own artists and keep an eye on up and coming artists.
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.
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.
iTunes has just gone live in South America. These new stores only launched today and they will be announced in the next few hours. This is an amazing move by iTunes, which Im sure will bring them great success.
