With suspiciously good timing as the Digital Economy Bill is hurried along towards becoming law, the National Association of Recording Merchandisers has issued a white paper outlining their recommendations for the development and standardisation of deliverable media and information collection. Essentially aimed at people like us (digital music distributors, that is), record labels, online music stores, that sort of thing, not exactly light reading, but interesting if you want to keep an eye on the future of the digital music industry.
The document can be downloaded by handing over your email through the widget below (powered rather pleasingly by Topspin media)
The White Paper details historical information on standardization both within the music industry and in other industries, along with member-identified and prioritized issues surrounding identification and communications standards for music release metadata. It is intended to provide an understanding of the core issues currently undermining accurate and efficient delivery of music information and music. It also features recommendations regarding how NARM will work strategically address these topics.
The Orchard’s majority stock owners, Dimensional Associates, are considering a bid from music streaming service eMusic’s owners, JDS Capital. JDS have been angling for a majority in The Orchard for a while, and this is the third time they’ve come to the table with a new bid, this time of $2, up from their original price of $1.68.
The period between the announcement of the initial bid and this last news has seen the Orchard’s stock prices climb out of the trough they were in last October (a $1.05 low point). The advantages to the tie in of a music distributor and a music streaming service are obvious, as eMusic would gain unlimited access to The Orchard’s catalogue, and take advantage of the entire chain of profit between musician and consumer, using their own services to promote artists they think will sell.
Emusic has just announced that they’ve licensed not only Warner Music’s catalogue, but that of every one of their associated sub-labels. From their blog:
So — quite a few new arrivals today, eh US members?
Over 10,000 albums, to be precise, a dizzying avalanche of stuff from the Warner Music Group. No matter your taste in music, there’s sure to be something here that appeals to you.
The increased catalogue will hopefully mean more subscribers, which in turn will mean more pairs of ears that can access all the music that RouteNote distributes to them… A small trickle down perhaps, but positive news none the less.
Ever clicked on an iTunes link and sworn under your breath as you wait for iTunes to open and demand that you download the latest version of the software before you’re allowed to hear the sample you were after? Well that doesn’t need to happen any more. The iTunes store has now become a lot more browser friendly, allowing you to view content using a normal web browser, rather than taking you to the shop page in their proprietary software. Content can be browsed by genre and artist, but is not yet searchable [EDIT - and you still have to open itunes to hear samples - very silly...]. A much quicker way of getting people to know about the music you’ve distributed through RouteNote.
You could always use our iTunes link maker, if you’re not unhappy with the old method… Just put your name in the search title and follow the steps through to get some HTML code that’s embeddable in your facebook, myspace or website.
Another new survey conducted in the EU argues that music sharers buy less music over the course of a year than those who are classified as online or physical only buyers.
Oddly iPod owners aren’t classified as digital music buyers, and it’s not clear how these categories have been delineated or how people have been divided into them, or whether they are mutually exclusive. I wish that when research like this is commissioned it was released in its entirety, to allow us to make our own decisions about it, rather than accepting the opinions of those who publish it based on limited information release. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but it might help us get to the truth if it happened.
The debate on music piracy is a bit like that on global warming; vocal and vehement, and extremely polarised (pardon the pun). Evidence can be produced to support the most extremeopinions, and is wrangled over until those in the middle don’t know what is believable. Consensus seems to be that even though music pirates are active music fans, and likely to be buying music as well as ‘stealing’ it online , piracy is damaging to sales of actual music tracks, although this may be slightly offset by increased gig attendance and other types of premium content purchase – box sets, t-shirts etc.
It also seems to be accepted that legal methods of ad supported, free-to-the-consumer streaming is the best way of combating the rise of piracy – the great user experience that Spotify has been able to offer has seen it expand faster than it can deal with; attracting users to use a great free streaming service isn’t hard, but finding a way of profiting from all those users is, balancing ad revenue against streaming and licensing costs, and Spotify’s launch in the States has had to be delayed while they evolve their model, and figure out how to move people onto their £10 a month premium service.
While they figure this out, MOG is stepping up to the plate in the States with their £5 a month subscription only model, that allows playlisting and file searching in a pretty similar way to Spotify’s interface [see the video at the bottom of this post]. A poll conducted by Demos (a company that sends people out with clipboards) suggests that revenue (income and adoption) would be maximised at the £5 price point:
But this doesn’t account for the costs inherent in delivering the amount of music that people tend to consume through such streaming services; leaving the computer streaming music all day, an individual could incur a lot of charges for their service provider.
So which footpath of digital development is going to turn out to be the music superhighway of the future? In my humble opinion, it’s going to come down to user experience: if we discount piracy as a viable future for the industry (no revenue means no artists) then we’re left with paying per track, either for streams or downloads, or for a month on month subscription service. These will remain as competing options, probably with iTunes still in pole position of the download market, given it’s current market dominance, and the relentless success of the iPod and it’s cousin the iPhone, and for the rest it’ll come down to whoever provides the slinkiest, most versatile service for whatever the music industry decides is the rock bottom price per stream, plus the minimum streaming cost. I for one hope that the big 4 accept thatad-supported music streaming is the best and only real way of putting an end to piracy, that they come to terms with the smaller license fee and infrastructure that will be demanded by this model. Of the options currently available, I think that Spotify has the most user friendly platform, I’m proud that we’re working with them, and I suggest that you upload your music to their service, via RouteNote’s digital music distribution platform right…. Now.
In the aftermath of the MORI poll about music piracy, consumer advice site Moneysupermarket have commissioned their own piece of research, conducted by Opinium research in an online poll of 2,319 British adults between Friday 5th June and Tuesday 9th June 2009. The full resutls aren’t available online, but here’s MS’s take on the results:
Napster and LimeWire have been havens for illegal downloaders in the past, but the introduction of Spotify*, a free music download site, is curbing the habits of illegal downloaders.
* 30 per cent of under twenties admit to illegal downloading
* Spotify encourages two in three Brits to curb their illegal downloading habits
Almost two thirds (62 per cent) of those who admit to illegally downloading, say using Spotify has encouraged them to reduce the amount they download illegally or kick the habit altogether.
The survey** from the leading price comparison website moneysupermarket.com on downloading and streaming also showed that one in eight Brits (12 per cent) admit to download illegally in the past six months.
Illegal downloading is worst amongst men (16 per cent compared to 9 per cent of women) and the younger generation, with 30 per cent of those under 20 admitting to illegal downloading.
James Parker, broadband manager at moneysupermarket.com, said: “The number of people looking for unlimited broadband packages is rising, which is an indicator that downloading and streaming are becoming a bigger part of online behavior.
“Downloading music used to be mainly associated with illegal sites such as the old Napster, but now over a quarter (27 per cent) of people say they go to a digital source as first port of call; usually iTunes or Amazon.
“With Spotify joining the ranks of legal music sites, illegal downloading seems set to become much less popular. With the new Spotify iPhone application and the new ‘Monkey’ tariff from Orange, which allows users to stream music from the orange site as part of the tariff, it will be interesting to see how these new mobile music services take-off. Streaming music for free or for a reasonable fee whilst on the move could spell the end for illegal downloading and could even send the CD the way of the mini-disc and cassette tape.”
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!
The debate on music piracy is a bit like that on global warming; vocal and vehement, and extremely polarised (pardon the pun). 
Over at 