Sony’s new MyPlay store is live, and they’re hoping they can claw back some of their sales margin from iTunes, currently the biggest outlet online. Doubtless this will have some effect, especially if they plug it into the Play Station Network, but I don’t think they’ll really be able to take much market share away from iTunes, eMusic or the other established download stores, as their catalogue won’t be comprehensive. Unless they sign deals with the other majors to sell their content too, which seems unlikely to happen – why would EMI want to give Sony an advantage? – then the twin pitfalls of limited catalogue and people’s unwillingness to open and run multiple credit-card accounts will hinder their progress. Unless they gouge their competition heavily on the pricing of their own product, they’ll remain a minority player in the download market.
The very popular music discovery and download site AmieStreet will soon be adding the Sony Music Entertainment catalog. AmieStreet which is best know for their fan-driven pricing model will bring the Sony catalog to their community, however not at the fan-driven pricing model and instead Sony has set their own pricing levels at $0.69, $0.99 and $1.29 per song.
I find it funny how AmieStreet have been making some great progress in the music discovery and consumption sector with their pricing model, but the Major label is too scared to actually let the average consumer pay what they think the music is worth. Is this because most of the garbage pop that comes out of the major labels isnt really worth much?
Anyways, AmieStreet has created a special section on it’s website (http://amiestreet.com/blog/sony) which highlights a small sample of the artists, both old and new, that are already available.
“Amie Street has proven to be an innovative platform for engaging music fans and introducing them to both emerging and established artists,” said Michael Paull, Executive Vice President, Global Digital Business, Sony Music Entertainment. “We look forward to our music being available to Amie Street’s growing community.”
Then why doesnt Sony actually adopt their pricing model then if its working?
“The partnership with Sony Music is a huge development for Amie Street,” said Peter Asbill, Co-Founder of AmieStreet.com. “We want to be the best place to discover new music for all types of customers, from indie to mainstream, and adding the unparalleled Sony Music catalog is a critical step towards fulfilling that promise.”
Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr turned up onstage at Microsoft’s E3 press conference last night to plug the upcoming music game The Beatles: Rock Band. The game will include over 45 songs with others also available to download from a dedicated online store.
One – All You Need Is Love – will have all royalties from sales donated to the Doctors Without Borders charity. There’s a trailer too – the first sight of how the game will look. Watch it above and let us know what you think.
A few days ago it was reported that eMusic has come to a deal with Sony to add their catalogue. However, there has been a lot of reaction from this new deal for eMusic, because this is the first major record label eMusic has added. Hypebot has a great preview of the service and then some interesting reactions that have been voiced on the eMusic message boards.
Jellybones: Thank you eMusic. Its been a good run here for me. I love emusic, been here over 5 years. But I can’t afford my tracks to be cut by 2/3 for the same price.
90 downloads will become 35. Sorry, not worth it for the selection. I can go buy a couple albums (maybe only 2 instead of 3) but I can get exactly what I want.
Kez RE: I feel sold out. It seems eMusic is enraptured with the dazzle of their future customer-trolls and have cast aside their loyal member base.
From the UK xtrev: As noted down in the bowels of the ‘Major label…’ thread, the new more expensive price plans have appeared on site today. Including Booster prices. Damn.
Don’t think I’ll be buying many more 50 track boosters at 20.99 UK pounds. That’s a HUGE increase over the previous 14.99. If this is an example of what it means to have major label content here, then frankly they can shove it.
btx: Except for very rare circumstances, I’m not particularly interested in giving my cash to the major labels, that’s why I come here. If it is going to cost me more for their presence [even if I should choose not to download their stuff], that may be the end for me.
d.w.: “Effective Jul 6, 2009, your plan will change to the new eMusic Plus plan which gives you 37 downloads for $14.99 every 30 days.
We’re sorry that we’ve had to retire your current plan, but we’re confident that you’ll find even more music to love among the many new additions to the music catalog. And of course, you can always choose a different plan by visiting the Plan Options page within Your Account.”
My current plan is (grandfathered) 65 tracks per month for $14.99. This means that your Sony deal results in a 100% per track price increase over what I’m paying currently.
I appreciate(?) that you’ll be adding a lot of music from major labels that I could frankly not give a crap about (Alicia Keys — really?), but literally halving the amount of tracks I get on my current plan is a bit much to take. I’ve been a subscriber since 2000, but I am seriously considering canceling at this point.
eMusic is one of our great partners here at RouteNote and I would have rather seen the service stay with the indie industry and not attach themselves to the major labels, but now it seems like there is a new opportunity in the market for another indie service.
I was sitting in my living this evening watching Britain’s Got Talent Final and really wondered what Simon Cowell actually owns and how much his companies make. Well I thought I would write a quick article and run through the basics of the Cowell empire.
Simon founded a record label and television company Syco which encompasses music, film and television. Within these companies they operate television shows such as The X Factor, Britains Got Talent, American Inventor, America’s Got Talent and Grease is the Word.
Cowell claims Syco accounted for approximately 40% of Sony Music Entertainment profit in 2006, despite only employing 14 people. By 2008, it was believed that Syco accounted for as much as 70% of Sony profits. In 2008 Sony music entertainment forecasted a net profit of $1.5 billion, thus making Simon Cowell’s companies estimated at $1.05 billion if they indeed did 70% of the profits.
CNET and the Wall Street Journal are both reporting that Universal Music Group and YouTube are in final negotiations to create a new music videos website, with the working title of Vevo.
The site is intended to feature music videos, artist-related content and interviews. The aim of course is to bring in more high profile brands who arent necessarily interested in advertising on YouTube because of its user-generated content.
It has been mentioned by CNET that the three other major labels have all been approached to join the Vevo service. Im sure this would all work in the same way as Myspace Music in which the major labels all have an equity stake. Myspace Music has amazed me that so many independent labels have come on board with the solution, because they should realise that part of their profits are still going to the major labels. However, with Myspace Music most independent labels need to have their music on the site, so why not make some revenues in the process.
Qtrax has released a press release this morning stating that they have finally signed Sony BMG to their catalogue.
Qtrax is a legal P2P downloading service. In January 2008, Qtrax was overeager to announce it’s launch during the Midem conference and misrepresented ongoing negotiations and expired deals with major recording labels as being signed deals.
Qtrax is a very interesting service that has never really lived up to expectations. I’m keen to see how the service grows and if they can actually deliver decent royalty rates for the content providers. Here at RouteNote we are always looking for the next site to take off and Qtrax is definitely in the mix.
Acclaim has decided that they didnt want to battle Guitar Hero and Rock Band and instead have launched an online music game called Rockfree. Players can battle it out with up to seven other people over the internet, and it”ll feature licensed tracks including Iron Man, Fat Lip, and Woman. A closed beta kicked off this weekend, with a full launch scheduled for the first quarter of next year.
WMG, Sony and EMI are on board for licensing – which indicates that Acclaim is ponying up a decent amount of cash for song rights, since WMG is apparently playing hardball on this score with games publishers right now.
Currently, the game is free to play so it is going to be very interesting to see if Acclaim will make money from advertising, or even push though affiliate sales to iTunes and Amazon. All I know is that this is a very interesting idea and it is good to see that Acclaim is moving away from just being a console publisher and now turning into a real games publisher.
It has been reported that Sony has agreed to acquire Gracenote for approx $260M. Gracenote provides a range of music-related solutions including MusicID, which detects which song is currently being played by an application and loads track information for the user (such as artist and album names). MusicID leverages a database of over 6M CDs and 80M tracks. Its technology has been in development since 1995 (previously under the name CDDB).
Consumer music app services such as Apple iTunes, Yahoo! Music Jukebox, and Winamp use Gracenote for their music detection capabilities. It is reported that Gracenote will continue to operate separately from Sony after the deal closes, but I still think this is a bit of a major blow to other major labels. Gracenote has technology that is leading the industry and now allows Sony to produce more tech startups in the music industry without having to worry about music recognition.
The whole industry is aware that traditional, physical music sales are threatened by new mobile and internet methods of music consumption, and lot of suggestions for the way that music will be paid for in the future have been discussed. One such is the idea that ISP’s and other big service providers could be made responsible for the music that their clients download, charging a flat premium on their service contracts to be passed on to the music copyright owners.
Danish company TDC have teamed up with Warner, Sony/BMG and EMI to take a step in this direction with their new Play package delivered in co-operation with multi platform cable provider YouSee (Danish language). Their ‘Nordic’ users can make unlimited, DRM protected downloads from a catalogue of approximately 1 million tracks, including REM, James Blunt and The Red Hot Chili Peppers.
“When our customers wake up tomorrow, we will have changed their everyday lives. They will experience that through PLAY they are suddenly able to download all the music they wish as a part of their subscription from TDC or YouSee, legally and without extra charges,” says Jens Alder, President and CEO of TDC. (from TDC press release).
I’ll be very interested to see how this innovation works out, and I think that it’s only by a process of learning from what users do and don’t adopt from new packages like this that the new model of paid-for music consumption will evolve (obviously with RouteNote at the forefront of development:).
Sony’s new MyPlay store is live, and they’re hoping they can claw back some of their sales margin from iTunes, currently the biggest outlet online. Doubtless this will have some effect, especially if they plug it into the Play Station Network, but I don’t think they’ll really be able to take much market share away from iTunes, eMusic or the other established download stores, as their catalogue won’t be comprehensive. Unless they sign deals with the other majors to sell their content too, which seems unlikely to happen – why would EMI want to give Sony an advantage? – then the twin pitfalls of limited catalogue and people’s unwillingness to open and run multiple credit-card accounts will hinder their progress. Unless they gouge their competition heavily on the pricing of their own product, they’ll remain a minority player in the download market.
I was sitting in my living this evening watching Britain’s Got Talent Final and really wondered what Simon Cowell actually owns and how much his companies make. Well I thought I would write a quick article and run through the basics of the Cowell empire.
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