Music Industry Now Screwing Up Concert Revenues

Posted on June 22, 2010 by b

Rolling Stone recently analyzed a developing trend in summer tours, currently undergoing a meltdown and concluded that high-priced tickets are a prime culprit. Nosebleed ticket prices for superstars – and festivals, for that matter – are killing attendance at shows.

“If they continue to rip everybody off, it’s going to be the kiss of death,” Harvey Goldsmith told an audience at Musexpo in Los Angeles in late April.

Overpriced shows, overpriced contacts, and lots of cancelled dates are pointing to a music business sector in serious trouble.

Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield questioned whether the music industry was “screwing up the last good part of its business,” while shifting the blame for nosebleed tickets onto artists, agents and managers.  This is a group that “keep[s] pushing for higher and higher guarantees from touring companies such as Live Nation and AEG… in order to compensate for recorded music sales declines,” according to Greenfield, who recommended softer demands to make the fan experience more affordable.

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Google to sell music for Android?

Posted on June 16, 2010 by b

There is a rumor of Google getting ready to get into music download business. Reports from CNET suggest that the Google will soon launch a music service to compete with iTunes.

Apple and Google both want to dominate the mobile-phone market. ITunes has been a major part of Apple’s success in first iPods and then phones. The music industry has never been comfortable with Apple’s dominant hold on digital-music sales.

Google would be free to offer better terms to music companies, one of several ways it has available to it of making mischief for Apple, should it decide to join it in the business of digital tunes.

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Canada closer to new copyright law, will be in lockstep with U.S.

Posted on June 2, 2010 by b

The Canadian government will unveil new copyright legislation Wednesday that is expected to favour entertainment giants and electronics manufacturers over consumers.

The bill will modernize Canada’s copyright laws through a series of reforms that will affect everything from what Canadians can play on their iPods to how artists pay their bills.

While CD owners can finally make copies of their music for their iPods, expect that future CDs and DVDs will come with digital locks to restrict mulitple copying.

So get ready for the next round of independent code crackers to trump corporate progammers

rest of National Post article

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Google gets into the TV business

Posted on May 23, 2010 by b

Google is leading a group effort including Sony and others to deliver a TV/Internet package by this christmas. The TV search box looks through live programs, DVR recordings and the Web, delivering a relatively compact list of results that can be accessed with a push of the button. Plus, you can you your Android phone as a remote.

 Read more

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Lady Gaga + Rock Band = Eric Cartman

Posted on March 29, 2010 by b

Lady Gaga is signing on with Rock Band, a somewhat atypical pairing given the lack of a traditional rock band set up in GG’s music.  Rock Band designers MTV Games and Harmonix will have to stretch the instrumentation a bit.  Gaga herself is just the thin edge of the wedge – the Gaga song menu also includes a cover of ‘Poker Face’ by South Park’s Eric Cartman.

The songs will be available for download next week across Xbox, PS3, and Wii systems.  “Lady Gaga Pack 01″ will include “Bad Romance,” “Just Dance,” “Monster,” and “Poker Face,” from the multi-platinum album, The Fame.

Also, MTV and Harmonix are expanding the Rock Band content channels – recently launched is the Rock Band Network Music Store, open to any aspiring band.

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Texts Without Context

Posted on March 21, 2010 by b

Times Article Excerpt:

“Who owns the words?� Mr. Shields asks in a passage that is itself an unacknowledged reworking of remarks by the cyberpunk author William Gibson. “Who owns the music and the rest of our culture? We do — all of us — though not all of us know it yet. Reality cannot be copyrighted.�

Mr. Shields’s pasted-together book and defense of appropriation underscore the contentious issues of copyright, intellectual property and plagiarism that have become prominent in a world in which the Internet makes copying and recycling as simple as pressing a couple of buttons.

In fact, the dynamics of the Web, as the artist and computer scientist Jaron Lanier observes in another new book, are encouraging “authors, journalists, musicians and artists� to “treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind.�

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Sounds pretty communist to me – How do creators get rewarded for their work?

With new media pillaging old media sources for content through copying and mashups, and personality-driven news trumping ideas-based content, with loud opinion getting more attention than facts, where are we headed as a sentient species?

Full Article Here

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Google inside your TV Set?

Posted on March 19, 2010 by b

Bloomberg News:  Google Inc. is working to bring Web software to televisions through a partnership with Intel Corp., Sony Corp. and Logitech International SA, according to two people involved in the discussions with the companies. The project, called Google TV, uses Intel chips, with Switzerland’s Logitech developing a keyboard that operates as a remote control, said one of the people, who declined to be named because the matter isn’t public.

Google, expanding beyond its main Internet-search business, would challenge Yahoo! Inc., TiVo Inc., Rovi Corp. and Microsoft Corp. in delivering the Internet to TVs.

Intel, meanwhile, aims to get its Atom chip into TVs, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes.

“It’s a sign of the legitimacy of Internet connectivity moving well beyond the PC and mobile spaces, which Google has tackled already,” said an analyst at industry researcher Parks Associates in Dallas.

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Canadian Movie Pirate walks the plank

Posted on March 16, 2010 by b

from Canadian Press

A Canadian man who drew international attention for illegally copying movies has been handed a two-and-a-half-month prison sentence.

In a landmark decision, Geremi Adam will also be forced to perform 100 hours of community service, and has been given a two-year suspended sentence.

Prosecutors had wanted him to serve four months behind bars, but they’re still heralding the sentence as the toughest of its kind in Canada.

The 27-year-old was once considered by the FBI to be among the most prolific movie pirates in North America.

He pleaded guilty to two counts, under the Copyright Act, for distributing copied Hollywood films on the Internet under the alias maVen.

The movies were then distributed for a fee by a network.

During his sentencing hearing, the court heard that Mr. Adam only recorded the movies for notoriety and not really for monetary gain.

Mr. Adam is also detained on an unrelated charge.

The maximum sentence he could have received was six months in jail and a $25,000 fine.

The charges against Mr. Adam came shortly before the Conservatives introduced tougher camcording laws in June 2007.

The new law made recording a movie without permission a crime punishable by two years in jail, and taping a film for future sale or rental now carries a maximum five-year jail term.

Canada has been considered a hotbed of illegal film reproduction, and that has been an irritant in relations with the U.S.

Industry figures blamed Canada for between 20 and 70 per cent of global camcords and huffed that Montreal alone was responsible for up to a quarter of the world figure.

Even the governor of California, former action-movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, referred to the country’s reputation during a visit to Canada.

But in an interview with The Canadian Press last summer, the RCMP said the number of complaints had dropped drastically.

In two previous movie piracy cases, one in Montreal and one in Calgary, the two accused were handed fines or probationary sentences. They were also both banned from movie theatres for a period of time.

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Digital Distribution Boosts PC Gaming Revenue

Posted on March 15, 2010 by b

from GameSpy

According to a new report by the PC Gaming Alliance (PCGA), worldwide PC gaming software revenue rose 3% in 2009 to $13.1 billion, fueled by growth in the Asia Pacific region and the growing popularity of digital distribution models.

PCGA, a non-profit group led by Randy Stude, the director of Intel’s Gaming Program Office, issued the findings today in its annual Horizons Report, a study that encompasses all aspects of the PC gaming industry. The most notable trend in the industry, Stude said in a statement, is the movement to digital distribution models and consumers showing a willingness to pay for add-ons and upgrades in digital games.

“In 2009 we saw North America and Europe experience a rapid uptake in purchasing virtual items (italics mine). This model is what drove growth in Asia and we think it is just starting to come to Western markets.”

Great Picture and Rest of Article

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Advertising: On-line overtakes print

Posted on March 11, 2010 by b

A study by Outsell, to be released Monday, reveals that U.S. advertisers are spending more this year on digital media than on print. Long predicted, this Madison Avenue milestone has finally arrived thanks to a 9.6% boom in digital advertising in 2010.

That number comes from Outsell’s annual advertising and marketing study, which collected data from 1,008 U.S. advertisers (both consumer and B2B) in December 2009. Of the $368 billion marketers plan to spend this year, 32.5% will go toward digital; 30.3% to print. Digital spending includes e-mail, video advertising, display ads and search marketing. “It’s a watershed moment,” says the study’s lead author, Outsell vice president Chuck Richard.

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Kindling without the Kindle

Posted on March 5, 2010 by b

In a move similar to Apple using the iPod on Windows users to get people to consider a Mac, Amazon is offering the Kindle app as a free download for Windows desktops, along with free content, plus the ability to sync with your (future?) Kindle.

Kindle Download Page

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Scalping 2.0

Posted on March 3, 2010 by b

From DigitalMusicNews: The Ultimate Scalping Heist Hits a Wall…

Forget about the scruffy scalper outside the venue, that’s just pennies compared to the money floating online.  And, for a clique of devious hackers, the ultimate ticketing scam produced millions before crashing this week.

How much?  The self-named ‘Wiseguy Tickets’ ring ultimately netted $25 million before running afoul of federal investigators.  The LA-based group tapped a number of Bulgarian programmers to flood systems like ticketmaster.com, and grab prime tickets under different aliases.

The programmers outsmarted ‘captcha’ systems, ironically designed to keep bots out, and snatched the best selection across a range of music, sports, theater, and other concert categories.  ”The public thought it had a fair shot at getting tickets to these events, but what the public didn’t know was that the defendants had cheated them out of that opportunity,” US Attorney General Paul Fishman announced, while announcing 43 different charges related to fraud, conspiracy, and computer hacking.

In the music world, the scam included high-profile shows from Bruce Springsteen and Miley Cyrus, both focal-points for a serious aftermarket backlash.  Those shows featured huge, high-profile markups on the aftermarket, a problem for the then-proposed merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

The Wiseguy gig is up, though the operation exposed some serious market inefficiencies.  Scalpers have earned a bad reputation for marking up prices, though from a purely free-market perspective, these scalpers are merely agents of arbitrage.

Take it a step further, and scalpers are actually assuming risk by betting on actual consumer demand and willingness to pay higher prices.  Perhaps gate-crashing secure systems takes the practice to a ridiculous extreme, though throughout, the internet offered a perfectly-lubricated market for reaching willing buyers.

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iTunes Store hits 10B

Posted on February 25, 2010 by b

Reuters

Apple’s iTunes Store hit a landmark on Wednesday with the download of its 10 billionth song.

A counter on the company’s home page hit the 10 billion mark at 4:43 p.m. ET — approximately 6 years and 10 months since the store first opened in the U.S. Back then it was known as the iTunes Music Store and served just music but it has since expanded to include video, TV shows and podcasts.

The customer who snagged the 10 billionth download will receive a $10,000 (U.S.) iTunes gift card from Apple, the company said.

That’s roughly enough money to fill an iPod Touch to capacity with music from the store — a generous gift for any music lover, but not as generous as the package on offer when the store hit its billionth download in 2006. Then Apple offered a similar gift card but also a 20-inch iMac, 10 60GB iPods, and a music-school scholarship set up in the winner’s name.

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Google and music – what’s next

Posted on February 23, 2010 by b

Here’s an interesting take on what Google is up to re: getting involved in music distribution.

The key point: we are approaching a time when we stop managing our music collections on a local hard drive and instead locate them online, where they can be accessed by any device at anytime, without dealing with manually transferring files

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Sink or swim time for Rhapsody

Posted on February 22, 2010 by b

Rhapsody, the monthly all-you-can-eat music subscription service, is becoming an independent company.

Up to now Real Networks and media giant Viacom owned the Rhapsody service.  Viacom will reduce its minority stake and turn over intellectual property rights;  Real Networks will surrender its majority stake and contribute $18 million in operating capital to get Rhapsody started as an independent business.  Once the deal is done, Rhapsody will have no single majority owner.

Rhapsody was one of the first to market in the digital music space and is the largest “pure play” service.  However, like all other music services not named iTunes,  Rhapsody has been challenged in finding a customer base and audience with its subscription model.  In Q3 2009,  Rhapsody had about 700,000 subscriptions, down from 800,000 at the start of ’09.

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