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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Canadian Music Festival in March

Posted on February 22, 2010 by b

Link to event here

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Steam: Digital distribution now 25M accounts

Posted on February 8, 2010 by b

According to an annual press release by Valve Corporation, their Steam digital content distribution service surpassed 25 million active accounts, growing 25% over previous year numbers.

Other stats:

  • those 25 million accounts experienced/played an average of 3,000,000,000  minutes  per month (=  nine million days of time each month)
  • Steam hosts over 1000 games from more than 100 developers and publishers from around the world.
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Sam Phillips goes subscription route with fans

Posted on February 8, 2010 by b

By this fall, singer-songwriter Sam Phillips will have released five EPs and a full-length studio album.  She’s taken the step of making her music available through The Long Play, a subscription-only service on her website that gives members access to new songs.

Phillips says she is recording the music as she goes along. So far, she has released two digital-only EPs, ‘Hypnotists in Paris’ and ‘Cold Dark Night.’ Three additional EPs will arrive as well as a full-length digital studio album due out in the fall. The money coming from the subscribers (a ‘Long Play’ membership is $52) will shape the costs in creating the music.

“You might hear that things may get a little lush if a few more people join [up],” explains Phillips. “Maybe me on a guitar or a kazoo. So far we’ve had a great response. We have a lot of fun doing what we do.”

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Hooray! Net pirates to be ‘disconnected’

Posted on November 27, 2009 by b

The UK government has been laying out some of the ways it intends to pursue persistent net pirates.

It comes as Lord Mandelson confirmed that he would introduce tough measures against illegal file-sharers.

Initially pirates could have download caps imposed or have their bandwidth restricted.

If that did not prove effective in reducing illegal file-sharing, the government will consider disconnecting them from the network.

Article & Video from BBC News

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More Networking for Xbox

Posted on November 25, 2009 by b

Last.fm announced that it quickly gained one million users from its recent Xbox integration. Now owned by CBS, Last.fm agreed to sync itself into Xbox Live alongside Facebook and Twitter last week.

The increase in user base (covering the US and UK) is the largest incremental gain ever for the service and new users have already listened to 120 million minutes of music.

Also,  Microsoft reported more than two million Facebook logins through Xbox Live in the last week alone along with Xbox-generated Twitter traffic.  The Xbox integration now also includes Zune (the Microsoft download store).

The gaming computer is another  network access tool.

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Composers and lyricists make pitch to join Teamsters

Posted on November 23, 2009 by b

From the LA Times

David Carbonara has a gig many of his peers would covet: He writes music for the critically acclaimed AMC show “Mad Men.”

A former jazz trombonist, Carbonara loves his job and is grateful for the work. Yet even after he labors on 13 episodes for a full year, he says he won’t earn enough to support his family. A one-hour basic cable TV show like “Mad Men” pays $7,000 to $13,000 an episode, but at least half of that goes toward hiring musicians, paying for studio time, copying music and other costs that composers like Carbonara increasingly absorb as studios look to lower their expenses.

Rest of Article

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Music: Too Expensive to Be Free, Too Free to Be Expensive

Posted on November 23, 2009 by b

MySpace, rumored to be on the verge of purchasing the free music streaming site imeem, is struggling to keep up with its own payments to music copyright holders, according to a top News Corp executive — a problem that has plagued every other licensed free music service.

The digital music doubters could be right with the contention that advertising revenue can’t cover the costs of licensing music. Meanwhile, illegitimate free music sources continue to proliferate, rendering paid music subscriptions irrelevant for most music fans.

Rest of Wired Article

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Boyle Is Back: Amazon Pre-Orders ‘Breaking Records’

Posted on November 20, 2009 by b

edited from Digital Music News

Susan Boyle just got an extension on her fifteen minutes of fame, and this time, she’s cashing in.  Instead of ad-free, non-monetized YouTube views, Boyle is now positioned for a serious windfall and setiing a new sales record

Ahead of the critical holiday shopping season, Boyle is now preparing her debut album, I Dreamed a Dream.  And, according to information shared Thursday, Boyle has sold more album pre-orders than any other artist on Amazon – ever, on a global basis.  ”We’re absolutely ecstatic now that the album has become our largest global CD pre-order,” said Craig Pape, senior manager of Music at Amazon.com.

Also ecstatic is Sony Music Entertainment, the label behind the November 23rd release.  The disc is available for pre-order for $9.99, and AmazonMP3 will start selling a digital copy alongside the physical street date.

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What Modern Warfare 2, Hans Zimmer, and 50 Cent Have In Common…

Posted on November 12, 2009 by b

from Digital Music News

Avid gamers are hard to reach these days, thanks to the release of Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The hugely-anticipated game is suddenly casting ‘obligations’ like employment, friendships, and marriages as mere distractions. Sounds like Grand Theft Auto IV all over again, yet this time, the soundtrack is much different.

Instead of a dashboard radio tuner, the action of Modern Warfare 2 carries a cinematic soundtrack. And, who better to craft that musical backdrop than Hans Zimmer, the composer extraordinaire behind blockbusters like Pirates of the Carribean, Gladiator, and Rain Man, to name a few.

The result is a big-screen auditory experience, though Modern Warfare 2 was Zimmer’s first foray into gaming. So, instead of set time periods to develop musical arcs, Zimmer was forced to score something that fit the always-variable frames of an action game.

The choice of Zimmer is symbolic. Of course, Zimmer is hardly a budget choice, though the gaming industry now rivals – and often surpasses – Hollywood in terms of title receipts and the scope of its projects. On that note, Modern Warfare 2 is also stuffed with big-name voices, including 50 Cent, whose voice appears in multiplayer and ‘special ops’ modes.

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