Remember when David Letterman was moving from NBC to CBS and he had all sorts of special guests in his final week? It was quite an event. Bruce Springsteen, who had not yet played Letterman, performed "Glory Days" his final show. At one point, Letterman quipped that he was [...]
Coolfer will be light (or void of) posts this week. I'm laptop-less in Austin for SXSW. On Thursday at 11am I will moderate a panel on blogs and whatever level of awesomeness they have attained in the music world. Other than that, I will be roaming around from party to' [...]
Before the BusinessWeek.com article by Douglas MacMillan on consumers' use of streaming services as substitutes for purchasing, I was the only one (as far as I know) to point out this harmful downside to free, ad-supported services.
In December 2008, I wrote that streaming services are not a boon' [...]
• Sony/ATV Publishing is creating a television series called "American Storytellers." The series will turn the stories of country songs into one-hour dramas. (Billboard.biz)
• Bit torrent search engine Minivova generated €1,000,000 in revenue in 2007. Be careful of the wording in the article. It says Mininova "earned" €1,000,000, which [...]
The Tennessean has an article on the launch party for the Third Man Records building in Nashville. The label was founded by Jack White (White Stripes, The Raconteurs). Its headquarters will house the record label and will have a record store, photo studio and performance stage. Said White:
If [...]• U2's No Line On The Horizon entered at #1 on the album chart with sales of 484,000 units. Given the changes in the marketplace and the shift away from the album format over the last four and a quarter years since the band's last album, 484,000 units is about [...]
At last, the curtain is being lifted on artists' involvement in the secondary ticketing market. The Wall Street Journal's Ethan Smith has an excellent article on Ticketmaster, secondary ticketing services and the extent to which some artists and managers are profiting from legal scalping.
A focal point of the article [...]
• A profile on Jim Griffin and Choruss. "I think it's fair to say the business of music products has fallen and it just can't get up. … For any civilized society, it has to become very, very concerned when it becomes voluntary to pay for … the stuff of" [...]
One of two outcomes will come from todays' three-and-a-half hour hearing on the Performance Rights Act: Either the committee will approve the Performance Rights Act or the National Association of Broadcasters and labels will reach their own agreement. It is very clear the committee members understand the promotional value' [...]
• Now streaming: House Judiciary Committee's hearing on the Performance Rights Act. (House Judiciary Committee)
• The NAB's statement before today's hearing. (Radio Ink)
• Chuck D is Sellaband's spokesperson as the company launches in the U.S. (Music Ally)
• Pitchfork has a new design and now has the pitchfork.com [...]
Trans World, operator of f.y.e. and other entertainment chains, reported dismal earnings in Q4 2008 (read earnings release and earnings call transcript). Total Q4 sales were down 24% to $344.7 million while comp store sales were down 14%. For fiscal 2008, sales were down 21% to $988.0 million [...]
Do the major labels have a master plan that will guide them to a soft landing in the post-CD era? If you believe the claims of an unnamed music executive told by Michael Arrington in a post at TechCrunch, everything is going as planned. The lawsuits, the stubborn licensing [...]
Nice to see Bob Lefsetz touch upon some topics I have written about a few times lately: the practice of setting aside a block of tickets for artists and managers, which parties get to share in ticket service fees. Ticketmaster Entertainment CEO Irving Azoff went on the [...]
• Eminem's producers lost their lawsuit against Universal Music Group that sought a higher royalty rate for digital sales. (Los Angeles Times)
• The Australian recorded music market fell 8% to $234.4 million in 2008. Digital increased 14% to $14.4 million. (Billboard.biz)
• Live Nation wants to make upgrades to' [...]
Both the Tennsessean and Music Row have articles today on a CMA consumer survey that sought to find out more about country fans. Both are recommended reading.
[...]• Live Nation's ten-year deal with German ticketing giant CTS Eventim would survive a Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger. The partnership allowed Live Nation to license CTD Eventim's ticketing technology and allowed CTS to have Live Nation' ticketing business in Europe. (Billboard.biz)
• Q&A with Imeem’s CMO and head of business development' [...]
Digital Music News has a data-heavy post on the new U2 album, No Line on the Horizon, that seeks an answer for why the album is headed for such a low first-week sales tally. The latest album is on target for 400,000 to 500,000 units, according to some estimates. [...]
People constantly lament the absence of Beatles tracks online (legally, anyway) but word is out today (read the EMI press release) that Apple Corp, MTV and Harmonix will release "The Beatles: Rock Band" on September 9th.
The software will go for $59.99. The guitars (modeled after instruments played by [...]
If you haven't already seen it, read the text of the keynote speech given by Jim Griffin at the Digital Music Forum East last week. Hypebot posted the entire thing. Griffin is the founder of Choruss, an organization currently working with universities in an attempt to monetize campus P2P' [...]
• Taylor Swift's Fearless is again at #1 on the album chart with little competition to speak of. The album sold 73,000 units. Number two was Lamb of God's Wrath with 68,000 in its debut week. Sales for the week were off 13.1%. (Billboard.biz)
• A report says YouTube and [...]
U.S. album sales were down 11.5% versus 2008 and down 27.6% versus 2007, according to Soundscan information available at Billboard.biz. Through the first two months of 2009, album sales were down 11.7% versus 2008 and down 28.6% versus 2007. The February deficits are a slight improvement over those [...]
While journalists tend to latch onto the portrait of the record label as technophobic morons (which has been right only part of the time) there are occasional opposing opinions in the news. At the very end of Sunday's NY Times article on U2, guitarist The Edge speaks of the [...]
Edgar Bronfman, Jr. spoke at the Deutsche Bank Securities Media and Telecommunications Conference yesterday (you can stream the audio from the Warner Music Group investor relations site). Two comments stood out above all others. Many of the comments are reruns from recent earnings calls.
Far into the conversation, Bronfman revealed [...]
• Transcript of Monday's Live Nation earnings call. "We’ve now shown you in Q4 we didn’t get hit by ticket sales and as of the first two months we haven’t gotten hit by ticket sales. So, we can confidently say, although no one has believed us for months that we" [...]
The other day I posted the text of some excerpts from last week's Senate Judiciary hearing on the proposed Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger. In my opinion, the sections I highlighted stood out above nearly all other comments. They were unprecedented admissions by a music executive of where ticket service fees go [...]
EMI owner Terra Firma released its annual report today. Click here to download the 115-page PDF (the EMI section of the report starts on page 45) or here for a Reuters article.
EMI's EBITDA was £221 million for the last nine months of 2008. That compares well to [...]
• Terra Firma made public in its annual report that it has written down half its £2.3 billion ($3.29 billion) investment in EMI. (Wall Street Journal)
• All Virgin Megastores are planned to be liquidated and closed by the summer. There is still a future for physical music retail, but [...]
Vivendi announced its Q4 2008 earnings today (press release and PDF of earnings release). Universal Music Group posts a 0.2% drop in its 2008 revenue and a 7.8% decrease in its Q4 revenue (both in constant currency). Annual revenues for publishing, artist services and merchandise all increased due [...]
• Jim Griffin finally provided some details about Choruss at Digital Media Wire's Digital Music Forum East. (Billboard.biz)
• iTunes is offering to upgrade users' tracks to DRM-free MP3 files...except some of those tracks are MP3s purchased at Amazon.com. (Consumerist)
• A good recap of the trial of Eminem's production' [...]
The previous time I checked, there was no archive of Tuesday's Senate hearing on the proposed Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger. Nor is there yet a transcription available to the public. But the full hearing can now be streamed from the Senate Committee on the Judiciary's page for the hearing.
I wanted [...]
• Two more Virgin Megastores, at Union Square in New York and Market Street in San Francisco, are to close. (Billboard.biz and SF Examiner)
• AEG Live CEO Randy Phillips called testimony by Irving Azoff and Michael Rapino "completely and totally disingenuous" and pointed out that AEG's contracts with [...]
• Taylor Swift sits atop the album chart with a mere 62,000 units moved last week. Total sales for the week were down 7% versus the same week in 2008. (Billboard.biz)
• EMI has sued music search site Seeqpod (currently "down for maintenance") and Favtape, a playlist site that [...]
It was not the Iran-Contra hearings, but today's hearing on the proposed Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger (held by the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights) did not disappoint. I missed the first 50 minutes of the webcast and, unfortunately, the government does not quickly archive such [...]
Pretty much any person to write, talk, blog or Twitter about music streaming service Spotify has praised it to no end. In a world in which the term "iTunes killer" is tossed out without caution, Spotify is being hailed as a legitimate successor to Apple's market-dominating player/store. Capturing some [...]
• What's the over-under on this being called a "slippery slope"? Irish ISP Eircom has agreed to block user access to file-sharing sites such as The Pirate Bay. (TorrentFreak)
• Today's circus: A Senate hearing/grilling on the proposed Ticketmaster and Live Nation merger. You can watch a live stream of [...]
If Ticketmaster stumbled on an in-demand sale for a Bon Jovi concert in East Rutherford, New Jersey, would 2,000 consumer complaints have been brought and a settlement with the State of New Jersey ever had taken place? Probably not.
Anyway, Ticketmaster reached an agreement with the state that will [...]
Music Week has a bit about Warner Music Group's overlay ads in a My Chemical Romance video at MySpace. The site has a partnership with Auditude that puts the ads in music videos. You can go to the My Chemical Romance page for the video, a cover [...]
It is quite ironic that a new secondary ticketing service launches just as a public debate roars about how a Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger would raise ticket prices. Regardless of the number of tickets Ticketmaster offers only on its secondary sites -- that's the hot topic these days, the number of' [...]
• Last.fm denies the claim made last week by TechCrunch that it gave the RIAA user data that could be used to track down people listening to unreleased tracks. (paidContent)
• Elio Leoni-Sceti, CEO of EMI Music, is calling for ISPs to do more than just send emails to [...]
• Universal Australia prematurely released the new U2 album to getmusic.com.au, a site run by Universal Music Australia. Oops. (LiveNews)
• Spotify, the new music service that everybody seems to love (it's not yet available to U.S. users) has landed an exclusive on the upcoming new U2 album. Which would' [...]
• Nashville's Montage Music Group is reportedly closing. Montage is home to The Road Hammers, Ryan Shupe, Matt King and Andy Griggs. (Music Row)
• Of you can take the Billboard.biz report that Montage Music is going to simply reorganize. The company's publishing division will remain, but a spokeswoman [...]
Taylor Swift's Fearless tops the album chart with sales of 92,000 units. Not so long ago that would have been a horrible tally for a week's top album, but these days it's about average. And while album sales are dropping (especially for the hits), singles are selling better and better.' [...]
• Prosecution for the record labels have dropped half the charges against the Pirate Bay. The "assisting copyright infringement" charge was dropped. The the lesser charges of "assisting making available copyright material" are still in play. The Pirate Bay hosts no files. Instead, it has indexes and tracks torrent files [...]
RealNetworks announced Q4 2008 and full-year earnings last week (read SEC filing). Taking into account digital trends, RealNetworks' music gains are fairly disappointing. The company's music revenue increased 8% for the entire year and 8.2% in Q4. Those gains are well behind the increase in U.S. digital download revenue [...]
• A group of Ticketmaster shareholders have filed a class action lawsuit against the company that claims it sold itself too cheaply to Live Nation. (Los Angeles Business Journal)
• Liberty Media will keep Sirius XM Satellite Radio afloat by loaning $530 million in the struggling company. After the loans [...]
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Coordinator, Artist/Label Relations at The Orchard; New York, New York
The DVD is beginning to go through the downward slide its cousin the CD has seen for many years. The Wrap has some consumer sales data from Digital Entertainment Group: Consumer spending on home video entertainment slid 10.0% from 2004 to 2008, and DVD sales dropped 10.4% during that [...]
• Sirius XM creditors will reportedly try to remove CEO Mel Karmazin if he opts for Chapter 11 over dealing with an investor to retain solvency. (Reuters)
• The file-sharing trial against The Pirate Bay is underway in Sweden. Among the plaintiffs are Warner Bros, MGM, Colombia Pictures Industries, 20th [...]
You may get run over by Omnifone's runaway PR campaign sometime today or this week. The company has announced MusicStation Next Generation, a "revolutionary" music service that offers "unlimited access to the world's music" and ushers in a "new era" of entertainment. (read press release).
It's a familiar refrain.' [...]
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[...]• The Legal Affairs Committee approved extending copyright for sound recordings in the European Union to 95 years. The proposal, a reversal from the recommendation of the Gowers report just a few years ago, is expected to be signed into European law next month. (Times Online)
• Google will [...]
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CD Baby has shared its 2008 performance figures (via TechDirt) and they show modest to good growth. CD sales increased 2% to 1,013,478 units while digital download revenue rose 45% to $25.4 million (that's wholesale, not retail).
Proving that it matters for hits as well as niches, iTunes [...]
• The Fray's self-titled tops the album chart with sales of 179,000. Sales for the week totaled 7.32 million units, a 13.1% decrease over the same week in 2008. (Billboard.biz)
• Sirius XM Radio Inc is reportedly talking to Liberty Media as well as EchoStar, both possible acquirers of the [...]
Warner Music Group and Qtrax, the worst fake-P2P music service this side of iMesh, have inked a deal that covers WMG's catalog.
Here is today's press release. Here's a press release from September 2006, the first time WMG licensed its catalog to Qtrax.
The difference? In 2006, WMG [...]
I'm incredibly surprised by all the criticism and doomsday predictions concerning Live Nation Entertainment, the company that would be created by the proposed Live Nation and Ticketmaster merger. Everybody has an opinion, music critics are now prescient business analysts, and almost all of them are wrong. If there are' [...]
CNET's Greg Sandoval has a nice look into Sony Music's sinking digital market share. But he left out one important thing: The company's total market share -- not just digital -- has taken a beating since the Sony and BMG merger.
Borders, which accounts for about 2% of the U.S. recorded music market, plans to dramatically reduce the number of CDs its stores will carry and seeks revised payment terms from vendors. As Billboard's Ed Christmas termed it, Borders is "threatening" to reduce inventories. Judging from the email that was' [...]
• Senator Charles Schumer has called for the FTC to investigate Ticketmaster. Schumer wants an investigation into anything and everything and frequently says the most ridiculous things (not too long ago he wanted to slap tariffs on Chinese exports if the country didn't stop manipulating its currency). I wouldn't [...]
Word is out this morning that the boards of Live Nation and Ticketmaster approved a merger two days ago. Many reports claim negotiations were not done Sunday evening, but the USA Today has a source that said the two boards voted unanimously for the merger.
The Wall Street Journal's' [...]
I noticed the top-selling CDs at Amazon.com are all big Grammy winners (Robert Plant & Allison Krauss, Coldplay and Adele go 1-2-3). Makes perfect sense and was expected. But when I checked the best-selling MP3 albums, I was surprised to see a different set of titles. Amazon.com MP3 customers [...]
When estimating the regulatory scrutiny of a Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger, it becomes clear the two companies would have had fewer hurdles if they wedded during the Bush administration. That's not to say a merger would be denied, but it will not have the opportunity to breeze through it would have [...]
According to Music Row, country album sales were down 20.5% year-over-year in January 2009. That's considerably worse than the 12% drop for total album sales but not as bad as the 24% decline for country albums in all of 2008.
Digital accounted for 12.7% of country album sales, up [...]
• A complete list of last night's Grammy winners. (AP)
• As it closed its Ruckus music service, Total Music has shut its doors as well. So cross Total Music off the list of candidates to run Facebook's music play. (Music Ally)
• People's Music Store has received a [...]
paidContent reports college campus-focused Ruckus is history. The blank home page tells the story: "Unfortunately the Ruckus service will no longer be provided. Thanks." According to the Ruckus Wikipedia page, the message went up yesterday afternoon.
Just a few years ago I used the music service as a [...]
From an article on music-based mobile games comes (via Music Ally) this bit of info on sell-through for Katy Perry: Over 250,000 people downloaded Perry's "Hot N Cold" to play on Tap Tap Revenge, and 56,000 of them later purchased the song at iTunes. That's a 22.4% conversation [...]
Digital Music News has some notes from a keynote with new MySpace Music president Courtney Holt at the EconMusic conference in LA. paidContent, host of the conference, also has a report.
Holt gave some indications where he's headed. He talked of improving the playlist features. That's important. MySpace Music's' [...]
• Connecticut's Attorney Genera may start an investigation into the rumored Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger, and he said he has talked to other Attorneys General about a probe. If the two are going to try to merge, they should do a better job at keeping their noses clean until lawmakers [...]
MySpace's Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolf were on the Charlie Rose Show on Tuesday. Content was a big aspect of the discussion. MySpace wants to be the de facto source of entertainment content, and music is a big part of that strategy. During the interview, the word "music" [...]
• Norway is dropping its complaint against Apple's iTunes that centered around the closed iTunes-iPod ecosystem. "We have no reason to pursue them anymore," said the country's consumer mediator. Dropping DRM will do that to this type of complaint. (AFP)
• A judge has thrown out the part of Universal [...]
Warner Music Group eked out a slight profit in Q1 ending 12/31/08 even though revenue dropped by 11% and operating income fell 34%.
It wasn't improved cost management that allowed WMG to eke out a slight profit of $23 million on revenue of $878 million. Cost of sales was' [...]
According to album sales information available at Billboard.biz, U.S. album sales dropped 12% in January 2009 versus the same period in 2008. Compared to January 2007, album sales in January 2009 were down 29.5%.
This is a familiar story. January 2008 album sales were down 12.2% compared to January [...]
It's Bullet Point Wednesday.
• It's the economy. In the absence of a recession, neither company would be as prone to do this merger. But the willingness to tough it out is not what it used to be. The value of Live Nation's multi-million, multi-rights deals has declined since those deals [...]
Live Nation shares are currently up 10.22% to $5.50. Ticketmaster Entertainment shares are up 15.36% to $7.08.
Ticketmaster was at $25 in August 2008. Live Nation was at $17 in August. Investors obviously feel what executives at both companies feel: a merger is one way to deliver a return [...]
• An interview with Vivendi CEO Jean-Bernard Levy. On iTunes' current dominance: "I believe that in the long run, the people tend to look at multiple stores to find what they want to buy. That will be also true of music." They certainly don't do it now. There are a [...]
Maybe you noticed Topspin Media is selling various items for the 20th anniversary reissue of the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique -- downloads (various formats), download-and-videos package, CD or vinyl. The prices seem kind of steep, but 20 years of legendary status must amount to something.
That's a Capitol' [...]
From the Wall Street Journal's Ethan Smith (hat tip to none other than the Lefsetz email):
Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc. and Live Nation Inc. are close to a merger, people familiar with the matter said, in a deal that would consolidate two of the most powerful forces in the music industry [...]Rafat Ali at paidContent has a good overview of RealNetworks' pre-earnings release. Notable is "a decline in the assumed valuation of the Rhapsody America venture" and a non-cash charge of $185 million to $200 million related to impairment in goodwill and acquired intangible assets (a few mobile acquisitions that' [...]
• Amanda Ghost has been named the new president of Epic Records. (Press release)
• Oops, forgot to mention this yesterday. Ben Sisario has a good article that compares #1 albums over different years but concludes being #1 is good no matter what the year. Taylor Swift has sold [...]
Chris Anderson, author of "The Long Tail," has an article in today's tomorrow's (it was posted online at about 7pm Monday) Wall Street Journal titled "The Economics of Giving It Away Free." This is a great time for a free model. There are a few issues. First, ads tend [...]
In 2008, Americans purchased 297.6 million video games, according to NPD Group (as reported by Billboard.biz). Those sales had an estimated $11.7 billion retail value. The third- and fourth-best selling titles were music-based. Activision/Red Octane's "Guitar Hero World Tour" moved 3.4 million units and Harmonix/MTV/EA's "Rock Band 2" sold [...]
The EMI restructuring continues and the latest Maltby report (PDF, 566 KB), released by EMI last week, provides many insights into the company's progress and ambitions. Where its competitors or focused on adding parts of the value chain, EMI is slimming down and preparing for an era where [...]
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• Finally, somebody has a good take on EMI's recent earnings release. Yes, its second-half of 2008 loss was an improvement, but there are important implications to its strategy. "The cost cuts are helping to reduce the company's losses, but they also appear to be costing EMI market share, which" [...]
Sony Corp. profits were thin in Q3 2008 ending December 31, 2008. Sony Music Entertainment did not fare so well. On a pro forma basis -- necessary because Sony took over BMG in October 2008 -- sales were down 22% on a U.S. dollar basis. Operating income rose 10% [...]
• How bad will this summer's touring business be? Festivals are offering layaway plans for their expensive tickets, so some companies are trying to work around the problem. Live Nation points to the summer of 2008, the point at which the recession started to kick in, and insists it will [...]
Keith Jopling at Juggernaut Brew has a very good post that outlines an artist's path to market. He lays out two important questions musicians need to ask themselves:
1. Just what do you do to get your music heard? and; 2. Just how long do you intend to last?The answer [...]
An 86-page report on digital music was released today by the UK Department for Culture Media and Sport. "Digital Britain - Interim Report" has recommendations on a a new deal for digital content rights, universal access to broadband and the future of digital radio. Download the PDF (1.5MB) [...]
• There may be no cliff, but the downward slope is no picnic. Taylor Swift's Fearless is spending its eighth week atop the album chart. More importantly, it sold a mere 63,000 units. At #10, Mariah Carey's Ballads was the weeks' top debut. Last week's 6.43 million units were 12%' [...]
Y'all in Nashville should attend the "Why Can't Music Be Free?" panel tonight at Vanderbilt University's Sarratt Cinema. On the panel are Joe Galante (Chairman, Sony Nashville), Luke Lewis (Chairman, Universal Music Group Nashville), Ken Robold (EVP/GM, Universal Music Group Nashville), Troy Tomlinson (CEO, Sony/ATV) and Jim Beavers (songwriter). [...]
From this post at Music Row:
Based upon the numbers country consumers are still only downloading about 7.5% of their country album purchases compared with about 17% for overall music.Country sales are falling just like the sales of other genres. It could because of the drop in CD shelf space. [...]
Intellectual Property Watch has an article titled "Licensing Remains Essential But Elusive For Digital Music Providers" that is worth reading. ISP-based models are all the talk these days. All models would require licenses of some sort, whether or not they are the hotly debated blanket license.
The move to [...]
The music industry's new strategy for combating piracy is built upon the cooperation -- voluntary until that proves unworkable -- of ISPs. Sources have told CNET's Greg Sandoval that AT&T and Comcast have expressed interest in working with the RIAA on its "graduated response" anti-piracy program. Neither has signed [...]
• Spain's recorded music sales fell 10% to €254.4 million in 2008. The country's top-selling album moved only 187,000 units, a puny sum for a country of some 46 million people. (Billboard.biz)
• Another independent artist-focused e-commerce solution is available. Audiolife launches its public beta today. Artists can create [...]
Muxtape is back (via Nashville Cream). Almost. In a few weeks. The site shut down while it retooled to a band-focused streaming service that looks like it will be quite multifaceted. The previous incarnation, which allowed the public to upload files and create playlists, was not favored [...]
Verizon Wireless saw the number of its music and video downloads increase 16.3% in Q4 of 2008, according to today's press release. That comes out to about 50 million downloads versus 43 million downloads in Q3.
The number of Verizon retail subscribers increased 1.7% to 70 million (which [...]
This interesting tidbit about Lala's peer recommendations is in a piece at ReadWriteWeb about the different ways to approach music recommendations.
Other services, like Lala, have decided to not feature any real recommendation technology at all. Instead, Lala purely relies on users following each other on the service and [...]
