orlow A report by Maltby Capital, the company created to acquire and run EMI, reveals that the British music giant is still spending money like a drunken sailor. A highlight of the out-of-control budget was £700,000 spent with just one London taxi firm.
“This was only slightly less than the bills of three investment banks, with 8-10 times more staff than EMI Music,” the report notes.
The Monday morning after the clocks go back traditionally brings us very little cheer, but here’s one piece of good news – you’ll be seeing less of Sir Cliff Richard in the future.
Almost half the nation’s households don’t have net access – and most of them aren’t going to sign up.
In what will be unwelcome news for ISPs, ecommerce providers, and the government, a survey of UK households suggests internet hold-outs are getting more stubborn.
The availability of cheap broadband has eroded the refusenik camp very slightly, with 3.6 per cent of non-net households signing up over six months. However, the increase in broadband is largely at the expense of dial-up, and isn’t winning net converts. The number of households with no access fell by 1.6 per cent year-on-year from the previous survey, while broadband uptake rose 7.1 per cent.
Overall, 44 per cent of UK households don’t have net access and views are becoming more entrenched.
Rights to the celebrated documentary The Clangers are changing hands. Often mistakenly described as “a children’s programme”, the 1970s series revealed for the first time the existence of an advanced knitwear-based lunar civilisation, knowledge of which has been suppressed by governments and space agencies ever since.
Not only was the vast body of evidence of the Clanger civilisation never formally acknowledged by NASA, but neither was a great deal of natural lunar vegetation (sentient music trees) and unique geographical features (soup wells).
Federal investigators have hit a California biker gang where it hurts – by seizing the group’s trademark. The Mongols OutLaw Biker Gang [website] attracted the attention of the DoJ’s Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Department, with 61 indictments issued today. Search warrants were issued in six states yesterday, following a long undercover investigation. Gang members’ bikes were impounded, but it’s the seizure of the Mongol’s trademark that will raise eyebrows.
Under Federal racketeering laws, introduced in 1970 to counter organised crime, “any property, real or personal, which represents or is traceable to the gross proceeds obtained, directly or indirectly,” can be forfeited from indictment for specific criminal activity.
So, what’s the DoJ doing grabbing IP? Well, the DoJ’s Thomas O’Brien says it’s because the gang initially trademarked the name Mongols and the distinctive design as part of their patch. In a statement, he explained:
“We have filed papers seeking a court order that will prevent gang members from using or displaying the name ‘Mongols.’ If the court grants our request for this order, then if any law enforcement officer sees a Mongol wearing his patch, he will be authorized to stop that gang member and literally take the jacket right off his back.”
But not so fast.
Hats off to young British entrepreneur Chris Ridgeon for developing a new tool for self-expression. Internetshout.com which launches today describes itself as “the world’s voice-based social and discussion forum” – and delivers exactly what it promises on the tin.
Instead of simply spraying your thoughts onto the Hive Mind’s graffiti wall using ASCII, you can now speak your brains at the internet, instead. Or if you prefer, SHOUT YOUR BRAINS at it.
The internet has been great for millionaire music performers and amateurs – it’s everyone else in between who gets screwed. Now we have Radiohead’s publisher Warner Chappell helping confirm the trend. The publisher’s head of business affairs Jane Dyball has divulged some information on the band’s “name your own price” offer last year.
Radiohead offered fans the chance to pay for a low-bitrate version of its new album In Rainbows, an album that was made available in various physical formats on indie label XL Recordings a few weeks later. Since the credit card processing fee could be set at zero, fans could preview and keep the album for free, while true mugs fans could pay twice: once for the preview, and again for the CD.
Not surprisingly, the avalanche of publicity for this brave move gave In Rainbows a huge boost – reversing a decade of dwindling sales for the band. Dyson said this week that Radiohead had sold 3.25 million copies, more than half of which (1.75 million) were physical CDs. 100,000 diehards paid £40 for the box set. This exceeds sales of 2001’s Kid A and Amnesiac and 2004’s Hail To The Thief. Only the band’s The Bends, a US hit in the early 90s, and the worldwide bestseller OK Computer did better.
There were other benefits to this go-it-alone strategy: since physical sales were handled by the Beggars Group’s XL label, an independent, Radiohead kept more of the revenue. The band didn’t have to pay overseas rates for revenue on digital downloads from their site, and cut out the retailer for those box sets, which were sold by Radiohead’s Waste Management operation. Dyball said the band saw more revenue from the “name your own price” digital download than it had from its final album with EMI. So the gimmick proved to be a resounding success for the band and their publisher.
But before musicians cheer too loudly, such success came at the expense of a hard-fought principle. The experiment was only possible because collective bargaining societies bent the rules to make it happen, bringing their own existence into question.
Let’s see why.
The regulator’s rule book for deciding what is permissible on today’s roads is very thick indeed. The content, behaviour and performance of “stuff on roads” is massive, and grows by the day. Try hot-rodding your lawnmower – or deciding that on Thursdays, you will only make left turns, and see how far you get.
By contrast, the regulator’s rule book for deciding what is permissible on the internet – its content, behaviour and performance – couldn’t be simpler. There isn’t one.
Something very spooky happened in the United States last week. The chances are you noticed it too, many days before it was reported.
Tuesday found me in New York, on my first stateside visit in a couple of years. The details of the Bailout plan had just been revealed and the slow burn of outrage was apparent everywhere.
Few music business people expect Nokia’s unlimited free music giveaway to be repeated, or even last very long. There simply aren’t enough large consumer companies prepared to take such an expensive gamble .
And Nokia’s richest partners aren’t interested in helping out.
But it’s a radical and interesting offering that merits some serious analysis: certainly, much more than Nokia’s other Dad-at-the-Disco attempts to get down with da yoot.
As we wrote last December – Comes With Music is much more subtle and interesting than most people gave it credit for. There are strings attached, but fewer than with any such previous bundling promotion.
Nokia has been inhaling Chris Anderson’s “Freetardonomics,” and this is what comes out when it exhales. ..