music business

Nokia’s free music offer isn’t so free

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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. ..

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Songwriters pal with IT to counter the Google lobby

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There’s a new lobby group in town – but unusually, this one unites traditional adversaries from tech, telecoms, and media companies. Backers include the American Songwriters Guild representing creators, Microsoft, Cisco, and AT&T, and media companies including Viacom and NBC. Everyone but Google, it seems.

The launch in New York today was well attended by songwriter’s reps. Arts and Labs’ mission, the group says, is “robust and intelligent networks needed for the swift and safe delivery of the online content consumers demand.”

Which very much sounds like a counterpoint to “Net Neutrality” and similar freetard-friendly campaigns – although everyone present in New York today denied that Neutrality was an impetus in the creation of the group.

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MySpace Music hears the antitrust song

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News Corporation and the major record labels are facing antitrust questions about the blockbuster MySpace Music venture – even before the site has launched.

MySpace Music is billed as the biggest music retail launch of the year. It’s a one-stop shop backed by the cross-media muscle of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, with the three biggest record labels. The site promises to offer everything from downloads to ringtones to concert tickets, backed by the “street” cred of the MySpace brand, and a blockbuster launch is expected this week. Astronomical valuations – $2bn – have already been placed on the service, which MySpace insiders want to become the ‘internet’s MTV’.

The problem? Not everyone can play. Independents say they’re being frozen out of the new venture. No independent music company has inked a deal with the News Corp, and independent labels report that they’ve been blocked from uploading their music. And since MySpace Music is a joint equity venture between News Corp and the three biggest labels, which control 70 per cent of the US recorded music business, the trouble might only be starting.

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Freytards, fanbois and feudalism

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British digital music company 7Digital claimed a coup yesterday by becoming the first online music store to carry DRM-free catalog from the “Big Four” major record labels. Calling it a coup is misleading, however. It’s really further confirmation that the top of the music business is run along feudal lines: closer to the 12th century … Read more

Why (almost) nobody wants a music tax

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In Pynchon’s novel Gravity’s Rainbow, set in WW2 London, a character called Slothrop begins to realize that everywhere he has sex, a V2 rocket subsequently lands on the same spot, obliterating the area. If you dig a little, you may notice something spookily similar with the idea of a Music Tax in the media.

Back in March, talk of a Music Tax suddenly exploded at the SxSW music conference in Austin. WiReD‘s blog ran a story by Frank Rose, entitled Music Industry Proposes a Piracy Surcharge on ISPs.

“[The] idea is to collect a fee from internet service providers – something like $5 per user per month – and put it into a pool that would be used to compensate songwriters, performers, publishers and music labels.” Apparently this was the brainwave of Jim Griffin, a collective licensing advocate hired by Warners to think the unthinkable. Here’s an interview with him from 2004, where he dismisses the idea that collective license should be compulsory, should penalise non-participants, or be imposed by the government. “Government has an after the fact role, as it does with Antitrust legislation. The arguments should be voluntary,” he said then, and sources indicated he hadn’t changed his mind.

A pool, yes, but not a tax.

Coincidentally, the International Music Managers’ Forum happened to be meeting in Austin, and its former head (and now Emeritus President) Peter Jenner was quoted in the article.

Last week, another screaming came across the sky, and another Tax Bomb fell to earth, this time in London.

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Who killed Three Strikes for filesharing?

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A badge of pride

Rejoice! “Three strikes and you’re out” is dead in the UK. Music file sharers will no longer face the threat of seeing the household broadband connection severed. The plague that is currently endemic in France won’t be jumping the English Channel.

Strangely, some people want to keep it alive. Stranger still – this includes the “digital rights” lobby.

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Legal P2P ‘by year end’

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Legal broadband subscription services that permit file sharing may appear on the market by the year’s end, according to music industry sources – after government intervention brought both music suppliers and ISPs to the table.

The UK would become the second country after South Korea where the music business has agreed to offer licenses to file sharing services in a bid to reverse declining revenues. The co-operation follows the intervention of “Brown’s Fist”, the former advisor and Parliamentary Under-Secretary at BERR (the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform) Baroness Shriti Vadera. Vadera is understood to have threatened both the ISP and music businesses with reform and policy intervention, threats which encouraged both parties to open negotiations.

The government is understood to be extremely reluctant to intervene with legislation as it threatened to do earlier this year, and cross-industry agreement to offer attractive consumer broadband music services would mean it wouldn’t have to.

No deals have been signed yet and significant details have yet to be addressed. These include the royalty share between mechanical, sound recording and publishing rights holders, and administration issues. A significant amount of music released has never been licensed digitally – so should a music service provider ignore it, or attempt to pay the owners? As for price, this will be determined by the ISPs. However, sources are confident that Q4 2008 or Q1 2009 will see such the first of these offered to the public.

The move would represent the most radical supply-side reform ever considered by the music business in the modern era.

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EMI hires the Biggest Brain in Sadville

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How desperate is EMI? Desperate enough to hire the co-founder of Sadville? Amazingly, yes. Not only is a graphics programmer joining the storied British music group as head of “digital strategy” – he cheerfully admits he doesn’t know anything about the music business. And he doesn’t even like music – he’s only bought five albums in the past eight years and three of those are by Rush.

Welcome to EMI, then, Linden Labs co-founder Cory Ondrejka.

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“Wake up and smell the Doritos™” – Terry McBride

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Copyright is over, and musicians should make themselves as pretty as they can for big brand advertisers, says top music manager and label boss Terry McBride.

McBride’s Nettwerk Music manages artists including Avril Lavigne and the Barenaked Ladies, and it’s been an indie label for over 20 years. He’s put his thoughts into a Music Tank report published today, and a keynote at Brighton’s Great Escape music festival.

It’s an upbeat vision of the future that eulogises free music, mash-ups and corporate sponsorship. It’s just not a vision of the future everyone is going to welcome – for example, Billy Bragg, who warned against corporate-flavoured feudalism here recently.

Last night Terry was named Music Manager of the Year by his peers. So we caught up with him today ahead of the keynote, to find out where the RIAA scourge thinks the money’s going to come from.

In the report, entitled “Meet The Millenials“, McBride writes –

“Discovery of new music in the digital economy will be synonymous with consumption”. The money will come from ad-supported music services and subscriptions.”

He predicts:

“Premium data services will be the new format of chic within social connections of friends and like-minded individuals”.

“Price will be a fluid definition and more indicative of a response to demand and freedom to use the file after purchase. The definition of what is ‘free’ and what is ‘paid’ will merge, and become a relative point of view.”

That’s one to remember when your landlord knocks on the door, demanding the rent.

“You might think I’m two months behind,” you’ll be able to say, “But that’s a relative point of view.”

Actually free music will become “an upsell technique for other music related products, e.g. concert tickets, clothing, music or artist branded physical products,” reckons McBride. The recorded music helps establish a larger commercial presence. And don’t forget micro-monetisation of P2P recommendations, he writes.

So let’s hear it from the horses mouth. Show us the money, Terry!

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