Of course you can also search for the podcast on iTunes or go to Digitalmusictrends.com for the new feeds. DMT has become a video show as well as an audio show so I hope you’ll come and watch as well as listen in our new home!!

All the best,

Andrea Leonelli

Thanks for sticking with the show for so long through ups and downs (and fairly long breaks) if you’re a long-time listeners and welcome if you’re new to it!

This week an interview with Jason Herskowitz (@jherskowitz), one of the programmers leading the Tomahawk (@Tomahawk) project.

Tomahawk is an open source music player that finally enables cross-platform music consumption and has a very strong social and discovery backbone. Ever wanted to search for music and see results spanning from Soundcloud to last.fm to your Spotify subscription and finally your own music? This is what Tomahawk enables you to do.

There are many cool features and rather than listing them all here I encourage you to listen to the episode and find out!

How to get Tomahawk:  http://gettomahawk.com

Also check out http://www.toma.hk for a web-based first dip into the world of cross-platform streaming!

Hope you enjoy the show, Andrea Leonelli www.digitalmusictrends.com http://twitter.com/digimusictrends

To follow Jeremy’s work online visit: http://www.twitter.com/JeremyS1 http://www.mediaclarity.com

Hope you enjoy the show, have a great week and ’till next time.

Andrea Leonelli

http://twitter.com/digimusictrends http://www.digitalmusictrends.com

This week on the show an interview with Taishi Fukuyama from All Access Today Japan. We talk about the evolution of the digital music landscape in Japan, AATJ’s work with US and European start-ups and how they can help artists enter the Japanese market.

All Access Today Japan: http://www.aatj.jp

Taishi on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tshfkym

This week on the show an interview with Jay Frank, author of Futurehit.dna. Jay is back on the show two years after his first interview to talk about his new book Hack Your Hit and about his new record label Digsin.

We talk about how musicians can improve their odds of being noticed online, the elements that can play a part in creating a hit, real world presence versus social media presence, how to avoid being overwhelmed by the abundance of digital services, the value of free and much more!

Check out Jay’s site http://www.futurehitdna.com and his label’s site http://www.digsin.com. And of course you can find Jay’s books on Amazon too - here’s the link to the Kindle edition of Hack Your Hit http://www.amazon.com/Hack-Your-Hit-Marketing-ebook/dp/B0076QJS54/ref

Have a great week and ’till next time. And BTW if you’re going to be at SXSW 2012 give me a shout! Here’s a link to the panel I’ll be moderating on the 15th of March “The Evolution Of Music Discovery In The Cloud” http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_MP10980

Andrea Leonelli www.digitalmusictrends.com www.twitter.com/digimusictrends

MPme is an application created from the ground up for the iPad and it provides a curated online radio experience. The app actually monitors thousands of commercial radio stations and can serve up recommendations in real tim on stations that are playing tracks that are in line with your music tastes. MPme was recently named best startup in the Music Discovery, Recommendation and Creation category at Midem.

Check it out on the app store or visit www.mpme.com for more information!

Hope you enjoy the show and don’t forget to visit www.digitalmusictrends.com and www.twitter.com/digimusictrends for more info on DMT.

Also an interview with Lutz Villalba the CEO of newly launched start-up Navegas that is creating an interesting in-browser integration of different audio sources.

Visit http://www.playmysong.com & http://www.twitter.com/playmysongapp http://www.naveg.as and http://www.twitter.com/navegasmedia

Don’t forget that you can follow me on twitter the handle is @digimusictrends, the show’s website is www.digitalmusictrends.com and you can also access it via the iTunes store (on your computer or on an iOS device), Soundcloud at soundcloud.com/digitalmusictrends and mixcloud at mixcloud.com/digitalmusictrends.

There are also some great applications to keep up to date with podcasts on the go such as Downcast for iOS and Doggcatcher for Android.

Have a great week and ’til next time! Andrea Leonelli

This week on the show an interview with Justin Kalifowitz, co-founder of the start-up Songtrust. The company offers a digital rights management solution that allows songwriters to manage their publishing online. Amongst the services offered by Songtrust is the payment of royalties from international collection societies and the company also offers different membership tiers according to the songwriter’s requirements as well as an account aimed at bands.

Check out: http://www.songtrust.com http://www.twitter.com/songtrust

Have a great week and ‘tll next time.

Andrea Leonelli Digital Music Trends http://www.digitalmusictrends.com http://www.soundcloud.com/digitalmusictrends http://www.mixcloud.com/digitalmusictrends http://www.twitter.com/digitalmusictrends

http://dimensions.rjdj.me http://rjdj.me

Twitter #dimensionsapp https://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23dimensionsapp

Links to Topspin:

Topspin Homepage http://www.topspinmedia.com/

Education http://www.topspinmedia.com/education

How To Videos: http://www.topspinmedia.com/help/artistsupport/videos

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/topspinmedia (@topspinmedia)

Topspin and Youtube articles: Financial Times: http://on.ft.com/semFLJ Music Week: http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1047061&c=1

Examples: http://beastieboys.com/ http://theboxerrebellion.com/store/ http://www.guillemots.com/?c=1#store/

This week on the show an interview with Ashley Eldson, creator of the Palmsound blog which has been going strong for five years and is all about about music making apps and hardware.

In this episode I tap into Ashley’s incredible knowledge base about making music on the iPhone and iPad in particular. We talk about the latest developments in this field including implementation of “core audio”, the entrance of large music creation companies like Native Instruments, Yamaha and Korg into the market, stand-alone software synths versus sequencers, the Alesis I/O Dock for the iPad & the release of new hardware products for iOS devices in general. We also discuss the status of Android in this field and we finish by talking about what the future may bring for making music on the move - taking into account the inevitable hardware advances that will be taking place in the next couple of years.

If you’re into creating music on mobile devices you have to check out http://the-palm-sound.blogspot.com/ and also follow Ashley on Twitter on http://twitter.com/palmsounds.

SoundOut has created a community of Scouts that built up via word of mouth - they are encouraged to evaluate each track based on how well they think it will do commercially rather than on whether they personally like it or not. The Scouts are paid a small fee (2 to 20 cents depending on how good they are) for each review they post and the review themselves are evaluated by the company’s semantic technology to check on how good they are.

Based on these reviews SoundOut is able to generate reports at different levels of complexity - starting at just $30 for the Standard report which contains 80 reviews delivered within 5 days all the way to $149 for the Pro report which contains a whole host of additional information as well as 200 review, demographic analysis, possibility to isolate UK or US reviewers etc. If you’d like to download a sample report check out http://www.soundout.com/Gallery/126.pdf.

It seems like a very interesting way to go about looking at the commercial viability of a track and with large radio stations and labels regularly commissioning SoundOut reports it looks like they’ve tapped into the right market, let me know what you think!

Well that’s all for this week, I really hope you enjoyed the show. Please remember to visit www.digitalmusictrends.com for previous shows or you can follow me on twitter, the handle is digimusictrends. Have a great week and ‘till next time!

This week on the show an interview with Mark Kelly, the CEO of the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) - also well known as the keyboard player in the band Marillion.

In the interview we talk about the FAC and its main objectives, the challenges that are facing featured artists in navigating the digital domain both in terms of managing new revenue streams and managing their own presence online as a brand, pan-european licensing and the shift in mindset from rights-holders as the perceived value of music slips.

This week’s show is not all about digital music technology but I hope that it will be appreciated by the many artists who listen to the podcast!

www.thefac.org

www.featuredartistcoalition.com

www.twitter.com/featuredartists

Have a great week and ’till next time

Andrea Leonelli

www.digitalmusictrends.com

www.twitter.com/digimusictrends

I hope you enjoy this week’s episode and ’till next time!

Andrea Leonelli

We Are Hunted is one of the world’s most popular indie music websites and they have created a fantastic platform to give exposure to music that strays out of the mainstream. Make sure you visit Wearehunted.com and follow them on Twitter. Also check out the Pocket Hipster and the Hunter apps for iPad, they’re really cool.

http://wearehunted.com http://www.wotnews.com.au

Have a great week-end and ’till next time!

Andrea Leonelli

Hello everyone and welcome to Digital Music Trends. This week on the show an interview with Cliff Fluet, partner at the law firm Lewis Silkin. In the interview we discuss music in the cloud, locker services, anti piracy legislation, the licensing situation for start-ups and the most exciting developments in the digital music business. You can follow Cliff on Twitter (@Fflic) and I also recommend that you check out this video of a presentation he did on the roadmap for branded content shot at MIPTV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r1qAf3-Ddc.

As usual you can visit www.digitalmusictrends.com for more information on the show and you can email digitalmusictrends@gmail.com to send feedback. You can also follow me on twitter, the handle is @digimusictrends.

Have a great week and ’till next time

Andrea Leonelli

This week on the show a quick update from the CEO of MXP4 Albin Serviant, they have just launched a new product - then a lenghty interview with Drew Larner, the CEO of Rdio, where we talk about the company, business model, licenses and lots more and finally an interview with the CEO of Get Ctrl Nick Holden - Get Ctrl has just been shortlisted for the Music Week Awards in the B2B digital service of the year category.

As usual you can keep in touch via the website at www.digitalmusictrends.com you can also email me on digitalmusictrends@gmail.com and follow me on Twitter on twitter.com/digimusictrends.

Also on the show a short piece on Amazon’s new Cloud Drive service and its repercussions for the music industry.

I hope you enjoy this week’s episode and prepare for some celebrations next week for DMT’s second anniversary (and 80th episode) !

Have a great week and ’till next time!

Andrea Leonelli

This week on the show an interview with J Sider, the CEO and founder of RootMusic, a company that is having a big impact on how bands are presenting themselves on Facebook. I’ll be chatting with J about the company’s development and growth, their business model, functionality of the service and future plans. If you’d like to know how to set up a BandPage on Rootmusic go to www.rootmusic.com and you’ll find a step-by-step video guide that will show you exactly how to do it - I know that sometimes Facebook pages settings can be anything but intuitive.

In terms of Digital Music News SXSW has monopolized the news in the last couple of weeks. Of all the news that came out of Austin I’d like to point out two that seem particularly important on the tech front. First of all Topspin Media launched what they called “Act 2” of their service. Topspin has been so far only available to bands with a sizable fan-base and yearly revenue, now the platform is available for a fee of $9.99 per months which gives you access to their marketing platform and e-commerce tools. Topspin is really a fantastic service so if you’re a band looking for ways to improve your direct-to-fan sales this is certainly something you want to look at. Naturally though you’re going to need to be able to offset the monthly fee with your impressive sales!

Also at SXSW London-based start-up Songkick announced a series of partnership starting with one with Facebook that will enable artists to pull gig listings from Songkick into Facebook painlessly. Songkick also announced a number of other API-based integrations with the likes of Souncloud, Ning, Topspin and BandCamp amongst others which really makes the service a great way to keep up to date with your favorite artists’ gigs. So if you have a chance this week make sure you check out Topspinmedia.com and Songkick.com - you may already know the names but it may be well worth checking out their new features.

Well that’s all for this week, I really hope you enjoyed the show. As usual check out www.digitalmusictrends.com for more information on the show and previous episodes. On the homepage you’ll also be able to sign up to the newsletter. You can also find the show on iTunes and subscribe from there and naturally you can access it from any iOS device including the Apple TV. The show is also available on Doggcatcher from Android so you have no reason to miss it really! And finally you can follow me on twitter, the handle is digimusictrends, or email me with any feedback the address is digitalmusictrends@gmail.com

Have a great week and ‘till next time!

Andrea Leonelli

And now let’s talk Apple. Many of you will have heard by now of the new Subscription rules that have been announced by the company. Basically from June the 30th all content distributors that allow access to their subscription services via an iOS app will be required to offer their users the option to subscribe directly from the App - which means that Apple would keep 30% of the revenue from the subscription. On top of this it looks like they would not be able to provide any direct links within the app that potential subscribers could use to circumvent the in-app purchase. I must stress that publishers will still be able to bring in subscribers that signed up through their online channels but that this second in-app option will also have to be in place. This is an interesting turn of events that many have labelled as greedy on Apple’s part. Music start-ups like We7, Spotify, MOG and Pandora still operate on very low profit margins because of the costs involved in paying the rightsholders and developing/maintaining the technology required to provide a good service to their subscribers. A 30% cut in their earnings would certainly compromise the profitability of these companies. It all boils down to how many users will end up subscribing directly from the app - which I can imagine will be painfully easy compared to having to go through the company’s site, entering your billing information etc etc. The success of in-app subscriptions also depends on how prominent the option will have to be within the app itself - meaning that companies could provide this option but bury it fairly deep within the app itself so that users would not be able to readily find it. Obviously though this would cut into their conversion rates as Apple will specifically prohibit in-app links to lead to the subscription page for the service.

Steve Jobs apparently - because we never know if it’s actually him or not - replied to a note by a worried Apple customer saying that this new subscription charges will only apply to publishers, in other words content owners and distributors and not to Software as a Service companies. Thanks Steve. So basically if you are Dropbox or Salesforce then you’re safe but if you’re a Spotify that’s where things start to get problematic. I understand that Apple wants to avoid seeing the content industry as a whole, with its big chunky numbers slipping away from the iOS net but at the same time - for example in the music industry - the margins just aren’t there to justify such a high percentage to Apple. A Neflix for example may be able to sustain losing 30% of the income from part of their subscribers to Apple but this charge may throw a smaller, less profitable company off balance. Google - in what looked like either a direct response or incredibly good timing - announced its One Pass subscription facility which will charge publishers only 10% - which according to Google goes to cover their costs. At the moment the One Pass service caters for written content only but there’s no reason why Google should not be able to extend it to Music as well.

Naturally there have been a number of reactions to this announcement in the music technology world. Steve Purdham the CEO of We7 said that “Thirty percent makes music subscriptions economically unviable in the current form” but he also maintains that once the dust settles there may be different approaches to this new charge. Rdio CEO Drew Larner told paidContent.org that “..From a financial standpoint, that fee is certainly untenable for us, that’s obvious.” Deezer issued a statement saying that “It is very unlikely that Apple could legally apply these rules on the paid digital music services. It would be a leverage of its dominant position on the mobile applications market to reinforce its already over‐dominant position in the paid digital music market”. The BBC quotes Forrester Analyst James McQuivey saying that : Taking a 30% toll amounts to a massive increase in the cost basis of a content business that will kill it,”. Also the CEO of Forrester has chipped in with a blog post on the Company’s website where he states that Apple has wildly overestimated the pricing of content on mobile devices. He reckons that a realistic fee level for subscription-based applications should be around 5%. Also a number of news outlets from PC World to the New York Post have commented on the impact that this decision will have on a service like Pandora, that counts on the App Store as one of the main driving forces for its subscription service. Some are saying that this could even delay Pandora’s plans to go public with an IPO. The New York Post also quotes Ted Cohen from TAG Strategic as saying that “Apple, in this instance, and in a few other instances, is being more anti-competitive than Microsoft ever was.” At this stage there is really no saying as to whether Apple is just testing the waters or whether it’s really going to implement these new rules starting June the 30th. If the company shows no signs of budging anti-trust regulators on both sides of the Atlantic, the European Commission over here and the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission in the US, will start investigating its new policy seriously.

Wall Street Journal Article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704657704576150350669475800.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEADTop

MacWorld http://www.macworld.co.uk/business/news/index.cfm?newsid=3261927&pagtype=allchandate

BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12491883

Tech Crunch http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/16/powered-by-google-checkout-one-pass-is-a-simple-payment-system-for-content-publishers/

Paid Content http://paidcontent.org/article/419-interview-rdio-ceo-says-subs-will-boom-but-first-that-apple-problem/

Billboard http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/digital-and-mobile/business-matters-will-apple-face-antitrust-1005044262.story

MacRumors http://www.macrumors.com/2011/02/21/steve-jobs-email-suggests-in-app-subscriptions-dont-apply-to-software-as-a-service/

This week was fairly busy in terms of tech meet-ups here in London. First on Friday was the TechHub demo night - where start-ups and developers get to demonstrate the app/product/idea that they are developing and get feedback and questions from the Audience. From a Music point of view Spreaker presented their demo which was quite a coincidence considering that I had them on the show only last week. Other start-ups that caught my eye but non-music related were UbiCabs, Enterproid and Just What’s on - if you’re in London check out techhub.com for a list of all the events they are putting together, it’s worth dropping by! http://www.techhub.com/magazine/read/the-presenting-companies-at-techhubfriday-demo-night-4-feb-2011_132.html

Also this week was the launch party of the MusicConnex conference - a new event focused on the independent sector that will take place here in London in April and it was definitely a success with high attendance, good networking and great music. If you want to get involved in the event go to www.musicconnex.co.uk and check it out.

And that’s all for this week, I really hope you enjoyed the show. As usual visit www.digitalmusictrends.com for more information and to sign up to the mailing list. The show can be enjoyed both via subscribing on iTunes, via Soundcloud, RSS feed and Mixcloud. If you’d like to follow the show on twitter the handle is DigiMusicTrends, have a great week and ‘till next time!

But before the interview today it’s impossible not to mention the twist in the fate of EMI with Citigroup taking over the major and writing off 65% of its debt. EMI is now left with a cash reserve of 300 million dollars and it will be interesting to see whether they decide to invest any of it in the Digital space. Meanwhile there were reports this week that a deal had been reached between EMI and Spotify for a US launch, which means that Spotify could indeed see a launch by the end of this year since it has reportedly already reached an agreement with Sony. I think that if either Warner or Universal were to also join in Spotify could comfortably launch on the back of three majors and the indies.

Meanwhile ever-reliable Greg Sandoval from CNET outlined in a great article the latest on Google Music - with conflicting reports on it being very close to launch (as early as next month) and on it not being very close at all with a launch still months away… Here the link: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20030130-261.html

Well that’s all for this week! I hope you enjoyed the show. Next week I’m going to have Alex White, CEO of the Next Big Sound on the show so it’s going to be a good episode!

As usual you can find all previous shows both on iTunes, Soundcloud and www.digitalmusictrends.com. On the site you can also sign up to the weekly newsletter so you’ll know as soon as a new show is out. You can also follow the show on twitter at twitter.com/digimusictrends.

Have a great week and ‘till next time. Andrea Leonelli www.digitalmusictrends.com

- a Midem Preview with Albin Serviant, CEO of MXP4. We talk about the evolution of the company into social gaming and about the opportunities that this field holds for the music industry. Albin will be taking part in a Social Gaming panel at Midem on Monday the 24 so I look forward to covering that next week. www.mxp4.com

- A short report on an evening organized by start-up Gigswiz to talk about the Live music industry especially looking at small to medium-sized venues and how artists that are not yet established organize their gigs.

- An interview with Denver Thomas, CEO of mobile music company Music2Text. The company is sponsoring Digital Music Trends’ coverage of Midem 2011. www.music2text.com

I hope you enjoy the show and look forward to next week’s many Midem podcasts!

Also this week we’re only 10 days away from the start of Midem which is pretty exciting. I will be providing daily coverage between the 22nd and the 24th as well as running an extra-long expisode at the end of Midem with the best bits. See below for a last-minute Midem offer in case you want to attend!

MIDEM 2011: Last-minute flash offer! 300€ off registration before January 14 (€790 instead of 1090). To benefit from this offer, just: - head to MIDEM’s online registration page: http://bit.ly/9y3jdq - sign up/sign in - choose the required package - add the promo code LINKTOMIDEM53 (all caps) at the bottom of the page.

And finally here are some of the issues that are facig the digital music industry in 2011 and that I will be looking into whilst at Midem. And as a short preamble of preview of the sort of subjects that I’m going to try and shed some light on I’d to spend a few minutes considering the most pressing issues that face the digital music industry this year.

1)      Music Streaming – Where’s the deal and where’s the money?

-          UK and Europe: the services are there – 2011 will be a make-or-break year for them as they will have to prove to investors that they can become profitable. Another year in the red and the investors could decide to pull the plug.

-          US: whilst everyone’s still talking about Spotify with many stories coming out in the past week about the possible reasons or causes why the service didn’t manage to launch States-side there are many other subscription services already live and kicking there. Will Google or Apple enter this space and upset the balance?

2)      Permanent Digital Music Downloads – are they destined to stall or is there still room for expansion?

3)      Music and gaming  + Music and Social – the rise of location-based services and their influence on digital music distribution . There will be some interesting companies at Midem working in this tricky space so I look forward to having  a chat with them..

4)      An integration between the live music experience and the digital experience.  The folks at Topspin have done some great work on the subject last year and there are many start-ups that want to integrate the ticket experience in the buying experience either by getting the audience to buy music at the gig or by combining the experience of the gig with the purchase of the music from the get-go.

5)      Digital Music Events 2011 - the music industry through events like Musichackday is beginning to understand the importance of the developers community to the creation of alternative revenue streams. Midem this year will host a MusicHackDay within the conference which will be a very interesting experiment.

That’s all from me for today. Have a great week - don’t forget to sign up to the new Digital Music Trends newsletter on www.digitalmusictrends.com and ’till next time!

Andrea Leonelli

I really hope you enjoyed the interview! Feel free to send in feedback, ideas or links to companies that I should be interviewing:  the address is digitalmusictrends@gmail.com,  you can also get in touch via Twitter the handle is digimusictrends and visit the website at www.digitalmusitrends.com for everything related to the show. There is now a list of all the guests I have had on the show on digitalmusictrends.com and although I haven’t gotten around to linking every single one you should be able to navigate it pretty if you are using iTunes, Soundcloud or Mixcloud as references. Feel free to embed the widget for the show wherever you wish as it’s distributed on a creative commons license so basically you can do whatever you want with it as long as it’s for non-commercial purposes! I’ve now booked my three days at Midem in January and plan to get as many interviews as I can possibly fit into a 72 hour period so stay tuned as there are going to be some very long and interesting show in January. In the meantime have a great week and ’till next time!

Thanks again to Ollie for taking the time to come on the show - Silence Media’s model is certainly appealing for industries that have great content that can be used to entice the public to click through. Check out their site to sample a few of the campaigns we talked about.

This week I also want to mention a Music Tank session that I attended a couple of weeks ago. If you’re haven’t heard of Music Tank you should definitely go and check them out at www.musictank.co.uk. They are a business development network operated by the University of Westminster that focuses on the changes and innovations in the music business. The session was called The Brave New World of Location-Based, App-Driven & Immersive Marketing and it was a great overview of the diverse roles and purposes that apps can have for the music industry - whether it’s an artist-specific app, a musical quiz or a location-based app. I just want to highlight some of the key points that I took away from this session - if you register with Music Tank you can actually access all of the content from their sessions but there is a £30 annual charge for the membership. 1) Creating a compelling social game based on music is hard, and companies that are leaders in the social gaming field like Zynga are unlikely to want to share the profits with the music industry by incorporating licensed music - at least as long as they keep making a billion per year or more. 2) The only way to engage the fans is through a 2 way conversation. If you have a lot of twitter followers and you want to create an app make sure that involves your fans as well, that they are part of the process so that they will want to stick around and check upon the progress of your project. 3) if you are at a stage where you have lots of Twitter followers, lots of fans and produce some great content in the form of videos, blogs etc consider developing an app since that can have a really amazing global reach and it’s not very expensive if you use someone like Mobile Roadie. Consider the platform carefully and look at your fan base, if most of your fans have Nokias there’s no point in developing an iPhone app! 4) Consider creating an app not just as a marketing exercise as many labels have done so far but as a source of revenue. if you give the app away for free make sure you incorporate in-app purchase options within it. 5) Location-based apps and especially applications like Google Goggles can be great to create an app that for example unlocks exclusive content if a person takes the picture of your album of a billboard on the high street advertising your latest single or tour. Also consider using QR codes as a way to spread content for mobile access.

Well, that’s all for this week, I really hope you enjoyed the show! Don’t forget that you can email me - the address is digitalmusictrends@gmail.com,  you can also get in touch via Twitter the handle is digimusictrends and visit the website at www.digitalmusitrends.com for everything related to the show. I realized that it’s kinda hard these days to navigate through all the shows - there are so many of them now! - so very soon I’m going to add a page on the site with a links to each episode and details on that week’s main feature so you will be able to delve into the back catalogue with more ease. Digital Music Trends is distributed under a Creative Commons license which means that you can embed the Soundcloud widget for the show wherever you wish or otherwise distribute the show as long as it’s for non-commercial purposes and with the correct attribution so don’t be shy spread it around! And finally I have just confirmed that I will be covering Midem for a few days so if you’re going to be there give me a shout!

Have a great week and ’till next time!

Andrea Leonelli

Please do get in touch with any feedback you may have – the email is digitalmusictrends@gmail.com or you can find a Get in Touch form on www.digitalmusictrends.com. I send out a weekly newsletter when the show is ready so if you send me your email I’ll be able to add you to it and you’ll never miss another episode!  Don’t forget to tweet about the show if you enjoyed it, my username on Twitter is digimusictrends.  Finally remember that you can enjoy Digital Music Trends on iTunes, Soundcloud, the Music Void, Mixcloud and many wi-fi radios absolutely free. Have a great week and ‘till next time!

Andrea Leonelli 09/11/2010

Also on the show this week I’m going to talk about European anti-piracy measures, Ministry of Sound’s ongoing effort to sue file-sharers, Microsoft launching a Zune service in the UK,  Vevo’s plans to launch a TV network to compete with MTV and a new piracy tool that is worrying the music industry called Mulve.

But let’s start with this week’s interview with Scott Wambolt from Yangaroo.com.

And now on to the news!

1) European anti-piracy measures

So the European Parliament on September the 22nd voted for the adoption of the report on the enforcement of Intellectual Property in the internal market. So what does this report say? Well basically it outlines the need to create a European-wide framework to protect intellectual property and calls for appropriate legislation to be considered. It is not a law in itself but its adoption allows for its findings to be used as a way to create a legislation on the protection of intellectual property. The report first of all calls for the creation of more services to access legal content online, second it establishes the need for ISPs to start a dialogue with the rights holders and third it allows for the possibility of creating a legislative framework for the protection of copyrighted material should the first two solutions fail. Potentially the effect of this report would be the implementation of European regulations that require countries to have a specific legislative path to protect copyrights and punish illegal file sharing. The approval of the report has been lauded by many in the music industry including the IFPI as the introduction of a European legal framework that could finally stop the slump music sales that has affected countries like Spain and France. Naturally all of this is a pre-preliminary step but one that makes labels understand that Europe has taken notice - though it may actually take a decade to finalize legislation!

http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1042622&c=1

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i164dab495458bd2bf5dbd9d95c0e32e1

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/a-stab-in-the-back-eu-tackles-online-infringement.ars

2) Staying on the subject of piracy TorrentFreank and ISP Review this week reported that Ministry of Sound’s most recent request for the disclosure of broadband customer’s identities based on their IP addresses has raised concerns with the judge Chief Master Wintergarden - who pointed out first that he had received a large number of letters by people who were concerned with the way Ministry of Sound’s lawyers were sending out pay-up-or-else letters and second that he was surprised that after thousands of these letters were sent not one of the recipients was actually taken to court. The judge called Ministry of Sound’s approach like using a huge sledgehammer to crack a nut and refused to grant the labels’ lawyers latest request for the disclosure of personal contacts delaying the decision to the 4th of October. Many in the UK have questioned the legality of these pay-up-or-else letters, that have a very aggressive tone and demand the recipient for hundreds of pounds in compensation. The fact that none of these have been followed up and transformed into full-blown lawsuits is further proof that those damages would probably not be awarded in a court of law. The judge also made the point that after the introduction of the Digital economy act in the UK these requests will probably not be granted any longer. I don’t support piracy in any way but I have said it before - i really don’t like this approach. The fact that there isn’t a warning or anything and that the letters are sent indiscriminately to all users identified can only be seen as a way to get some money from the few people who will be scared enough by the letter to pay…

http://torrentfreak.com/judge-warns-of-end-to-file-sharing-cash-demands-100922/

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2010/09/23/uk-isp-plusnet-illegal-file-sharing-judge-predicts-end-of-settlement-letters.html

3) Microsoft launches the Zune platform in the UK!

The telegraph and the Register reported this week on Microsoft’s latest move which is to expand the Zune entertainment platform to Europe by launching it in the UK alongside the release of Windows 7 mobile phones. The platform will work with the Xbox, Windows 7 mobile and naturally Windows PCs and will allow a song that is purchased on one system to be played on all three. Xbox users that decide to splash out on the new Kinect controller will also be able to buy music using their hands rather than a traditional keyboard. A very important development for the UK is the arrival of a Zune pass that enables unlimited streaming and (DRM’d) downloads for only £8.99 per month which is one pound cheaper than Spotify’s premium service. The new platform will face fierce competition by the likes of Spotify and We7 who already have a very loyal customer base and naturally being completely tied to Microsoft for your PC, phone and Xbox its appeal will be limited. I believe that the only way it will really take off would be if Microsoft decided to release an app for each of today’s leading mobile operating systems, iOS4, Android and Symbian and Blackberry. Only then would non-gamers catch on to the service - who knows they could pick up some mac users on the way!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/8015264/Microsoft-Zune-service-to-launch-in-UK.html

http://www.reghardware.com/2010/09/21/microsoft_uk_zune_pass/

4) Vevo plans to launch a TV channel

The New York Post this week revealed that in an interview with the CEO of Vevo Rio Caraeff he mentioned that the company is working on the launch of a regular TV network that would compete with MTV. But if you read the article closely there is actually very little reference to the “old” MTV model since Vevo has not yet established any partnership with networks or cable providers. Instead it is focusing on developing its relationship with manufacturers of web-enabled TV in order to offer a personalized channel that will be able to cater to the specific taste of a user. I think this is a great idea considering the resources and traction Vevo has at the moment and the fact that web-TV is on the brink of becoming mainstream with the new Apple TV and the upcoming Google TV set to sell in considerable numbers. I personally don’t think that they should even look into partnering with a network since I don’t believe there’s a huge amount of money to be made there - after all if there was MTV would have reverted back to its old model and ditched all of its annoying reality shows. But exploiting the momentum of Vevo to take it into people’s TVs via the Internet is absolutely the right thing to do and may also help the company attract more advertisers who would probably see the appeal in being able to reach people’s living rooms rather than just their laptop screen.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/coming_soon_vevo_u6tCNNLOmkxXOrHUIPhBNO

5) Is Mulve as scary as it sounds?

So this week every news outlet from Music Week to Billboard to CMU to more mainstream press seems to have covered Mulve. This is a new very small piece of software - only 2 megabytes - that gives the user access to a huge catalogue of music that can be downloaded, illegally i should point out, for free. Apparently Mulve’s representatives have clarified that this is not a new P2P software but that the music is simply stored on servers for which they did not reveal the location although they are believed to be located in Russia. The site mulve.com , in part because of the huge amount of coverage it received, is now down most of the time because of excessive traffic. Naturally the idea of a server storing the music is more appealing than a P2P solution because it is virtually impossible for rights holders to pick up on these downloads since they don’t happen in the public domain like on torrent networks. At the same time Mulve does sound a bit of a gimmicky challenge to the content industries and I wonder how long it will stay online for - after all maintaining all those servers, even in Russia, has got to be an expensive enterprise when so many users access the data. Naturally should it get funding and start meeting the demands of hundreds of thousands of users then yes - the nightmare scenario described on many publication may become reality. But I have the feeling that by then law enforcement agencies as well as the rights holders anti-piracy divisions will have worked out where the company’s servers are located and acted in order to get them shut down.

http://newsblog.thecmuwebsite.com/post/Everyones-talking-about-Mulve.aspx

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i386774579db7c203f0f20f88b1751172

www.mulve.com

________________

And that’s all for this week. On Thursday I will be in Barcelona at the Future Music Forum where I’ll moderate a session on the business model for on-demand music so expect to see some reports and interviews on that in the next episode. I will actually be in the States for the next two weeks so if you are in Seattle or Vancouver give me a shout - I should be able to publish the show as usual with some interview from the Future Music Forum and hopefully the Norwich Sound and Vision session I took part in a couple of weeks back coming through from the venue but I probably won’t be able to post any news coverage and if the podcast is a day or two late please bear with me.

As usual please feel free to email with any feedback or news story - the address is digitalmusictrends@gmail.com On the site at www.digitalmusictrends.com you can find all information you need about the episode and the relevant links and remember that you have quite a few options to listen to the show - the iTunes store, Soundcloud, the Music Void, Mixcloud, RSS and I believe you can now also search for Digital Music Trends on standalone Internet radios like those made by Logitech or Pure. Have a great week and ’till next time!

Andrea Leonelli

www.digitalmusictrends.com

And now let’s talk about MusicHackDay. So it’s the second MusicHackDay coverage for me after last year’s event - and again it was held at the Guardian headquarters after a last-minute venue change. So numerous the companies and hackers taking part in the event - not just from Europe but from around the world. Sponsors of the event - who deserve a mention for making it happen - include Soundcloud, Songkick C4DM, FXpansion, Universal Music, Last.fm, the Echo Nest, Bounce Mobile and Gigulate. So - if you’re unfamiliar with the idea of a hackday - basically it consists of a number of programmers, engineers, and hackers at large - not only on the software side but also on the hardware one - getting together to create cool new projects that mash together the APIs made available by some of the biggest and most innovative players today in the digital music arena. So let’s jump right into it! The coolest hack - and the one that was awarded what you could classify as a gold medal in the form of a Nintendo Wii prize was that created by Marek Bereza and is called Speakatron. In the Musichaday wiki - which you can find on http://wiki.musichackday.org - Marek described this as “A program that looks at you through your web cam and plays a sound when you open your mouth. It can tell what shape you’re making and how high your mouth is on the screen as synthesis parameters”. so that’s basically the essence of it, but trust me when you see it in action it is coool. From what I could gather you can actually assign different sounds to the different parameters so that makes it potentially really great little app. It was a damn cool application and I really hope that Marek will find a way to release it to the general public as I think this would be a number one app on any app store for quite some time.

The second hack I want to talk about is called Gramophone - and was created by James Coglan from Songkick. The application draws on the Songkick API with set-list data from past gigs, it also draws on 7Digital’s music store and Google Maps. Basically it allows you to fly into an area with google maps, select a month and a year and get a list of the tracks that were played live in that area in the that particular time frame, a really awesome idea! If you follow the link in the show-notes or go to the Musichackday Wiki Page you can actually go and try that for yourself. I have to say that at the moment it doesn’t seem to be working but give it a try and you may have more luck! If you live in an area that has seen its fair share of music go by - i’m in Camden Town for example - it’s a great way to work out which bands were playing 10, 20, 30 years ago - and with Songkick’s database in continuous expansion the data you get is bound to become more and more exciting. http://gramophone.jcoglan.com/

The third hack that I want to talk about today is called EarthDestroyers  and it was put together by Paul Lamere from the Echo Nest - it uses the Bandsintown, Echo Nest and Google Maps APIs. Basically this app - available on  http://labs.echonest.com/EarthDestroyers - lets you look up the environmental impact of your favorite band’s touring activities to see if they are well organized and organize their tours in clusters meaning that they are earth savers or if they jump from country to country and continent to continent meaning that they are earth destroyers. The app is incredibly quick and responsive already and you can pop in any artist and it will tell you how far they have travelled for x amount of gigs, working out an average mileage travelled per gig and spewing out the verdict - earth saver or earth destroyer, check it out!

The fourth hack that I want to talk about today is called auto Tube Scoring, an it was created by Nicholas Froment, Thomas Bonte and Werner Shweer in collaboration with Simon Dixon and Chris Cannam from the Queen Mary University. The application allows you to look at a musical performance on YouTube whilst that is being synchronized automatically to a music score running alongside it. You can watch the video on how this works on a YouTube link that i’m throwing the the show-notes and in the blog. It’s pretty incredible - especially if you’re a buddying musician. Just think of being able to look at the same score for a piano sonata played by 10 different professional pianists - all completely synched to the score. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1_kzPg1dLI

Naturally this is a tiny selection of the hacks that were made at MusicHackday, less than 10% actually since there are over 50 hacks on the Wiki page - so do take the time to go and explore for yourself all the projects. If you like what you see and are better at programming than I am remember that MusicHackDay London is only one in a series and that there are more events scheduled soon - one in Boston this coming weekend and one in Barcelona on the 2nd and the 3rd of October - go to http://musichackday.org for more details!

—–

Ping! in the last couple of weeks has been everywhere. Slightly overlooked during the first day of the Steve Job’s press conference aftermath the real troubles for the service started when people actually started playing with it. On top of that shortly after launch the juicy story of a spat between Apple and Facebook started to take shape. The two companies failed to reach an agreement over the amount of times Ping was allowed to reach out to the Facebook API which caused Facebook to disable Ping’s access to their friend connect feature altogether when Apple decided not to remove it from the product - making Ping pretty hard to use…

So Ping was well overdue, with Apple being quite late in the game considering how many users they have at their disposal through the iTunes platform. But does it deliver? As a concept it’s promising but its current implementation certainly feels like a social network that is half baked. Setting aside how difficult it is to find your friends on the platform, Ping also makes it hard for people to express themselves - comments can only be made on products available on the store - and it makes it hard for the artists that want to access the service since access to the platform is by invitation only at the moment. Apple has stated that it is committed to bringing more artists - both major label and independent ones - to the network since now there are still only a handful of artist pages live and most of them have little to no interesting content on the artist….

http://musicmusic.com/articles/why-the-music-industry-needs-a-music-official-website-domain-name-all-artists-bands-and-musicians-are-music-brands-in-need-of-a-home.html http://www.music.us http://musicmusic.com http://twitter.com/musicextension

I really hope you enjoyed this week’s show, you can find everything you need to know about Digital Music Trends as well as previous episodes on www.digitalmusictrends.com. As usual please don’t hesitate to send feedback, ideas and news digitalmusictrends@gmail.com and finally you can follow me on twitter, the handle is Digimusictrends. Digital Music Trends is distributed via the iTunes store, RSS, Soundcloud, Mixcloud and the Music Void so make sure you subscribe via one of these channels!

Have a great week and ’till next time!

Future Music Forum

www.iconeventsinternational.com www.futuremusicforum.com

And thanks again to Niall, i do apologize for the audio quality that is not stellar in places but Skype is temperamental sometimes, do go and visit www.futuremusicforum.com as it’s shaping up to be a great event. And now the second interview of this week with Clare Crean from Audiofuel.

www.audiofuel.co.uk www.twitter.com/audiofuel

And now let’s move onto this week’s brief news section.

Soundcloud and Creative Commons

http://soundcloud.com/press/releases/2010/08/19/creative-commons

http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/23018

http://blog.soundcloud.com/2010/08/19/reuse-soundcloud-style/

First of all Dave Haynes from Soundcloud forwarded me some information about the company’s deepening integration with Creative Commons this week that I found fascinating. Basically this is creating a huge pool of material including beats, samples and loops licensed under creative commons that can be used freely to create new remixes - there are various types of creative common licenses so that the original creator can retain some degree of control on how the material is used. Soundcloud also tweaked its search function so that users will be able to search only for tracks licensed under Creative Commons which will give them a pool of thousands of ideas, sounds and beats to explore. I was aware of Creative Commons from a podcasting perspective - Digital Music Trends is distributed under Creative Commons in that anyone can share it online and copy it as long as it’s for non-commercial purposes, but I had never thought about the implications of Creative Commons in the creation of music. If you’d like more information do check out the shownotes that contain links to Souncloud’s latest press release, the blog post and the Creative Commons page on this integration!

Tunesbag and Logitech

http://blog.tunesbag.com/2010/08/tunesbag-streaming-to-logitech.html

And second and last news of the day is that Tunesbag - an Austrian-based cloud music services that I covered in the early days of Digital Music Trends - has forged a partnership with the Logictech Squeezebox so that its users will be able to access their Tunesbag collection on the cloud directly from the Squeezebox. Hardware integration is an important part of the evolution of cloud music services - as I have realized when talking to Michael Robertson a few weeks back - and Tunesbag is definately moving in the right direction getting involved with a heavyweight of internet radio hardware.

Also this week in the news: Songkick announced a new partnership with Youtube, Pure radio launched a cloud-based music service, Spotify’s SVP of strategic partnerships Paul Brown is leaving the company, Arcade Fire got a digital push from the Amazon MP3 store to reach the top spot in the US charts and RjDj launched the new Moovz mode that will appeal to hip-hop fans.

But as usual let’s start with this week’s interview!

AL = Andrea Leonelli

HS = Helen Saunders

ADL = Adam Liversage

AL: I’m really happy to welcome to the show Helen Saunders and Adam Liversage: she’s the head of Internet Investigations at the BPI and he’s communications director at the BPI. It’s great to have you on the show. We’re going to talk a little bit about piracy and about the state of the UK music industry. But first of all would you like to introduce yourselves and explain what your role at the BPI is?

HS: My role as the head of Internet Investigations is to look after the Internet part of the anti-piracy unit. Our function is to crawl to find unlicensed music that is available for download or indeed anyone who is file-sharing.

ADL: I’m director of communications so a large part of what I do is convincing the media, the public and politicians at large that action is needed against file-sharing and other forms of piracy and at the same time to promote the growing range of excellent legal music services that are out there in the UK.

AL: So let’s start with the figures. Many talk about piracy but they don’t have figures in mind. What is, according to your figures, the size of music piracy in the UK?

ADL: There’s a number of metrics that we use. We know, because there have been several studies and surveys around this, that around 7 million people in the UK are file-sharing on a reasonably regular basis. This menas that approximately about 18 to 20% of the population is file-sharing and it’s a problem which is losing the industry about 200 million pounds every year.

AL: So what are the main tasks of the BPI’s anti-piracy unit, are there many divisions to it and how is it organized?

HS: Well, basically we have a team here based in London, that looks after the Internet side of things, but we also have  a number of investigators based around the UK who take on more the physical side looking at car boot sales, markets, shops, but they also take on the online cases that we generate from the London office and work closely with law enforcement in order to help us take those cases forward.

AL: I’m really interested in the technology and the methodology involved in tracking down piracy online. Have you developed your own technology in order to detect file-sharing or do you rely on third party companies, and if so what kind of third party companies do you use?

HS: Well we use a range of techniques in order to uncover piracy online. The technology is so complex that we can’t use one technique for everything. So we do use third party vendors but we also do our own scans both across the web and on P2P networks.

AL: This week Carphone Warehouse has introduced a new cloud service for music that has been endorsed by yourselves as well as by PRS for Music. So what do you think about cloud services as a possible source of secondary revenues for the industry?

ADL: I think that when they are correctly licensed they are something that we would encourage. At the same time it’s important to point out what this service is and what it’s not. It replicates songs that you may have on your computer and transforms them into a legal stream which either goes to your computer or to a mobile device, and in a small number of cases it will upload songs which you have on your computer into a locker. You have to bear in mind that the industry is keen to see a wide variety of services develop and we’ve gone quite some way in taking leaps of faith with various services just to see how the market develops and to encourage consumer into the legal market. You will inevitably see more cloud services launch in the future which are entirely legal and licensed.

AL: The interesting thing about cloud services is that there’s still a debate on-going. For example there’s a service called MP3Tunes that has been operating for about five years now out of the States. They maintain that if the user uploads his own music onto their locked service and only that user can access the music then they should not have to pay licensing fees for that. Do you consider this sort of service legitimate in the UK or does it not comply with your requirements?

ADL: Not all services are alike. There are some record labels that don’t believe that the way in which Mp3Tunes operates should be licensed. The service that Spotify and Music anywhere provide is different. It creates a playlist based on what is on your computer but then moves everything into an entirely legal and licensed world where consumers are paying to have that service and where the artist is receiving payment for it.

AL: We’re talking about Spotify, Music Anywhere and We7 here in the UK, services that have or are developing a fairly widespread audience, so the UK is in a better position than other countries in that respect, but piracy is still very much present, so what are the ways the BPI think are feasible to  try and convert the people that are still pirating to the huge amount of services that are out there and available in this country.

ADL: Well there are a few things that we are doing. I think that the main thing as an industry is to try and make as many services available as possible. We have over 70 digital music stores in this country, that’s more than any other country in the world and the revenue they generate is twice as much a country like France or Germany so we are the most progressive country in the world when in comes to this. That’s a reflection in many ways of the fact that we are the biggest consumers of music pro-capita in the world. Almost anybody in this country buys at least two music products per year so making these services available is important. The other aspect of it is ensuring that people know about them and also explaining that they have moved on considerably in the past few years. It’s no longer the case that there are one or two dominant services and nothing else, there’s a massive range of choice. Record companies have digitized all the catalogue you could ever want, there’s something like 11 million songs that are available to be licensed. We’ve tackled issues like DRM which put consumers off the services so we’ve made it easier and better for people and now there’s a price competition as well - there isn’t ade -facto 79 or 99p per track price point, you can get tracks for 29p and in some cases you can enjoy services for free if you are willing to listen to adverts. So having the services is one things, educating people on how these services have changed is another, but also it’s unfortunate that these services still have to compete with the free, illegal services. That’s why we lobbied hard for the introduction of the Digital Economy Act which introduces a form of graduated response which we hope will encourage people to move to legal services.

AL: Talking about the Digital Economy Act - since we’re there - what do you think about its implementation considering that quite a few of the measures still need to be tweaked and finalized? Do you think that because many of the measures have yet to be finalized it might get altered or watered down in the coming months?

ADL: One thing is sure: the Government is completely committed to the Digital Economy Act. All rights-holder groups in Britain are committed to it and we only have a couple of exception in Britain’s ISPs who are resenting these measures. The rest of Britain’s ISP community has taken a sensible view and realized that something needs to be done about copyright infringement on the Internet. There’s consultations going on about how it’s going to be paid for and how it’s going to work - there is every indication from those consultations that everyone is taking it seriously and what we will have is a workable graduated response with a meaningful deterrent at the end of it and that will we expect move millions of people from illegal services to legal services in this country.

AL: The relationship of the BPI with ISPs - like for the IFPI - has been full of ups and downs over the years. But a few of them are now introducing legal services like SkySongs. Do relationships with ISPs from the BPI’s part vary considerably between different companies or are they presenting a more united front and being more collaborative with you guys?

ADL: It varies, there are a number of things which come into play here. Some ISPs are owned and operated by companies which are also content providers. So if you look at a company like Skype, their holding company produces movies and owns sports rights so they can see both sides of the argument. At the same time lots of the ISPs are trying to sell services to their customers but are competing with the free illegal services so it’s in their interest to do something about it. I’m convinced that the ISPs that oppose the measures are doing so purely because they are convinced that it’s a cheaper and more effective measure to try and avoid accepting their responsibilities under the act. Most People in this country feel that something should be done about file-sharing when they are asked about it, it’s only a minority of people who do it and their days are numbered.

AL : How does it technically work from the moment you detect that there has been an alleged illegal exchange of copyrighted files to actually identifying the person that has been allegedly responsible for this exchange?

HS: We would scan a Peer to Peer network and effectively download from the user a title that is actually one of our member’s titles. from that point we basically have the evidence and we have their IP address. We don’t know anything else about that user, that’s purely something for the ISP to resolve back to one of their subscribers. In the framework of the act it talks about the concept of CIR, so we would log a “Copyright Infringement Report” with an ISP and then under the act it would be their duty to send a note on to their subscriber once they’ve matched the IP address that we’ve given them to someone that was using that service at that time, so that’s essentially how it works.

AL: One of the uses of this technology and the fact that you can ask ISPs for the identity of people who have been sharing tracks once you have the evidence that this has happened has been is that in the last few weeks  Ministry of Sound  started a controversial campaign by sending letters from a law firms from people that have allegedly shared their music asking for compensation, basically saying give us 300-400 pounds and we’ll get over it and won’t take legal action. Many legal experts maintain that these charges would be almost impossible to enforce in a court of law and some people think that it’s counter-productive - a bit like the campaign by the RIAA is the US where it started suing the fans which turned out to be not such a great idea. So what do you think about it? Do you think that there’s still a reason to unilaterally ask people who have file-shared for X amount of money or do you think that the approach should be more gradual like in the Digital Economy Act?

PB: Well, I’m going to be very precise in my answer as I have been every time I’m asked about this. As things currently stand it is our preferred way of tackling the file-sharing problem through the measures that are outlined in the Digital Economy Act. Graduated response means that people have an opportunity to curtail and amend their behavior before there are serious consequences and we think that as things stand is the right way forwards.

AL: So let’s talk about piracy as a whole, not just Internet piracy but commercial piracy as well. When people think about physical piracy they tend to think more about eastern European countries, about China, but it’s actually a big problem in the UK as well. So what is the volume of physical piracy, is it something you are still concerned about and is it as damaging as digital piracy?

HS: I think there has been a shift over the years from commercial piracy to online piracy and that’s just the same as any other business or crime for that matter. In terms of commercial piracy, yes, it’s still a concern. I mentioned earlier things like markets and car boot sales, that where we see the biggest part of our problem. You mentioned China, yes we have bits coming in from overseas that have been pirated there but because it’s so cheap and easy to burn your own disc effectively they can be burnt to order at markets and car boots sales and effectively sold for a fraction of the real retail price. We’ve seen an increase in the sale of DVDs for example that carry 40 to 50 MP3 Albums each and that’s an interesting point because the new piracy is both physical and digital in that most of the music is obtained via file sharing networks, forums or cyber-lockers in the first place and then sold on. Pre-loaded hard drives are also a trend. It’s certainly not something that will go away - some people will still prefer to obtain their unlicensed music via those sorts of methods if they are not downloading online.

AL: And Internationally you work quite closely with the IFPI as well, so how do these two massive entities collaborate in trying to tackle the piracy problem?

HS: In terms of online the IFPI looks after the International problem. They are the co-ordinating body to make sure that the BPI and their equivalents around the world are doing what they can in their own countries. They also look after big international releases whilst we focus primarily on UK record labels and UK releases. We talk very closely about how we co-ordinate ourselves online and in the physical world if we identify pirated discs that are pressed overseas we work with them to identify the origin of those discs and make use of - for example - the IFPI’s forsenic facilities in order to trace those discs. So we do work and collaborate very closely and try to cover all bases.

AL: Talking about the future: the Digital Economy Act will probably start being implemented next year and even though many countries have talked about three strike laws and implementations there aren’t actually any figures as to how many people these new measures would actually stop. Do you have any projections, any numbers that you hope to achieve via the Digital Economy Act in the next couple of years?

PB: There is in fact a target of reducing copyright infringement by 70% within three years. There is not absolute clarity as to when that three years clock started ticking, but let’s assume that it started ticking about a year ago so the objective is to try to reduce it by 70 % by the end of 2012.

AL: And do you think this is feasible given that none of the measures of the Digital Economy Act have been implemented yet or do you think you may need a little more time to get there?

ADL: We have always said that legal services and education will help. We have strongly argued that effective deterrent measures which can be communicated as part of the notifications - including things like temporary account suspension and throttling - are required in order to meet those targets and we remain convinced that that’s the case.

- Songkick launches a partnership with YouTube

Billboard Business this week reported that Songkick - a London based start-up focused on gathering concert information -  has inked a deal with YouTube and Vevo. The company will provide up-to-date location-based services that will advertise concerts in the vicinity of the user, creating a compelling new way for people to find out about acts playing nearby. This is already being deployed for Lady Gaga and JustBieber videos, where the Tour banners lead you straight to a Songkick page. Songkick is fast becoming the place to find out about gigs happening in your area, since it aggregates information provided by over one hundred ticket sites around the world as well as the information added by its own users. The company has already inked many deals with the likes of the Hype Machine,Nokia, the BBC and others and its user base is growing every day.  I featured Songkick in Episode 10 of the show so if you want to delve in the Digital Music Trends vaults then go and listen to my interview with Ian Hogarth. From my part I’m always happy to report good news on London-based start-ups.

Paidcontent amongst others reported this week that DAB radio manufacturer Pure has launched a new service called FlowSongs that allows people to buy music directly from the radio. This new service is the result of a partnership between the manufacturer,Shazam - the music recognition company - and digital a-la-carte retailer 7Digital. Users will be able to track down a song they liked via Shazam on the radio and then buy it with just a couple of clicks on the radio’s own screen. The song will then be available to stream from 7Digital’s server or users will be able to download from a normal browser browser as a DRM-free mp3 to use on any device.  Users will only have to pay a £2,99 yearly fee to use the Shazam service. This seems like a rather nifty solution - you can find out more on Pure.com - and from the looks of it it will work with all ofPure’s DAB radios that connect to the web.

- Spotify: Paul Brown SVP of Strategic Partnerships leaves the company

http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/08/16/spotify-svp-paul-brown-leaves-for-new-startup/

Spotify this week lost its SVP of strategic partnerships Paul Brown. Brown told Music Week that an opportunity presented itself that he had to take and he will be working for a start-up outside the music industry.Spotify will therefore need to start looking for a new person to fill that all-important role. As TechCrunch points out the company still needs to do a lot of work in terms of partnerships - especially on the mobile carrier front - and Brown’s departure could on one side delay those partnerships and on the other allow someone else to start the negotiations with a clean slate and get things moving more quickly.

A couple of real interesting stories surrounding the release of Arcade Fire’s album “The Suburbs”. First of All it looks like Amazon MP3’s decision to sell the album at a loss for $3,99 really helped it reach the top spot in the US charts. Amazon still has to pay labels the wholesale price of about $7  when it decides to sell new albums for $3.99 so it was losing about three dollars per album. At the same time - whilst many blogs and publications point to the Amazon’s promotion as something that really propelled the album to the top spot - the co-founder of Arcade Fire’s label Merge Records - LauraBallance - said that Amazon’s promotions devalue the music.  This is an interesting take on the promotion that allowed Merge Records to have its first-ever number one album…

Well, that’s all for this week, I really hope you enjoyed the show. Next week on Digital Music Trends a feature on the Music Industry Conference Future Music Forum, taking place on the 29th and 30th of September in Barcelona. Please write in with any feedback, the email is digitalmusictrends@gmail.com and you can also follow me on twitter, the handle is digimusictrends. On www.digitalmusictrends.com you’ll find all you need to know about the show including links to the iTunes store and to the RSS feeds. Digital Music Trends is distributed via iTunes, Podbean, Soundcloud, The Music Void and Mixcloud.

Have a great week and ’till next time! This has been Andrea Leonelli for Digital Music Trends.

This week: an interview with Michael Robertson, CEO of MP3Tunes and experienced entrepreneur probably best known for founding Mp3.com in the late 90s. In the interview we discuss cloud music, MP3 tune’s business model, the way the service has been integrated with numerous software and hardware partners, EMI’s lawsuit against the company and the future of digital music consumption.

Also this week in the news our heads stay firmly in the cloud with Carphone Warehouse launching a new, licensed, Music Anywhere service in the UK, Rdio removes restrictions to access in the US and Canada, Apple appears to be scaling back its efforts to roll out a comprehensive cloud music service and the numbers atMyspace are not looking good with the company still loosing bucket-loads of money for NewsCorp.

But let’s start with this week’s interview with Michael Robertson, founder of MP3.com, Linspire, SIPPhone, MP3Tunes and Ajax13.

And now for the news:

Carphone Warehouse beats Google and Apple to a licensed and sensible cloud music service in the UK

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/mobile-phones/7922686/Carphone-Warehouse-launches-Music-Anywhere-service-to-rival-iTunes-and-Spotify.html http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1042062&c=1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/aug/02/carphone-warehouse-music-anywhere-cloud http://musically.com/blog/

Carphone Warehouse this week got everyone talking by announcing - in a surprise move - the launch of a new service called Music Anywhere that has been licensed by all four majors and by digital distributor the Orchard. The new cloud service will compare the user’s music library with its servers and basically only upload the tracks that it does not already have on file, so that users won’t have to spend hours and hours on end uploading their entire library. For a fee of 29.99 per year users will then be able to take advantage of the many applications developed for the service, there’s one for Blackberry, iPhone and android as well as for PCs to listen to their music wherever they are. The mobile apps will also allow cashing of a number of songs from the cloud that users will be able to play them without an Internet connections. The service will then pay some license fees to the labels and artists calculated on how many times their track has been accessed online. This is a pretty interesting turn of events, because it looks a lot like what people have been waiting for from Apple or Google but from a mobile brand that people would probably not normally associate with music. What’s funny about this story is that the service is basically an advanced version of the Beam-it idea that had been implemented by MP3.com in the 90s, where people could just insert a CD in the drive as a proof of purchase and after that they could access the song online. In this case the files on users’ computers are already digitized which makes the process a lot easier. There are some privacy concerns as the company that is providing the service said that it will intervene if it sees that the majority of a user’s music is made of pirated filed by shutting down their access which is posing some questions as to how much privacy users will have with a service like this. I am pretty surprised that the labels gave this service the go-ahead to be honest but with the latestBPI numbers showing that secondary revenues are becoming more and more important record companies have to be willing to experiment.

Rdio opens its doors to everyone in the US and Canada.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/02/rdio-public-launch/ http://musically.com/blog/2010/08/03/merlin-hits-out-over-rdio-launch/

Digital Music Start-up Rdio, founded by Skype, Kazaa and Joost founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis has opened its doors to everyone in the US and Canada, so that users won’t have to know someone that can extend them an invite in order to join the service. New users will get a 3 days trial, which can then be extended to 10 days, and after that they will have to pay $9.99 per month for using the service. Rdio now boasts over 7 million songs from both majors and indie aggregators and is in a pretty good place in the US since Spotify is struggling to get off the ground because of issues with its licenses. Rdio places a lot of emphasis on its social features and boast some great mobile apps for all major systems that are updated frequently. In the US it faces competition from the likes of MOG and Pandora so it will have to really capture the public’s imagination to capture a substantial user base.

Apple scaling back its cloud music efforts

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20012445-37.html

According to the latest Cnet reports Apple has been telling music industry executives that the company’s plans in regards to music on the cloud are likely to have a fairly modest scope in the near future, thus disappointing many who were hoping for a fully featured cloud service by the end of the year. The company has found it hard to negotiate licenses for this new way of consuming music ever since it purchased Lala .com at the end of 2009. Apple has apparently decided to shift its focus to video content with rumors of large deals with movie and TV companies nearing completion, rumors that are corroborated by reports of a re-vamped Apple TV box, cheaper and completely reliant on the cloud for content.

Myspace losing money for NewsCorp

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-myspace-ad-dip-drags-down-news-corps-digital-media-group/

Paid Content reports that News Corp blamed its higher Q4 and full-year operating losses in its digital media groups to lower search and advertising revenues at Myspace, bringing them to 575 million dollars. Although this could sound like a nearing death knell for Myspace, Ruperto Murdoch has re-affirmed his backing of Myspace for the time being since the site is going through a major overhaul that will make it better to navigate and more in tune with the public’s needs. Personally I never feel the need to go to Myspace any longer and given the fact that it’s hemorrhaging visitors and users to Facebook and other social networks I find it hard to believe that an overhaul of the site’s look will be of much help.

Streamjam goes beta with new features:

And finally I wanted to let you know that the The Electric Sheep Company has launched the first beta version of StreamJam, a free app for putting live events – and particularly live music – online in a virtual venue. The beta app includes a virtual currency usable for purchasing virtual goods that support the performers as well as dancing, embedded live video streaming, and other interactive features. I interviewed StreamJam’s founder Sibley Verbeck on episode 28 of Digital Music Trends and it’s great to hear about the company’s progress. Check out streamjam.com for more information.

www.streamjam.com http://www.electricsheepcompany.com/2010/08/electric-sheep-launches-streamjam-beta/

Well, that’s all for this week, I really hope you enjoyed the show. Next week on Digital Music Trends the third installment in my series of features on piracy and anti-piracy, this time featuring the BPI’s point of view. Please write in with any feedback, the email is digitalmusictrends@gmail.com and you can also follow me on twitter, the handle is digimusictrends. On www.digitalmusictrends.com you’ll find all you need to know about the show. Digital Music Trends is distributed via iTunes, Podbean, Soundcloud, The Music Void and Mixcloud.

Have a great week and ’till next time! This has been Andrea Leonelli for Digital Music Trends.

And this week in the news:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20011797-261.html

http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/21/google-hires-legal-gun-for-new-music-service/

Italian Major label representative FIMI this week announced that for the first time in 11 years sales of music in Italy grew by 7.7% in value, with digital music increasing by 15% over the same period last year and CD sales growing from 45 to 50 million euros.

At the new music seminar, Pandora announced that they now have 60 million listeners, up from 40 million in December 09. If if they keep up this growth rate they could be reaching 100 million users in the first half of 2011.

IFPI feature

- PRS for Music controversial report on an ISP charge http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Business/Talktalk-Rejects-The-Music-Piracy-Proposal-Suggested-By-PRS-for-Music-As-Futile/Article/201007215664998? http://newsblog.thecmuwebsite.com/post/PRS-man-proposes-piracy-monitoring-and-net-firm-levy.aspx http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2876e320-8ec0-11df-8a67-00144feab49a.html

But as usual let’s start with this week’s interview and first feature of this summer’s piracy debate.

And thanks again to Ben for taking part in the show - I really am impressed with Audiolock’s technology but also by the way in which they are trying to change the mindset of the public in a less confrontational way. Oh and as promised in the interview here’s a short sample from a mastered audio file which was watermarked > then downloaded as a 128K mp3 > then turned to an 80Kbps ogg file > then to real media > then to an 80Kbps mp3. And from this they still were able to pull the watermark which is pretty impressive.

And now for the news:

Forrester research piece on cloud computing: http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1041809&c=1 http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i76b408899045994d81aab55a93246e9f

Music Week and Billboard business reported this week on a new study published by Forrester Research entitled “360-Degree Music Experiences: Use The Cloud To Target Device Use Orbits”. This work, written by researcher Mark Mulligan, explores user’s needs when it comes to cloud access to content and has revealed some pretty surprising statistics that shed some doubts on the idea of multiple access points as the consumer’s ultimate dream. In fact the research showed that the vast majority of users do not listen to music from more than one device and those who do are a very small niche. Interestingly Mulligan notes that he believes the Tablet will really help in advancing the consumption of music streaming on mobile devices as it constitutes a bridge between a phone and PC, but this is interesting as many have touted the iPad as a large brick when they listen to Pandora because of its current inability to multitask. the research is entirely based on the US market and shows that whilst the PC is still the most popular device to listen to digital music from, the mobile phone is becoming increasingly popular for a younger audience that prefers to load it with MP3 rather than using a streaming app. The research was conducted at the end of 2009 when some of the newest streaming apps like MSpot and Moog had not yet launched in the US but it clearly shows that there isn’t a huge appetite for on-demand streaming services. I wonder what kind of results the same research would have produced in the UK, where streaming services like Spotify and We7 really have millions of users. Also something to bear in mind is that streaming music requires a solid data plan and those in the US are pretty expensive and pretty much impossible for most teenagers, which is another reason why they prefer to load their phones with MP3s.

ISPs legal challange to UK anti-piracy laws http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3ic639ed027f3e13c9b0845efbeb934218 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/10542400.stm

The BBC this week reported on the new challenge facing the Digital Economy Act in the UK. After running the risk of being repealed by the new government since liberal democrat Nick Clegg was fiercely opposed to its implementation the Digital Economy act is now being challenged by UK ISPs BT and TalkTalk who want the High Court to clarify the legality of the act before it is implemented. Large ISPs have a number of reasons to be against the new act. first of all it only targets ISPs with more than 400,000 customers, which they say puts them in a situation of competitive disadvantage and makes it likely for people to switch service just to avoid detection. Second they maintain that some parts of the bill may not be in compliance with EU regulation, and given the number of iterations that the Hadopi had to go through to be compliant in France I would not be surprised by that. The Digital Economy Act was rushed through Parliament just before it was dissolved by the Queen prior to the general election and this has prompted many to say that there had not been enough time to iron out the creases in the law. As i had mentioned at the time when the Act was passed this was a shame as a great deal of research had gone into the process and much of it was not even considered because of time restraints. It will be interesting to see how the High Court rules in this case.

Well that’s all for this week - I really hope you enjoyed the show. Next week the series on piracy and anti-piracy continues with a feature on the IFPI so stay tuned for that. I will also be attending Music Ally’s debate on Music and the Cloud on Wednesday so there willl be a report on that. If you are in London and would like to attend the event make sure you visit musicallycloudmodels.evantbrite.com. You can find links to the iTunes and RSS feeds on www.digitalmusictrends.com and the podcast is also featured on The Music Void at www.themusicvoid.com.

Please don’t hesitate to email me with any suggestion or feedback, the email is digtialmusictrends@gmail.com Finally you can follow me on twitter, the handle is digimusictrends

Have a great week and ‘till next time.

Interview with Matt Stanley from www.tunited.com, a new platform for independent music. In the interview we talk about what Tunited is, its focus on independent artists and labels and its alternative business model that aims a providing a better return to the artists whilst encouraging listeners to spend time and money on the site. The company is currently running a closed beta and plans to move to an open beta in late July/early August.

Report on Music Connected, London So last Wednesday I was lucky enough to be able to spend the morning at the the event Music Connected, that took place in Central London and was organized by the Association of Independent Music or AIM that you can find on www.musicindie.com. If you’re not from the UK AIM is a great organization that provides many resources to both independent record companies and distributors. Music Connected is a yearly event focused on the digital marketplace, it kicked off with a session where the 17 digital music companies presented their product or service.

After the presentations the event was split between a “Conference Zone” where there were 4 main seminars/panels revolving around digital music and a “Digital Market Place” where the 17 digital companies that presented earlier had set up some stands so that the delegates could go and speak to them directly. Unfortunately I was only able to stay for the morning but I manged to speak to many of the companies involved in the event, including the sponsors of Music connected - a company called Music 2 Text. Their service allows you to download a track by simply send a text message to a Music 2 Text number and clicking on the download link that you receive in return. This is a tool that I’m sure will be incredibly interesting especially from a marketing point of view at live events. Other companies present included digital distributor Ditto Music, music recognition company Shazam, anti-piracy company Web Sheriff as well as Bounce Mobile with their interactive music app Fireplayer amongst many, many others. The only panel that I managed to attend was that on Fanalytics moderated by Dave Haynes from Soundcloud. The panel looked at the options that bands and labels have to monitor their fan-base online, the importance of analytics and the way in which they can be used to improve the band’s communication with its fans. One of the most interesting points to come out of the panels was that gathering analytics for bands is now absolutely paramount, but it’s not useful at all unless the band spends some time understanding those statistics and using them to improve its communication with the fans. It was a topical discussion for me as on Digital Music Trends episode 50 and 51 I’d just been interviewing two companies that work on music analytics, namely Music Metric and Gigswiz. Overall Music Connected was a really well organized event that I would recommend for next year - I was gutted to miss the afternoon sessions this time but I hope that some substantial blog posts or videos are going to be posted on-line soon to catch up!

iTunes licensing hurdles http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/07/01/exclusive-apple-itunes-in-the-cloud-definitely-happening-soon-wireless-syncing/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20009534-261.html http://thenextweb.com/apple/2010/07/02/streaming-itunes/ http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i0dbd1be978e01a7f346f47e6b6f7557a

The Boy Genius Report this week re-started the rumour mill on an iTunes cloud-based music service. According to BGR’s sources the service should be unveiled soon and will allow users to stream media directly from Apple’s own servers as well as from their own computers to mobile/wireless devices and to synchronize their iPhones, iPads and PCs/Macs wirelessly as well. Billboard Business commented on the news by saying that the article does not add anything that we didn’t already know to the story and CNET’s Greg Sandoval reports that whilst music industry executives are not denying that talks with apple are ongoing they have not reached and agreement yet. Apparently the problem is that Lala’s licensing deals with the labels did not stand after the company was acquired be Apple and this means that if they want to stream music from their own servers they will have to cut a new deal. The music industry is once again between a rock and a hard place, they’d like to avoid handing the keys to their empire to Apple once again and see them hold the majority of both the a la carte and the streaming business but at the same time they know that only a company like Apple has the user base and the technical ability to really break streaming to a mass audience in a way that perhaps not even Spotify will be able to do in the US market. I personally think that the progress or lack thereof in the licensing talks will be very much dictated by the performance of the music labels in the next two financial quarters. If the flattening out of the rise in digital sales as well as the decline in physical sales were to continue Apple would be in a much better place to get the industry on its side whilst if the market proved more resilient then the labels would not have to run to Steve Jobs to obtain some much needed security.

Spotify bringing multitasking to iPhone app http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/spotify-updated-for-ios4-ready-to-replace-ipod/ http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/34073/spotify-app-multitasking-your-music http://musically.com/blog/2010/06/28/spotify-bringing-multi-tasking-to-its-iphone-app/

And Spotify made the headlines again today simply by releasing an update - though it’s certainly the one update that every Spotify-loving UK user with an iPhone 3Gs or iPhone 4 wanted to get. It introduces finally multitasking to the app which means that you no longer have to stop your music to check your email or look up a map or play your favorite game. This is a real revolution for Spotify and as Wired points out the company is now well on its way to replacing iTunes on the iPhone itself, which is an interesting paradox. The only fields where Spotify is still lacking compared to the iPhone’s iPod functionality is that of Podcasts that are still only sporadically available on Spotify and do not upgrade automatically. The update also brings social features to the mobile app so you can share your music with your friends and it has some nice touches like the ability to control the app via the headphone controls of Apple’s headset. I am personally going to upgrade once again to Spotify premium having been frustrated for months by the lack of multitasking which made the app unusable to me. I look forward to enjoying a whole load of new music from now on!

Tapulous is acquired by Disney http://tapulous.com/blog/2010/07/tapping-on/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/02/the-tapulous-purchase-price-mystery/ http://www.businessinsider.com/tapulous-has-been-acquired-by-disney-2010-7 http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1041719&c=1

Tech crunch, Busines Insider and Music week have all reported on the juicy news that Disney has decided to acquired Tapulous. Disney was adamant not to reveal the true figures surrounding this acquisition with all people in the know forced to sign non-disclosure agreements. TechCrunch worked out from various sources that the purchase price must have been between 22 and 50 million dollars. The acquisition itself comes as a surprise for a company that only ever had to raise 1.8 million in venture capital and angel investments and became profitable almost immediately. Projected earnings for 2010 were in the region of 10 million dollars which sort-of make me wonder why sell the company at all? The co-founders of the Tapulous Bart Decrem and Andrew lacy will become Senior VPs at Disney’s mobile operations and will continue to expand the Tapulous brand whilst integrating it with Disney properties.  Mr Decrem when speaking to TechCrunch revealed that Tapulous will become a point of focus in Disney’s mobile strategy and that he will be working hard to expand the division in Palo Alto.

Pandora’s guide to mobile app platforms http://gigaom.com/2010/06/28/pandoras-guide-to-mobile-app-platforms/ Keys to Pandora’s success http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3ife5a57734af1cf193fd1205ca36522d5

And finally Pandora’s CTO Tom Conrad recently spoke at a Digg event about how Pandora proceeded in picking which mobile platforms to support. He looked back at the history of the company and at the choices it had made in terms of handset support to explain why Pandora ended up becoming so darn successful. GigaOm did a good job in summing up the key points of this talk but I suggest that you watch the whole thing since it’s available - the video is also embedded in the GigaOm article. Mr Conrad spoke about how knowing your customer is paramount - Pandora was incredibly successful on the iPhone because many people that had transitioned to that device were iPod users which made them more likely to appreciate the service. And also he talked about the importance of tailoring the app to the device, even if this can take some time. The most telling story was that of the explosions of users on the Blackberry Storm that was caused by a Pandora developer in Canada taking it upon himself to write a really great app tailored-made for that device. I’m personally still waiting to get Pandora in the UK so in my case the problem is not handset support but availability in my country!

And that’s all for this week, i really hope you enjoyed the show. You can email with any feedback or comment to digitalmusictrends@gmail.com or visit the website on www.digitalmusictrends.com if you’d like to look at previous episodes or find the links to the iTunes or RSS feeds. You can also get the podcast by subscribing directly on iTunes, just search for Digital Music Trends in the store. Digital Music Trends is also available on the Music Void, SoundCloud and Mixcloud. Have a great week and ‘till next time!

And now for the news:

On Thursday Myspace confirmed a TechCrunch article that revealed the departure of co-president Jason Hirschhorn - this marks yet another management shake-up in the company’s recently turbulent history. After the departure of CEO Owen Van Natta only four months ago NewsCorp appointed 2 co-presidents at the helm of Myspace - Jason Hirschhorn and Mike Jones. Now, with Hirschhorn’s departure - which was blamed on his desire to get back to New York for personal reasons - Mike Jones is expected to be made CEO of the company sometime soon. Many news outlets including myself on this show had expressed doubts at the time of the appointment of the two co-presidents that having two people at the helm of a company that needed a dramatic change in direction in order to survive may not have been a good choice, as a dual leadership could easily translate to compromise. Now the situation is not looking good at Myspace, with rumors that the network may be spun into a private company to limit News Corp’s losses. Billboard Business makes a really good point when it remarks that Myspace’s main asset now appears to be Myspace Music - but even they have not yet decided what kind of music service they want to become - they are not like Spotify or like Pandora and have lots of social-heavy cool features. But the problem is that with less and less people using the site for social networking purposes how are they going to expand those social features beyond their own users? TechCrunch remarks that Myspace’s lucrative search deal with Google is going to expire in two week’s time and there’s so far nothing that will replace that revenue stream - meaning that the company could soon be haemorrhaging even more money. Billboard’s piece reports that Myspace’s employees remain confident - they view saving Myspace as a great challenge but not something that is altogether unattainable.

- Now the Publishers are going after LimeWire.

www.musicmetric.com

- The launch of iPhone 4 is used as an opportunity to cap “unlimited” data plans for mobile both in the US and in the UK. How will this affect music services like Pandora?

http://www.maclife.com/article/feature/infographic_iphone_data_plans_exposed http://www.theipadguide.com/faq/how-much-data-does-pandora-streaming-radio-use-ipad-3g

So last Monday the iPhone 4 was unveiled, and I have to admit that it’s a pretty cool phone. But behind the scenes the operators both in the US and in the UK are planning to use to launch of the new iPhone to change their stance on unlimited data plans that were in my opinion a very compelling reason to buy into the iPhone platform in the first place. AT&T - still the only carrier to offer the iPhone in the US although many are expecting a Verizon phone by the fall - effectively changed its data rates from $30 for unlimited data to $25 for a 2gb cap. The company says that only 2 or 3 per cent of its users go above that consumption every month and that therefore this should not affect the vast majority of its users, who actually will see a reduction in their monthly bills, since they also introduced a $15 rate for users who stay below 200 megabytes per month. Similarly a few days after the iPhone launch the UK operator O2 and now it seems also Orange announced changes to their data consumption policies. O2 is going further than At&t in the sense that their cap is going to be 500 megabytes from a previous unlimited plan - which is only a fourth of hat At&t offers with the option of paying an extra 5 pounds per 500 mb consumed every month. Orange is going as far as saying that their customers don’t generally use more than 200 megabytes so will they place their caps that low? Well, the individual figures are not the main problem here, and i can actually see the Operator’s argument for not wanting to fund the small majority that uses gigabytes and gigabytes of data (probably from jailbroken and tethered iPhone anways) - but how will this affect people’s perception of music streaming via 3g and how much does that streaming effectively consume in terms of bandwidth?

Well, on the site Ipadguide.com I found post where they detailed Pandora’s’ streaming data consumption on the iPad, and I assume that figure will be similar for the iPhone, in one hour of continuous streaming the data used was 38.9 megabytes. This is consistent with Maclife’s report that the average Pandora song stream uses just over 2 megabytes. this really put things into perspective for me in terms of how much streaming services will be affected by the new charges, especially in light of the multitasking features on the new iPhone. Currently, I’m a low data user, i use lots of email, Twitter, Facebook, maps throughout the day but no music streaming because of the lack of multitastking and my data consumption is between 150 and 200 MB per month. but one of the reasons I was looking forward to iPhone 4 was exactly the ability to play Spotify, We7 and company in the background even via 3g, the snag being that that uses over 30 megs per hour it would take less then half an hour per day of use to reach the cap established by O2, although with At&T things look a bit more relaxed in that respect. So what is happening here? Are operators clamping down on data use just when it’s about to explode via multi-tasking? are streaming music services going to be forced to use more caching within the phone in order to retain their customer base? How is Apple going to roll out a cloud-based music locker service when these new caps are in place? This is certainly an interesting and as of yet unexplored area. with faster phones, 3g-enabled Skype, streaming services, Youtube, gps, maps and virtual goggles it’s very likely that we’ll be using lots more data this year and I wonder just how much we’re going to have to pay for it.

- An update on the Limewire case from the courts

http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/bentley/riaa-asks-court-to-shut-down-limewire/?cs=41600

PcWorld, CNET and itBusinessedge reported this week on the news from the Limewire’s trial front. As expected, this week the RIAA asked the court to shut down Limewire immediately, arguing that for each day the site stays open the recording industry is losing millions of dollars in revenues. The judge Kimba Wood actually gave Limewire 2 week of extra life in order to prepare a response to the RIAA’s request, after that there’s a high probability that the service will be shut down unless they can come up with an extremely good argument for their survival. In the meantime it looks like the RIAA together with a number of record labels will be asking for billions in damages from Limewire, a sum that they are unlikely to obtain naturally. 13 Record labels reportedly filed a suit last week to freeze Limewire’s assets including those of the founder Mark Gorton - although it may take a few months for the damages trial to take place.

- An interesting article on the rise and fall of the RIAA from TECHDIRT

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100611/0203309776.shtml

This week there was an interesting article posted on TechDirt on the rise and fall of the RIAA - more specifically a graphic representation of the revenues of the labels that are represented by the RIAA in relation to the RIAA’s actions in terms of anti-piracy efforts and the customer-oriented lawsuits between 2003 and 2007. Well the result is a mixed picture, and whilst there are many, many other factors to the revenue of the record industry other than the RIAA’s direct actions i have to say that whilst during the four years of lawsuits the intakes of the RIAA represented labels had stabilized they dropped very quickly after the end of the mass-lawsuit policy. Is that related or is it just the natural evolution of the market? Well it’s up to you to decide I guess… but in any case go and explore this interesting graph, the link is in the shownotes!

- Spotify apparently doubled its subscriptions after introducing social features and partners with Scandinavian Telco to reach TVs.

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i2b61a0dd47969d0f0b677818addccd85

http://musically.com/blog/2010/06/10/social-and-local-features-have-doubled-spotifys-subscription-rate/

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_25/b4183032378514.htm

Quite a few bits of Spotify News this week. Let’s start with Music Ally’s blog report that Spotify’s new social features have caused the company’s daily subscription rates to double. This revelation was made by Spotify’s UK Managing Director Paul Brown in an interview with Music Ally. This is a really interesting figure because Spotify didn’t actually limit the social features to the paid option, but the fact that people could share music with their friends must have tipped them over the edge and convinced them that the service was worth paying for. There are no recent official figures as to how many paying subscribers Spotify has in the UK so keep your eyes peeled for any future figures that may reveal whether Spotify’s bet on premium was accurate or not!

On Billboard business I found an article dedicated to Spotify’s latest partnership with Scandinavian telco Tellasonera to add its service to the company’s digital TV offering in Sweden and Finland. Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify stated that “Introducing Spotify into the living room is a major step forward in our continued efforts to make Spotify available wherever you are”. For now the service will only be available to that portion of Tellasonera’s 120,000 customers who already pay for Spotify’s premium subscription, but who knows maybe in the future they’ll decide to give all the other customers a little free taster of what it’s like to have all the music you want at the tip of your fingers, and maybe already connected via the TV to a great-sounding surround system!

And finally Business Week on the 10th of June published a lengthy feature on why Spotify has not yet launched in the US. It’s well worth a read and the link is in the shownotes, but basically the piece focuses on the Major Label’s resistance to having a free Spotify service launch in the US in the same way in which it was rolled out in the UK and the rest of Europe. They want to make real money from it and i guess there are worries that it may cannibalize the a’ la carte download market that in the US is stronger than in Europe.

- Believe Digital launche office in the UK

http://www.mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=130874

The Music Industry News Network reported this week on the expansion of Digital Distributor Believe digital into the UK. Believe is not simply a digital distributor but it also also integrates marketing and strategic support options for labels and artists - the company in fact has offices in a number of countries now and the official launch of the London base will certainly bring a few more UK acts into the Believe fold. The new managing director for the UK will be artist manager Stephen King - who has guided the careers of The Libertines, The Hives, The Lighthouse Family and many others. I’ve been familiar with Believe’s work in the UK for a couple of years now so it does not come as a surprise that they decided to make a more permanent base here, but for me it’s interesting to see how a company like believe can start taking on some of the burden that was traditionally left to the record label in order to steer the careers of independent artists. for more information go to www.believedigital.com

- Spanish judge compares P2P to lending libraries?

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i773194c18528fcf799301bfa7252e13f

And finally, in what is without a doubt another defeat for the anti-piracy front in Spain. Three judges ruled the site CVCDGO.COM whose headquarters in Madrid, Malaga and Seville were raided by police in 2005 not guilty of a crime since it did not host the actual copyright files and generated no profit directly from any infringements of copyright, they also maintained that the presence of advertising on the site was legitimate. The three judges went as far as saying that the exchange of digital files was comparable to the exchange, loan or sale of books and other mediums that has been happening since ancient times. In their view the internet only makes this exchange faster and of a higher quality. In Spain the music sales are crashing quickly and there are fears that many labels are going to stop developing acts in the country because of the widespread use of P2P networks and the politician’s aversion to taking a strong stance in that regard.

Well thanks again to Nikhil for a really interesting interview with some great stats. As i mentioned earlier the show ends here today, check out www.digitalmusictrends.com for links to the feeds, Digital Music Trends will also be featuring on Mixcloud from now on as they’ve implemented RSS integration and you can also catch the show on the Music void. If you’d like to email the address is digitalmusictrends@gmail.com Have a great wee and ’till next time!

www.digitalmusictrends.com

Digital Music trends - Episode 48 - 31st of May 2009.

Hello everyone and welcome to digital music trends - the main feature of this week’s show is Future Music Camp the music conference/barcamp that took place in Mannheim this week-end. I only just flew back from there and I’ll be talking about the event, the presentations and keynotes that took place starting off with a short interview with one of the organizers, Ryan Rauscher.

Also as usual a few nuggets of digital music news for this week’s show which include Wonfgang’s Vault deal with Boxee, Limewire’s last appeal as it risks being shut down in a week, the decline of digital music sales in Japan in 2009, Ofcom’s release of some details about its forthcoming crackdown on file sharing and finally many of my listeners in the States will be mourning the death of Lala, as today is its last day - will Steve Jobs resurrect it as early as tomorrow by unveiling a new iTunes service? I’m not so sure but what the hell you gotta hope so!

But let’s start with the Future Music Camp and and introduction by one of the organizers, Ryan Rauscher. www.futuremusiccamp.com So here’s the introduction, but what happened exactly during the week-end? Basically as Ryan explained the event was structured as part conference and part barcamp. So there were scheduled presentations and workshops and then sessions that were put forward and organized by the camp’s participants. On Saturday there were many very interesting presentations - the event was kicked off by Nikhil Shah, co-founder of Mixcloud - who ran us through a presentation on how to build a business like Mixcloud and what people need to look out for in the process. He provided some great tips on how to build a successful start-up, his context naturally was music but that could be applied to really any business that is starting out online.  Some of the ideas that he shared with the audience really struck me during the presentation and I’m just going to run through although they made a little bit more sense through the context of the presentation itself. Number one is the concept of shouting from the rooftops about your service and your idea, there’s no point trying to protect it - if you don’t share it and get everyone on board it won’t be successful. Second Nikhil talked about the idea of getting the product out there before it’s 100% complete, if you try and wait until you launch the perfect product you’re going to waste time, whilst if you release a product that is  - even if not completely stable - 80 to 85% complete you may have some problems but those are issues that can be solved very very quickly once you know what they are.  Third Nikhil talked about the idea of building a cool product first and foremost, sorting through the issues and having a great implementation since no matter how much funding you have if the idea or the product have issues they are not going to go away by throwing money at them - those are the first things that need to be sorted out which means that  funding is not as important as having a great idea and a great product. Fourth point Nikhil made was regarding the supply versus demand - one problem that often faces digital music services is that it’s very hard to get the content without listeners and it’s pretty much impossible to get listeners without content. So Nikhil’s suggestion in this case is to try and build a great library of content during the beta phase of a service so that when it goes out of beta the content is already there and the company will be able to draw a lot more listeners. Finally Nikhil talked about implementing a top down and bottom up strategy, meaning that you need both the guy in the bedroom that is doing his own thing for a handful of people and the more high-profile content provider who can guarantee you thousands of listeners with a single tweet about a release, these two approaches combined can grow the user base of a service quickly.

After this presentation was the presentation from Simfy. I had heard the name mentioned before but I couldn’t frankly remember what the company was about. Basically it’s a streaming service that is comparable to the likes of Spotify and We7 - although not without a few differences - the key here is that they are German-based and have licenses to use over six million tracks having deals in place with all the majors and also recently with Merlin. What’s interesting is that collection society Gema is often characterized as giving new digital services a real headache when it comes to negotiating terms for licensing music - so the Simfy story is an interesting one as it has managed to overcome all these problems and create a really large business. Simfy actually started right next to the Popakademie in Mannheim - it relocated recently due to a round of funding that meant they had to move to Colone. The platform already has 1.7 million users and is based on the freemium model - so advertising for the free service and monthly subscriptions to get ad-free content. One interesting difference with the likes of Spotify and We7 is that so far it has been running as a web service and as a  mobile applications but is now about to launch a desktop application as well. So it will have all three - whilst in the UK you have the choice of going web-based with We7 or desktop-based with the Spotify software, both of which have their own mobile app. simfy is aiming at having 80,000 paying subscribers by the end of the year and is certainly a very dynamic new company. The player and many of the features are not at all dissimilar from what we have already seen here in the UK, but i guess that there are only so many ways to slice a pie as the saying goes. In this field the important thing is to obtain the licenses and Simfy certainly beat Spotify to it in the German market.

Music DNA also had a presentation which i was looking forwards to since I was hoping to see a real product over five months after I attended the MIDEM press conference where the format was announced. In case you didn’t hear my Midem coverage from a few months ago Music DNA is a new format that wants to replace the MP3 and offer a better experience to the user. .DNA files will be able to include better metadata, multimedia files like videos and images, links to all the sites that have content from that artist, to their twitter feeds and to tour dates and the idea is that these files will be able to upgrade themselves via the net every time you listen to them. The format was developed by a company called Back technology that is really very ambitious in its plan as many are skeptical that the users will accept moving away from the MP3 without a large amount of resistance.  At the presentation there was a limited showcase of the software that didn’t really give me a clear idea regarding how responsive and complete it is. They plan to penetrate the market by allowing users to upgrade their entire collections with media-rich .DNA files free of charge. They will release their software at the end of July so you and I will be finally able to play with this soon - and personally i can’t wait to give it a go. but if you’re not inclined to change your habits and preferred music platform fear not - during the presentation they announced that they will be launching plug-ins for iTunes, windows media player and other music platforms by the end of October 2010. Finally they are pushing hard on the hardware front and established an office in China to present and push the music DNA SDK to electronics manufacturers - will your mobile handset be DNA-enabled in two years time? we’ll have to wait and see!

Presentation on P2P by Janko Röttgers. Janko Rottogers is a German-born but San Francisco based journalist that has been covering for many years the evolution of P2P technology. Janko’s presentation centered around the question of if and how it’s possible to monetize P2P. Whilst the industry is fighting hard to have P2P disappear from the face of the earth this is not likely to happen anytime soon. So the option is to let P2p networks continue their work outside the law or to try and monetize what they do to bring some revenue to the artists. the problem is that allowing P2P networks to do that would basically be an acceptance of their service so the industry would not be able to sue them and get them to shut down an longer. This is the problem that happened with Limewire for example- the service had developed a FAN artist network a couple of years ago to sell contextual advertising based on the searches and to share the revenue with the rightsholders but it was not possible to reach an agreement and we all know where things stand now… Another product that is currently trying to monetize P2P is a revamped version of Audio Galaxy, that brings back some memories of it being the late 90s and me trying to download an mp3 on a dial-up connection and giving up after two hours… They are now planning to get licenses for the content although there’s nothing concrete in place yet, just like with the Choruss initiative that aimed at legalizing P2P within university campuses for a flat fee of 5 dollars per month per user. Flattr http://flattr.com

The last possible solution is the crowd source donation and here Janko talked about a service that I’d never heard of but that sounds really fantastic. the service is called flattr and was started by Peter Sunde, the face of the pirate bay and it’s all about compensating rightsholder. Currently in a closed beta phase, Flattr is a bit like the .digg button but for donations where people decide to donate right there and then by clicking on the icon. If you register on flatter as a user you can decide to direct between 5 and 10 euros per month to what you find on the net, so you are never going to spend any more than that no matter how many content sources you Flattr, what happens instead is that at the end of the month flatter does a tally and divides the money between the number of clicks you made and distributes it amongst the sites, it’s a very distributive model with low barrier of entry for people to donate. So if you donate 5 euros a month and you click on 20 sites in may, they get 25 cents each, whilst if you click on 10 sites in July they will get 50 cents each, It sounds like an amazing idea and I’m checking it out right now just got my login details for the beta. will let you know more on it soon!

Will Page, chief economist at PRS for Music and Oliver Tuerke, who also works there as international manager, gave a presentation entitled Comforting lies and Unpleasant truths - Copyright 101. They ran the audience through a whirlwind of incredibly interesting facts and figures about copyright, the worldwide music market and collection societies. Unfortunately I didn’t record the event and I really couldn’t keep up with the presentation in terms of taking coherent notes that i could present on the podcast but I think that the guys at the future music camp have filmed all the main keynotes and will be uploading them to the site so I’ll let you know when that happens so you can enjoy this fantastic presentation. I’ll be watching it again too knowing that I can happily pause and finish taking my notes!

And finally I can’t forget to mention the fantastic Reactable instrument developed by Günter Geiger and his team that was on showcase at the camp it’s basically a completely new way to interact with music and create music. You really need to check out the www.Reactable.com website and also google Bjork and Reactable to watch videos of her perform with one of the prototypes a couple of years ago on her last tour. I was there and I have to tell you that when I saw the very same table right in front of me at the Future Music Camp I drooled a little!! A portable version of the Reactable table is now being produced - although in small numbers - so if you can afford it ( i sure as hell can’t unfortunately ) go and treat yourself to one!!

In terms of the barcamp side of things i must admit that unfortunately I didn’t attend a great deal of sessions as they were all run in German and although I can get by on basic things like introductions food and most importantly beer at that level of conversation all I could do was  staring blankly without being able to take much in, but hopefully I’ll manage to get Ryan to tell me more about them once he’s recovered from organizing this event!

Wolfgang’s vault deal with Boxee

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3if3584cb6d538b8e117072537ba085230 http://paidcontent.org/article/419-streaming-music-archive-wolfgangs-vault-expands-to-boxee/ http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/05/prweb4062444.htm http://www.cultofmac.com/boxee-rocks-tv-world-with-wolfgangs-vault-app/44988

OK for this story first of all a premise - if you have never heard of Wolfgang’s vault - well it’s a site that allows users to live recordings by famous artists - usually recordings of gigs that are not usually available elsewhere and has a catalogue of hundreds of recordings. The site is legal and makes its money primarily by selling concert memorabilia to the visitors. Although the music streaming is mostly a loss-leader for the memorabilia sales it has also developed a premium subscription for intensive users called WVIP. Well this week Wolfgang’s Vault has announced a deal that will allow it to enter the living rooms of Boxee users that will be able to stream up to ten hours of content each month for free. Additional streaming will require them to pay the site’s $48 annual subscription fee. Boxee is gaining traction in the US as the way to bring Internet content on your TV and naturally the more visibility the site has the better.

Limewire may only have a week to live

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20006285-261.html http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3if3584cb6d538b8e19b75a6b97774071f

So, June the 7th is the day when Limewire’s long and troubled history may come to a screeching halt. the court has established a hearing for that day following on from the recent ruling that established that its business model was in fact was to make money by facilitating the exchange of copyrighted material. The RIAA on June the 7th may well - and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t - seek an injunction against the service which would mean that Limewire would have go offline pretty quickly. Limewire has launched a last ditch attempt to appeal the court’s decision. Billboard reports that Limewire argues that the court made errors in its analysis of liability, including whether the company had the ability to supervise copyright infringement. Limewire also maintains that in the case there was conflicting evidence and they had to be given the benefit of the doubt. Apparently it’s unlikely that this argument is going to have any hold on the court and the company is likely to shut its doors soon. But naturally there’s a hundred of other services that are planning to pick up Limewire’s users should it go down for good!

Japanese digital sales declined in 2009

http://newsblog.thecmuwebsite.com/post/Japanese-digital-sales-down-in-2009.aspx http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2010/05/26/digital-music-sales-down-3-japan-03909-mobile-dips-4 http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1041310&c=1

For the first time in 2009 Japan’s digital music sales slipped by 3%. The mobile market, which represents 90% of digital sales in japan fell by 4% whilst the computer-based song downloads grew by 9%, but given the difference in market share between these two options the 9% growth was not enough to offset the 4% decline. The value of the sales remained flat at 90.6 billion yen. This is a surprising news - everyone expects digital sales to go up year-on-year because it’s large market with many new adopters every month, has the Japanese economy been saturated by digital content or are the price points still wrong?

OfCom reveals some details regarding the forthcoming anti-piracy measures

http://www.broadband-expert.co.uk/blog/bt-broadband/bt-unhappy-with-file-sharing-regulations-from-ofcom/778731 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/10183820.stm

And finally UK  regulator ofcom released a draft code of practice that contains some important details about the anti-piracy measures to be taken in the UK. Music Labels and Movie Studioes will be able to request details from the lists of individuals who have been infringing and send warning letters that could then escalate if the infringement kept happening. One interesting thing is that an infrtingment will not hang over your head forever as the three strikes only works if you have infringed in the same 12 months period, after that you get a clean slate. Controversially OfCom decided not to apply these measure to ISPs smaller than 400, 000 people which prompted some to say that the pirates will just end up moving to a smaller company. BT was quick to respond saying that the draft is not fair because it singles out the larger companies pushing customer onto smaller ones.

iTunes Store widens its lead as the largest music retailer in the US http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/magazine/upfront/e3i12fe2557a9382597671a522cc1cc901d

Billboard Business reported on the new market share figures for music sales in the US - and the most striking one is that that iTunes is widening its lead and dominates the field. Apple’s music store went from a 21.4% share in 2008 to a 26.7% share in 2009. The trends in the physical market were reversed, with Wal-Mart losing 2.5% and settling with 12.5% - which was probably by all means a calculated risk since the company keeps reducing the shelf space reserved for CDs, and along the same lines the Best Buy share has dipped to 8.7%. The Amazon Mp3 store rose by half a point but is only at 1.3% - a far cry from Amazon’s and the labels’ aspirations and surprising given that often their prices are slightly lower than on iTunes.

Google taking on Apple on the music front as well? http://www.itproportal.com/portal/news/article/2010/5/21/google-acquired-simplify-media-launch-android-music-service

http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/20/google-buys-simplify-media-to-power-music-syncing-for-new-itunes-competitor/

http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/20/um-did-google-just-quietly-launch-a-web-based-itunes-competitor-yep/

ItProPortal and TechCrunch last Friday reported on Google’s latest announcements regarding its Android 2.2 or Froyo mobile operating system. Apparently Google is planning to introduce music in its Marketplace with the next upgrade and the process would be very similar to what happens today on the iPhone: you’d be able to find the music, buy it and download it directly on your device. At the moment there are no details as to which labels will be licensing their music for the service but with overall sales for Android-powered handsets overtaking the iPhone’s in the US it’s certainly a market that I would assume all labels would want to get a piece of. In another even more intriguing note - Google announced that it acquired the start-up Simplify media - a platform that allows you to manage your music and photos across different devices and pieces of software including remote access from the web. Simplify had announced a change in direction and pulled its app from itunes back in March which suggests that the deal with Google took place then, and is planning to release a desktop app that will allow you to access your computer’s drm-free music collection from your handset. If this turns out to be a software that is solid and user-friendly it could be a real blow to Apple - the Cupertino company is apparently working on a music locker system in the cloud but is yet to announce anything officially. Google has never been great at handling Media, although Android 2.1 brought a number of positive changes to the User interface for its media player - whether the implementation is up to scratch to gather a large user base is anyone’s guess!

Digital Technology Allowing blind people to record music http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704852004575258444254422092.html?mod=WSJ_ArtsEnt_LifestyleArtEnt_9 www.dancingdots.com

I came across a great article on the Wall Street Journal this week that I really wanted to include in the line-up for the show. It’s about a piece of software called Cake Talking developed by the company Dancing Dots - which basically allows blind musicians to navigate and use music production software. The article is based on the experience of blind musician Raul Midon who although extremely accomplished was unable to use normal production tools because most of them are based on icons and screen prompts - just think at your usual Logic or ProTools window. CakeTalking  now allows him to produce his tracks the way he wants them and tweak with the sounds in a way he didn’t previously thought possible - it directs him on the screen and reads out the different commands, and through a combination of these prompts and keyboard short-cuts Raul is now able to create complex pieces without anyone’s help. I just though this was a really great story on how technology can make a difference for musicians, although the development of these platforms is always hampered by the fact that being very niche products they are hard to monetize and I can imagine that there isn’t a great deal of funding for them… At the moment - by looking at the Dancingdots.com website - the CakeWalking software is available specifically for Sonar but I guess that there’s no reason why it could not be applied to other platforms in the near future.

In Spain revenues from the Blank Media tax overtake mechanical royalties from music sales.

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i3b8cb13fe213cb83d754397e5db3c4bf

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-11/spanish-levy-on-cds-dvds-may-breach-eu-law-court-adviser-says.html

Billboard reports that in Spain the amount collected by authors body SGAE through the tax imposed on the sale of blank CD and DVD has overtaken the amount collected through mechanical royalties that derive from music sales. It received 27.7 million euros from the tax but only 20.5 million euros through mechanical royalties. According to the IFPI the value of the Spanish music market declined by 14.3% in 2009 to 177 million euros. On the 11th of May Business Week had run a piece on how the European Union is pondering on whether this tax is acceptable or whether it breaches EU regulations. The case was brought up by Padawan, a Spanish maker of DVDs and CDs who refused to pay and was brought to court by the SGAE. Advocate General Verica Trstenjak of the European Court of Justice said that “A levy in favor of authors, artists and producers may not be applied indiscriminately,” to buyers who have clearly acquired the data media for purposes other than copying others’ work. Now her advice is generally followed by the court so if the ruling was in Padawan’s favor the SGAE could find itself deprived of a very important source of income.

A discussion on the future of physical content.

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3idbde8a913c8837424e12a0d45f78cd6a

And now onto another piece from Billboard Business - they strangely seem to have better coverage of European music business events than most other news organizations based in Europe. This is a report on the Music Tank debate that took place in London last week and focused around the physical formats. the event was called “Never Mind the Box Set: The Album Post-iTunes” and aimed at analyzing the future of the album. During the debate a study by the Future Business Research Group was discussed which is basically the first-ever industry-wide segmentation of the British music-buying public. This study divides the music-buying public into a number of groups to give a few examples the “traditional fanatic” - slightly older tech savvy and obsessed with physical products - the “going digital” that has just moved onto digital and may pirate some content the “digital convert” that is following the totally legal digital route. These groups and the correlation between the groups and the amount of money they spend of music is meant to be a guideline as to where the Music Industry should concentrate its efforts. In regards to the call for innovation at the record-store level to drive digital consumption Gennaro Castaldo head of press at HMV spoke of an upcoming service by the chain which would allow customers to receive a legitimate digital copies of the songs they just bought on CD. Others talked about the importance of vinyl, or merchandise and of box-sets for higher-margin products. What’s certain is that physical is not going anywhere and that although digital is set to increase and has already conquered the singles market album sales are going to happen primarily in the physical world for quite some time.

Soundcloud Congrats http://blog.soundcloud.com/2010/05/18/1000000/

The Soundcloud team announced last Tuesday that the company reached the milestone of one million users! I’ve been hosting the show on Soundcloud as well as on the usual RSS podcast feed for the past six months and I couldn’t be happier with them! Mhh now the only trouble is whether to still call it a start-up or not, what do you think?

And that’s all for this week, i really hope you enjoyed the show. You can find all the links to the stories in the show notes which are both embedded in the Mp3 file and on the blog at www.digitalmusictrends.com. You can also find the podcast on the Music Void at www.themusicvoid.com. Please email me with any comment or feedback - the address is digitalmusictrends@gmail.com. Next week-end I’m going to be at the Future Music Camp in Mannheim which is super-exciting, I will be conducting a workshop on Interactive Music so if you’re planning to be there give me a shout - otherwise I’ll tell you all about it on the next episode of digital music trends. This has been Andrea Leonelli - have a great week and ‘Till Next time!

But let’s start with this week’s interview with Gregory Kris, CEO of Decibel.net (here is not a transcript but a more conicise summary of some of the subjects covered in the interview):

First of all, how did Decibels start out and what is the idea behind the company?

Our founder is a music fanatic and software architect. He got the idea when he tried to digitise his own collection, and found that the software was in its infancy and all the information was in silos. The idea was to provide knowledge and navigation in one place, and to make the listening experience totally compelling for digital music.

The product was made with many issues in mind. First was the need for knowledge — to duplicate the record notes. Then came the idea of navigating a typically-large digital music collection. The next was in finding music online. Then there’s the “English-only” nature of the music market, with many interested people left out.

As listeners we typically use separate programs or web sites for each function, but if you think about it, all of these issues are part of a single, musical ecosystem. The job of Decibel is to allow all items to function together smoothly, and that’s a pain-point right now. We want to power the next generation of digital music.

The focus of the company is on music discovery, a field that is now expanding on various fronts including that recommendation services. How does decibel spur music discovery? Decibel furnishes the raw material for recommendations, but more important, it lets listeners follow their own trail of interest. There is no field where people love details more than music, and Decibel allows listeners to make their own discoveries. Social connections are interesting, but listeners may also want to follow the guitarist, or the piece or the label … or whatever else strikes them. We make no assumptions — we simply furnish people with the tools to do what they want, and can find things even if they’re not on the cover. Decibel can be used to discover your own collection, but equally, it makes online services easier to use. All of a sudden, sellers are music experts.

How do you gather the information that you include in the music? You talk about listing all session musicians, backing vocalists, producers etc for a specific recording but often this information is not even available to the original record label – do you need to carry out a lot of detective work on some of the recordings?

We often have better information than the record companies. Record companies are in the business of making music, and don’t always have the time to look after data. In fact, we view them as potential clients, since complete data will help them make better sales.

We get the information wherever we can find it, and sometimes spend ridiculous amounts of time on small details. The sleeve notes are all-important, but we also go to reference works, blogs, and any sources that will help. Generally, we have a 30,000-foot view of music data, so we can make the best guess if we need to. Nobody’s perfect. We often find that the sleeve notes have the wrong song authors, and we’ve even found a record where they got the artist wrong (Joe Turner / Big Joe Turner). We’ve asked everyone to be extra-critical of our own information, and we make a point of putting fixes in place immediately.

Is the information provided by Decibel for now only accessed by larger organizations or is it accessible through specific software I could use so that if I pop a CD in my drive that has been indexed by Decibel I can access all that wealth of information?

Decibel is accessed through an API. Using this model, anyone can write software to use the data for whatever purpose they need. For instance, Decibel has a program that recognises CDs, and rips to MP3 and FLAC with all the rich information in the tags. We see a wealth of consumer products coming from the same source. The same way that PCs have the “Intel Inside” sticker, we see the products having the “Data by Decibel” label.

I imagine that your client base is split – on the one side the content creators that want you to index their tracks on Decibel and on the other the service providers who want to access the content. In that respect are these two forces equivalent or is one more predominant than the other in terms of your business model? You can’t have one without the other! The move to digital music has caused some friction between the producers and consumers, when really, their interests are totally shared. Die-hard fans can’t get enough music, and creators need everyone to know that they’re there. The problem is that something has been lost in the translation on the way to digital music. The physical product is going away, and traditional magazines and advertising are going through turmoil as well. We look at Decibel as the missing part of the equation. Good information lets creators sell something of similar value to the original product, and good navigation lets listeners find what they want. Everyone wins.

What are your plans for the service in terms of the information you hold? Is your goal to keep distributing solely via the Cloud or would you like a tie-in with Mp3s or other upcoming interactive formats? We plan to deliver data from the Cloud, since that easiest and most convenient. However, we have no limits on the products we will produce. As new things are invented, Decibel will be part of them.

Most of the data will be dynamic, though some will go into more static products such as MP3 tags or eBay listings. We already have tag formats for MP3 and FLAC, where users can get full information and link back to Decibel — without breaking players like iTunes or Winamp. In fact, listeners can even get the tags in their own language. This is all proven technology. And we’re happy to be a part of any product that uses information.

Labels work with proprietary and closed systems to create their products so the metadata is fragmented and for example I can safely assume that EMI can’t access Warner’s systems to look up the product details, engineers and backing vocalists of a specific track. Do you think that Decibel may finally provide not only consumers but also professionals working in the music industry with a solution that may help resolve issues regarding licensing and sample clearances for example in a more straightforward way?

We are looking to make Decibel the reference database for the music industry. EMI might be able to look at Warner, but it’s true that too much data lives in silos. There’s one database for CD recognition and another for publishing rights, when it all deals with the same material. A laser focus can be helpful, but you never know why people will want certain information. Producers may want to find songs for their performers to sing, DJs may want to research their programmes, and fans may want to follow someone they like. We don’t make any assumptions. We gather any and all information, and make sure that it’s linked to work with all the other information. At this point we’re in discussions with the royalty agencies to make sure we have the information they need, as well as all other people in the music industry who we want to work with in the future.

And now for the news:

The big story this week was definitely the RIAA’s win in court against Limewire. U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood, for the Southern District of New York, on Tuesday found Limewire liable for copyright infringement. CNET quotes parts of the sentence written by the judge “The evidence demonstrates that [Lime Wire] optimized LimeWire’s features to ensure that users can download digital recordings, the majority of which are protected by copyright,”  “And that [Lime Wire] assisted users in committing infringement.” What is really interesting is that the judge did not only declare Limewire and the Limewire group as responsible but also held its main owner and CEO Mark Gorton accountable and he may face having to pay part of the charges himself if and when they are handed down. Cnet makes the interesting point that this may prevent investors and VCs to invest in start-ups that don’t have all the necessary licenses to distribute or aid in the distribution of copyrighted material, whilst ZDNet’s Sam Diaz wonders whether there will always be way for the entrepreneur to get around a ruling like this. Ars Technical also has a really great in-depth analysis of Limewire’s history and of the legal proceedings connected to the company so go and check that out, the link is in the shownotes. Main thing to take away from this is that even the most anti-RIAA people out there could not deny that Limewire was basing it business on people downloading copyrighted material and the NPD in a recent survey reveal an astounding figure -  58% of all people surveyed who were filesharing indicated that they were using Limewire, and it’s not hard to believe given that the software amassed over 200 million downloads per year. The RIAA said it will seek the maximum compensation that nowadays is set at 150,000 dollars per work downloaded, which is enough to sink Limewire many times over. The RIAA may also seek an injunction to get the company to shut its doors as soon as possible. Whilst I have been known to maintain on the show that it’s pointless to try and get all P2P networks shut and that P2P has its place in the grand scheme of things I cannot say that I feel any sympaythy for a company that built its business model around the exchange of copyrighted material.

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7018674084

First of all let’s talk about the Best of British Digital Music Start-ups session. This involved Silence Media, Psonar, Music Metric, Music Glue, Pledge Music and RjDj. These represent a wide variety of business models with the advertising platform, music locker service, direct-to-fan marketing and music app development all in the picture. But a company that caused a little bit of controversy as reported by Music Ally and Mobile Entertainment was Psonar. Psonar is a music locker service that works in principle in a way not dissimilar to other companies like Tunesbag for example. It lets users upload their entire music collection and then listen to it from any device - thus creating your own mini version of Spotify. The interesting thing is that you can browse other people’s collections and search for tracks that are not part of yours - the catch being that you can only listen to 30 seconds of any given track. The company then provides you with a link to buy the track from a legitimate store if you realize that you like it. Naturally music locker services have come under fire lately as there is no proof that the music that is uploaded is actually yours and has been acquired by legitimate means. Mobile Entertainment reports that Mark Mulligan - analyst at Forrester who was also one of the judges for the session remarked on the lack of licenses for the service and on how it’s effectively becoming an enemy of the labels that should instead be partners. Francis Keeling also remarked on the fact that the company is not legally able to do what they are doing when the discussion was opened to questions from the floor. I personally think that music lockers are just a phase - why if you have the option of having all the music that was ever made on one service like spotify would you go through the trouble of pirating the music and then uploading it all to a server in the cloud? it seems like many users would choose the convenience of paying a monthly fee and not being limited by the size of their own collections. I may be wrong - but unless someone like Apple comes up with a working model of the locker that gets over the licensing hurdles of proof of ownership I see the future as being a service like Spotify or We7 and not a locker service.

Francis Keeling - the VP of Digital at Universal Music Group International took part in one of the sessions at the Great Escape and his remarks were reported by a number of outlets including the BBC and Bilboard Business. According to Billboard, Keeling stressed his belief in subscription models like  Spotify, backed the freemium model and remarked on how the slow pace of acquiring licenses is essentially stalling the industry. The BBC article instead focused on Keeling’s take on Piracy - that is still clearly seen as a number one enemy in the creation of a healthy business - a problem that needs to be tackled especially in those countries, like Spain and Italy, where there is the feeling the music is free and therefore there is no reason to buy it. Keeling also backed the Digital Economy Act - telling delegates on the subject of the yet-to-be-determined sanctions that “The solution needs to be fair, proportionate and implemented well,”

Warner Music Quarter One figures

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704370704575227853370120376.html?mod=WSJ_business_whatsNews

And finally let’s close with another quarterly earnings report from RealNetworks. Although revenue fell 9% to 128.6 million dollars, the net profits rose from a loss of 12.1 millions a year earlier to a profit of 3.2 millions. The revenues actually beat analysts expectations but Rhapsody as a service is still having a hard time, having lost another 25,000 subscribers. AP reports that even though the company has reduced the subscription price by 5 dollars and implemented changes in its mobile application that allow for the cashing of tracks on mobile for offline access this has not reversed the fortunes of the service whose ownership - as i reported earlier this year - is now evenly split between Viacom and RealNetworks, neither of whom is majority stakeholder. RealNetworks is a well-known name in the States as is Rhapsody,  but users don’t seem to be responding well to the subscription model given that their numbers are reducing. RealNetworks in fact, being now a separate company from Rhapsody is concentrating on producing a whole other host of web-related products including games. The lack of traction for Rhapsody may indicate that the public is not keen on subscription or - more likely - that other services have come along that more than fulfill their music needs, like Pandora for example. This is also interesting news for Spotify - the company is supposedly planning a roll-out of their service in the States in quarter three of 2010, and to succeed it needs the same momentum it achieved in markets like the UK for example. This momentum though could only be guaranteed by maintaining the free ad-funded feature that spurred its viral spread over here and was used to convert users to pay for the monthly subscription which includes mobile access. At the moment though it is not clear whether Spotify will be introducing a free version in the States - a factor that could greatly reduce its viral spread. The first question is - do people want subscription? And the second is - is a service in this space by Apple likely to kill all competition in a short amount of time? The second question is interesting in that if the majors felt that they could get more money through a successful Spotify (let’s not forget that all the majors have a steak in the company) than from an Apple-led subscription model - they could ostracize a streaming deal with Apple to prevent their service from killing off Spotify before it even has a chance. As far as I can understand the agreements that Lala had with major labels do not automatically transfer to Apple so the terms and fees paid for streaming and other cloud-based services would have to be renegotiated. It’s definitely an interesting time for streaming models…

Don’t forget that I will be at the Future Music Camp in Manheim in the last weekend of May so if you are planning to attend drop me an email (digitalmusictrends@gmail.com) Have a great week and ’till next time!

http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1040991&c=1 http://www.macrumors.com/2010/04/30/apple-acquired-lala-music-service-to-shut-down-may-31st/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13526_3-20003923-27.html

Macrumors last week was one of the first sites break the news that Apple is finally shutting down streaming site Lala on May the 31st. Lala was acquired by Apple back in December 2009 for $17 million and only a short while after I interviewed the company’s CEO Geoff Ralston for the show - if you want to go back and listen to that interview it’s on Episode 24. http://www.digitalmusictrends.com/weekly-podcast/2009/11/9/digital-music-trends-episode-24.html At the moment there are many speculations regarding the future of the service. On one side there are people maintaining that Apple will not launch a music streaming service from the cloud anytime soon, withCNET’s own Matt Rosoff maintaining that Apple’s idea of creating a music locker has already been shot down by the industry. Others believe that Apple will launch a streaming service as soon as June. Lala in fact is supposed to Shut on the 31st of May and Steve Jobs has agreed to open the D: All things Digital conference  the following day on the 1st of June. Given the rare public appearances of Jobs outside the of the tightly controlled environment of Apple’s own product presentations this has led to some speculation that he will indeed unveil the new service there and then. A third opinion is that Apple only acquired Lala for its engineers and never had any plans to roll out a music streaming service, but this would go against the fact that the Cupertino firm is investing over a Billion dollars in server farms and is without a doubt aiming to providing a better cloud services than the frankly inadequate Mobile Me.  In my opinion Apple would be mad not to try and create a subscription service, the a’ lacarte digital purchase is destined to decline in favor of services like Spotify and Rhapsody and I don’t think Apple is ready to hand over its digital distribution market share without putting up a fight. But I guess that if they are interested in creating this sort of service the music industry will have to make some tough decisions and evaluate the repercussions of the subscription model before committing to it. I should note thatLala customers who have bought tracks on the cloud will be given iTunes vouchers for the amount that they had originally spent - which is a meagre consolation to people that had built large collections on the site.

http://www.t3.com/news/spotify-pulls-plug-on-social-update?=45111

This week Spotify unveiled its new social side and started to compete seriously with iTunes. Spotify’s new software allows users to share their playlists on Facebook, lets people subscribe to those playlists with one click and lets you publish your profile on a host of social networks as well as your own personal website. It takes a stab at iTunes by finally incorporating the user’s local music library within the software.

Shortly after rolling out the update Spotify revealed that they were overwhelmed by the public’s interest and that they’d have to roll it out slowly in the next few days to avoid slowing down their servers. I personally wonder whether this move was actually a way to encourage people to upgrade to the monthly subscription - premium subscribers are apparently receiving the new software right away.  I think that this is a necessary and long-awaited move forSpotify and that above all I think that it may present some financial benefits for them. I hope the following makes sense but but think about it, even though many of us use Spotify for music discovery we also use it to repeatedly stream songs by bands we really love and know well. Chances are that we will have these songs on our computer either because we bought the CD or MP3 or because we followed less kosher avenues. If Spotify is able to access the music we have on our Hard Drive then we could incorporate the songs we ‘own’ in our playlists and that would allow Spotify to save the licensing money because they would be played locally and not streamed from their servers, a move that could potentially save them a fair amount of cash in the long run.

After Lala and Spotify this is the week of streaming services as We7 had an eventful week. Spencer Dalziel from the Inquirer has a really good write-up on the first and most important news which is that We7 has finally broken even, meaning that its advertising income is making up for all the royalties and other costs paid to record labels and publishers. This was highlighted by the company’s Chief Executive Officer Steve Purdham as a great milestone for the service - something that they have been working towards for the past three years. The CEO went on to detail in the announcement that it has taken a long time to get here because the service had to juggle with satisfying the needs of the consumers, of the advertisers and of the rights holders and that at last it seems to have found a happy balance. There was no shortage of sly digs at Spotify , We7 admitting that a song played one million times generates anywhere between 2.000 and 4.000 pounds, well above the figures allegedly paid out by the Swedish company to record labels and publishers. Also, he maintains that the company wants to remain completely open - no registration is required and the service is web-based -  and therefore it has greater mass-appeal than Spotify. in that respect it’s true - if you want to tell a mate to check out a great new album that is on Spotify they need to have an account as well, otherwise no cigar.  The second announcement of the week was in Spotify’s footsteps as We7 announced some new social features including an integration with Windows Live Messenger, one with Facebook and scrobbling with Last.Fm, although the announcement seemed a little rushed as a way to counteract the overwhelmingly positive coverage of Spotify’s update.

Interesting BPI and IFPI numbers http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/business-models-jostle-for-space-in-digital-revolution-1955255.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/apr/26/uk-recorded-music-sales-risehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8645878.stm

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/88931/ifpi-global-music-sales-down-7-in-2009/

The saga of Hans Pandeya is never-ending, once again he claimed that he will buy the pirate bay by the summer and circulated a press release to that effect. This would be done through a company called Business Marketing Services. Again the Pirate bay reiterated that it’s not even in talks with MrPandeya in a concise blog post. Frankly given Pandeya’s supposedly shaky financial situation and the fact that his announcements in the past have produced only thick empty smoke I can’t even understand why anyone is reporting on this other than because Pirate Bay stories generate traffic and because this saga now reads like a mildly entertaining soap, but I guess that right now I’m falling into this trap myself so I’d better stop talking about it!

Tomorrow Never Knows. http://www.themusicvoid.com/2010/04/exclusive-the-big-debate-jeremy-silver-on-that-piracy-thing/

The debate was well-stocked with with high calibre speakers including Geoff Taylor from the BPI, Paul Brindley from Music Ally, Jeremy Silvers from the Featured Artist Coalition, Peter Sunde Komisoppi from the Pirate Bay and Will Page from PRS for Music.

The debate’s aim was to address the future of the music industry but by and large it failed to address that subject comprehensively and much of the conversation - understandably given the presence of PeterSunde from the Pirate Bay - ended up revolving around Piracy -  although Paul Williams from Music Week who was acting as Chair did his best to keep the conversation fluid and on track. The debate ended up being somehow monopolized by the polar opposites that were Geoff Taylor from the BPI and Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi from the Pirate Bay neither of whom was in my opinion entirely in touch with reality. Peter Sunde didn’t understand for a second the struggle of an artist who sees his work used and shared without permission on P2P networks - he simply said once it’s digital it will be shared and copied and there’s no way to stop that. On the other side you had Geoff Taylor who kept pinning the decline in sales entirely on piracy whilst we know that is not the cast saying things like: The many digital revenues are starting to add up to something but because of people like the pirate bay they are a fraction of where they should be and that the anti piracy measures are great for consumers and music fans as otherwise investment in new acts is going to dry up and it will be the pirate bay’s fault.

Thankfully the panel also offered some more balanced opinions like those of Paul Brindley from music ally, who pointed out that the music industry has been struggling for years as to where to intervene on piracy in the value chain. They tried suing the users and that back-lashed horrendously, they tried closing down the sites responsible but the nature of the Internet made that a useless pursuit, they are now putting pressure on theISPs to send letters out with the latest legislation but cutting people off the Internet could be going a step too far as the Internet is becoming a basic human right just like water. Also Will Page fromPRS talked about the value chain and about how measures need to put in place that allow for the growth of legal digital companies to outpace that of illegal ones.

I suggest that you go and read the very well written article by Jeremy Silvers on the Music Void where he debates the piracy issue as a reflection on Thursday’s debate in a very sensible way.

Rjdj: www.rjdj.me

Sounds Digital: www.sounds-digital.com In the second half of Keyonte day at Sounds Digital summaries of the main points made by Dave Birss from OgilvyOne, Steve Jang and JasonDa Ponte from the BBC.

An interesting figure was reported by the Music Ally blog which reflects the impact of the mobile app stores on the development of some digital music companies - Shazam in this case. Apparently according to the accounts for the financial year ending on the 30th of June 2009 the company’s revenues - compared to the previous year - went up by 60% from 4,6 million to 7.3 million. This rise in revenues corresponded with the release of the iPhone app and also apps for other smartphones. Whilst it’s not accurate to say that mobile alone was the drive to this increase, it’s certainly fair to say that it was probably a big factor. Pandora similarly enjoyed a huge expansion thanks to its mobile apps and with multi-tasking in the wings this is a market that is only destined to grow and will essentially become the next form of radio.

And finally a number of outlets have reported on the latest Facebook development: social plugins. At the F8 conference Facebook announced the creation of a number of social plug-ins that can be inserted in third party websites whose job is to track what you like, what events you are attending and let you chat with your friends on pages outside the confines of Facebook. This is basically a way for Facebook to extend its reach to outside the walled garden of Facebook.com which is also a way in which it could start threatening Google’s dominance in web advertising. But what are the implications in music? Cnet has a really good article on this which i suggest you check out from the shownotes. The most interesting one so far is partnership with personalized radio service Pandora. This new partnership will allow you to import all your facebook’s contacts in Pandora with one click, see what they are listening to and even tune into the same “radio station”. Potential benefits are the fact that you don’t need to enter any new information and that you are not constantly worrying about having to post or link to a particular track unless you really want to because your friends who are also using Pandora will be able to see what you are doing anyway. The Cnet article also states that record labels and bands will be able to collect data by introducing the new “like” buttons within their sites and once you click on those the information will not only go to Facebook but also to Pandora and will enhance the recommendation experience automatically! Naturally there are huge privacy implications in all this and it seems like some flaws in the implementation of the APIs of these social graphs have already been uncovered that revealed to all the events attended by users who had not chosen to make their profile public, but all in all this is a pretty neat feature - you just have to accept the fact that between your transport card (for those living in large cities), credit card, email,IP tracking and everything else privacy does not really exist any more…



Susan Bonds www.42entertainment.com

MFlow goes public in the UK and start heavy advertising on Absolute radio as well! http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/shanerichmond/100004939/mflow-updates-and-moves-into-public-beta/

MFlow was a big story this week in the UK as the service went in public beta. Mflow is effectively described by Shane Richmond from the telegraph as a cross between iTunes and Twitter, where users can recommend tracks to one another and get 20% of the price of the download in redemption credits if someone buys a track through their recommendation. I’m really intrigued by this service and I look forward to trying it out next week. I’m also in talks to arrange an interview with them so hopefully that will happen soon as well.

the Ovi store reveals its latest growth figures http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/36722/Nokia-Ovi-Store-generating-16m-downloads-a-day

The Nokia Ovi store keeps growing and is now reporting over 1.6 million downloads per day globally, with China, Germany, India and Indonesia being amongst the most active countries. Nokia has made a real effort in providing localized content to its users, and most of the Ovi Store’s users can now receive content and browse in their own language. Mobile entertainment reports on how the billing and operator supports are very important to the expansion of the service, with over two thirds of payments are being made via mobile billing. The Ovi store seems like a huge opportunity to reach consumers in countries where access to PCs or Broadband services is not as widespread that are seeing a huge increase in mobile data consumption.

Last.fm re-focuses on scrobbling and discovery http://blog.last.fm/2010/04/12/yes-it-does http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/apr/13/lastfm-streaming

Last week Last.Fm announced that it would stop its streaming service to concentrate on its core business of scrobbling. Now if you want to play a track on Last.fm you are re-directed to one of the many partners of the service, including Spotify, MOG, We7, Vevo via what is called a “playlink”. The site announced that its aim is to become ubiquitous amongst music services and able to scrobble from any music experience on the web. Apparently the company does not get paid for the use of the scrobbling technology - the revenue comes from users that go through to the Last.fm site to check out their profile and tracks. Since streaming was just a side feature and didn’t really fit in with the company’s business plan it was certainly an expensive feature in terms of licensing fees and cutting it seems to make a great deal of sense - especially since last.fm users were probably scrobbling from other platforms anyhow.

More controversy regarding artist revenues from Spotify http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/7590782/Spotify-rejects-claims-that-it-rips-off-artists.html

Some fresh controversy on the Spotfy revenues debate. The British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (Basca), which represents 2,000 songwriters last week claimed that the company generates very small amounts of money for the rights-holders - casting fresh doubts over whether the service is capable of providing a substantial revenue source even for artists that generate millions of streams. Spotify was very quick to hit back and to re-iterate that they are paying out to rights-holders considerable amounts of money, a figure in the tens of millions o euros, and that one of the company’s main objectives is to be able to compensate the creators fairly. Naturally the problem the company has at the moment is that with everyone being so secretive about the actual figures most of this is pure speculation and we have no idea of knowing who is making what!

Apple reveals new regulations regarding app advertising and analytics. http://venturebeat.com/2010/04/12/apple-changes-rules-on-iphone-app-analytics/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Venturebeat+(VentureBeat) http://venturebeat.com/2010/04/13/apple-ads-analytics/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Venturebeat+(VentureBeat) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/technology/12slate.html?pagewanted=1

And finally Apple has been the source of a few headlines last week. First of all it changed some of its Development guidelines to include this line “Device Data may not be provided or disclosed to a third party without Apple’s prior written consent. Accordingly, the use of third party software in Your Application to collect and send Device Data to a third party for processing or analysis is expressly prohibited”. This caused quite a stir because basically it bans any analytics app for the phone from the store, and these had been very helpful to developers to understand the public take on the product. Second it may have changed the guidelines as to not to support personalized advertising powered by AdMob on the iPhone, naturally in favor of the company’s own and new iAd platform.

www.frankrose.com

www.deepmediaonline.com

But let’s start with this week’s interview with Frank Rose -  Frank started out writing for the Village Vanguard in the 70s and since then he has written for some of the most important publications in the United States including Rolling Stone Magazine, Fortune and during the past ten years Wired Magazine. He has also published a number of books including titles like West of Eden on Apple computers and The Agency that details the history of Hollywood’s most powerful talent agency. Frank will be one of the speakers at the Sounds Digital event taking place this week-end in London and organized by the Music Void and XMediaLabs.

And now for the news

iPhone 4.0 and new possibilities: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/04/apple-announces-multitasking-and-more-for-iphone-os-40.ars

Tech Crunch reports of a deal between Universal Music and Conduit Labs. The latter is a start-up that creates social music games, including the increasingly popular Music Pets, Loudcrowd and and Super Dance, These are all apps distributed via Facebook and collectively count over one million users.

Musicians For music 2.0 aims at helping music start-ups get funding.

http://www.indiemusictech.com/music_marketing_for_indie/2010/04/fund-music-technology-startups.html

And finally I wanted to point to an Article on Indie Music Tech.com about the Musicians For Music 2.0 initiative which is was started by Charles McErney from Well-Rounded radio and aims at raising funds from the community that will go towards helping 12 cash-strapped music tech start-ups. I’m glad to see projects like this one cropping up - I’ve spoken to a few people detailing the difficulties encountered in trying to secure funds and in trying to run a bootstrapped operation. At the moment the project is raising some preliminary cash through Kickstarter so go and give a buck if you can!

And now here is the transcript of this week’s interview with David Roberts from the Filter. The filter was started back in 2004 by Peter Gabriel and Martin Hopkins and since then it has grown to develop a very successful recommendation technology whilst also shifting its focus from B2C to B2B . David Roberts, the company’s CEO since 2007, talks about its evolution both as a technology and as a business and about the Sounds Digital conference.

www.thefilter.com

AL: Well, I’m really happy to welcome to the show David Roberts, CEO of the Filter, a UK based recommendation engine. Hello David and thanks for coming on the show.

DR: You’re very welcome, hello.

AL: So, first of all, what is The Filter?

DR: Well, The Filter is a recommendation and relevance engine for digital entertainment contents, so music movies, web-videos etc, so it basically it finds the most relevant content that somebody wants to consume. And we do that on music sites, video sites, DVD rental sites.

AL: The company was created by Peter Gabriel and Martin Hopkins back in 2004,  and since then you have made huge leaps in the recommendation technology, you have been CEO at The Filter since 2007, looking back to the history of the company, what do you think are the most important milestones that spurred its development?

DR: Well, several stages. In the first they validated the power of the technology by building music playlists way before Apple Genius was around - it was using technology  to build great music playlists, so actually getting that done and out as a consumer piece of technology was the first milestone. I think after that one of the next milestones was probably getting Nokia to use our technology on their music store - that was the first B2b deal we ever did and it was pretty major. And I think that a final point was a leap into video. we have been working with Daily Motion now for over a year, we only announced the deal a few weeks ago but we have been working with them for ages and being able to use the technology for web video, for a library of 100 million videos was a massive milestone for us.

AL: Music Recommendation services are absolutely vital in today’s increasingly all you can eat subscription model, consumers are kind of confused as to what they should listen to and when presented with a blank page they sometimes don’t know what they want to find. But still, it seems strange that a company like Spotify for example didn’t launch with a full-blown recommendation service from the beginning and it’s not just Spotify, there are many other services that are lagging behind in this area. Why do you think that often the creation of a recommendation infrastructure comes as an afterthought to many companies?

DR: Well, there are probably two main reasons. The first is that these sort of companies  focus first on the content itself and on how they may deliver that and the deals they have to do - in the case of Spotify the deals they have to do with the record labels. So they focus on the UI and they focus on the deals and that takes up 99.9% of their time. So that’s one of the reasons. And it’s a problem across all media companies, they focus on the supply of content rather than on the demand for it. The second reason is that people is that people think it’s easy - they think ‘we’ll do it later” and it’s not - it’s been proven again and again that whether you are Netflix, Google, Youtube it is really hard to get quality personalization in place and it takes many years to be able to do that.

AL: The bulk of your business at the moment is in the B2B licensing of your technology for use by clients such as Nokia as you mentioned earlier and Sony Music for example. But you started out as a B2C service, and you still have that embedded within The Filter, how do you separate thses two units and how do you go about developing them?

DR: Well, the B2C side of it - so our website, our downloadable playlist generator and other things that we do like the iPhone app Bandstalker - all of those things are showcases for the B2B part of the business so we don’t actually separate them. When some of our engineers have some spare time they will develop new features on the B2C side of things but they are very much there to show what we can do and 95% of our time is focused on licensing.

AL: And Data is at the core of filter’s experience naturally. Your services, more than just providing great recommendations to your clients are also complemented with a great set of metrics and analytics that help your clients gauge the impact that you have on their business. How did you go about building the infrastructure to provide this sort of data?

DR: Well, the good thing is that to provide really deep recommendations you have to capture a great deal of very detailed  granular data around the content. Since we were capturing all of this data anyway to feed to the recommendation engine we didn’t have to  build anything separate for the analytics. What we did have to do is start  understanding what information was important and start showing it in dashboards to customers. We understood it was important  when people started realizing that from Omniture and from other existing packages they could not get the same level of detail that we could provide about the content. So it’s now become a bigger and bigger part in the future of what we offer. We actually have 2 services - we have software as a service and data as a service because it’s becoming huge for us.

AL: And although you started with a focus on music you mentioned before that you also create movie and web video recommendations. Is music still the bulk of your business or are online video and movie rental businesses becoming an increasingly important part of you client base?

DR: Well the video and movie rental is defiantly increasingly important. In terms of volumes - the amount of recommendation calls we put out every month i’d say that 75% are now on video, but in terms of revenue 65% of it is still coming from music, so the volume and the revenue are not necessarily connected.

AL: And your client base spans from organization such as video distributor Daily Motion which is pretty huge going all the way down to small start-ups like Evolver.net. How do you deal with working with businesses that have such varied requirements in terms of both the type of recommendation and the scaling of it?

DR: Well we have a very easy start point for recommendations so we can actually set up small businesses without costing much money or time, so it’s a very easy start point. What tends to happen with larger businesses is that they have many more bespoke requirements as to how we need to adapt our recommendation model to them. So that’s when we get much more involved with the teams, how we integrate the APIs etc… Integrating the core technology is fairly straightforward on any system and so we can work with very small businesses all the way to the Daily Motions, the Nokias and the Sony’s of this world.

AL: The Filter is based in Bath, which is a city that is not widely known for its tech community. Did you find it harder to develop the company from there, or would you say that today location has minimal impact on businesses that operate mainly online?

DR: The good thing about Bath is that it’s 10 miles away from Bristol. Bristol has a very strong tech community - there are a lot of digital agencies and a lot of technical resources and creative people that you can access to build up a company in Bath - and since it’s only 10 minutes by train that’s quite easy. Having said that it’s not San Francisco and you have to work quite hard to find the right people to come and join you. But it’s a great place to live and once you attract the right people they love living and working here.

AL: You’ll be one of the speakers at the Sounds Digital event hosted by the Music Void and the XMediaLabs in London between the 16th and 18th of April. What will be the focus of your keynote there?

DR: Well my keynote is all going to be about how to make content more relevant to individuals based on their taste, location, time of the day,  the device they are on - so I’m going to explore what is important to making things more relevant to individuals when it comes to music.

AL: And talking about the Sounds Digital event - you will also be taking part in the Labs sessions as a mentor - what are you planning to bring to the table to help these new digital projects get of the ground?

DR: I guess in my background I’ve been lucky enough to be involved with very large media companies, so I ran all of Future Publishing’s web operations for several years, I set up a lot of magazines, international operations, so I come to the table with that experience. But actually what’s even more relevant is the last three years at the filter where we have gone from a B2C model and strategy and changing that to one that makes a lot more money and is a lot more successful. So I can talk about how you need to be flexible, you need to understand the strengths of you technology and your people  and how you can be flexible to deliver a better business model and a sounder return on investment for the people that are involved.

AL: Well that’s fantastic, thank you very much or joining me on the show and I look forward to meeting you at Sounds Digital.

DR: Thank you very much, take care.

And thanks again to David for joining me on the show.

And now for the news:

- The iPad was released this week-end, what will be the repercussions on the music and music interactivity world?

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/ipad-interactive-music/

So the iPad finally went on sale this week-end and Wired dedicated an article to Michael Breinderbruecker’s new app called RJ Voyager as an example of what’s to come for interactive music. The app allows you to tweak and modify music based on very accurate tactile controls that take full advantage of the iPad’s large screen real estate. Michael is one of the founders of Last.fm and is also the head of Reality Jockey which is the company behind RJDJ, so he knows a thing or two about interactive music. It’s no surprise then to see him take full advantage of the iPad’s hardware to allow full control of instruments, effects, patterns in a way that can make the average Joe feel a lot closer to an accomplished producer. This is a great way to show that a new type of technology needs to be developed that can really showcase the iPad’s creative potential - whilst most of the press in the past week has been focusing on the iPad as a consumption device only. If the technology and the licensing of great music come together on this platform there is a great deal more that developers can do to keep the public entertained than there is on the iPhone. In the meantime, I’m sure that interactive music tech companies like MXP4 are already developing for this platform just like most probably the guys at RjDj are. The key here is not in rushing out an app that has been scaled up from the iPhone but to take some time in figuring out how people are interacting with this new device, how they’re holding it, if they are able to hold it in a certain way for a long time before getting tired - i’m already hearing reports that extended reading sessions may require a stand. So there’s a huge amount of unexplored territory and simply scaling up the iPhone experience would really be a bad call at this point. But I already have Michael and the rest of the RJDJ team booked in for an interview in a few weeks’ time so I’m sure that you’ll be hearing more about their strategy towards the iPad then.

- Guvera Launches in public beta in the US.

http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1040636&c=1

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i539277d81ea4a9b116d25c6d60e21c64

Guvera, the Australian start-up offering ad-funded free Mp3 downloads went in to public beta in the US - although the launch was kept low-key and functionality was limited. Out of Music week, Hypebot and Billboard business it was definitely the latter that made the actual process clearer and I suggest you check out their article from the link in the show-notes of you want to have a sneak peek at the screenshots of the service. Guvera at the moment is operating in a limited fashion - probably because they don’t want to end up giving away too much free music too soon and apparently even registered users are not allowed to start downloading tracks straight away. At the moment there are two services operating in the US offering licensed free music - Guvera and Freeallmusic, but their approach is quite different. On Guvera, users have to choose the brands they want to be involved with from the very start and the whole process incorporates that - you could say that the exposure that the brand gets in this way is much greater although their presence could be felt as more intrusive by the user. FreeAllMusic, the Georgia-based start-up, works instead in a more immediate way, which is possibly less memorable to the end users who are made to watch a fairly long advert before being allowed to download the MP3s, without having prior introduction or involvement with the brand. Guvera is now able to give away selected tracks from Universal Music, EMI and IODA and although as usual we have no idea as to what their financial arrangements may be it’s a safe bet to say that if the service catches on they will have to be fairly strict regarding the number of tracks each user gets to download and as to if and how much money they are prepared to lose at the start of this venture. If they are able to cover the cost of the music with the sponsorship money already then great, otherwise as usual it’ll be a race against time to prove that the model works before the VC funds run out.

- Spotify and e-books?

http://musically.com/blog/2010/04/01/spotify-makes-its-move-into-e-books/

It looks like Spotify is really aiming at becoming a home entertainment hub. After their first successful foray into video streaming with the Amy MacDonald event the company launched an e-book section available both on its desktop and mobile clients. The new venture launched with 20,000 books which means that they must have been working on this for quite a while, and it proves the company’s ambitions to really take on iTunes and steal customers away from them whilst Apple is still tinkering with its 1 billion dollars data centre and pushing back the launch of its streaming service. If Spotify was able to 1) add videos and movies successfully 2) team up in a considerable way and across many devices with Android 3) garner enough interest in the US to really get the public’s attention - then it could really have a stab at taking - if not iTunes’ crown - at least a few million of its customers. Naturally adding all these media would cost the company considerably more in terms of licenses, a cost that could either be compensated by scale if the service is popular enough or by extra charges to access the movie and e-book sections in the future. In any case, I think that Spotify is making a really decent case for its future and I look forward to multi-tasking on the iPhone to re-start my premium subscription.

- Michael Robertson launches BYO.com

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20001334-261.html

Michael Robertson, who is no stranger to stirring the waters of digital consumption with sites like MP3.com, has now directed his attention to online radio to try and create the prefect service. The new platform is called BYO.fm or Bring Your Own, and merges the concept of the digital locker as a cloud service that matches your own music library and resembles the likes of Tunesbag.com with the idea of personalized radio that is created with text-to-speech technology and is inserted within the playlist. So you could ask for playlist X to run and to intersperse it with the latest news on US politics or the latest Baseball coverage from your favorite minor league team that would probably never be covered on your normal radio. This is a very intriguing idea, especially if the text-to-speech works as promised - but it could be hindered by the fact that content providers are increasingly turning to subscriptions in order to ensure their profitability. The service would then have to make deals with the likes of the New York Times or CNN in order to use their material, which could hinder its development. In the CNET article about this new service there was no mention of monetization although I assume this would have to be a subscription or an ad-based model - also there was no mention as to whether the digital lockers were created with the license of content owners or not - but I guess that since MP3.com eventually closed down due to to multiple lawsuits by content owners Mr Robertson probably has a less litigation-prone plan to guarantee BYO’s future.

Well, that’s all for this week, thanks a lot for tuning in and remember that you can access all of Digital Music Trends’ content on www.digitalmusictrends.com. To follow me on twitter the handle is digimusictrends and if you’d like to post any feedback or news items or if you know or work for a company that I should feature on the show the email is digitalmusictrends@gmail.com.

Have a great week and ’till next time!

www.muziic.com

www.sounds-digital.com IMO Entertainment launches IMHO, a new social media player blending music, videos, games and advertising.

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3ibfd213a270515452350214f913243ada http://musically.com/blog/2010/03/25/former-sony-music-boss-launches-imho-social-content-player/ http://www.pamil-visions.net/imho-cloud-content-distribution-is-a-game/213195/ http://preview.imhomedia.com/facebook_connect http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/former-sony-chief-ienner-launches-imho-alpha-89013107.html

Various news outlets such as Billboard Business and Music Ally reported on the launch of the IMHO social media player this week. The player is produced by IMO Entertainment, a company lead by Don Ienner, previously CEO of Sony Music Label group and Columbia Records. The idea behind the player is that it brings together music, video and gaming under a single roof that is cloud-based and geared towards social sharing. The player’s monetization revolves around virtual money that can be purchased outright via Paypal or earned through the exposure to advertising the level of which can be customized within the player, the virtual IMHO money that can be spent to purchase content, personalize your avatar or purchase virtual goods. At the moment the player features 150 radio stations, a partnership with digital distributor the Orchard as far as the music is concerned and over 900 games provided by RealNetworks. The player is geared primarily towards Facebook users, who have demonstrated time and time again how virtual goods done right can generate a huge cash flow - see Farmville’s history for details. The idea seems certainly pretty solid, but the real problem will be finding a balance between free content and paid content. If relatively new users were to experience that the majority of the content on the player requires payment they will soon be turned off by the experience, but just like in Farmville, if enough is given away for free to get them hooked to the platform then they will probably agree to buy almost anything, no matter how daft the purchase may appear. Due to Facebook’s fundamentally unsuccessful strategy up to now in regards to content distribution of music and videos many companies are competing to create an experience that can capture the imagination of the hundreds of millions of people who use the platform every day. IMHO has now captured the industry’s attention, it’s now up to them to demonstrate whether they can live up to their own hype and reach a mainstream audience.

Rapidshare goes all-out against piracy and wants to direct pirates to legal sites for the purchase of content.

http://torrentfreak.com/rapidshare-aims-to-convert-pirates-into-customers-100326/ http://musically.com/blog/2010/03/24/rapidshare-finally-getting-tough-on-illegal-downloads/

Rapidshare, the online file storage and delivery service, has decided to crack down on piracy. The service, which has been widely known to be a sort-of safe harbor for sharing copyright protected material, interestingly decided to start cutting off accounts of known file uploaders and started issuing warning letters to downloaders, probably in a bid to avoid a crippling lawsuit by the entertainment industry. The move took many by surprise as after all Rapidshare’s business had grown dramatically thanks to its sharing-friendly reputation. Torrentfreak, though, offered a different angle on the story after unveiling a letter that was written by the company’s General Manager Bobby Chang addressed to representatives of the entertainment industries. In the letter, Mr Chang condemns new companies that are cropping up with the sole purpose of being cyberlockers for the safe exchange of copyrighted material. He also refers to infringing users as criminals and makes the interesting proposal to deny access to copyrighted material when searched for and replace it with links to sites where the users would be able to buy a legitimate copy of the same item he searched for.

The move has got to be positive news for the music, film and games industry but ultimately pointless as many users who want to continue exchanging files without restrictions will probably just migrate to other services who may have kept a lower profile and therefore so far avoided legal problems. Although this new stance is likely to damage Rapidshare in the short term and reduce its user base it’s certainly a clever move. First of all it greatly reduces the chances of having to fight expensive lawsuits in court. Second the company has now reached millions of customers so even if some were to leave the service chances are that many would stay on and keep it a viable commercial enterprise. Third, if the re-direction of users to legitimate sources was to work I assume it would involve some sort of affiliate sales fee and that could slowly replace the revenues previously generated by copyright-infringing users. I am very interested in seeing how Rapidshare will fare in the next 12 months as the results of this gamble are at the moment completely unpredictable.

Spotify might be aiming at a Q3 launch in the United States

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3if745772b249372ddad2f9ebc7a21298b http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-26/spotify-online-music-site-targets-u-s-start-in-third-quarter.html

In An interview released to Bloomberg the VP of of Spotify Paul Brown hinted that the service is aiming to go live in the US in the third quarter of this year. Brown said that Spotify is buying server space in random parts of the United States to ensure the smooth running of the service once online and it is still ironing out the details of the licensing deals with the labels. Billboard Business writer Antony Bruno, who picked up on the story, reports that there are also fresh rumors regarding the relationship between Spotify and Google. A couple of months ago, when the Nexus One was first announced, rumor had it that it was going to feature Spotify as an embedded feature. This failed to materialize at the time - also probably because the deals with the labels are not yet finalized - but it does not mean that it won’t happen in the next iteration of the Google phone or that Spotify won’t become a more prominent feature in new versions of Google’s mobile operating system, Android.

Ovi Store starts gaining some traction as Shazam reaches 1 million downloads.

http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1040533&c=1 http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/36462/Shazam-racks-up-1m-downloads-on-Ovi-Store http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/32294/nokia-comes-with-music-rebranding

While I spend a lot of time talking about iPhone and Android apps I almost never cover the progress of other app stores. Nokia’s Ovi store, launched last year, is finally starting to gain some traction. The store, which offers apps for Nokia’s own symbian mobile operating system, announced that Shazam was the latest app to reach the 1 million downloads milestone. The store seems poised at becoming increasingly popular in 2010 as Nokia sells more and more symbian-based smartphones and although it may not yet make financial sense for smaller businesses to develop for it certainly starts to be a more appetizing market for larger players who can absorb the development costs. For example, Shazam has over 50 million customers so one million is a very small percentage, but given the scale it can still amount to significant revenues. The Ovi brand is becoming quite popular, so much so that Nokia decided to re-brand its Nokia Music Store as Ovi Music. Ovi Music will be rolled out to all Comes with Music customers around the world in 2010 and in many countries it has actually supplanted the Comes With Music brand - for example Russia, Malaysia and India. There are no plans for a re-brand in the UK where the marketing campaign for Comes With Music had been so extensive that any such move would really confuse consumers.

CBS aims at making Last.fm profitable this year.

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-interview-cbs-thinks-last.fm-will-turn-a-profit-this-year/

Robert Andrews from Paidcontent published a days ago an interesting interview with Last.fm’s Product VP Fred McIntyre - you can find it and listen to it via the link in the shownotes. The key points are that CBS is as committed as ever to the Last.fm brand, seeing it as the only service that successfully ties in the listener’s music experience across multiple platforms and services. CBS aims at making the division profitable by 2010 by being very focused on the subscription business. Outside of the Uk, US and Germany last.fm requires a monthly subscription which currently drives about a quarter of the company’s revenues. In the interview, Mr McIntyre indicated that the number of subscribers is in the high tens of thousands. Rolling out new features for subscribers as well as enriching the way Last.fm integrates with different platforms and devices are both high on the list of priorities for the company. It seems that after a number high-profile departures last year, CBS is finally finding a way of turning things around at last.fm.

Well, that’s all for this week, i hope you enjoyed the show.

A few exciting developments for the podcast this week. First of all as I mentioned before I’ll be covering Sounds Digital in April, then at the end of May I will be covering Future Music Camp in Mannheim as well as hosting a workshop on interactive music services and I just confirmed that I’ll be at the Future Music Forum in Barcelona at the end of September. You can find links to all these events on the front page of the the site at www.digitalmusictrends.com, where you will also find links to the iTunes and RSS feeds, a contact form and other goodies. To contact me directly with news stories, comments and feedback the email is digitalmusictrends@gmail.com and you can follow me on twitter, the handle is digimusictrends. have a great week and ’till next time!

Well, the ruling in the Emi versus Pink Floyd case made some noise this week. The band, most people will be aware, never released singles as they always wanted people to hear the albums in their entirety. This was put down in writing as a clause of their contract that required the label not to sell tracks individually unless they had the band’s explicit permission. In came the digital revolution andEMI probably thought - there’s no other way to sell tracks on iTunes other than making them available individually so we’re going to run with it. Naturally the band was pretty upset by this and started a legal dispute that may well re-define the way in which old contracts thatdidn ‘t take the new digital formats into account are interpreted. This week the court ruled that the band was indeed trying to preserve its artistic integrity by including that clause and that the label should not have started selling the albums digitally without the band’s prior consent. For now the ruling only hadEMI pay for the costs incurred by the band, about £40,000, and did not require the label to remove the band’s music from digital stores but that, is suggested, may come at a later stage. I personally can’t believe that EMI thought they’d get away with it simply by pointing out that digital distribution didn’t exist at the time of the signing of the contract and therefore should not abide by the same rules. After all the talk about piracy and about how stealing a song online is just like stealing a handbag in the street or a CD in a music store, how can they go to court and make a case that states that physical products are nothing at all like digital ones? Naturally their hands were tied, Apple’s unwillingness to bundle albums took away the choice from the artist. I personally still don’t get Apple’s stance. I’m sure that if they did let artists choose whether to allow for individual track sales or not the market would then dictate which of the two is right and goes on to achieve more sales overall. If an artist or label only does that because the album’s poor and only the single is any good, like they were doing with CD’s in the 90’s then people will not buy it. If otherwise the album’s good then they will. In any case whether or notEMI decides to pull Pink Floyd’s music from iTunes before a court makes them do it, I’m sure that there are plenty of people out there who would still be willing to go to an alternative online store in order to be able to buy Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety. It’s just a shame that smaller artists who would like the same artistic freedom to sell their album as a complete hole are not afforded the same chance of success if they decide to pull their music fromiTunes, which after all does still have a vast majority share in the digital domain.

Spotify’s Daniel Ek reveals subscriber numbers and talks about the US market. http://digital.venturebeat.com/2010/03/16/spotify-daniel-ek/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Venturebeat+(VentureBeat)

There was some more Spotify news today straight from the main man Daniel Ek. Digital Venture beat reports that the CEO speaking at South By South West stated that the company now has 7 million users across Europe and 320,000 paying subscribers. This is an encouraging number that has been rising steadily over the past few months. ApparentlySpotify is still very committed to the North American market, which could afford them an audience almost twice as large as in Europe. MrEk though did not reveal anything in terms of a forthcoming US launch date, stating that dealing with over 5,000 individual publishers in the states turned out to be much more time consuming than the licensing process in Europe. The company is continuously developing its applications to take them one step further but it has no intention of becoming a social network in itself and would rather use existing social network in order for people to exchangereccomendations and play-lists.

My main problem with Spotify premium and We7 Premium at the moment is  the lack of multitasking on the iPhone. It may sound like a small problem, but the times in which I want to listen to music on my phone are the times when I’m outside the house, and in those times I want to be able to check my emails, update my twitter, look at a map without having con continuously interrupt my music then spending several seconds getting it back on track. In this form I personally find the app almost unusable unless I’m going for a jog or something that does not allow me to stop and use mysmartphone as a smartphone . But then again this problem is limited to iPhone users and moving onto android might be the key to enjoying these subscription services a bit better…

In any case it will be very interesting to see Spotify launch in the US at some point in the future. In the States there are already quite a few subscription services on the market offering similar services and I wonder as to whatSpotify can bring to the table that will draw consumers to its service.

A couple of days ago JDS Capital’s private equity arm Dimensional Associates announced its intention to buy back the share of the Orchard that it didn’t own. The company, which also ownes eMusic, was the sole owner of the Orchard up to 2007 and has now offered to buy the part it no longer owns for 2.05 dollars per share, thus valuing the indie distributor at 12.77 million dollars. The contract includes a 30 day go-shop period where other buyers could sweep in and make a higher offer and it is subject to stockholder’s vote. The contract also includes a provision that would allow stockholders to get a bonus on top of the agreed price if 80% or more of the company was to be sold by Dimensional within 6 months. This clause has led to speculations that the Orchard is only being bought in order to be sold off again, whilst others think that Dimensional will try to merge the Orchard andeMusic into a single entity. In any case the Orchard is a major player in the indie digital distribution arena and these developments are likely to have a significant impact on the market.

Billboard business reports on the latest court ruling coming from Madrid that is set to reinforce Spain’s liberal stance in regards to online piracy. At the center of the dispute this time was the websiteelrincondejesus.com which contained links to eDonkey. The site had been taken to court by Spain’s powerful collection society SGAE . The judge ruled that since the site was merely an index that facilitated the research within P2P networks it could not be held liable for the files it was linking to and went on to detail that if that was the case then Google would be liable too because it offers access to similar sorts of links through its search engine. This is certainly not great news for those who are lobbying for anti-piracy measures to be adopted in Spain. The Spanish government had already said that it’s not going to target individual users and was thinking of introducing laws targeting sites that made illegal content available - but it looks like that sort of law in the current climate would only apply to sites that were actively hosting the content and not linking to it - and such sites are few and far between. Such a measure therefore would be unlikely to have any impact at all on the piracy phenomenon in Spain.

PRS for music reveals that digital revenues growth has finally offset the loss caused by the decline in physical sales. http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-digital-music-sales-are-booming-but-industry-still-cites-piracy-woes/ http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-spotifies-mean-online-now-filling-uks-cd-royalty-gap/

And finally, UK collection society PRS or Music gave the industry signs of hope as for the first time ever the growth in revenue on the digital front managed to offset the loss of revenue caused by the progressive decline of CD sales. Digital revenues increased by 12.8 million and physical ones declined by 8.7. This naturally only reflects the royalty incomes to songwriters, composers and music publishers and not the labels’ revenues. In this scenario there was no word as to how much streaming services likeSpotify and We7 contributed to this surge in digital revenues. We can only hope that next year’s figures will show that on both the collection society’s and the label’s front that digital has finally managed to compensate the loss for physical sales. I believe that can be achieved simply by offering real value and great services to the consumers and not simply by imposing a complicated and hard to implement legislation to tackle and contain the piracy problem.

Interview with David Ratcliff from www.MusicMyne.com

An introduction to my article: Adding a third dimension to music, will interaction save the day?

In the past four years there has been a growing focus on music interaction as a way to offer a third dimension to the consumption of music. Through my podcast I have come across many companies who have all approached the concept of music interactivity from different angles by creating new formats, games, enhanced auditory experiences and personalized remixes.

Though the vast majority of the companies listed below have fundamentally different approaches the goal is the same: enriching the music consumption process and turning a passive experience into an active and engaging one.

This attempt is not dissimilar to the way in which the movie studios have decided to push out 3D as a mean to get the public to attach a new value the cinema experience - they needed to find something the public could not get by sitting in front of their 40″ TVs. Unfortunately whilst 3D is an easy form of passive interactivity and has grown to become a somewhat unified experience that is easily understood by the public, creating an interactive experience with music is a lot trickier. Music is not something that can be simply “3-Defied”.

In-browser applications, standalone software, mobile apps, proprietary formats are only some of the ways in which the following companies have chosen to carry their products but they are by no means mutually exclusive. Categorization by means of implementation is therefore nearly impossible.

In the following paragraphs is an attempt to bring together some of the companies working in this space in a way that makes most sense to me. It does not want to be a definitive list but an overview of a field that is extremely dynamic. I would not be surprised to find that some of the companies listed below will have transformed their product and business model entirely in six months or a year’s time. You can find the rest of the article on http://digitalmusictrends.squarespace.com/weekly-podcast/2010/2/21/adding-a-third-dimension-to-music-will-interaction-save-the.html

Songkick becomes the largest concert database in the world. http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/02/18/songkick-lays-its-claim-on-the-music-events-crown/

It looks like the London-based start-up Songkick has overtaken market leader Pollstar to become the largest concert database in the world. Ian Hogarth, co-founder of Songkick, was one of the first guests on Digital Music Trends (see episode 10, June 2009) and it’s great to see this company finally taking off big time. TechCrunch reports that its database now shows 100,000 upcoming events versus the 78.000 listed by Pollstar and it also sports 1.4 million past events, which are all made available through its open API. According to TechCrunch the open API strongly contributed towards the company’s success - and the HypeMachine has recently created a new listing engine based on it.

Mobile Music Recognition company Shazam launched the Shazam Audio Recognition advertising technology - abbreviated to SARA. This new technology allows advertisers to place sonic “links’ within an advert. Listeners would only have to point their headsets towards the sound source through Shazam and they would be automatically re-directed to the product’s page, a special offer or a discount voucher. The new Sara technology could be use to direct users to special features and offer additional content as well as being a great way to assess the effectiveness of the campaign. It’s a really clever idea, and there are about 50 million users of Shazam worldwide that could be reached by the service, but a) how will people know when the advert they are listening to is Sara enabled? Will it be announced? b) even though there are many Shazam users, it’s still a small minority if you look at a country like the United States for example, and I suspect that it will only be an even smaller percentage of the existing Shazam users who will actively use the service. I’m very intrigued to see how this will pan out, In the meantime Shazam has already struck a partnership with Augme mobile to provide the service in North America.

http://www.indiemusictech.com/music_marketing_for_indie/2010/02/geographical-disbursement-of-music-technology-investments-2009.html http://musically.com/blog/2010/02/17/welcome-to-the-room-sara/

IndieTech posted a series of slides illustrating the geographical distribution of music technology investments in 2009. The site points out that the chart only displays known investments obviously, it only takes into consideration companies that received VC or Angel funding and only displays the number of companies that received funding but not the amounts. With this long premise, in the United States California comes out seriously ahead, with 17 companies versus 5 in New York and 4 in Massachussets. In Europe, the UK is way ahead with Seven and France is far behind with just three. Globally the United States sports 33 music tech companies that received investments versus 12 in Europe. Naturally these charts need to be taken with a massive pince of salt. The Global picuture is not global but limited to the US and Europe and many start-ups may not have publicly disclosed where their capital comes from. AND the European chart does not show any Swedish companies which seems rather strange… But all in all the general outcome even if inaccurate largely follows what most people in this field would have guessed.

Real Networks to Spin off Rhapsody

In the past couple of days there were many columns spent over the possible reason why he left or was made to leave with internal conflicts being at the top of the list. After all Rupert Murdoch had made it clear not so long ago that he was not happy with the performance of Myspace. I don’t want to join in the speculations as to why Mr Van Natta left, and I’m more interested in evaluating the effects this will have on the company itself. First of all Myspace seemed to be on the right track, they had stepped up development, openness, band support and brand partnerships to provide an immersive experience. I wonder if this process will be at all disrupted by the change in leadership. Second I have rarely seen a company that rumor has it is full of internal conflicts to fare well under a co-presidency - that’s likely to lead to a lot of half baked compromises that are no good to stir the group in a brave new direction. Third, I think that the only way in which Myspace is likely to succeed is for Newscorp and Murdoch to leave the company alone to do its thing. Myspace is primarily a technology company, it does not work like a newspaper and if it is run as one there’s no chance that it will recover even a small slice of the market share it has lost to Facebook.

Indicative of Myspace’s problems is the departure of Stream Architect Monica Keller who decided to jump to Facebook, as reported by Jason Kincaid from TechCrunch. Tech Crunch quotes her as writing: “But I have chosen to leave. While I was able to have some temporary creative freedom this is not the norm or part of what other engineers enjoy and I do not feel there is one cohesive push to deliver the best we can deliver anymore. To my friends and colleagues at MySpace, some parting advice: It is imperative that MySpace puts in place strong technical leadership who can attract good technical talent and make well-informed decisions. It is important that they stay connected to rest of the world and work on interoperable standards and solid products which benefit the end user. Many of my fellow engineers have fantastic ideas and a plan for phased delivery.”

Swrv music channel resuscitates the on-demand format for video music television

Of the two articles I found on this story the Multichannel.com one presents what Swrv does as a medium extensively whilst the Digital Music News article concentrates on the business model. Essentially the channel was created because CPMs in television are still much much higher than Online CPMs and the experience of SWRV aim at driving a huge amount of 12-24 year old viewers who will be actively engaging with the channel, a very important demographic for many advertisers. The channel would make money not only from advertising but also from licensing itself to other networks and providers across the country. The interesting part of the deal is that Swrv will play the labels both a percentage of the CPMs and a percentage of the licensing fees, although the amounts remain undisclosed.

Now the question is: will the tweenies version of Music Box succeed in a YouTube driven on-demand and always-on environment? We’ll have to wait and see…

http://digitalmusicnews.com/stories/021110itunes/view

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/02/11/itunes_soon_to_reach_milestone_of_10_billion_songs_sold.html

I can’t include every single interview on the podcast - although I’m contemplating putting together a special this week - but I will include a couple at the end of this show. You can find a player with all the separate interviews on www.digitalmusictrends.com/midem-2010 or on www.soundcloud.com/digitalmusictrends

Lucy’s Midem Academy presentation gave some great practical and usable tips which I think everyone in the audience found very refreshing so I would think that following her on Twitter and getting hold of her Twitter for Dummies might not be a bad idea if you want to use this medium at its best.

A little later on Tuesday I attended an interview with David Rezner CEO of Universal Music Publishing group - here he announced that the group is launching a new channel of Vevo - the platform made by Universal, Sony and Emi in partnership with Youtube - called “Behind the Hit Song” which will include premium footage of the songwriters talking about the creation of the song - the first video being that of Glen Ballard talking about Man in the Mirror. I was still fresh from my chats with Jonathan Klein - CEO of Getty Images on pre-cleared music licenses and with Cliff Fluet - entertainment lawyer specialized in digital and advertising on the difficulty and time required to clear a popular track- and could not help asking Mr Rezner about Universal Music Publishing’s whether they were taking any steps to streamline the licensing process at all. Apparently they are already trying to pre-clear a lot of music especially when it comes down to catalogue material and they always make sure that the client knows what’s readily available and what might require more time to license but according to Mr Rezner the final decision lies with the artist because without artist approval it’s not likely that a licensing deal will close.

In my opinion it seems like the complexity of music licensing is often outpaced by the speed at which many advertising agencies work when finalizing advertising campaigns and other promotional material. This is also corroborated by the number of brands that are flocking to unsigned musicians in order to get their music via sites like Sonicbids in order to cut through all the red tape that comes from trying to license a track from a more established act.

And finally I attended a great panel entitled Music and Digital - the Political initiatives to regulate the relationship between these two industries. The Speakers included the president of Promusicae in Spain, the president of the Songwriters Association of Canada, the chief executive of the BPI in the UK, the chairman of the IFPI in Sweden and the CEO of Naive. It was really interesting to see how all these countries have a different approach to tackling piracy. Spain will not target the user but is looking into targeting websites that offer copyrighted content, even though these constitute only 30% of all pirated material and the rest belongs to P2P Networks. Sweden’s record companies have had a good year after the implementation of the Ipred regulations prompted many people to go legal, in France the six months debate around the new measures to implement against piracy seem to have already done some good in terms of the public’s perception of the problem even before the actual implementation of the Hadopi, whilst the UK is very much on the fence especially because fo the upcoming election which might derail the bill currently in the works and whilst the BPI represnetative felt confident that something will be passed before Brown calls for the general election I’m not so sure that is going to be the case. In short - it’s a real mess even just in Europe to find a consistent approach to the problem, and with every single one of these approaches it’s very easy to avoid detection. Many countries around the world are aware of the problem but they are sitting on the fence to see how the implementation of each and every one of these models impacts consumption and music revenue. It’s very likely that a year from now - if one method proves to be the clear winner - other countries will follow in its footsteps. It has to be said though that cultural differences between countries mean that a specific response to a specific measure could create very different results in Italy as opposed to Sweden.

On Wednesday the real highlight was the panel conducted by Shamal Ranasinghe, co-founder of Topspin - on the tools that are available today to organize your digital footprints. It’s so easy today to disseminate your content online without really reaping the benefits or even understanding who is enjoying your product. At Topspin they are real masters in creating channels for artists where they can actually create a relationship with their fans and monetize that relationship as well. The www.topspinmedia.com website has a vast knowledge base section and a green room where you can discuss Topspin product usage, direct to fan marketing, best practices and a whole load of other subjects in an open community. Shamal talked about the need to create a permission based relationship (via facebook, twitter or a mailing list) with the fans and then being able to build on that to create revenue. The steps you have to take over and over again in order to monetize on the content are:

- establish goals

- craft offers to meet the goals

- collect data

- test and measure

- optimize

Physical sales are still the ones that drive the most revenue - and in particular higher priced options which naturally have higher margins are prone to selling very well. It’s important to create a selection of offers priced differently to cover all the basis from 10 or 15 dollars through to 30 and over 50 as well for those prepared to pay for a premium product.

Artists need to be able to use the analysis tools at their disposal - especially google analytics and sites like bandmetrics to gauge the effect of their mail-outs on traffic and the popularity of their content. The session was really full of information - i was hoping they’d publish the power point on their website but nothing has appeared as of yet. In any case if you are interested in this sort of thing it’s imperative that you look up Topspinmedia.com and browse around for the community and the knowledge base.

Please check out www.digitalmusictrends.com/midem-2010 for all the MIDEM interviews!

Please visit

www.bandcentral.com

www.radionomy.com

www.aviary.com

They are great companies!

Please excuse typos and a couple of possible misspellings, didn’t have a great deal of time to write this down!

Digital Music Trends Midem 2010 special edition  - Day one - 23rd of January 2009 - from Cannes in France.

Hello everyone and welcome to the first of a series of Digital Music Trends podcasts dedicated to Midem 2010. I will be releasing one each day during MIDEM summing up the day’s events. This will hopefully make it easier for you to catch up with what has been happening here at the conference. The full streams of th   e sessions are available on Midem.com but I guess that the prospect of watching all of them can be daunting, so have a listen to this summary and if you think you want to delve deeper into one of the panels go and catch up!

From early this morning outside the Palais du Festival there were a lot of works going on to prepare the venue for the NRJ music awards that are happening right now and fans (see early teens in this case) were already gathering at the railings.

In this slightly odd scenario the conferences kicked off at 10AM, with a brief address by Ted Cohen, managing partner of Tag strategic and longtime advocate of digital. He started off by noting that this is 11th year of Midemnet - it marks the beginning of a second decade for this digital conference and once again everyone descended to Canes to talk about how to do business. Mr Cohen remarked that the industry remains in flux and continues to contract. He believes that we’re probably at the lowest point now and things should start to turn around soon.  In his opinion it’s important to move from thinking of music as a product to music as a service. 11 years ago at the start of Midemnet Napster was really scaring the industry - and now 11 years later the industry is still struggling but we are starting to figure things out. Pandora just posted its first profitable quarter which is very encouraging. Next week in San Francisco Apple might announce subscription service that might just shake things up. Mr Cohen also remarked that it’s important to experiment in digital music and that we need to create value in music in order to make fans see that it’s worth paying for. A deep catalogue, good personalization tools and recommendation tools play an important part in providing a rich music experience that can be converted into revenue streams.

After Ted Cohen’s address Ralph Simon, the CEO of the Mobilium advisory group took the stage to moderate a debate with Dresden Dolls singer Amanda Palmer and Hal Ritson from the Young Punks and also musical director of Dizzee Rascal Live. The debate here centered around the role of the artist within the music space, how do you market yourself, how do you keep in touch with the fans and sell your product at the same time? Amanda Palmer is often hailed as a really savvy new media user and her perspective is that it’s all about the fans and that any mean of keeping in touch with them and giving them your time (for example by stopping for autographs and photos after every gig) is a way to consolidate and build trust. Both with the Dresden Dolls and as a solo artist she cultivated a forum that how hails thousands of regular participants and have helped her to achieve better sales with her last album released independently than with her last release which had been supported by Roadrunner records.

Hal Ritson has experience in both the DJ world with the young punks and in the workings of label politics since he’s been working with dizzee rascal. Talking about the latter, he said that Dizzee is the first independent artist to achieve three consecutive number ones - the first that his label XL had rejected as not commercially viable. It used to be hard for bands to bypass the corporate structure but not so anymore. In the DJ world Hal Ritson, as member of the young punx managed to get exposure in a number of different ways, even partnering with a German beer brand that wanted to get customers to drink beer in clubs rather than the usual Bacardis…

Amanda Holden concluded the debate stating that her revenue streams come from a variety of different sources but that the record sales are only a small part of that revenue and that there are ways for music fans to make things happen independently.

Third event of the morning was a stream of the second part of the interview recorded exclusively for Midem by Richard o’ Brien, it wasn’t enlinghtening - it gravitated around the need to experiment with the business models and the need for the labels to take risks, but it had a great quote which reads ” you disagree on it - he was talking about the three strikes law - and you’re typecast as a Taliban.”

Fourth event of the morning was a 15 minute lightening fast run-through a compelling survey on the music consumption habits around the world.This was presented by Jasper Donat, co-founder of Branded and president of Music Matters. Music Matters has carried out the survey interviewing 8.500 people around the globe. The results are exceedingly interesting for anyone working on international projects or for anyone remotely interested in the music consumption habits of our fellow earthly companions. Needless say that the news that Australians listen to the least music of all was met with widespread giggling.

So this starting to look like a marathon?? wait ’cause there were two more events in the morning…

So I was asking myself - what on earth is the Chief Marketing Officer of Kodak doing being interviewed at the MidemNet conference? And this was exactly the point Jeffrey Hayzlett started on. After just a minute it made complete sense. Kodak in the past few years has had to undergo a huge transformation. The most impressive figure he gave is that the company was selling 15 billion dollars in films just five years ago, a figure that is now 200 millions. These are truly nerve wrecking numbers and were all brought on by the digital camera revolution. Jeffrey went on to detail the steps the company took to ensure its survival. I think that putting aside the great differences between a label and Kodak - the latter never had to deal with musicians - this is a great story of quick thinking and survival. Over 60% of the company’s staff has only been hired recently to respond to the new digital demands, the company operates in a way that gives employees the opportunity to develop new ideas while listening to the needs of the public and the inevitable failures are viewed as a great way to learn and make things better. But this is really a discussion that you should go and check out on the Midem site as mr Hayzlett was really a character and it was a shame that he didn’t stick around for a couple of days as i’d have really liked to interview him.

Last conference in the Morning was the interview with Pharell Williams the famous producer and NERD member - this for me was not a highlight as very little came up about the business itself in the discussion, it mostly about his inspiration and drive and about the necessity to have a trusted team in place to execute projects. Pharell is a really talented producer and also an entrepreneur but I didn’t feel like I gained much from this outing.

The discussions resumed at 2:30 with a spirited panel that focused on the way in which streaming models are likely to evolve in the future and on what kind of deals are going to have to be done between rightsowners and companies to make money out of these ventures. Digital income was only up 12% in 2009 and this means that it had not yet made up for the loss in digital sales. The panel was moderated by Paul Brindley from music ally and included :

Simon Wheeler, director of digital - beggars group - vampire weekend is the first indie label number one in the uk for over 25 years. Steve Purdham - founder and investor of we7, one of the oldest streaming services, the third year going. How many users 2.5 million monthly users. Michael Epaull from sony - main focus to building a digital channel for monetization of sony’s music. Richard Gottehrer - founder and chief creative officer of the Orchard. He and his partner will bve making an announcement on monday which is more creative-focused. - ask for interview monday or tuesday? Stephen Bryan - responsible for deveoping new channels in the digital space around the world at Warner Music. Paul brown - svp strategic partnership at spotify in the UK.

Paul Brown started by outlining the history of Spotify, Launched in Sweden october 2008 and in the UK in february 2009 - the company was founded by Daniel Ek  is doing well having reached over 250.000 subscribers paying monthly fees between its 6 markets. Spotify relies on these subscribes and on a 40 strong ad sales team that is generating millions of euros in advertising revenue. The real aim for spotify right now is to grow a strong sustainable subscription model and the mobile application has definately driven a lot of traffic and new subscribers.

Steve Purdham from We7 explained that the company was created three years ago but the first year was about building the tech, the second about doing the licensing deals and last year at launch it was about building the audience. 2.5 million users use the site without having advertised it at all for fear of scaling too quickly. The audience is the driving force and whilst primarily ad-funded at the moment Mr Purdham announced that they will be introducing a subscription next week in 2 forms - one for use on PC and for use on both PC and mobile. I can personally only imagine that the former will be cheaper than the latter.

The labels (Warner Music and Beggars group) seem to agree that they are happy for consumers to find the service that is right for them but that the streaming services need to find the right business model underlying user-friendly technology because they believe that however you monetize a streaming service you are never going to get the same amount of income that you get from selling music.

Stephen Bryan from Warner said that it’s great to have a wider amount of streaming models -= since that reaches the 50 per cent of consumers that are more laid back and would not purchase the music outright.  The ability to reach this 50% is expanding and in 2010 with the smartphone market still booming there is the possibility to get a lot of revenue from mobile subscription services.

According to Steve Purdham the climate has changed and the lables are more open - the premise is still for him that every single track that is played on We7 should be paid for but you need to work out how that’s going to happen. It’s not a single bullet in the economic model, it’s a matter of being flexible around the model. At we7 they pay for every song that they deliver, there is a minimum fee and 1) payment to the label 2) payment to the publisher 3) cost to deliver the track to the consumer. This was seen as about a penny per stream a year ago but Steve said that the actual figure does not really matter but the key element of this is for there to be a revenue stream to make it work.

one of the main challenges of streaming services remains the recommendation process - often the user is at a loss on what to listen to once confronted with an empty search box. Michael Epaull  from Sony said that sometimes having so much available is almost like having nothing because it’s hard to choose. It seems like you get the on-demand without the programming - now the challange is to take the two and putting them together. If they could successfully get people to stay and explore new music all the time then they would not have so many subscribers leave after the first few months because they don’t believe they are using the service enough.

There are no indications so far that digital streaming are cannibalizing digital downloads yet, but that is bound to change as services become more seamless and easier to use. A key developements recently is the unlimited download model - there is no service yet but virgin media and universal have signed a deal. Paul Brindley asked the panel if  they thought that this will happen and what impact it will have. Most of the panelists agreed that it’s inevitable, Simon wheeler from Beggar’s group expressed his concern that such a service would attract Beggars largest customers that would jump at the chance but not penetrate enough in the mainstream to make up for this loss of premium customers that would otherwise spend up to $1000 per year on Beggar’s music. Michael Epaull from Sony had a different perspective, for him it’s about making the streaming experience as rich and seamless as possible - he does not think that people want to negotiate with an unlimited amount of music files in their computer and that it would be strange for the industry to release a product that the public is not asking for in great numbers. I think I kinda agree with him on this point.

The second session of the afternoon was a very informative chat between Owen Van Natta, CEO at Myspace ad Bill Werde, editor in chief of Billboard.  Owen was named named CEO of myspace 9 months ago and has implemented a lot of of changes to the site in that time to try and get users to spend more time on it. When asked about the difference between Myspace and Myspace Music Mr Van Natta replied that after the massive disruption to the music space created by the digital revolution there was the need of deep and strategic direct partnership with the labels to be able to turn things around. Myspace Music is a separate company and it’s a joint venture with the labels because myspace needed the partners to be also part-owners.

Myspace music has now gathered the largest collection of playlists - they have over 180 million - also partly through the time they spent importing the Imeem playlists after the company folded and was acquired by Myspace. But how do you monetize this huge amount of playlists? Owen said that he believes consumers want a holistic experience in relation to music - they want the place where they interact with other people to be the same as that where try listen to their music. Myspace music is one pillar that is needed to build this seamless experience. At Myspace they believe that the future of content distribution is going to be through people and not through portals.  Owen said to be pleased with the progress made on the business side and that they are continuing to grow. The economic downturn had caused a number of brands to reevaluate online as a cheaper option on and myspace has been very imaginative in introducing brand into the experience. Myspace have started selling a selection of concert tickets on the site and are looking at alternative revenue models other than advertising.

One of the most interesting things he mentioned is that they partnered with collection society soundexchange in order to distribute money amongst the bands. Soundexchange raised over 15 million dollars from Myspace streaming pennies but they don’t know who to give this money to - with this partnership have already identified 25000 artists who will be able to get paid for the streams that happened on their page. This is one way in which Myspace is trying to keep not only the viewers coming but also the bands unsigned or otherwise. Another way is the dashboard functionality that allows for bands to receive free metrics about the people who are visiting their page - where they come from, what they like and what the demographic is. Myspace overall saw a 7 per cent increase in unique users last month and this is very encouraging as it’s the first growth in the site’s traffic in over 12 months. Myspace Music has also been a great success with the site growing 92% in a year.

And finally - I’m getting to the end of this I promise was the session with Ning’s founder Gina Bianchini and Fall Out Boy bass player Pete Wentz. Ning allows people to create their own social platform for specific interests an passions. It has millions of users and entertaimment is one of the key areas for the site.  The discussion focused on how to relate to fans on a day-to-day basis and Pete Wentz who is an avid twitterer and social media user maintained that it’s all about the authenticity of the artist and putting yourself out there for the public. He said that social media are like a door into the artists life but that the artist has the power to decide how much to open that door. The discussion was quite funny, with Wentz saying that you cant’ be in the music business if you’re not prepared to shoot someone every now and again and likening the music industry to a post-apocalyptic giant armadillo that is only now evolving into something more practical. Gina Bianchini talked mostly about the business side of things and how artists are using ning to channel the fans to their own social network so that they can create a compact community out of all the fragmentation created by the myriad of social networks out there.

Ok so this was the end of the first day - and it was very nice to walk out of the auditorium and hear Amanda Palmer sing the entirety of creep with her Ukulele. Now gearing up for a second day that looks even busier than the first, till tomorrow then!

Shownotes: MIDEM: www.midem.com

News: French Three Strikes Law delayed Techcrunch http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/04/google-spotify-launch-android-nexus-one/ Paidcontent http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-as-in-uk-french-three-strikes-may-be-delayed-to-after-elections/ Music Week http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1039534&c=1 The Register http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/06/france_file_share/

Is google steering away from Lala? Digital Music News http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/010410google Billboard http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3ic3390a5158a31029679e459e78e821f1

The Echo Nest raises another 1.3 millions for development. http://gigaom.com/2010/01/05/the-echo-nest-developer-of-music-brain-taps-vcs-for-1-3m/

We7 revamps site http://musically.com/blog/2010/01/06/we7-revamps-site-with-new-shopping-cart/

Freallmusic signs up Universal as its first major TechCrunch http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/11/freeallmusic-signs-up-universal-music-for-ad-supported-downloads/ LA Times Blog http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/01/two-steps-forward-one-step-back-for-online-music-services-.html Company site: www.freeallmusic.com

Google to partner with Spotify on the Nexus one? Probably not. http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/04/google-spotify-launch-android-nexus-one/

Show Notes:

Interview with Sibley Verbeck:

www.electricsheepcompany.com

www.streamjam.com

Vevo’s CEO Reo Caereff talks to Paidcontent about the Vevo model

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-vevos-caraeff-we-have-to-establish-credibility/

Techdirt shows how the Swedish music industry at large is making more money – and how musicians are benefiting.

http://techdirt.com/articles/20091213/1648377324.shtml

Little Boots launches the first dedicated branded RjDj application

http://more.rjdj.me/2009/12/14/rjdj-little-boots-reactive-remixer/

Sky and Merlin reach an agreement, Merlin’s artists will be added to Sky Songs. http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3ia0d444a2a4b3e35a115ce36871d33069

Music Ally lists the A to Z of digital music startups for 2009.

http://musically.com/blog/2009/12/16/the-a-to-z-of-digital-music-startups-in-2009/

Legendary Abbey Road studios are now offering professional mastering at an affordable price for Soundcloud Users.

https://www.abbeyroadonlinemastering.com/soundcloud/

www.digitalmusictrends.com

Shownotes:

Dave Haynes interview - visit www.musichackday.org for more information on the event, previous hacks and forthcoming ones.

Simon Adams interview - visit www.mymusicsuccess.com to see how the site works.

News:

Lala being aquired by Apple? http://www.pcworld.com/article/183828/apple_acquires_lala_a_sour_note.html

Myspace Music launches in the UK http://www.nma.co.uk/news/cover-story-myspace-music-goes-live-with-fiat-as-launch-sponsor/3007468.article

Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Ebay not happy with article 17 of the UK digital economy bill. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e7e8466c-df58-11de-98ca-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1

The Spanish Government is contemplating anti-piracy measures tackling the websites the offer illegal content. http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i4fc25709a21933b0756e9b29d3c03ec5

And for the cheapest music visit www.tunechecker.com

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch, the email is digitalmusictrends@gmail.com

Digital Music Trends will be at Midem 2010, if you’d like to organize a meeting please drop me an email!

Shownotes:

The Guardian’s take on the digital economy bill to be introduced in the UK. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/20/digital-economy-bill-stephen-timms Billboard brushing on the subject from an outsider’s perspective http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3ie26373dd9e434261f33cad0e0f1be970

Sony to launch a new global network to link all of its digital services and challenge iTunes Pc World is skeptic that taking on iTunes is a good idea http://www.pcworld.com/article/182769/sony_online_service_to_challenge_itunes_fat_chance.html Music Ally Blog reports on the story. http://musically.com/blog/2009/11/20/sony-planning-an-itunes-killer-mark-ii/

Press release - Myspace Music and Merlin strike a deal http://press-releases.techwhack.com/43330-myspace-music-3

Myspace adds charts http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10401114-36.html?tag=mncol

Myspace adds charts - Courtney Holt Post (President of Myspace Music) http://www.myspace.com/pressroom?url=/article_display.cfm?instance_code=myspace&article_id=1116

Myspace CEO to attend Midem in January http://www.digitalproductionme.com/article-2013-myspace_ceo_jumps_ship_to_france/

MusicHackDay Boston: www.musichackday.org

AFP - EMI strikes a deal with Hulu http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jcGySFEeKkI7vLU4W-BaTCmlZEmQ

Paid Content - Vevo to launch in December http://paidcontent.org/article/419-vevo-to-launch-next-month/

Tech Crunch Shakira’s Ustream/facebook stats. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/17/shakiras-stats-dont-lie-facebookustream-music-video-debut-is-a-hit/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+(TechCrunch)

Shownotes:

Featured interview - Paul Warner - www.musicdating.com

News:

Music blogging site MOG planning a subscription service.

www.mog.com

Guardian Article

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/oct/14/mog-streaming

The Washington Post Article 

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/11/AR2009111129738.html

The Soundcloud app gets released.

http://blog.soundcloud.com/2009/11/11/iphone-app/  

Paid content interviews John Miller, head of News Corp Digital, on Myspace and freemium online content.

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-jon-miller-on-myspaces-future-and-google-controversy/

Myspace close to acquiring iMeem.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/16/myspace-close-to-acquiring-imeem/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

Zune is about to launch internationally, or is it?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9555cb06-d24f-11de-a0f0-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

Shownotes:

www.lala.com

The Soundcloud iPhone app to hit the iTunes store on the 17th of November

http://musically.com/blog/2009/11/04/soundcloud-theres-an-iphone-app-for-that/

The Register reveals the latest Spotify figures

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/05/spotify_exclusive/

The European Union relaxes its stance on the implementation of the three strikes law.

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3ie21418ac624effebac94af608bacb381

“Appetite for Self-Destruction” to become a HBO movie.

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3ib0e5fce5a1ad325c72ed15c7d22e041a

Real Networks announces more layoffs.

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-realnetworks-laying-off-4-percent-of-staff-today-about-70-jobs/

Bluebeat.com takes on the likes of EMI in an unlikely copyright dispute

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/11/about-those-beatles-songs-its-weirder-than-you-thought.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

Swedish internet users are flocking to VPNs to hide their identity

http://torrentfreak.com/millions-of-file-sharers-hide-their-identities-online-091103/

Shownotes and Links

French three strikes law makes the cut - the HADOPI agency is on! The Billboard Business story http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i92ec830f3865d5c0a3ff97b8d554ed3c The New York Times take on this http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/technology/23net.html Talk Talk broadband says it would refuse to comply to three strikes http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/29/talktalk-threatens-legal-action-mandelson

The new Google music search feature - One Box Ars technica hands-on review http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/10/hands-on-google-music-streams-useful-not-revolutionary.ars The New York Times blog http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/google-lifts-the-curtains-on-its-new-music-service/ The International Business Times http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20091029/onebox-google-music-search-google-onebox.htm

Real network’s user base shrinks but it becomes profitable again. http://paidcontent.org/article/419-realnetworks-swings-to-a-profit/

Facebook and Myspace in talks - could be sharing content. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/6440164/Facebook-and-MySpace-are-engaged-in-content-sharing-talks.html

Vevo hooks up with AT&T in what is its first major advertising contract.

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i018a992ff2ce5f8e38b93d6268761b7e

Spotify launched a new metadata API http://developer.spotify.com/blog/archives/2009/10/26/launching-the-metadata-api/

Hello everyone and welcome to digital music trends – episode 22.

It’s been a really long break since the last show – but between my journey in the US and some other projects that needed taking care of I really couldn’t get the show off the ground. But, I promise you a straight run until Christmas of your favorite digital music news and interviews.

In five weeks a lot has happened in the Digital Music World, but since there’s no point in trying to catch up now,  I’ll be sure to provide a background to any story that might require it. Also the last service announcement is that in the next couple of weeks the show is going to be news-centred as i’m gathering a news wave of guests for november and december. If you’d like to take part please email me on digitalmusictrends@gmail.com. Entrepreneurs, musicians with an interesting digital strategy and journalists are all welcome!

In The City in Manchester

First of all this week here in the UK we had one of Europe’s largest music industry event - second only to Midem in France. this is  in The City and it took place in manchester between sunday and tuesday. The event like its european counterpart and The Great Escape in brighton consisted of daytime panels and conferences and a slew of music events in the evenings with every venue in town booked for official and unofficcial in the city showcases.

This year I couldn’t attend unfortunately but luckily billboard business has a couple of good articles on the most important moments. The first day was fundamentally monopolized by the P2P panel to which the founder of the Pirate party Rick Falkvinge  took part. This according to the reports on Billboard Business, the BBC and Music Week was without a doubt created the most heated debate at In The City. Mr Falkvinge elaborated elaborated on his views on copyright and advocated a few extremely controversial points, especially considering the type of audience that he was facing. The pirate party advocates amongst other things the right to total privacy in communications, the right to re-mix music feely and distribute it, only recognizes commercial copyright and would make that last only five years. Its aim is to actively encouraging filesharing.  The BBC article in the shownotes is really good if you want to get to know the outline of the growth of this movement. I don’t know about you but I personally only heard about the pirate party this year right after the Pirate Bay founders were found guilty in trial and the site was fundamentally made illegal. This is when the P2P community as a whole got up in arms. But in fact the movement was created a good four years ago as a reaction to the first rulings that were coming out against filesharing. The pirate party has only just started out in the UK, has a few hundred members, but in Sweden it’s already a political phenomenon, and there it’s hoping to harvest as much as 5% of the votes at the next general election, which would give it a tremendous amount of negotiating power.

Naturally at In The City there were quite a few people that would have gladly taken a shot at mr Falkvinge, but the fact that he and the party exist in the first place and have a following must tell the industry that in the past three years it has taken a series of mis-steps that have alienated a lot of people. Theoretically a party that does not have a real political manifesto except that pertaining copyright could not get any political traction at all, it would be laughed at. The fact that they garnered so much momentum is a serious alarm bell for the industry not only in music but in film as well. Adverts describing file sharers as criminals, or as devilish iron-mongers must be thrown out of the window now before it’s too late - the polarization of the industry at one end of the spectrum has created its exact opposite in the pirate party. The UK, like Sweden, has a very high number of politically alienated young people who at the moment don’t vote at all. It is not unlikely that if a legislation such as that being proposed by the government at the moment for the disconnection of infringing users was to pass the pirate party could gain the same if not a stronger momentum in this country as it’s having in Sweden and that is something that no one working in the industry, myself included, wishes for.

The second day at In The City was according to Billboard a lot less heated. The head of SEG international Marc Marot stated that there needs to be a more organized support structure to help artists in the music industry - Michael Jackson being the most recent and powerful reminders that many artists end up falling through the cracks and the industry does not have the support structure to help them deal with a whole load of issues, with alcohol and drug related problems being the first in line. David Gilmore is actually at the head of a group called Recover Now, which aims at creating a one stop shop where people can go and get help - which could be financed by labels, charity shows, and PRS revenues.

Another panel discussed how a band can make it happen without a budget and Adam Sieff, director of A&R and UK operations for Sellaband,  showed how artists have used the site to garner a following and enough funding to get an album off the ground. The day ended with a discussion between of Mike Smith, managing director of Columbia records and Mark Ronson on his past production experiences. Though I can’t speak for this one I can only say that these talks tend to be a pretty self-celebratory especially when the interviewee is at the peak of his success like Ronson currently is.

One good news is that although the organizers did not disclose numbers it looks like there wasn’t a drop in delegate numbers, which is great considering that most of the booking were made in the worst part of the recession. This fills me with hope that next year Popkomm is going to be resurrected, although there seem to be music conferences and events springing up left right and centre which is making the competition very fierce.

In the City Day 1 http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i41da967fff242c95b5b04320b54c9da0# Pirate party and the future http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8314620.stm Pirate party fiery reception http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1038951&c=1 In the City Day 2 http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3ied2621cfc5e7c4cc4d019b38dc5a41da?imw=Y Delegate numbers hold steady at In The City http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004028952

Spotify in the USA

Whilst I would love to stop talking about it – I can’t. And Spotify in recent weeks has continued to make the headlines on newspapers and blogs everywhere. Last week the web was full of speculations that when the service launches in United States it will not come in its free ad-supported incarnation  like in the UK, since many labels are allegedly refusing to license their music to any free ad-supported service given the poor financial results these services produced up to now. This is still just a rumor but it’s true that the launch in the US of a free version of the service if  too successful could very possibly cause the demise of Spotify. Like the now defunct Spiralfrog the Swedish company could really struggle to have enough time to create considerable advertising revenue before being drowned in licensing fees to be paid to the rights-holders. At the same time a subscription-only service would certainly make Spotify not too dissimilar to services such as Rhapsody that already exist and have a loyal albeit small user base in the States, and would not provoke the same wildfire adoption that has occurred in the UK.

In spite of these dilemmas a healthy wind keeps pushing Spotify’s sails forwards as they made a deal with two major Swedish ISPs and they just announced a partnership with mobile provider three in the UK to provide Spotify as a built-in feature for the much anticipated HTC Hero running android. It will have to be seen whether Spotify’s phone tie-in will prove more successful than Nokia’s Come with Music but the combination of a killer phone, a killer music service and seemingly reasonable prices must bode well for three.

Going back to Comes With Music the register in fact this week quoted some incredible figures that were published on Music Ally’s blog  regarding the number of users of the Nokia service. Apparently there are only 33,000 active comes with music users in the UK, which considering the breadth of their marketing campaign across all medium cinemas, tv, radio, billboards, can be classed as a failure of monumental proportions. it has to be said that Nokia has launched the service in several more countries where it’s comparatively performing better than in the UK. Over here the limited handset choice and the difficulties in activating this DRM ridden service really turned away many music fans that would have considered this option. I personally bet that with Spotify’s iPhone app coming out there might actually be more paying Spotify members in the UK than Comes With Music users, which if true would be huge considering that you have to personally commit to the Spotify payments while with Nokia the cost is bundled in the price of the handset.

Bad figures for Nokia comes with music http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/16/nokia_cwm_figures/ HTC Hero to come with free Spotify on 3 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/mobile-phones/6374310/HTC-Hero-to-come-with-free-Spotify-on-3.html Various sensible considerations on the future of Spotify in the USA. http://www.americansongwriter.com/2009/10/spotify-the-next-great-music-service/

7Digital planning US expansion http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/10/22/7digital-plans-iphone-app-google-music-talks-in-us-expansion/

While I’m talking about Spotify it feels like a natural progression to talk about UK based company 7Digital - which is currently Spotify’s a la carte partner. the wall street journal blog talks extensively about the company’s plan to raise its profile in the US where its launch two weeks ago was met with some degree of skepticism as it’s seen as such a saturated market. But Ben Drury, co founder and chief executive of the company seems to have his business plan all figured out. 7Digital is not planning to be just another a la carte music store, it plans on growing by striking influential partnerships and by providing the expertise required to run large scale advertising campaigns that require a music distribution component. It’s currently pitching all major internet providers to strike partnerships and seems to be eyeing up google as well.  7Digital’s blackberry app is proving very popular and Mr Drury revealed that there are iPhone and android apps in the works, although i believe that 98per cent of consumer focused music companies are probably doing exactly the same thing.

Google to launch a music service!

http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/google-to-launch-music-service-imminently–643870 http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/22/google.music/ The next story is on Google. The Internet was ablaze with rumors that the company was a bout to launch a new music store that would compete with apple, Spotify and everyone in the world. Naturally the reality proved a little bit more believable although not less exciting. Google is about to launch a music focused search service - since search in the end is at the core of its business. This service will allow streaming but not purchase and has Lala and iLike as confirmed partners (others are to be announced). It looks like google does have the OK of the majors - with whom it already has a working relationship via the negotiations that took place regarding music videos on YouTube. So a new search function, exciting! or exciting? how many of us are irreversibly addicted to lazily typing YouTube.com followed by the name of the song? Old habits that are hard to eradicate unless something fundamentally exceptional is developed for this new search function. Should streaming start-ups be scared?

We7 gets a boost with Rihanna’s new single playback http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i441dd2967645128fcd311ce57114c9a6

Whilst Spotify is still the talk of the town, We7 is quietly striking some really interesting deals that might not generate headlines but that add up to the profile of a company that is managing to cope with an ever-growing competition surprisingly well. This week billboard business reports that Mercury Records decided to allow We7 to stream Rihanna’s highly anticipated new singe - Russian Roulette - at the same time as it gets released on traditional radio. This is a major coup for the service and it looks like its strategy of partnering with key players in the media industries including several newspapers  to distribute its content is paying off. A solid chunk of We7 users in fact access the service from third party websites where users can access its player via a widget,  thus maximizing the global exposure of the audience to the single. We7 at the moment relies exclusively on ad sales to support itself but there are rumors of a subscription service coming soon, which will further ignite the war with Spotify. The two services have certainly chosen different paths, Spotify has chosen to develop a brand name and a standalone application, whilst We7 has remained fairly unknown and out of the headlines but has developed a huge amount of traffic through its well thought-out partnerships. This in my opinion is a fairly good indicator that the two companies can co-exist, if both of them can become profitable, that is. Music streaming is enjoying a blessed year since people are still prepared to throw money at it - but unless both the labels and the investors can at least envisage that there’s light at the end of the tunnel these services are bound to be short lived.

European Commission meetings on pan-European licensing

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/22/licence_fragmentation_eu/ http://www.telecompaper.com/news/article.aspx?cid=698178 Both the Telecom paper and the Register report that digital music retailers and collecting societies met up with the European Commission to discuss the fragmentation of the music market in Europe. Amazon, BEUC, EMI, iTunes, Nokia, PRS for Music, Sacem, Stim and Universal were all present. Following a round table discussion each of the participants announced the changes they were going to implement to make music distribution in Europe’s 27 member states more streamlined. Apple for example announced the opening of a number of new iTunes stores in 2010, whilst collection societies like SACEM in France promised to reach out to other european states to make pan-european licensing a reality. The register reports part of  a statement that was agreed upon by all parties and which reads that “Extensive fragmentation of rights and the lack of effective rights clearance mechanisms create challenges to efficient and transparent music licensing,” they also. “An open, fair and transparent licensing process that secures an appropriate level of royalties for right holders and authors is in the interest of all players and therefore of cultural diversity in Europe” . It will be a relief to see the regulations involving music distribution streamlined and i’m curious to see how long it will take for this to happen. MySpace Music Videos launches Improved iLike and iTunes and Amazon MP3 store integration Fragmented and complex publishing arrangements are hindering the growth of a European online music market Myspace music takes a few steps forwards.

And finally Techradar reports - along with many other news organizations that myspace music has finally got its act together and a) managed to aggregate its music videos in an eye-pleasing fashion b) gave up on its attempt to defy itunes and amazon as and MP3 store. In fact myspace music users are going to find direct links to purchase tracks from both iTunes and Amazon, making the whole process a lot easier for everyone. Myspace in a last ditch attempt to prevent artists from focusing more on their Facebook page than on their Myspace one also launched a dashboard feature for the artists pages, which provides all sorts of analytics regarding the usage of the page which could be helpful to artists. this is actually a pretty neat feature and i’m going to give it a go as soon as I can on my own myspace page - though i must admit that i haven’t been on it in months. http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/myspace-music-videos-launches-644043

Well, that’s all for this week. Hope you enjoyed the episode and please email me  - the address is digitalmusictrends@gmail.com with any suggestion or story for the show. Also you can follow me on twitter - the handle is digimusictrends and you can visit the website at www.digitalmusictrends.com.

All the links to the stories in the show are in the shownotes which you can find both on the website and embedded in the Mp3 if you have a device that can show them to you.

Have a great weekend and I’ll be back next week, I haven’t quite decided whether to go back to the usual monday release - in which case in four days it might turn out to be a pretty short episode!

Spotify hits the Android and iTunes app stores, my first impression hands-on.

Apple rejects uMonitor Application. http://torrentfreak.com/utorrent-iphone-app-rejected-by-apple-goes-underground-090831/

Nokia denies the 2010 USA release of Comes With Music is an actual delay, and rolls out a subscription scheme to allow Comes With Music customers to continue their subscription after the year’s freebie expires. http://musically.com/blog/2009/09/04/nokia-slaps-down-talk-of-comes-with-music-us-launch-delay/ http://musically.com/blog/2009/09/02/nokia-reveals-subscription-renewal-plans-for-comes-with-music-customers/

HMV aquires 50% of 7Digital, a smart move to hit the ground running in the digital arena? http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i82908c6716f89cd1349aadd334e3781c

Mog and Rightsflow get additional VC funding, is the tide starting to turn for Digital Music Companies and http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i0d1b247e2040d9db9527de9d46ccb683

Youtube reaches an agreement with the PRS in the UK, but are Non Disclosure Agreements becoming a problem? http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/sep/03/youtube-google-prs-nda

Shownotes and Links

Interview with Dave Haynes from Soundcloud: http://www.soundcloud.com/ http://openmusicmedia.wordpress.com/ http://musichackday.org/

News:

Spotify iPhone app approved: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8225731.stm http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/27/spotify_on_iphone/

Spotify’s impact in Sweden: http://www.swedishwire.com/business/687-spotify-overtakes-apples-itunes

Rhapsody submits an iPhone app to the Apple: http://realnetworksblog.com/?p=889

Internet radio stations still safe in the USA http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i537b1397c7b1ba3e56949dbe38dcfaef

The long way to the Pirate Bay, Global Gaming Factory’s via crucis: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/08/swedish-court-rules-tpb-admins-too-broke-to-pay-damages.ars http://musically.com/blog/2009/08/21/new-pirate-bay-p2p-partner-he-hasnt-paid-and-we-havent-done-the-work/ http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-returns-with-guns-blazing-090825/ http://musically.com/blog/2009/08/27/ggf-shareholders-approve-pirate-bay-acquisition/ http://torrentfreak.com/no-pirate-bay-deal-says-key-ggf-technology-partner-090828

The UK government planning tougher action against pirates http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8219652.stm http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/25/p2p_disconnection/ http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86927/lord-mandelson-defends-plan-to-disconnect-uk-file-sharers/

Shownotes:

Soundexchange sets fixed streaming rates for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the USA.

http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2009/08/11/public-radio-stations,-soundexchange-set-webcast-royalties http://paidcontent.org/article/419-public-radio-music-industry-reach-agreement-on-online-royalty-rates/ http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i224997d33ab2d0140e89dbea5ea1f4c

The Orchard expanding in China. http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090811005762&newsLang=en

Spotify Expanding in China.

http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSTRE57B1H320090812 http://musically.com/blog/2009/08/12/spotify-confirms-chinese-launch/ The majors have created the CMX interactive format to battle Apple’s “cocktail” project.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6788045.ece

In the UK Lord Mandleson launches an attack on internet piracy with stricter laws in the pipeline very soon.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/45ded62c-8933-11de-b50f-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss&nclick_check=1 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/the-net-closes-in-on-internet-piracy-1772820.html

Nokia aims at becoming the world’s largest entertainment media network

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/138/iphone-envy-you-must-be-joumlking.html

Rank ‘Em: www.gorankem.com If you’d like to try out the service, request an invite on their website - you can use the special code DMT for instant access but be quick! It’s limited to the first 20 users.

Rank’Em also have a Kickstarter funding pledge running for another three weeks, so if you like the site and would like to contribute go to: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1003234199/help-us-keep-rank-em-rockin/backers/new

Links to the news stories:

Spotify’s deal with the label surfaces http://www.thelocal.se/21170/20090807/

Spotify secures a new round of funding http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/04/spotify-funding-investment-markets-equities-music.html

Spotify in talks with mobile network 3 http://www.nma.co.uk/news/spotify-in-talks-to-offer-music-app-to-subscribers-on-3/3003073.article

Warner Music takes a hit in quarterly reports but holds out better than expected. http://www.reuters.com/article/industryNews/idUSTRE5753R220090806 http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/08/06/ap6750441.html

Itunes launching in Mexico, how does that affect the market? http://www.reuters.com/article/industryNews/idUSTRE57700Z20090808

Big Champage launches an interactive data gathering source that is sure to bring in a lot of industry subscribers. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/inside-bigchampagnes-music-panopticon/

Rhapsody announces layoffs http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20090806/sources-layoffs-at-rhapsody/?mod=ATD_rss

Midomi secures extra funding so that us hummingbirds can keep humming on! http://venturebeat.com/2009/08/03/midomi-lets-you-identify-music-by-humming-hits-no-1-iphone-paid-music-app/

Links: Startup of the week: www.tunesbag.com

Spotify submitted its app to Apple - and let everyone know about it… http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8169971.stm

Spotify also struck a deal with digital distributor IODA this week, adding over 2 million tracks to its catalogue, which makes the mobile applications all the more appealing. http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/07/21/spotify-strikes-deal-with-ioda-adds-2-million-more-tracks/

Palm re-instates the synch functionality with iTunes. http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/palm-brings-back-itunes-syncing-for-pre-619544 http://www.pcworld.com/article/168976/palm_pre_webos_110_available_fixes_itunes_sync.html

Digital Music Startups running short of capital in the States. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10293815-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

Gamasutra finds that Rockband and guitar hero sales are down, by 49%! http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24482

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology/2009/07/22/rock-band-and-guitar-hero-sales-collapse-115875-21540261/

http://stuff.tv/news/Guitar-Hero-and-Rock-Band-sales-down-but-downloads-soar/12842/

Loi Hadopi delayed to September. http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86710/frances-three-strikes-delayed-until-september/

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssTechMediaTelecomNews/idUSLL63496320090721

Myspace to become a data goldmine for discovering the next big thing. http://www.observer.com/2009/media/myspace-music-pres-courtney-holt

Apple looking at new ways to sell albums. http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/apple/apple-racing-to-get-itablet-out-for-xmas-620046

Links:

Ethan Kaplan’s blog:

www.blackrimglasses.com

Microsoft aims at launching a streaming service very soon.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/15/microsoft_does_a_spotify/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/microsoft/5817049/Microsoft-is-launching-a-music-streaming-service-this-month.html

Spotify aims at US lanuch in the third or fourth quarter 2009.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/19/spotify-launching-in-us

New Zealand revives the three strikes law.

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3ia62deb261008854a4bffa408386f6176

P2P exchanges nosedive in Sweden

http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2009/07/15/report:-swedish-file-sharing-down-wake-p2p-law http://www.swedishwire.com/business/506-illegal-filesharing-dives-in-sweden

Another file sharing service goes legit - Kazaa comes back as a subscription service!

http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/kazaa-returns-as-legal-music-service-617777 http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10289985-93.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Pirate Bay sale makes the IFPI want its share - but who does the site belong to?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10288495-93.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Apple Disables Palm Pre’s Synch function with iTunes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8155795.stm

Music Hack Day: www.musichackday.org

We7: www.we7.com

News:

- Labels reach a deal on internet radios http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/technology/internet/08radio.html?_r=1&ref=technology

-  Hadopi’s many tribulations - will the third one stick? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/13/france_third_attempt_at_three_strikes/ http://www.betanews.com/article/How-many-strikes-will-Frances-HADOPI-three-strikes-law-get/1247488484

- Universal partners with Tunecore. http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1038140&c=1 http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/07/universaltunecore-deal-opens-major-doors-for-indie-artists.ars http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gV6FVPPSrNt8xgZXAYMBlzVWuLkwD99AQ7KO0 http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i70172e607ddc1be9c33d807bbc390667 - RIAA sued many many people http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/has-the-riaa-sued-18000-people-or-35000.ars

- Music companies shine at Techcrunch’s Europas Awards http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/07/09/the-europas-the-winners-and-finalists/

- Soundcloud a Myspace for the Twitter era? http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/07/soundcloud-threatens-myspace-as-music-destination-for-twitter-era/

Links:

Limewire partners with digital distributor CD Baby. http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/lime-wire-announces-partnership-with-cd-baby,880168.shtml http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3idb69280d465a66a26e0b3c8ad9f67dfd

Pirate bay sold , but for how much, how, why, and what’s the business model in the works? http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2009/06/pirate-bay-raising-the-surrender-flag-to-hollywood.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/technology/companies/01pirate.html?ref=business http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/30/swedish-software-firm-acquires-the-pirate-bay-for-77-million/ http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2009/gb2009071_378545_page_2.htm

EMI withdraws its mechanical rights from PRS over new streaming rates. http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/news.phtml/25152/emi-refuses-prs-streaming-rates.phtml

A Price for Music - A digital piracy prediction tool http://musically.com/blog/2009/07/01/detica-launches-digital-piracy-prediction-tool/ http://www.apriceformusic.com/

Sony’s Physical distributor RED ties knots with digital distribution firm IODA http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3iff1672d639e4a43021184911dfae6657

Links

The Orchard Partners with Uplaya.com http://www.pr-inside.com/music-intelligence-solutions-inc-partners-r1339154.htm http://www.marketwatch.com/story/music-intelligence-solutions-inc-announces-launch-of-uplayacom-to-analyze-hit-potential-and-promote-music-for-artists-and-labels-globally-200961830280

Spotify is only making 14p per user? And partnering with 7Digital http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/25/spotify_exclusive/ http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i344418db676344f0e97258e816f68d19 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/5638847/Spotify-to-offer-one-click-7digital-song-downloads.html

Rapidshare loses court battle in Germany. http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/18325.cfm http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i6fad5a2a1d8e51322a228bfb25596759 http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/achtung-rapidshare-hit-with-24m-fine-content-filter-rules.ars

Michael Jackson’s death shows the influence digital can have in immediate sales and affects the secondary tickets market. http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3ica1b8f186dc40803c265db8315c524cd http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1614952/20090629/jackson_michael.jhtml http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6580748.ece

Myspace’s layoffs and closures internationally focused on countries where the social network has already lost its battle with Facebook. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/23/myspace-layoffs-coming-to-countries-where-it-is-getting-trounced-by-facebook/

Three strikes law developments in France http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3ied6fab8616f8c1a170e4c9f6f7c536f3

- Interview with Patrick Rosenthal from www.tronme.com

Transcript: AL: Hi Patrick, great to have you on the show. First of all, would you like to explain briefly to our listeners what TronMe is and how it relates you the label 3D Solar, your parallel venture? PR: TronMe is a new generation of media player that will play your favorite tracks like never before. Whenever you use your Ipod or windows media player, your mp3 will always play the same way, you can quickly go off a song when you know every single note backwards! Our goal is simply to experience a new way of listening to the music and in addition you are going to be able to show it to the world. Tronme will create a different version of your track each time you play it, like a live version or a new remix of your track, and will create a unique video to go with it. So you will be able to save a video clip with your new mix and unique video, I’m sure Andrea you have special songs that remind you of special times and memories, now you will be able to remember theses images forever as each song will have his own dedicate video clip to play it on your ipod. AL: Let’s talk about the visual side of things, how does the software interact with the videos you record and with the music?
PR: The player has more than 900 visual effects that interact with the music and your image. Think about the combinations, 1 mp3 generating more than 3 million if not 3 billion possible remixes, ehanced with more than 900 interactive visual effects. All the visual effects you apply to your tracks will follow the beats of the tracks; that means that they will perfectly adapt themselves to the song’s tempo. Additionally they will be mixed with your own images also based on the beat and measures of the track. Images shown during the performance are most of time created by the music. So as you create a unique song performance, the accompanying visual effects will be also unique. AL: I understand that there are three types or levels of IVS files, could you explain what the difference it? PR: Let’s start with IVS1 the fully interactive format, this allows you to add or remove instruments, vocals and much more from the track, and what’s more important, to do it in a dynamic way. This is possible because the IVS format has control over every part of the song: the individual instrumental as well as the segments (introduction, verse, bridge, chorus, etc.). All these components can be handled as blocks or separated entities, so you can mix or rearrange them according to your style and personality, giving you endless possibilities to mix, remix or create a totally new and unique performance.

IVS 2 are the normal interactive files. Its advantage is that any MP3 format song can be converted into an interactive file by 3D Solar label after the agreement of the original label and without changing the original recording. Although you can’t play with the instruments, in basic interactive mode you can play with the segments parts and remix them to the infinity or even let the player auto remix your track.

And Finally the IVS3: the IVS3 is also a basic interactive mode so similar to the ivs2 but because it uses your local mp3 you don’t even need to buy the mp3 embedded inside the ivs2 from our music store, we offer this solutions for all mp3 that we are not yet authorized to sell.

AL: How did you manage to have artists provide you with the multitrack recordings of their songs required for iVS1 files? PR: To have this level of interactivity we had to sign special contracts directly with artists and to do so we had to create our own label 3D Solar uk Ltd. When an artist signs with us they get free access to a dedicated account on our server where they can upload and easily create their track in ivs format, then the track will be automatically promoted and featured on our music store TronMe.com.

AL: What’s your background and how did you come up with this idea? PR: Well I love technology and I love to create products that will make people dream, in 2003 I created a 3 dimensional interactive screen for witch I won a price backed by the European Council of Applied Sciences.  For the very first time, computer users were able to view 3D objects hovering a 13 inches away from our prototype that rotate 180 degrees without wearing glasses, and the stand-out feature is the way users were able to manipulate the virtual image directly with their hands as they would a real object. But the technology involved too much investment to be easily setup by a start up company. So I decided to work on pure software solutions like TronMe.

AL: Do you consider the software TronMe as the ultimate use for IVS files or do you see it more as a promotional tool for IVS? In other words, do you foresee IVS permeating other applications other than your own? PR: Well I’m sure we will have hardware manufacturer interested with this new format, it could be for them a way to add a really new functionality that would make the difference with competitors, so yes I think a few selected mp3 players will be available with ivs inside soon.

AL: How has the artists and the users reception been for this new concept and software? PR: People first are curious and after they get used to it they simply can’t stop using it especially with tracks they really love. People always need more interactive products.

AL: Are you planning on taking TronMe out of beta anytime soon? PR: Well I would say TronMe is even not yet beta but alpha and we should be out of the Alpha in a month or so, beta means out of bug and as we add new things all the time it will take time before we get stable.

AL: What is the business model for IVS and TronMe? Is the software going to continue to be free while you will be charging for IVS formatted tracks or will you be charging for the software as well? PR: No the player will be always free to use, while we will charge for iVS1 and IVS2 files.  The ivs1 fully interactive format will be a little bit more expensive than an mp3 and the ivs2 will be sold at the same price as the equivalent mp3. The model for the ivs3 files is different because you don’t pay per track.

After installation, the software will list all of the mp3s on each user’s PC and will show if other other TronMe users have already found interesting loops in a particular song.  If the user wants to use these pre-tagged sons he can subscribe for a small monthly fee and also be able to access plenty of new versions uploaded daily. But the player can also be used for free! To do this a user needs to convert his own tracks into the interactive format and publish the position of the seamless loops he found. The player is then able to create remixes of these tracks for free and the new version is made available for other users to use.  The player comes with free visual tools when you install it but you can buy additional effects to enhance your remixes. AL: While using the program I noticed that it’s possible to have access to free tracks and effects, how does that work? PR: As a TronMe user you can add a vote widget (vote button), which can be placed close to your video and allows you to get “Trons”. Later, you can see your score in the player based on the number of Trons you got. The more Trons you get the higher your score grows and this will result in you having access to new tracks and visual effects for free, so if you contribute by publishing a lot of successful ivs3 tracks you will get plenty of Trons and you will be able to use the player for free.

AL: Do you want to keep IVS exclusive to the  3d Solar label or have you approached others, such as majors for example for licensing? PR: No IVS2 and IVS1 is open to all artists and Labels and Majors that would be interested to have their own tracks in this new format, IVS1 usually can’t be used for old tracks because we need the agreement of too many different parties like labels, artist, composer etc, so we target new tracks. IVS1 makes an artist think about the music in 3 dimensions and not in 2 like before.  IVS2 is perfect for labels as we do not alter the original recording nor do we create a unique remix for that track, so the label can let us sell the track without prior permission from artist etc.

AL: Multitracks are becoming more and more important as RockBand and Guitar hero and various other music-related games all make use of them one way or another. The problem is that no-one has figured out a simple inter-operable format for these large files. Are you hoping IVS will be the answer to this hole in the market? PR: Well it’s too early to say; the big advantage of the IVS2 and 3 is that we will be able to convert 90% of the existing music into interactive music.

AL: Right now the software is windows-only, are you working on a version for Mac or Iphone? PR: Well we plan to create a light version of the player for the IPod and iphone, imagine each time you shake your iphone it will shake your music creating a unique remix and will also do a unique video clip to go with it.

AL: Finally, any developments on the horizon or news that you’d like to share with Digital Music Trends? PR: Plenty of new ideas, for example the TronMe player is already seen as a camera by all windows software -  so you can show your friends what you are doing in software like Messenger or Skype. We are planning to use this in order to let users perform unique duets and remixes together during a video chat. We are working on other projects -but these will be for the next interview Andrea.

NEWS:

- An analysis of iTunes variable pricing - the first results are in http://www.reuters.com/article/musicNews/idUSTRE55K0DJ20090621 - Popkomm 2009 is cancelled http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i04825332556ab23dde17b522e89d3b65

- Myspace cuts US staff by almost 30% http://paidcontent.org/article/419-myspace-cuits-staff-by-30-percent More layoffs to come at Myspace http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/17/myspace-isnt-done-yet-big-international-layoffs-come-next/

- Myspace music set for September Launch http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/5570650/MySpace-Music-set-for-September-UK-launch.html

-  Vodafone partners with Myspace in Europe http://www.nma.co.uk/vodafone-partners-with-myspace-to-boost-music-credentials/3001603.articleodafone

- The Majors in Ireland take legal action against ISPs http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2009/0620/1224249188923.html

- Majors welcome p2p win in the USA but it could backlash in PR http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i6c3a49109c5609b6d1e2d8a0c47835fd - Warner increases its stake in Imeem http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-warner-imeem/

- Imeem is king of mobile apps, iPhone and Android seem to be a good environment for advertising http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/16/with-an-iphone-and-android-strategy-imeem-mobile-pushes-past-a-million-users/

- Amazon Messes Up pricing in the UK MP3 store. http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i1cb4423097de6eb15f173112f54c0ba9

Show Notes:

Interview with Ian Hogarth from Songkick: www.songkick.com http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/08/songkick-aims-to-make-a-database-of-every-concert-ever-%E2%80%94-and-its-well-on-its-way/

Last.fm founders leave the company http://blog.last.fm/2009/06/10/message-from-the-lastfm-founders-felix-rj-and-martin http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/06/10/lastfm-founders-sever-ties-with-cbs/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/5506200/Last.fm-founders-look-to-work-together-on-new-internet-start-up.html

Three strikes law in more trouble in France: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6478542.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=1063742   http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jun/11/piracy-three-strikes http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/france-govt-goes-into-spin-mode-to-salvage-three-strikes-law.ars   Studies in the Uk : Users would be deterred by three strikes threat if it involved disconnection: http://www.paidcontent.co.uk/entry/419-research-special-three-strikes-threat-would-work-many-users-would-pay-i/

Another study reports that users would not be deterred unless the letters contained a specific threat of disconnection…. http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2009/06/10/most-illegal-broadband-file-sharers-not-dissuaded-by-uk-isp-warning-letters.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8091107.stm

Universal Music partners with UK ISP Virgin Media to provide a subscription drm-free all you can eat service http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/technology/internet/16music.html?ref=technology http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/06/isp-umg-agree-on-unlimited-music-plan-graduated-response.ars

Myspace rumored to be planning large layoffs: http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-myspace-might-close-offices-in-europe-and-san-francisco/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jun/11/myspace-bebo-social-networking

<a href=”http://www.podcastalley.com/”> My Podcast Alley feed!</a> {pca-8f940fed1dcebd8559d59156a029f6d0}

Shownotes:

The Pirate Bay gains 2 seats at the EU http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/06/a_swing_to_the_pirates.html http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86365/the-pirate-bay-urges-eu-users-to-get-out-and-vote/

We Are Hunted starts a Twitter chart: http://wearehunted.com/twitter http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industrye3/i1dc51bcd151aa7062dfa0da86b7b1b76

Last.FM - a great UK success story http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jun/03/last-fm

The RIAA failing to convince ISPs to police their networks: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10256481-93.html

We7 Going Mobile! http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3ifc1a00a9add40186346d1114648177b8

Sony music joins the VEVO venture http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/04/AR2009060403995.html

SHOW NOTES:

Feature: interview with Steve Knopper - contributing editor for the Rolling Stone and author of the book Appetite for Self-Destruction - now on sale on Amazon!

News:

Spotify Gets everyone excited with a preview of the android application and a special buffer… http://musically.com/blog/2009/05/28/spotify-shows-off-android-mobile-app-at-google-io-event/

Spotify for mobile should frighten Apple http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/05/spotifys-android-app-should-frighten-apple/

Other sources on Spotify on Android http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/spotify-shows-off-android-application-603030 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/28/AR2009052800538.html http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i0cc7a863b3935049819d1665c0039b43

Music Labels easing up on startups in licensing fees? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/technology/start-ups/28music.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

PRS launches new rates for music streaming http://www.recordoftheday.com/www/news/article.php?aid=605

Youtube Responds to new PRS streaming rates http://musically.com/blog/2009/05/26/youtube-responds-to-new-prs-for-music-streaming-rates/

We7 responds to the PRS new streaming rates http://musically.com/blog/2009/05/26/we7-new-prs-rates-are-a-significant-milestone/

Guardian and Times: could the new streaming rates mean an upcoming new deal with YouTube? http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/may/26/digital-music-and-audio-youtube http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6367121.ece

Eu Nears Bloc-Wide Music Licensing http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/062db6ae-4a1f-11de-8e7e-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss&nclick_check=1

Itunes wants single EU copyright to harmonize the licensing on iTunes http://www.paidcontent.co.uk/entry/419-apple-wants-single-eu-copyright-itunes-licence-harmonisation/

Pandora Unleashing Mobile Phone Ads http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_22/b4133052597112.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_top+stories

Farkie startup lets you download online content such as youtube http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/25/farkie-lets-you-download-youtube-videos-myspace-playlists-and-much-more/

Seven million people download illegally in the UK http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8073068.stm

Spanish protests pro-p2p http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3id950b3467e2c7b0e7be2b07e67055a31

Spain’s piracy problem “getting worse” http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i6ec2932c7d29e992036757945a4b1ca8

Itunes Support confirmed for Palm Pre

email: digitamusictrends@gmail.com to contribute!!!

LINKS

The 2nd judge appointed to oversee the Pirate Bay’s trial is removed - again for possible bias. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/judge-reviewing-pirate-bay-trial-bias-is-removed-for-bias/

Labels increase pressure on the Pirate Bay http://torrentfreak.com/record-labels-increase-legal-pressure-on-pirate-bay-090519/

Napster, the best subscription deal ever? Is five dollars a sustainable price for other subscription-based music companies? http://news.cnet.com/8301-13845_3-10244574-58.html http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/the-high-cost-of-selling-cheap-music-services/

Take That launch a new itunes Pass - what are the implications of joining this scheme versus creating your very own iPhone app? http://musically.com/blog/2009/05/21/take-that-launch-itunes-pass-subscription/

Myspace possibly in trouble http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/18/myspace-is-in-real-trouble-if-these-page-view-declines-dont-reverse/

Spain’s own P2P trial against Pablo Soto: http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/Pablo/Soto/soy/heroe/descargas/elpeputec/20090519elpepusoc_5/Tes http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86284/spanish-p2p-developer-goes-to-court-for-unfair-competition/ http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i82a4bef380199312f851e2b544022806

Episode 3 Links from Stories

Startup of the week! www.tunesbag.com

Three Strikes Report part 2 - Around the World

New Zealand http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/new-zealand-three-strikes-law-delayed-537427 http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/03/3-strikes-strikes-out-in-nz-as-government-yanks-law.ars http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5966219.ece http://torrentfreak.com/kiwi-3-strikes-law-081017/ http://freeculturenews.com/2009/04/12/new-zealand-3-strikes-amendment-removed/

Canada http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/Videotron-Wants-Three-Strikes-Law-In-Canada-101109 http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3706/125/ http://blogs.itworldcanada.com/idol/2009/04/24/crtc-opens-online-public-consultation-on-bandwidth-throttling/

California http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/rep-howard-berman-calls-for-new-ip-law-using-dodgy-data.ars

South Korea http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/korea-fits-itself-for-a-3-strikes-jackboot.ars

Taiwan http://billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3ib20649ac4d6059c2ff7b95023c51cbe6?imw=Y

WEEK’S NEWS

Torrent Freak and the Swedish Torrent Sites Closures http://tinyurl.com/cz6f46

Torrent Search via Google

http://mashable.com/2009/04/20/google-torrent-search/

http://www.google.com/cse?cx=003849996876419856805:erhhdbygrma&ie=UTF-8&q=&sa=Search

Comes with Music might not have a great deal of active users…

http://musically.com/blog/2009/04/21/comes-with-music-has-23000-active-uk-users/

Troubles for the Loi Hadopi in France http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/technology/internet/21net.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

Another study claiming pirates buy more music http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/04/study-pirates-buy-tons-more-music-than-average-folks.ars

We Are Hunted home page http://wearehunted.com

Native Digital’s Home Page http://www.nativedigital.com.au

Nick Crocker’s Blog http://www.waycooljnr.com.au

Mashable article on We Are Hunted http://mashable.com/2009/04/16/we-are-hunted

All about jazz article on We Are Hunted http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=34085

Three strikes law for criminals in the USA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_strikes_law#cite_note-2

NY Times article on the Rejection of three strikes bv the french National Assembley http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/technology/internet/10net.html?_r=1

Le Figaro article on Sarkozy’s anger at the rejection of the law http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/2009/04/11/01002-20090411ARTFIG00476-hadopi-la-colere-de-sarkozy-.php

Le Monde article on the new schedule to get the law passed by the end of April http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2009/04/15/la-loi-hadopi-de-retour-a-l-assemblee-le-29-avril_1181222_651865.html

Three strikes in Ireland http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Three-strikes-and-youre-out-for-Irish-illegal-music-downloaders-42153527.html

Three Strikes in Germany http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9791/uk_prime_minister_denies_three_strikes_proposal_after_europe_tossed_it/

Three Strikes in Italy http://torrentfreak.com/italy-to-follow-french-3-strikes-model-for-p2p-090121

Times article on the Pirate’s Bay’s sentence. http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6111777.ece

PC world article on short lived nature of the entertainment industry’s exultation http://www.pcworld.com/article/163366/hollywoods_victory_over_the_pirate_bay_will_be_shortlived.html

Google announces its irst quarter financial results http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8002712.stm

Peter Foster of the Times on the Prs for Music launch and the Spotify deal ]http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article6061922.ece

BBC feature on the Record Store day http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8005324.stm

NY Daily article on Record Store Day - In praise of… http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/2009/04/17/2009-04-17_in_praise_of_the_vanishing_indie_record_store.html

LA Times article on Record Store day http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2009/04/coachella-09-record-store-day-lauds-wax-on-indios-grass.html