Label:Life

Siemens Information and Communication Mobile (Siemens mobile) launches the DRM Music Player. No longer will anyone on the move have to depend on the radio to hear the latest hits: With the DRM Music Player, music files can be downloaded directly via a cell phone. In order to check out the latest music, only a cell phone and the DRM Music Player developed and produced by Siemens mobile is necessary. And to ensure consumers can begin downloading straight away, mobile operator O2 has launched the O2 Music service this week.

Downloading compressed pieces of music (aacPlus format) to the DRM Music Player (DMP) could not be simpler. A GPRS cell phone is connected to the DMP by cable or by infrared and the connection to the mobile service provider is established at the touch of a button. The Player (measuring 52×98 x 21 mm and weighing just 80 g) then displays the music titles on offer. It is possible to listen to extracts and save the music onto the player if desired. [more @ www.siemens-mobile.com]

Last week, two of the five major record labels, Sony and BMG, announced plans to merge. And it’s likely that EMI and Warner will follow suit, leaving three big majors, each responsible for about 25 per cent of the music we “consume”. The remaining quarter is produced by the independent sector. So how do the people in charge of indie labels see the future of their business, and how will it affect the music we listen to?

“I think we’ll mutate into a new type of company – a mixture of artist management, publisher, marketing consultant, agent and promoter,” reckons Steve Beckett of Warp Records. “We’ll be a company representing artists’ ‘careers’, in whatever way they want to be represented.”

Wall Of Sound’s Marc Jones agrees that with the advent of digital technology the days of the traditional label are numbered. “We’re a communications company and that’s what we’re becoming more and more everyday. I don’t think the model for a traditional record label will exist in this environment anymore. To survive as an independent label we’re going to have to change.” [more @ www.bbc.co.uk]

The first pan-European CD in the guise of a book has been released by top independent label Ninja Tune, featuring artist Kid Koala. The CD is zero-rated for VAT as a book in the UK. An ordinary CD is not treated as a cultural product and would attract top rate VAT.

The Kid Koala package includes a CD, a comic and a game, which means it could be registered as a book for VAT. In the EU, the rates of VAT on sound recordings range from 15% in Luxembourg to 25% in Denmark and Sweden but other cultural goods and services such as books attract low or zero rates. Consumers currently pay a low VAT rate when they buy a book of Jim Morrison’s writings or a music sheet, but a high rate when they buy one of his CDs. This is illogical and unjustifiable.

This highlights the absurdity of the VAT discrimination between cultural products that currently applies in the EU. The AIM/Ninja initiative is supported by Impala as part of its pan-European campaign for VAT equality between music and other cultural products.

The release coincides with a rally of the Finance Ministry in Brussels to take place at 11am this coming Thursday 20th November, to exert pressure on Finance Ministers ahead of the 25 November EcoFin meeting in Brussels. Protestors include rights holders across the music sprectrum – from authors, composers, music publishers, performing artists, artist managers, independent and major record companies, entertainment retailers and collective management societies.
[The full press release is not yet available online but more info will be forthcoming soon -ED.] [www.ninjatune.net]

Skint Records have just gone live with their ringtone promotion for Freq Nasty’s first album on Skint ‘Bring Me the Head of Freq Nasty’. Fans can get free polyphonic and mono ringtones of the first track on the album ‘Come Let Me Know’, and Freq colour wallpapers, logos and picture messages. You can take a look at www.skint.net.

Skint is the latest in a series of labels using YR’s unique C:LIVE mobile content platform. To find out more about how your label can use ringtones and mobile content contact seth@yrmedia.com

After much planning and a rigorous artist approval process, the Ninja Tune ringtone shop is now live. Offering polyphonic and monophonic ringtones from 10 different Ninja artists as well as a series of colour wallpapers the early response from the Ninja fan base has been very positive.

Using YR’s C:LIVE platform and payment system Ninja is delivering to 6 countries and is looking to roll the service out worldwide over the coming months. Check it out at www.ninjatune.net

The best of this week’s submissions comes from Detroit artist Jessica Domain, who is set to release her debut album ‘Liquid Amber’ through Astral Records in Australia (release date:2/5/2004). This track, ‘Still Ivy’ is georgeous. Warm bass, moody pianos and a soul voice in the same league as Sade or Eryka Badu. Class. Check It Out at HERE.

In this new age of downloads and mp3s, I often yearn for the days when an album came in an attractive sleeve that you valued as much as the music it contained….but not all of them. Check these howlers out!.

Two of YR’s online games for Wall of Sound have been shortlisted for this years Interactive Music Awards and now face a public vote to decide the Best Web-based Music Game of 2003.

Our two contenders are the Off the Wall Game, to celebrate 10 years of Wall of Sound (www.offthewallgame.co.uk) and bling bling shootout game for Blak Twang’s ‘So Rotton’ campaign (www.yourrelease.com/out/twang/rotton/blaktwang.html).

Vote for your favourite web-based music game and you could be in with a chance of winning a BT Home Computing PC and 12 months rental of Broadband from BT. Five runners up will receive an Xbox console. A text costs 50p plus your standard operator costs on some networks. Voting will end before Midnight on 30 November 2003. Full Terms And Conditions.

So, We need your votes! To help us win, just text game followed by a space followed by the number of your favourite game. You can view all the entries Here.

To vote for the Blak Twang – So Rotton game, Text game 3 to 82133.

To vote for the Wall of Sound – Off The Wall game, Text game 10 to 82133.

Thanks in advance to all of you who vote.

The music industry has been quick to sue its own consumers for downloading music for free from the internet, however the industry itself is responsible for giving away millions of free CDs on newspapers and magazines (29,870,000 between Jan00-Jun01) that ultimately do not benefit the artist or the record label.

A report by music marketing consultants Frukt into covermounts, which now equate to at least 10 % of UK trade deliveries of CDs, questions the practise and explains how and why covermounts are so prolific despite the fact that most record labels report no increase in sales after such promotions.

An industry wide solution is mapped out in this report that demands action and promotes real benefits to rights owners. The report was written by Helen Doyle as part of her MA in Music Business Mngmt at University of Westminster and is available for purchase at www.fiveeight.net.

Record labels are urging artists to put fewer tracks on albums because fans are put off by too many average songs, the Los Angeles Times has reported.
“There’s been a tendency to overload CDs because the technology permits it,” Sony US president Don Ienner said.

CD sales are competing with websites that give fans songs cheaply or free. On Monday, Microsoft unveiled its online music service plans while free site Kazaa launched a campaign to fight the music industry’s anti-piracy drive.

Record labels are urging the clampdown on album tracks as a way of reversing a three-year-long slump in album sales.

“The final choice will always be the artist’s, but I feel – and consumer research bears it out – that the public thinks albums have too much filler,” Mr Ienner told the paper. [more @ www.bbc.co.uk]