Label:Life

While legal fears have apparently led millions of Americans to stop swapping music on the Internet, the overall number of users who download is increasing, a survey finds.

More than 17 million Americans, or 14 percent of adult Internet users, have stopped downloading music over the Internet, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said in a study Sunday.

At the same time, the study said, the number of users who say they do download music jumped to 23 million, compared with 18 million in a similar survey that Pew did in November-December 2002. [more @ www.cnn.com]

Top executives of Universal Music Group are scheduled to meet with analysts in Europe and the United States this week to map out the future of the world’s biggest music company.

Analysts said it is the first time Universal Music, a subsidiary of Vivendi Universal, has brought together all its senior managers since the near-collapse two years ago of the media conglomerate, whose debt swelled following an acquisition spree by former chief executive Jean-Marie Messier. [more @ www.forbes.com]

Ireland’s mobile phone ringtone market will be worth EUR16 million this year, according to O2 Ireland.

At the Digital Media conference in the Alexander Hotel in Dublin on Monday, Campbell Scott, product director, O2 Ireland, said that the sector had grown into a multi-million euro business, reflecting the trend globally.

Scott, who was citing statistics from Jupiter Research, went on to claim that the worldwide mobile music market would be worth about EUR5 billion by 2008. [more @ www.enn.ie]

[April 21]RMD Entertainment, Inc. announced today its subsidiary RMD Dance, has signed an expanded licensing agreement with Megabop Records for distribution of an entire album by C and C Music Factory in the United Kingdom.

The original licensing agreement was solely for distribution of RMD Dance’s hit single Freedom Williams/C and C Music Factory’s “Everybody Dance Now…Sweat.” All told, this individual song has sold over nine million copies to date, making it the dance music industry’s all-time leader in unit sales. It will now be contained in the new album, “C and C Music Factory’s Greatest Hits Remixed,” along with updated versions of the four other classic platinum hits by the group. [more @ www.businesswire.com]

Napster has been reborn as a legal online music service, but the ghost of its former renegade song-swap self is trailing about $17 billion of legal baggage.

Next Tuesday [04/27/04], music labels and publishers will face off against Bertelsmann AG [BERT.UL] in federal court in San Francisco over claims the German media company’s 2000 investment in Napster kept the file-swapping service operating eight months longer than it would have done otherwise. [more @ www.forbes.com]

Artists including Coldplay, Robbie Williams and U2 have sparked a huge increase in music DVD sales in the UK, according to new figures.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) says sales have almost doubled thanks to DVDs featuring artists live in concert.

According to the IFPI, 6.4 million music DVDs have been sold in the UK in the past year – an increase of 95%. Of those sold, 60% are of live performances. [more @ www.bbc.co.uk]

A cross-section of speakers ranging from elected officials to activist punks will convene in Washington, DC, on May 2-3 to discuss crucial issues facing musicians and the music/technology industry. More than 70 panelists and 700 participants will gather for the fourth annual Future of Music Policy Summit, being held at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium.

During the summit, experts and audience members will explore such issues as the explosive growth of online music stores, the impact of increased media consolidation on citizens and musicians, the impact that activist musicians can have on political discourse and changes in the music industry as distribution and sales continue to go digital. [more @ www.biz.yahoo.com]

[The intro to this article is heavily biased but read on for a useful breakdown of the current market – ED]

“This is an exciting time to be a music fan,” according to RIAA truth-adjuster-in-chief Mitch Bainwol.

“Never before in the music community’s history has there been so many ways to enjoy music legitimately,” he says in the RIAA’s (Recording Industry Association of America) 2003 Consumer Profile.

Tell that to all the innocent men, women and children the RIAA’s owners, the Big Five record labels, have victimized through the US legal system.

Bainwol regularly claims his paymaster, Big Music, is being ‘devastated’ by p2p networking. But the truth is: the Big Five record labels are doing just fine and reporting record sales. [more @ www.p2pnet.net]

No. 1 is usually a good place to be for a band. Making it to the top spot on music magazine Blender’s “50 Worst Songs Ever!” list is a more dubious honour.

The plastic tiara – and we’re guessing no one will be especially shocked at the news – goes to Starship’s 1985 anthem We Built This City.

In the May issue, Blender describes the song as “the truly horrible sound of a band taking the corporate dollar while sneering at those who take the corporate dollar”.

The magazine’s editor, Craig Marks, says the song was the choice of virtually every colleague, industry insider, music fan and friend he polled. [more @ www.stuff.co.nz]

Federal agents in Phoenix and elsewhere in the country raided schools and other targets in a national crackdown on pirated music CDs and movies.

Agents poured through data and records at a computer command center for the Deer Valley School District in the northwest Valley and blocked the office from the public. It was among other places in Arizona and “quite a few other states” where sealed search warrants were served, the FBI said. [more @ www.azcentral.com]