Music Industry 2.0
Some of the world’s biggest music firms are the latest targets of New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer.
Mr Spitzer has served subpoenas on EMI, Universal Music, Sony BMG and Warner Music, the New York Times has reported.
The firms have been asked to hand over contracts, invoices and other documents as part of an inquiry into how songs make it on to radio station play lists. [more @ www.bbc.co.uk]
“Piracy, both online and on the street, continues to hit the music community hard, and thousands have lost their jobs because of it,” RIAA chairman and ceo Mitch Bainwol claims.
The jobless thousands notwithstanding, the music industry is doing very well in the first half of 2004 with full-length CD shipments to retail outlets increasing by 10.2% compared to the same time period in 2003, says the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).
“It is the first time in five years that the first half of the year has experienced an overall increase in shipments of all formats combined. DVD music videos and licensed digital downloads also showed impressive growth,” says the music industry enforcer, giving the lie to its own claims that its owners, the members of the Big Four record label cartel, are being ruined by file sharing. [more @ www.p2pnet.net]
The Recording Industry Association of America has reached a $10 million legal settlement with a Spanish company that briefly offered MP3s online for just pennies a song.
The trade group on Monday said four people associated with Puretunes.com, which operated only briefly in mid-2003, collectively agreed to pay $500,000 in damages, while the holding company responsible for the Web site’s operations will be responsible for $10 million.
The company initially said it had acquired the rights to the songs legally through overseas licensing authorities. The RIAA disagreed and sued the company not long afterward. [more @ www.zdnet.com]
Feargal Sharkey is appearing in Glasgow this week, but the former Undertones vocalist will have more to say about onstage licks than teenage kicks.
He is coming to MusicWorks 2004, the music industry convention that is taking place from Wednesday to Friday, in his capacity as chair of the government’s Live Music Forum, to talk about the explosion in live music across the UK in recent years.
“One of the difficulties we have is that we don’t have statistics to show what has changed since five years ago, but the industry is in a very buoyant mood right now,” he says.
“It could be because of the increasing number of acts out there touring. Let’s face it, it can be a bloody good night out. Maybe people are getting bored with the television and want to do something else instead.” [more @ www.sundayherald.com]
Peer-to-peer traffic has not declined despite the music industry’s aggressive pursuit of illegal file sharers, according to a new study.
Researchers from the University of California at Riverside and the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis evaluated packet data on the internet and found that P2P continues to thrive. Their results are published in a study, titled “Is P2P dying or just hiding?”
“In general we observe that P2P activity has not diminished,” says the study, which will be presented at IEEE Globecom 2004 next month. “On the contrary, P2P traffic represents a significant amount of internet traffic and is likely to continue to grow in the future, RIAA behavior notwithstanding.”
[A PDF of the study is available HERE – ED.][more @ www.wired.com]
Steve Barnett has been named President, Epic Records, by Don Ienner, President and CEO, Sony Music Label Group U.S., to whom he reports. Mr. Barnett is based in New York.
“It’s a pleasure to announce this well deserved promotion,” commented Mr. Ienner. “Steve’s intense focus on A&R and artist development has resulted in a wide range of success stories, including recent breakthroughs such as Los Lonely Boys, Modest Mouse and Franz Ferdinand, and he has a great track record of creating and implementing innovative marketing and distribution deals that expand the reach of our artists. I know he’ll continue to be a major asset as we further build Epic’s presence in a wide variety of genres.” [more @ www.soundgenerator.com]
Billboard magazine now sees ring tones as worth including in its venerable top-seller listings.
The music industry magazine will soon be publishing a list of best-selling ring tones, alongside its more traditional categories, like best-selling album.
The new listing, which debuts in the Nov. 6 issue, reflects the “growth, innovation and success of the rapidly growing mobile music market,” Billboard said in a statement Tuesday. The “Hot Ringtones” chart will list the top 20 selling ring tones for each week. It will be based on sales of polyphonic, or “real music” ring tones compiled primary from U.S.-based providers, Billboard said. [more @ www.news.com]
Beginning tomorrow, Warner Music Group (WMG) will release four albums in the U.S. from critically acclaimed artists on the new music product DualDisc, a two-sided disc made up of a CD on one side and a DVD on the other.
In stores on October 26th, Simple Plan’s highly anticipated new album “Still Not Getting Any…” and The Donnas’ eagerly awaited new album “Gold Medal” will be on DualDisc. Additionally, the Grateful Dead’s “American Beauty” and Trapt’s self-titled album will be made available on DualDisc November 23rd. [more @ www.marketwire.com]
Beleaguered music industry giants EMI Music and Warner Music agreed to sell their jointly-owned CD manufacturing business in Australia yesterday, as part of a restructuring programme.
It was the third such move by EMI this year after the announcement in March that it was to abandon manufacturing operations in Europe and the US with the closure of plants at Uden, in the Netherlands, and at Jacksonville, Illinois. [more @ www.telegraph.co.uk]
The father and manager of R&B singer Beyonce has said UK acts should not be obsessed with cracking the US market.
“A lot of people feel they have to be accepted in America, and I don’t feel that way at all,” Matthew Knowles told BBC Radio 1.
“With Destiny’s Child/Beyonce, we sold way more outside America than we did in, so it baffles me that you’re trying to sell records in America,” he said. [more @ www.bbc.co.uk]