Label:Life

Unfortunately, there’s no Label:Life this week as the dog ate it. Normal service should resume next week. Apologies – Ed.

British musicians are being offered a helping hand to crack the lucrative market in China, it has been announced.

A UK music services office is being opened in Beijing on Monday offering advice to independent labels on how to make contacts in the country.

It is being set up by the Association of Independent Music and government body UK Trade and Investment. [more @ www.bbc.co.uk]

“If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat / If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet,” sang the Beatles on “Taxman” in 1966. Now they might have to add “If you listen to illegally downloaded music, I’ll tax your your digital media player.” Not as catchy, but that’s what’s going to happen if certain people in the U.K. music industry get their way.

The idea has been suggested following legislation in Holland for a point of sale surcharge on any device capable of storing illegally downloaded or “pirated” music. The recently passed Dutch legislation will become law within the next three months, with reports suggesting the levy could be around Eu3.28 per gigabyte. On Apple’s 60gb iPod that would add over Eu190 to the price. The levy would be paid to copyright holders, to compensate for profits lost to illegal filesharing. [more @ www.monstersandcritics.com]

Warner Music Group narrowed its losses in the first three months of the year, but the results failed to stem the slide in the firm’s share price that has taken place since it joined Wall Street last week.

The company yesterday posted an $18m (£9.8m) loss for its fiscal second quarter. In the same period of 2004, it was $45m in the red.
[more @ www.guardian.co.uk]

RazorPop, a peer-to-peer(P2P) file-sharing developer and distributor, announced plans today to create the RazorPop P2P Music Subscription service. The unlimited music subscription offering is similar to those from Yahoo and Napster. RazorPop is the developer of the multi-network TrustyFiles P2P file sharing software.

RazorPop offers music rights holders, including labels, composers, and publishers, a percentage of the subscription revenue, similar to licensing deals that have been entered into with iTunes and other centralized online music services. An independent clearinghouse will hold and disburse licensing fees. An industry research firm will sample network downloads and allocate payments among rights holders. [more @ www.addict3d.org]

Barney Wragg is the vice president of the eLabs arm of Universal Music Group, which investigates and develops technologies to improve and change the way music is distributed. It’s at the center of the world’s largest record label’s efforts to both drive new revenue streams from online and mobile technologies and to ensure its stable of artists’ rights are protected.

Although the music industry is often perceived as viewing mobile distribution with extreme wariness, especially when it comes to DRM, Wragg believes it offers bountiful opportunities for his company and the music industry as a whole. [Very interesting article – Read on…-Ed.] [more @ www.thefeature.com]

XM Satellite Radio is holding active discussions with wireless carriers about offering some form of its radio service on mobile phones, XM chief executive Hugh Panero said on Monday.

“We have conversations that are ongoing with the carriers about going into the wireless market,” XM CEO Hugh Panero told Reuters in an interview. “They are clearly looking for content to support their platform and we are a logical place for them to go.” [more @ www.reuters.com]

Yahoo stunned the online music world last week by rolling out a beta version of software that allows users to access more than one million songs for as little as US$7 per month, about half of what competitors Napster Latest News about Napster and RealNetworks Latest News about RealNetworks offer.

The other shoe, though, has yet to drop.

Rumors are swirling around what top online music provider Apple Latest News about Apple iTunes will do about the new competition, and the pressure is building.

The subscription business model “will hurt iTunes, absolutely,” said Yankee Group’s Mike Goodman. The question is what the company will do about it. [more @ www.newsfactor.com]

The San Francisco dance music industry continues to put its weight behind the ongoing crisis of children orphaned by AIDS in Africa; the “For The Kids” event this past weekend seeing the likes of Naked Music’s Miguel Migs and Grayhound’s DJ Garth spinning in support of NextAid, the organisation dedicated to creating awareness and funds for children orphaned by AIDS.

Another of San Francisco’s dance music heavyweights, Om Records has also teamed up with NextAid to put together the benefit CD compilation reBoot:Notes for the Next Generation.

Representing the dance music community’s response to AIDS in Africa, the single-disc compilation will be an unmixed album featuring tracks from artists and friends of Om Records including the Thievery Corporation, Louie Vega, Miguel Migs, Mark Farina and Adam Freeland.
[more @ www.residentadvisor.net]

Suspicions of illegal copying of tracks and possible dissemination of such via FTP servers not withstanding access providers are not legally obliged to divulge customer data. This the Higher Regional Court (OLG) in Hamburg has found, thereby annulling a contrary decision by the District Court (LG) in Hamburg.

According to the OLG, among other considerations, such a demand for information had no legal basis. This could change in the near future, however, as the legislator is currently planning new regulations governing the providing of information. [more @ www.heise.de]