Label:Life

Sony BMG Music Entertainment admitted that its employees lavished cash, trips and other bribes on radio stations and their employees to get its music on the air in a settlement that is part of a wider investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer into payola in the music industry.

At a news conference Monday, Spitzer said payola was “pervasive” in the industry and, while it had assumed more sophisticated forms lately, does not much differ from practices unearthed in scandals that have dogged the industry since the early days of radio. [more @ www.washingtonpost.com]

\Apple has raised its wholesale prices for US indie record labels, claims Digital Music News.

Many UK indie labels have complained that Apple’s iTunes service offers them a different wholesale price than it does to major labels.

It is not yet clear if the US indie payment increase is being applied in the UK.

Consumer pricing remains unchanged by the new deal, at 79 cents per song.

In the US, Apple has met that criticism, raising its payments to indie labels to 70 cents per song – the same rate as it pays the majors (and inclusive of publishing royalties). [more @ www.macworld.co.uk]

Legal music downloads have tripled in the past year, an international record industry lobby group said yesterday, citing the figures as further proof it is winning the war against piracy.

IFPI, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents 1,450 record companies in 75 countries, said there were more legal downloads in the US, Britain, Germany and France in the first half of 2005 than in the whole of 2004. [more @ www.guardian.co.uk]

People who illegally share music files online are also big spenders on legal music downloads, research suggests.

Digital music research firm The Leading Question found that they spent four and a half times more on paid-for music downloads than average fans.

Rather than taking legal action against downloaders, the music industry needs to entice them to use legal alternatives, the report said.
[more @ www.bbc.co.uk]

It is no secret that major-label consolidation has reduced the number of available executive posts across the board in the music industry. Yet despite black music’s impressive gains — R&B/hip-hop represents 24.5 percent of total album sales for 2005 — there are only a handful of African-Americans in key executive roles at the major labels.

Can the limited number be attributed solely to consolidation and restructuring? Does it stem from racism? Or are African-American executives themselves at fault for not being as business-savvy as their white counterparts? [more @ www.msnbc.msn.com]

M-Theory Music would seem an anomaly in the world of bricks-and-mortar retailing: a CD store thriving like a Top 10 single.

Stars including Moby and Spiritualized often stop by the South Park shop to sign autographs and perform.

The ambiance is pitch-perfect, with music videos playing in a corner and knowledgeable staff members ready to track down obscure tracks in the bins.

Sales of new CDs at the shop are up over the same period last year.

“If I had listened to the naysayers 3 ½ years ago, we’d never have opened,” M-Theory Music co-owner Eric Howarth said, referring to predictions that the segment would fade. “We’re doing well.”

Rumors of the death of traditional record stores apparently have been greatly overplayed. [more @ www.signonsandiego.com]

A startling study conducted by Qpass of 100 leading U.S. and European digital content Websites revealed that more than one third of the sites are unsecured, allowing users to ‘shoplift’ music tracks and download them as free ringtones.

The extent of the problem in US may have already cost the mobile and music industries an estimated $40 million U.S. since the beginning of 2004, and a further $123 million U.S. by 2007, according to Qpass.

Qpass attributes this problem to the need for the mobile and music industries to enable users to preview music before they purchase it, an important part of the customer purchasing experience. Two thirds of web sites tested offered preview music files between 15 and 30 seconds, the perfect length to convert into a ringtone. [more @ www.softpedia.com]

Illegal downloads, decline in concert ticket sales, illicit file sharers and iPods – the music industry would have you believe it was under fire from virtually every side. While profits, share prices and revenues have been hit, it is by no means certain these new technology threats are the only reason for the slump.

But is file sharing really killing the music industry? The evidence is not conclusive. Danny Goldberg, chairman of Artemis records, has been reported as saying: ‘I don’t think there was a more downloaded song than 50 Cent’s ‘In Da Club’ (2003), and yet it sold 9 million albums, despite the fact fans had seen the video and they could get it online. They still wanted to hear the full statement 50 Cent was making.’ [more @ www.guardian.co.uk]

When Don Rose stood to speak Monday night to the 75 independent record label executives gathered at Los Angeles’ Knitting Factory club, he had almost an embarrassment of good news.

Earlier that day, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer had settled with Sony BMG Music Entertainment over charges of “payola”—essentially that the major label had paid radio stations to play its music. Independent labels had long complained that these under-the-table practices had kept their music disproportionately off the airwaves.

But Rose, who was addressing the first West Coast meeting of the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM), a new trade group for independent labels that he heads, also had more immediate news. After years of small labels being given less money than big labels for their products, both Apple Computer and Microsoft were at last agreeing to provide indies with a greater cut of the profits from online music sales, he said. [more @ www.news.com]

Hartmut Spiesecke, spokesperson for the German Phonographic Association that some 1300 cases have been filed in Germany since the wave of lawsuits against participants of peer-to-peer networks who make music tracks available for downloading.

The damages and reimbursement costs demanded amounted to an average of 4,000 euros per person, with outliers up to 15,000 euros. Spiesecke did not say how many of those who had “broken the law” had actually made payment of the music industry. [more @ www.heise.de]