Label:Life

Russia’s largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems, or MTS, has started selling music content under its own brand name, Russian business daily Vedomosti said Wednesday.

MTS has launched a WAP portal to sells ring tones, real tones and full-length tracks calling it Zhivoi Zvuk (Live Sound).

MTS charges US$0.99 per full-length MP3 track, excluding value-added tax (VAT), and US$2 for three tracks bought simultaneously.

However MTS also charges additional money for the volume of music files downloaded, said Andrei Shvechkov, chief spokesman for Russian mobile content provider Nikita Mobile, Vedomosti reported.

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Nokia has agreed to buy the Seattle, US-based digital music distributor Loudeye Corp. in all cash deal of about $60 million. The Finnish mobile phone giant will pay $4.50 for each share of Loudeye. This acquisition is aimed at providing a music download service under Nokia’s own brand in 2007 and is expected to be completed in Q4, 2006.

“By acquiring Loudeye, Nokia can offer consumers a comprehensive mobile music experience, including devices, applications and the ability to purchase digital music,” Nokia said in a statement.

Loudeye has customers in over 20 countries, who include MSN Music Store, Deutsche Telekom and Coca Cola.

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EMI Group PLC said Wednesday it was in talks with video Web site YouTube Inc., about distributing its music content via the site.

A spokesman for the London-based music company said EMI was discussing “a variety of different business models” which would enable it to make music videos available on the site, but it said no agreements had been reached yet.
YouTube, a California-based startup, registers over 100 million views per day of its content, which consists of a mixture of homemade videos and archive video material.

A variety of possible business models could be used, from a pay-per-download system similar to that offered by Apple Computer Inc.’s (AAPL) iTunes, to the advertising-supported operation of Yahoo! Inc., or a subscription-based service.

A press report Wednesday said YouTube was in talks with other music companies including Warner Music Group Corp.

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Napster creator Sean Fanning made news when he announced that he was working on a new software project under a new brand name Snocap which would enable making it easier for music bands to sell music online.

The company has now started testing this new service, which aims at enabling the bands to sell music through popular online websites like the MySpace.com network.

Their Linx service has been developed keeping in mind the needs of online retailers who wants to sell music on the net.

They have already signed on deals with music industry groups including Universal Music, Sony BMG, EMI Group and Warner Music.

They already have one band named The Format using their services to sell music in unencrypted MP3 format through MySpace.com service.

[from we’ve seen this actually might just shift the bias form the labels to the artists… – ED]

Source:techwhack

There’s something noteworthy about the digital download version of “A Public Affair,” the latest single from pop star Jessica Simpson.

No, it’s not that the song can be personalized: Simpson and her backup singers recorded 500 first names, from Adriana to Zachary, that Yahoo Music will electronically insert at a dramatic moment in the music for $1.99 a pop.

Far more significant is another feature of the song: it is being distributed as a standard MP3 file, with no digital rights management (DRM) technology. And this comes from none other than Sony BMG, the record label that has taken the most extreme measures to keep customers from making digital copies of its songs (see “Inside the Spyware Scandal”).

Until now, essentially all of the legally purchased and downloaded music from the four major record labels—Sony BMG, EMI, Warner, and Universal—has been offered in formats designed to make copying and sharing difficult. Apple’s iTunes Music Store—the source of more than 70 percent of all commercial music downloads—limits customers to playing its songs on their iPods or up to five “authorized” computers.

But because it’s being released in the most universal audio format, Simpson’s song, which debuted on July 19 at Yahoo Music and goes on sale at other digital music retailers this week, can be copied and played on an unlimited number of devices, including the iPod. (Posting such digital files on file-sharing networks for anyone to copy is still illegal.)

[I actually think that I’m hallucinating, I think they might just be starting to get it, odds are good for them sellling a lot of these – ED]

More@technologyreview

Lots of people would download music to their phones, if they could find something other than Gnarls Barkley, according to one mobile download infrastructure firm.

The proof of this comes from The Long Tail theory, which in the case of music downloads states that a few songs, like Barkley`s ‘Crazy,’ will have a very high download rate, while classics like the Beatles and more obscure bands like The Go! Team are likely to only have a few downloads each, the chief executive officer of Targetize, Avichai Levy, explained.

Cellular operators can`t afford to keep less popular songs on their limited portals. However, if users had access to unlimited numbers of songs, the collective download rate of songs like those by Beatles or The Go! Team would dwarf the songs currently in the Top 10, Levy told UPI.

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National Geographic is known for bringing the world alive through images and stories. Now it has expanded its representation of global cultures by creating a music exploration and purchasing site, enhanced with content from its National Geographic Channel and elsewhere.

National Geographic World Music blends a music store, powered by Calabash Music, with extensive context provided by videos, maps, photos and features from National Geographic magazines, the National Geographic Channel and other editorial activities of the National Geographic Society.

“World Music is a natural extension of NationalGeographic.com`s rich multimedia experience that entertains, informs and engages consumers who are as passionate about the world`s cultures and the environment as we are,” National Geographic vice president content operations Betsy Scolnik said. “World Music fans around the world will be able to listen and learn in one digital experience.”

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Korea – With music downloading sites beginning to charge subscribers for their file-swapping services, the debate continues as to whether companies should be allowed to profit from peer-to-peer (P2P) music trading on the Internet.

The operators of Soribada (www.soribada.com), the country’s largest peer-to-peer network with more than 15 million users, this week started to charge subscribers a monthly fee of 3,000 won ($3), or another option of 500 won to access their music file sharing services, previously provided for free since the company’s establishment in 2000.

Soribada was heavily pressured by local recording companies and the Korean Association of Phonogram Producers (KAPP). They claimed that free file-swapping services have hurt record sales.

Soribada lost a major legal battle with KAPP last year, when the Seoul Central District Court ordered the Internet company to scrap its free service model and charge subscribers for copyrighted music.

More@thekoreatimes

Digital music has given the UK singles market its best sales for six years, with World Cup songs contributing more than 250,000 downloads alone.

The BPI’s second quarter market report shows that download formats now account for half of all singles sales, and together, single track downloads and bundles combined to more than compensate for declining physical format sales.

A total of 16.7m singles were sold in the quarter, and weekly digital sales are now close to the million mark. So far this year 24.3 million tracks have already been downloaded, just two million short of the total for the whole of 2005.

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Consumers are starting to leave iPods at home in favor of listening to cell phones that store their favorite songs. Should Apple be worried?

At first, 26-year-old London resident Rachel Slack carried around both her Apple iPod and her mobile phone. But in November, after buying a Sony Ericsson W800i Walkman phone with enough memory for about 100 songs, she started leaving her iPod at home. “I always carry my phone with me, but the iPod is an extra. It made sense to just use my phone for both,” Slack says.
Should Apple (AAPL) be worried about people like Slack? Maybe. Phones able to store and play MP3s have been on the market in Europe at least since 2001. But the latest models are starting to encroach on iPod territory in terms of song storage.

Sony Ericsson’s soon-to-be released W950i Walkman phone (expected to cost upwards of $500 before operator subsidies) can hold up to 4,000 songs in 4 GB of solid-state memory—still much less than a 15,000-song, $399 iPod, but plenty for people who don’t need to have their comprehensive collection of 1970s acid-rock albums with them all the time. “It’s all I need on the ride to work in the morning,” says Slack of her Sony Ericsson (SNE) (ERICY).

CELLULAR THREAT. So far, iPod and iTunes sales don’t show any sign of suffering from the proliferation of music phones, analysts say. In Britain about 8% of all adults listen to music stored on their phones, vs. 17% who listen to music on an iPod or other dedicated music player, according to market researcher Gartner Group (see BusinessWeek.com, 4/25/05, “iPod Killers?”).

More@businessweek