Internet Radio Still Strong

Thirty-three million Americans age 12 or older (i.e. approximately 13% of the U.S. population) listen to an Internet radio station during the average week, up from 29 million a year ago, according to “The Annual Infinite Dial 2008: Radio's Digital Platforms” from Arbitron and Edison Media Research. The complete study, will be released next month.

Word of the Day....

“verticialization” – used by Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO of Research in Motion during the recent Canadian Music Week's digital music & media summit.

 

Wal-Mart Gets Tough With The Major Labels

Wal-Mart has recently proposed a new five-tiered pricing scheme that would allow it to sell albums at even lower prices and require the labels to bear more of the costs…(= less money for artists) While the proposal was presented only as a starting point, one label executive said, "This sounds like the Hail Mary pass, and if it doesn't work, they could be out of the music business; or maybe they reduce music down to a couple of racks from the 4,000 titles carried by Wal-Marts with larger selections.”

Favorite Quote of the Week

When asked about differentiating himself from others in the rapidly evolving home-automation market, “Addressing the broader market isn’t accomplished through establishing simple levels of product defined by cost…We stay #1 by listening to, caring for, and appreciating our customers more than anything else.  Our customers are our partners, our friends and our family.  We will never do anything to compromise that value.”  -- Randy Klein, EVP Crestron

The End of The Music Industry

Forrester Research is now predicting that half of all music sold in the U.S. will be digital by 2011, with the tide turning against the CD in 2012. "This is the end of the music industry as we know it," stated James McQuivey, VP and principal analyst at Forrester... "experiments in ad-supported downloads will be silenced by the powerful combination of DRM-free music and on-demand music streaming on sites like imeem.com."  McQuivey says that ad-supported Web music services are not the future and that ad-supported music should be "on the radio where it belongs."
OK, maybe I'm missing something here, so what does he call all the banner ads we're forced to see to get to the free on-demand streams....?  Aren't the licenses for this music being subsidized by the advertising, in addition to equity being given to the labels??

Quote of the Day

"To disable the Internet to save EMI and Disney is the moral equivalent of burning down the library of Alexandria to ensure
 the livelihood of monastic scribes."  --Jon Ippolito, of the Guggenheim, on the CBDTPA

 

(Thanks Paul S.!)

 

Universal Sues DivX

Here’s a great blog post by Davis Freeberg on the recent suit UMG has files against DivX’s Stage 6 video site…Personally, I’m glad to see a company with deep pockets challenge a major label under the Safe Harbor provision of the DMCA, but this will no doubt drag on and be very expensive!  “In a legal filing published late Tuesday night, Judge Dana Sabraw dismissed DivX’s request to declare Stage6 legal, ahead of their UMG piracy trial.”

Cell Phone Sales Still Strong

According to the latest figures from Strategy Analytics, “329 million mobile handsets were sold worldwide in Q4 2007. Volumes increased at 12.3% annually. Three of the top five brands saw sequential increase in average selling prices (ASP). Nokia attained 41% market share, revenues and operating profits continued to grow at double digit levels. Motorola and Sony Ericsson slipped to the third position in CDMA and UMTS respectively, Samsung occupied the second spot in both categories. Among others, RIM and Apple gained share, with Apple coming slightly below expectations.”

CD Baby has the largest digital distribution catalog in the world!

Here’ a great story about CD Baby and its founder, Derek Sivers….I’ve always been a big fan and my favorite quote sums it up:  “From the grass roots to the elite, the music industry has taken notice of Sivers, who has rejected lucrative offers to sell his company and declined payments to give preferential placement of an artist's disc on the site. It's never been about the money for Sivers; it's always been about helping musicians. This ethos prompted Esquire magazine to dub him "one of the last music-business folk heroes."

Freescale Buys SigmaTel

Neither story has received a lot of press yet, but in my opinion, BOTH are pretty big deals….

 

“Freescale Semiconductor, plotting a future in digital media, agreed to buy SigmaTel in a $110 million deal.  Freescale, a wireless chip maker that was taken private last year, said Monday that it will pay $3 share for Austin, Texas-based SigmaTel. The deal represents a 67% premium over SigmaTel's closing price of $1.79 Friday.  Shares of SigmaTel surged 52% in pre-market trading Monday.  SigmaTel makes semiconductors for a variety of consumer devices, including media players and some models of Apple's iPods.  The news comes just days after Freescale's largest customer, Motorola, announced that it was exploring the possible sale of its mobile phone business.”

 

PRESS RELEASE:   "The increased demand for feature rich, always-connected consumer electronics devices is driving manufacturers to look for platform-based solutions that will accelerate time to market," said Phil Pompa, president and CEO of SigmaTel. "With the addition of SigmaTel, Freescale is the obvious choice for these next-generation devices."  "The SigmaTel acquisition enhances the long-term, strategic value we can deliver to our customers," said Lynelle McKay, senior vice president and general manager of Freescale's Networking and Multimedia Group. "Freescale's proven strengths in the high-performance multimedia and general purpose markets are complemented by SigmaTel's strong mixed-signal expertise in the portable media player and consumer audio markets."

 

 

 

New Paragon Media Research

According to Paragon Media Strategies, "14-24 year olds are actively designing radio that's not on the radio. The average (median) young adult has 500 songs on their computer, 400 songs on their MP3 player, and 50 CDs. 14-18 year-olds have more than double the number of songs that 19-24s have on their computers and MP3 players."  There's some good research available on the site and it seems to be free - if you sign up for an account.....

iTunes on DVD

I haven’t seen much chatter about this new value-add feature of buying a physical disc, but I’ve been a proponent of this ‘something extra’ strategy for years with regards to the music industry…(I’m glad to see the movie industry learning from the music industry’s mistakes…)

“Buy select DVDs and you get something extra free: an iTunes Digital Copy. Just pop the DVD into your computer and the iTunes version transfers to your iTunes library, ready to watch or sync to your iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV. Look for “iTunes Digital Copy” on the DVDs you buy, starting with the DVD release of Family Guy: Blue Harvest Special Edition.”

 

New COBY Video Content Partnership

Coby Electronics and WoozyFly.com (an online music media company devoted to independent music) recently announced a strategic digital content alliance that will deliver Coby MP3 players, MP4 and Portable Media players bundled with original WoozyFly.com music video content to Coby customers globally…Beginning this month, select Coby players will feature WoozyFly’s original videos from the leading artists on the indie music scene…

 

 

 

Quote For The Day

“We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I
would answer, To hell with them. The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do.”

- Michael Foot

Yamaha's New Visible Music Interface: TENORI-ON

Some of you may have already heard about this, but Yamaha recently introduced a new digital musical instrument for the 21st century called TENORI-ON, which has been named among the 25 Most Innovative Products of the Year by PCWorld.com. The TENORI-ON is "an ‘Inspired and intuitive handheld instrument that redefines music-making and screams innovation,’ adding, ‘nothing else even comes close'."

So......in other words, it allows anyone and everyone to create and play music with no training or talent! Yamaha truly has created a new "visible music" interface, and if it catches any legs, get ready for even more user generated content online and perhaps even a new genre of music :-)

http://www.global.yamaha.com/tenori-on/

Also, here's a link to a 3 minute video on YouTube.