World Music

Warner Music Owner Bets on Competing Digital Services By Ben Sisario - March 6, 2013 - NY Times: Media Decoder Blog Len Blavatnik, the Russian-born billionaire investor who bought the Warner  Music Group two years ago, has placed big bets on multiple digital music services as the streaming model grows around the world. Daisy — still only a code name, and not confirmed as the service’s eventual brand name — will compete with Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio and others by letting users stream millions of songs by subscription.Mr. Blavatnik’s holding company, Access Industries , is one of several parties investing $60 million in Daisy , a planned service by Beats Electronics, the high-end headphone company, Beats announced late Tuesday. The others are Marc Rowan of Apollo Global Management ; James Packer, of Australia; and the Texas oil heir Lee M. Bass. Read More: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/warner-music-owner-bets-on-competing-digital-services/

I Teach Guitar to Students Aged 10-24. And This Is How They Consume Music... By Paul Resnikoff - March 7, 2013 - Digital Music News I teach guitar to about 34 students. Age range: from 10-early twenties. So that is pretty much the people that you would like to sell (your) music too, right? Pretty much the kinda folks that (we) try to convince to use legal music subscription services. So what I gotta tell you about them is this: None of them have an iPod. They all have cell phones with unlimited internet. What do they do with it? Text, use WhatsApp to text even more and they sure as hell don't use a music subscription service that is legal - even though it doesn't pay a fair rate to the artist - etc.

Countering The Commoditization Of Music By Giving Credit And Creating Value By Solveig Whittle - March 5, 2013 - Hypebot.com Ubiquity drives the commoditization of music and other intellectual property, lowering value and decreasing discovery. Giving credit, or attribution, counteracts this effect and creates value. Read More: http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2013/03/countering-the-commoditization-of-music-by-giving-credit.html#

YouTube Plays Now Factored Into Billboard Ranking, Helps Make "Harlem Shake" #1 By D.L. Chandler - Feb. 21, 2013 - Hip Hop Wired Billboard has teamed with consumer information company Nielsen and will now factor YouTube video plays when ranking songs on the "Hot 100" singles chart. Baauer's smash hit, “Harlem Shake,” has already benefited, landing at No. 1 on the aforementioned chart. A new venture was announced yesterday, revolutionizing how Billboard tracks the rise of hit songs in a variety of genres. Before the deal, Nielsen tracked digital sales, physical copies, radio airplay and other traditional means of media delivery. Now, Billboard will collect streaming data on all of YouTube's official music videos using Nielsen's information measurements. Essentially, a streaming video click on YouTube will be counted as a radio spin Additionally, user-generated videos that have official use of original music will also have their streams counted and factore...

Could Amazon sell secondhand digital music? By Tom Pakinkis - February 11, 2013 - From Music Week A patent for re-selling digital content has been granted to online retailer Amazon. The patent describes a service similar to ReDigi in the US, which has raised copyright concerns with Capitol Records accusing the company of infringement . The Amazon patent , which was filed in 2009 but granted last month, covers “digital objects including e-books, audio, video, computer applications etc” and could be implemented “when the user no longer desires to retain the right to access the now-used digital content. “The user may move the used digital content to another user’s personalised data store when permissible and the used digital content is deleted from the originating user’s personalised data store,” it says. The mechanism could be problematic for rights holders, if they are left out of the loop when it comes to gaining revenue from second-hand digital sales, which could cannibalise sales at ...

The dangers of seeing streaming music royalties as a ‘trickle’ By Stuart Dredge - January 30th, 2013 - From Music Ally For the most part, the debate over artists’ income from streaming music services has been conducted in trade publications and websites. It’s breaking out now though: check the New York Times’ feature headlined ‘As Music Streaming Grows, Royalties Slow to a Trickle’ , which kicks off by focusing on an individual New Yorker who now spends $10 a month on Spotify rather than $30 a month buying music, and then jumps back to cellist Zoe Keating’s reveal last year of her Pandora and Spotify payouts. Cause for angry fist-biting from executives at Spotify, its rivals and the labels who are so invested in them? Well, don’t jump too fast. Read More: http://musically.com/2013/01/30/streaming-music-royalties-trickle/

Universal Music Publishing 'Now Has the Power to Shut Pandora Down...' By Paul Resnikoff - Feb. 5, 2013 - From Digital Music News Perhaps the only question is why Pandora 's top executives aren't cashing out faster . Because it's becoming increasingly apparent that this company lacks a sustainable business model, even if they successfully force recording royalty reductions through Congress. Enter Universal Music Publishing Group, which now looks like the second publishing behemoth to independently negotiate its rates with Pandora. The first step involves the cancellation of digital performance contacts with ASCAP and BMI, already in motion. The next step is creating a new deal with Pandora, on their terms. Read More: http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/20130205umpg#-k5VKaX6LZyfbRB042A-Fw

South Korea leads world digital music consumption Feb. 5, 2013 - Telecompaper South Korea is leading the world in the transition from physical to digital music, with digital services accounting for 56 percent of all consumer spending on full-track music in the country in 2012, according to data from IHS iSuppli. The pace of South Korea's transition to digital music leads all other countries, including major economies such as the US, currently in second place, and the UK, ranked third. However, based on current trends, the US is expected by 2016 to ascend to the market's top spot, followed by the UK. Read More: http://www.telecompaper.com/news/south-korea-leads-world-digital-music-consumption--923085