April 30, 2007

April 27, 2007

For his part, Best Buy's Mr. Arnold says the blame for waning consumer interest in CDs lies with the record labels, not with stores like his. "Music has become a commoditized item," he says. "The CD is perceived by the consumer to be a $10 item, and the manufacturers continue to release new titles at $15 to $18.98." To remedy that situation, he says he has urged labels to move to a "paperback-book model," with no-frills packages priced cheaply for most customers, and more deluxe presentations for die-hard fans.

Chain retailers are unlikely to eliminate music altogether. Big-box chains often set CD prices so low the retailer loses a dollar or two on the most aggressively priced titles. If nothing else, Mr. Arnold readily acknowledges, music remains cheap bait to lure customers who may end up purchasing, say, a brushed-steel refrigerator. "I couldn't imagine Best Buy without music," he says.

...CDBaby's "long tail" business has expanded from selling physical CDs (including mine) to supplying digitised versions to the subscription download services. CDBaby supplies 1.5m songs, or about a third of the iTunes catalogue.

Beyond the odd and cheap laugh, many a celebrity song foray puts up a fascinating and in some cases deeply unsettling window into the psyche of a given star. And believe it or not, some of them actually offer genuine musical pleasure independent of the circumstances of their creation. But each one of them offers a form of what we'll call, for lack of a better word, entertainment.

April 26, 2007

April 24, 2007

"It doesn't compare," Silver said of the sound quality offered by today's portable digital music players and their compressed audio files.

If his high-end gear is like a Ferrari for sound, and run-of-the-mill stereo equipment is a Honda, an iPod is "a moped," Silver said.

Heh. 40+ years ago, little plastic transistorized AM radios with 2" speakers (and a single crystal earphone for private listening) made fidelity take a backseat to portability.

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Give it a couple of years and it will get better. It has only been limited to allow for the lack of broadband over the years. As that becomes a thing of past, developers will make use of the extra bandwidth available.

When P2P started, everyone was doing 128kbps, now 360kbps is almost the standard.

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I will say that an MP3 on an iPod sounds MUCH better than my sister's record player did playing 45s when we were kids.

My folk's "hi fi" system was nothing special either.

April 20, 2007

April 19, 2007

Amazon predictions, part 1: The future of online music stores?

Amazon predictions, part 2: Selling digital music and CDs together

Amazon predictions, part 3: Adapting the eMusic subscription model

Amazon predictions, part 4: Additional digital music-related services

Final thoughts (for now) on an Amazon digital music service

Hypebot's advice for Amazon

Amazon rumors continued

Is Amazon's Music Strategy Stalled?

Part 2: Is Amazon's Music Strategy Stalled?

April 18, 2007

Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced it has joined forces with more than 30 independent music labels to launch "Go Indie," a new section in its Indie music store designed to introduce music lovers of all genres to indie music and existing indie fans to the best independent labels and artists. "Go Indie" features a hand-picked selection of nearly 700 titles, 150 of which carry a reduced price of $9.99.

Alligator Records, Anti, Astralwerks, Barsuk, Beggars Group, Bloodshot Records, Compass Records, Domino Records, Epitaph, Fat Possum, Hellcat, Koch Records, Matador, Megaforce, Mute, New West, Putumayo, Rykodisc, Sci Fidelity, Silva, Six Degrees, Smithsonian Folkways, Spin Art, Sub Pop, Sugar Hill, Touch N Go, Ultra, Vagrant, World Music Network and Yep Roc.

In 1986, the pop band Wang Chung released the ludicrous but catchy party anthem "Everybody Have Fun Tonight." Now two of the musicians behind the band have hatched a plan that might seem even more absurd than the lyric "everybody Wang Chung tonight." More than two decades after the song became a smash hit, they are recording it again.

But they have their reasons. In the decade and a half since Wang Chung dissolved, the licensing of music to advertisers, television and movies has become more acceptable -- and much more lucrative -- for performers from the past. And by remaking their own hits, these artists can keep a much bigger share of the proceeds. "To re-record our back catalog is a way of empowering ourselves," said Nick Feldman of Wang Chung. "We can be much more selective about where these songs end up and how much we charge for them."

Labels: eMusic, music licensing, sound alike music

April 17, 2007

April 12, 2007

Beginning next month, EMI Music will offer iTunes customers its huge catalog of music with higher audio quality and no usage restrictions. For just 30 cents more per track, you'll be able to purchase and download music free of digital rights management (or DRM) that’s encoded at 256 Kbps (twice the current bit rate), making it all but indistinguishable from the original.

April 11, 2007

No matter what people say or do, no matter how well funded the challenger, that installed base is what propels Apple away from all competitors. Plus, the ease of use of iTunes makes the wireless option a moot point. People don't, in a vacuum, download songs. They don't walk down the street and download songs. They like to listen to the snippet on iTunes, browse other songs and then buy something. I am confident that if wireless were a really big deal Apple would just put in a wireless chip and call everyone even. The iPhone probably will make all of this stuff happen if Apple chooses.

Jeff Price, owner of the New York independent label SpinArt, started TuneCore to provide the same services as other aggregators, but using a flat-fee model. Clients -- record labels or artists -- pay a one-time charge of 99 cents a song, plus a handful of other modest fees. For example, a five-song "album," sold for a year on four different online music stores, would cost a user $18.89. Each additional year selling the album on the services would cost $9.98.

TuneCore then passes along 100% of the wholesale price it receives from iTunes, eMusic.com or others. (That fee is about 62 cents from iTunes; eMusic calculates its payments to record labels using a more complicated formula that generally results in much lower payments per song sold, TuneCore says.)

April 10, 2007

Consumers have embraced the iPod, which went on sale in November 2001, far more quickly than they did Sony Corp.'s Walkman, the pioneering cassette player and headphones introduced in 1979 that changed how people listened to music. It took Sony about 14 years to sell 100 million Walkman devices. Apple of Cupertino, Calif., reached the same milestone in just over a third of the same time.

The idea is to give users a way to download new music on the go, something the iPod doesn't currently allow users to do. Even Apple's new iPhone, due out in June, won't initially let people buy music wirelessly. "The iPod is very much a pod. It provides functionality and an ecosystem that is somewhat cocooned," says Daniel Schreiber, a senior vice president at SanDisk. Apple declined to comment.

A key question: Will consumers pay the extra 30 cents? Where price points are concerned, a dollar is magic. You don't complain if your soda costs that much, you understand the bartender gets a single for each beer handed across the bar, and there's a reason it's not called the $1.29 Store. Whether your purchase is the stuff of routine or whim, a dollar isn't much worth worrying about -- even if you're online where that dollar is just bits rearranging themselves somewhere. But go higher than a dollar, and you start doing math.

April 09, 2007

How do I get paid, and how much?
Through CD Baby and SNOCAP you basically get $.63 per track, and we will pay you just like all of our digital retailers -- once they report your sales to us, we'll pay you the following Monday. Note that this is MORE than you would make if you went through SNOCAP directly, since we worked out a special deal with them.

April 05, 2007

We've spent the last several weeks trying to resolve two serious problems with the system, one of which is caused by Windows Vista and the other by Windows Media Player 11. The problem with Media Player is the worst of the two and we have been unable to find a solution.

As many have noticed, the new version of Windows Media Player will not play Weed files after you try to buy them. Windows Media Player 11 will gain in usage over time and the problem will become more common as it does. Rather than operate under steadily deteriorating conditions, we've decided to suspend operations.

"How does lala incentivize the churning of cd's (of course we delete everything afterwords) (winkwink) to keep the system running and active even during times when high volume new users aren't being added by the boatload?"

"Just rip and ship!! keep the supply flowing!! More trades is good for everyone."

April 04, 2007

The new higher quality DRM-free music will complement EMI's existing range of standard DRM-protected downloads already available. From today, EMI's retailers will be offered downloads of tracks and albums in the DRM-free audio format of their choice in a variety of bit rates up to CD quality.

...eMusic is currently making an average of $14 per customer per month on a subscriber base "well north of 250,000." This translates into an annual revenue run rate of at least $42 million and likely more. An asking price of near $100 million would thus represent just over two times annual revenue. Given that Amazon would be acquiring a paying customer base (many of whom are locked into 1-year or 2-year contracts) this seems a realistic figure and certainly a far cry from the speculative nature of a YouTube deal.

EU spokesman Jonathan Todd blamed the record companies for this situation. He said regulators considered Apple to be more a victim than a culprit. "This is an arrangement imposed on Apple by the record companies," Mr. Todd said. "The main focus of our attention is the major record companies."

April 03, 2007

Purchase price (relative to CDs and the variable pricing issue), DRM, sound quality, and convenience. And by convenience I mean both the instant gratification of downloads vs. a trip to the store and the option to purchase individual tracks instead of an entire record.