A few months ago Spotify introduced the ability to purchase songs and albums directly from them, though it was a little long-winded and hard to find. Users had to right-click on songs to see the “Buy” option before being directed to partner 7digital’s site to complete the purchase.
There is now a clear “Buy” button next to all songs and albums available to purchase and the transaction process is pretty much the same as iTunes.
Despite the lack of success music subscription services have had, entrepreneurs seem to be lining up to have shot at it. We’re hearing about new subscription services every week, and none of them have a USP. They all seem to have the same business model – pay a high monthly fee for a very limited access to music.
The latest company to try their hand at it is satellite television company Sky. Sky’s plan is to charge £7.99 a month for unlimited streaming and 1 album download (or 10 songs) – downloading more songs will cost extra.
Details on the new service are sketchy, some sources say they have partnered with Universal, while others say they have struck deals with all the majors and a number of indie labels.
On September 8th, Apple unveiled its latest ‘innovation’ to help prop up the recorded music industry – the iTunes LP. For only seven bucks more than a regular digital album, you can get some pretty pictures and liner notes. Facepalm!
But the story doesn’t end there.
Last week, Brian McKinney of Chocolate Lab Records told Gizmodo that Apple was charging record labels $10,000 in production costs to release an album in the iTunes LP format – and indie record labels need not apply. Apple later denied that allegation and said it is working on releasing the specs for the LP format and making them available to all, indie and major labels alike.
Regardless of the outcome of this “he said she said” tempest, it amplifies the silliness of the iTunes LP format itself.
Several web developers have dissected the format to find that it is essentially HTML, Javascript, CSS, and multimedia content – a website. For a little more than the cost of an actual physical CD, you get to save files to your hard drive that largely mirror content you can find online, from the artist’s website itself to Wikipedia, YouTube, and others. Read more…
I saw Mike Masnick post this on TechDirt a few days ago but only got around to reading it this morning. This is a paper written by Bas Grasmayer as part of the research for his thesis on the future of music distribution. Bas analyses 5 musical releases that used new business models; Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows‘, Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Ghosts I-IV‘, Groove Armada’s ‘Drop The Tough‘, Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse’s ‘Dark Night of the Soul‘ and Mos Def’s ‘The Ecstatic‘.
After analysing each one he draws the following conclusions:
What does NOT work (well)
Not going all the way. Fans love free music and so do people that are not familiar with the artist’s work, but if you’re going to give something away then really give it away. If you don’t, you won’t get the attention you were hoping and might even disappoint some fans instead of connecting with them.
Radio station to offer web streaming is not news. Web site to offer radio programming is.
CBS Interactive Music Group recently announced that it will begin offering music programming from Last.fm on HD radio stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco beginning October 5th. The stations will effectively hand the broadcasting reins over to the crowd-sourced, music discovery site – bringing listeners “an eclectic mix of music aggregated and influenced by the service’s user-generated weekly charts, combined with live performances and interviews from the Last.fm studios in New York, and event updates.”
According to CBS, this is the “first time a music website has been transformed into its own broadcast entity.”
The Apple event took place yesterday after weeks of anticipation and among the big announcements; a new and improved iTunes 9 (surprise surprise), a new, cheaper iPod Touch line, a new iPod Nano equipped with a video camera and microphone (don’t look at me), increased storage and price cut for iPod classics and a “genius” function for the iPhone and iPod touch that creates playlists based on your history.
But what you all really want to know about is the not-so-top-secret “Cocktail” project. Well, I can reveal that Apple has launched a new digital album format called iTunes LP.
The iTunes LP is pretty much as we expected. It’s a digital album with extra features such as music videos, artwork, liner notes, lyrics, photo albums, bonus tracks etc.
While the actual report is only available to Forrester customers, the company’s blog reveals that the plan involves broad “music release windows,” similar to the chart on the right. “Premium” content is released first, followed by a “mainstream” release at a later time, and eventually wide dissemination to free and “feels like free” services.
Judging by comments on the Forrester blog and elsewhere, many scoff at the idea of regaining content scarcity through this staggered release approach. “What about pre-release leaks?” they ask. True, the industry has increasingly bumped up release dates of albums – Jay-Z’s latest came out three days early today – in part to combat the problem of early copies leaking onto the internet. But it’s important to keep in mind that large swaths of music listeners are not running around downloading leaked copies of albums off torrent sites.
On August 28th Apple announced that they had approved the Spotify iPhone app. Yesterday, the music streaming service officially launched in the app store and you can now download it for your iPhone or Android.
I myself don’t have an iPhone so I can’t give it a test drive (as much as I am dying to!), but early reviews say it is pretty much just as it was described in the video demo we saw back in July (see it after the jump).
As we said before; the mobile service is only available to Spotify premium users, so if you want it on your phone you’ll have to sign up to the €10 ($15) a month agreement.
The most exciting feature about the mobile app is the “offline mode”. Spotify can cache a playlist created by the user and allows you to play it offline, for example in the subway or on a plane. I’ve also been told the streaming is lightening quick compared to other services.
At the moment the app is only available in Europe, a U.S. launch is expected later this year.
For my fellow Europeans, you can download the app here. Hit the jump for the video demo.
In March YouTube banned thousands of music videos in the U.K. after a dispute over licensing fees with PRS for Music. It took 6 months but it looks like PRS have given in and music videos will return to YouTube in the next couple of days.
Instead of a per-stream fee, YouTube will pay PRS for Music a lump sum backdated to January and lasting until 2010. The sum of money has not been disclosed.
PRS seem to be happy with the new deal. A spokeswoman for the Performing Rights Society told BBC News; “it is a lump sum deal which seems to work for YouTube’s business model and offers recompense for our 60,000 members. We can be friends again.”
Music retailer HMV has bought a 50% stake in 7Digital for £7.7 million ($12.6 million) as it hopes to enter the world of digital media.
The digital media firm, which provides services for Spotify, Last.fm and major music labels and artists, will use its expertise to handle all of HMV’s digital operations, including a new e-book store for its Waterstones arm.
“This is an exciting step for HMV which transforms our position in the fast-growing digital market,” said Simon Fox, chief executive of HMV Group. “We believe 7digital is the best partner to help us accelerate our growth in digital entertainment and to become a major player in the market for legally downloaded entertainment. Along with our recent initiatives, it demonstrates the Group’s continuing focus on transformation in structurally changing markets.”
HMV is very late to hop on the digital train, it’s been almost 9 years since iTunes came onto the scene. This is a deal that should have been done 6 years ago. Perhaps the collapse of retail competitors Zaavi and Woolworths made it realise that it needs to make some drastic changes if it wants to survive.
Despite the lack of success music subscription services have had, entrepreneurs seem to be lining up to have shot at it. We’re hearing about new subscription services every week, and none of them have a USP. They all seem to have the same business model – pay a high monthly fee for a very limited access to music.
On September 8th, Apple unveiled its latest ‘innovation’ to help prop up the recorded music industry – the iTunes LP. For only seven bucks more than a regular digital album, you can get some pretty pictures and liner notes. 
I saw Mike Masnick post this on 
Radio station to offer web streaming is not news. Web site to offer radio programming is.
The Apple event took place yesterday after weeks of anticipation and among the big announcements; a new and improved 
On August 28th Apple announced that they had 
In March YouTube 
Music retailer HMV has bought a 50% stake in 7Digital for £7.7 million ($12.6 million) as it hopes to enter the world of digital media.
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