Tag: Digital Music
NOISE GATE: 6 Tenets for a New Music Industry, Part One
Last week I had the pleasure of attending a roundtable event in conjunction with Intel (and their Intel Studio initiative) that discussed a very grand subject – the future of music. It’s a big subject, and one that, for some reason, everyone’s got an opinion on in the technology world. In conjunction between that event and thoughts I’ve been having for a long time on how music will change in the future, here’s six tenets that I think will permeate the next wave of music creation and discovery:
- 1)Music must be sharable – word of mouth is more important than ever
- 2)Revenue must come from multiple sources – if one bit of the industry becomes obsolete, it shouldn’t sink the whole ship
- 3)New technologies are to be welcomed and understood, not feared and litigated against
- 4)A&R can be crowdsourced, but remember the long tail
- 5)”Added value” is key – give people a reason not to pirate things – carrots, not sticks
- 6)Your artists are your most important spokespeople
I’ll go into detail about each one over the next six weeks – but today, I’m going to discuss the first in the list – how essential it is to be able to easily share music. Click over the jump for my thoughts.
Datz Music Lounge – Unlimited, DRM-free MP3s for £100 a year. Too good to be true?
Let the record show that I’m very suspicious about this one. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been in touch with a company called Datz who claim that they’ve got a product, launching this weekend, which will give you unlimited MP3 downloads for a year, for a one-off price of £99…
NOISE GATE: Do geeks know anything about the music business?
An almighty beef has kicked off between Idolator and Listening Post, where the former has blasted the latter with a headline accusing them of stupidity, claiming that “online nerds” don’t know anything about the music business.
It started with the disclosure of EMI’s financial data the other day. In that, it was revealed that 88% of EMI’s artists make a loss, almost 50 per cent of CDs were returned unsold in April and May 2007, and the label spent £700,000 on taxis in London in the last financial year. To anyone but old-school music business people, that would seem ridiculous and not a good way to run a company, right…?
NOISE GATE: Doug Morris must be replaced at Universal
Doug Morris, pictured over the jump, is the chairman of Universal Music – the biggest record label in the world. His contract has just been renewed, but given that the recorded music industry is in freefall and he’s admitted in the past that “there’s no one in the record company that’s a technologist”, is he really the right person to be heading up the careers of artists like The Killers, Elbow and Girls Aloud?
I say no. Morris has a long history in the industry – he headed up Warner Music before moving to Universal – but at the moment, one of the biggest issues with record companies face is that the old, traditional way of doing things simply doesn’t work anymore…
Spotify – stream all the music you could ever want
Gosh. I can get a bit jaded with all the rubbish new music services I get bombarded with every day, which is why it’s such a breath of fresh air when something comes along that ticks every single box. For me, Spotify is that thing. Spotify is a streaming service. It just streams, but by golly does it do it well. It has three things that set it apart from other, similar offerings – catalogue, speed and social functions…
NOISE GATE: Record Labels vs. Guitar Hero – who owes who?
Over the last month or so, there’s been an almighty argument between music labels and makers of rhythm games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band over who owes who. Major labels claim that the games wouldn’t exist without the music, but the games developers point out that the music in the games gets a massive promotional benefit. Who’s right? Click over the jump for my opinion…
Gibson releasing free limited edition high-def guitar album online
Gibson Guitar has announced that it’s releasing a music album, featuring performances by some of the world’s best guitarists, exclusively for download from HDTracks.com.
Gibson Presents: Hot Tones in High-Definition will be available for just sixty days from 6th October (yesterday, by my calculations, though the web site still lists it as “available for download soon”) in a variety of high quality audio formats including uncompressed AIFF and FLAC and 320kbps MP3, all DRM-free…
Baylis Eco MP3 player is a wind-up
No really, you have to wind it up. The new MP3 player from Trevor Baylis, powered entirely by renewable energy (i.e. crazy winding action) has finally arrived, allowing you to take your music anywhere without the need for batteries…
UPDATED: MySpace Music launches… just not in the UK
Licensing sucks. That’s the conclusion that I’ve come to. It means that we in the UK can’t watch any of the music and video-on-demand services from the States, like Pandora and Hulu. Given that most of the players involved operate globally, I’m amazed that global licensing isn’t more commonplace, but this post isn’t about licensing. It’s just that licensing is preventing me from giving you a proper review of MySpace Music – which launched at 8am this morning…
RUMOUR: Amazon MP3 on the gPhone
There’s a rumour floating around the interweb that Amazon’s MP3 store will be available on Google’s forthcoming mobile phone, which there’ll be an announcement on later today. If it’s true, it would be a powerful boot in the face to Apple, Nokia and Sony Ericsson, all of whom have either launched, or are preparing, mobile music stores.
