The Equity Kicker

As reported by Tim Bradshaw in the FT today, and also on the Guardian blog there is a new release of Spotfiy out imminently that will allow you to import your current music collection and mix it seamlessly with the Spotify streaming service.  The great thing about on-demand streaming services is the range of [...]

Mike Masnick has a post up on Techdirt with this great description of the changes afoot in the music industry (emphasis mine):

You may have heard that the music industry is sort of falling apart. It isn’t really a matter of there being less money in the pool – just that the money people [...]

Peter Kafka has a piece up on MediaMemo reporting that Universal Music Group is pushing a plan to sell CDs at a retail price of $10 or less.  They have done some tests which show that such a move might dramatically increase sales:

In the last few months, Trans World Entertainment [...]

Daniel Ek, founder of Spotify, was interviewed at SXSW today.  There is a full write up on VentureBeat which is well worth a read if you are interested in this space, but the standout nugget for me is captured in the following quotes from Ek.  They capture the industries main challenge, the [...]

As you may have seen Edgar Bronfman Jr, CEO of Warner Music Group, yesterday came out against free streaming services, saying the following (full article on the BBC website):

Free streaming services are clearly not net positive for the industry and as far as Warner Music is concerned will not be licensed. [...]

The Vancouver Sun recently posted a list of the top ten music earners of the last decade.  Aside from being shocked at how few newish stars made the list I was interested to see that nearly all of them made more money from concert ticket sales than album sales.  It would be interesting to [...]

As you have probably seen, following a failure to agree royalties with the artists representatives the Performing Rights Society YouTube is pulling music videos from it’s UK site.

This is the sort of destructive argument that happens when an industry is more focused on the short term than the long [...]

Mike Arrington has a great write up on a lunch he had with un -named executive from a major record label which throws some light on why the music industry continues to look so clueless.

According to this executive:

The labels fully understand that recorded music, streamed or downloaded, is going to be free [...]