The combined technologies of Gracenote and Omnifone provide consumers with a personalized, holistic music experience delivering immediate and unlimited access to millions of music tracks, and the freedom to download, make playlists, get recommendations, play music wherever they are, whenever they want, on any device they choose. For example, users can create a comprehensive U2 playlist at home on their PC using a combination of their own collection and the unlimited music service, and start playing it in their living room. Then, get in their car, and have it pick up where they left off. Later, when they are at a club, they can search for music they are looking for, then download it and have it synched to all of their devices, and get recommendations for other music they might like based on genre or user generated recommendations. On each device, the most appropriate file format and user interface is presented to ensure the best possible user experience for that environment.

Synchronization of personal and service content with a unified consumer experience across all platforms is paramount to achieving the dramatic growth analysts project for music consumption over the next three years. Forrester’s December 2008 Jupiter Research forecast says U.S. digital music sales will grow by 17 percent per year on average over the next five years to make up 41 percent of sales by 2013, while Juniper Research predicts the success of unlimited music services on mobile platforms will significantly grow digital music revenues, with subscription-based unlimited digital music services overtaking “first generation” pay-per-track services and worth U.S. $3.3 billion by 2012.

“We understand that consumers want access to all music content, as well as a consistent digital media experience no matter where they are — on the go, at home, or in the car. What we are demonstrating is a next-generation music solution to the industry that addresses this consumer demand,” said Jim Hollingsworth, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Gracenote. “This is an example of the future digital entertainment experience, and exemplifies the direction that commerce, content and technology companies should be headed.”

“Omnifone’s partnership with Gracenote will make connected unlimited music services a reality in the living room, in the car, on mobile devices, and computers; everywhere we go our music collections, playlists, and recommendations will follow seamlessly, automatically and without wires. Historically, unlimited music service providers have focused on mobile and PC platforms, but consumers want access to music in the living room and the car, as much as the mobile and desktop computer,” said Rob Lewis, CEO of Omnifone. “This announcement means music lovers will soon have the freedom to access and consume unlimited music legally, across a wide range of device platforms, with the most appropriate user interface and file format for each device, synchronized automatically rather than having to side-load, back-up or rip compact discs.”

Ars readers will remember that when iTunes Plus was introduced, it offered higher-quality, DRM-free tracks for $1.29 each before Apple reduced prices back to 99¢ across the board. Today, Apple promised that by the end of this quarter, all 10 million iTunes songs will be DRM-free, and released at the higher-quality 256 kbps iTunes Plus bitrate. This policy change applies across the board to all four major music labels (Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, and EMI) as well as thousands of independent labels.

“We are thrilled to be able to offer our iTunes customers DRM-free iTunes Plus songs in high quality audio and our iPhone 3G customers the ability to download music from iTunes anytime, anywhere over their 3G network at the same price as downloading to your computer or via Wi-Fi,” said non-Macworld-attending Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a statement. The price change policy will take effect in April of this year.

The 69¢ price point will likely apply to back catalog tracks, while the $1.29 per track price will probably be linked to the newest releases and exclusive singles. Flexible pricing has long been expected as a condition of iTunes universally dropping its digital rights management (DRM) and it seems like today’s announcement represents a realization of that compromise.

So does this represent a win for iTunes customers? Certainly the move away from DRM is a step forward for all customers. As for the tiered pricing, it depends on how you shop for and listen to music. If you prefer to listen to the newest, hottest tracks, this move will likely represent a 30 percent hit on the pocketbook, albeit a DRM-free and (likely) higher-quality hit. For back catalog customers, the lower 69¢ per track price may prove welcome, although it’s unclear how album prices will be affected. Many album purchases, both recent and back-catalog, already have per-track prices that are significantly lower than 99¢/track.

Reports suggest that Apple is set to announce the roll out of DRM-free music from all four majors on its iTunes store at the Macworld conference in San Francisco.

A report on Cnet.com quotes “two sources close to the negotiations”, who claim that under the new deal, song prices will be broken down into three categories – older tracks, midline (ie newer songs that aren’t big hits) and current hits.

As well as selling songs from all four majors free from DRM, iTunes will also offer variable pricing and Apple has also struck a deal to sell downloads over-the-air, the report claims.

Cnet’s source says that the deal could be announced as early as today (Tuesday).

Apple did not wish to comment on speculation.

The track equivalent album is a common measure that converts individual track sales into albums and adds the result to proper album sales. Typically, ten tracks equals one album (because they have the same wholesale value). This is a good way to gauge the impact of consumers’ movement to single tracks and away from albums. Even though digital album and track sales were up in 2008, track equivalent albums dropped 8.6%.

Looking for a bright side somewhere? Here’s one: track equivalent albums dropped 9.6% in 2007.

On the other side, consider the impact of digital track sales. If you convert all 1.07 billion track sales in 2008, you get 107 million digital albums. That’s considerably more than the number of digital albums that actually sold in 2008, but it’s far short of the 362 million CDs that consumers purchased in 2008. In terms of revenue, minutes of music purchased, and total tracks, the CD is still and by far the dominant format.

In 2008, growth rates for both tracks and digital albums nearly converged around 30%. The bad news is the days of explosive growth rates are gone. The good news is unit increases get bigger while the growth rates drop. With no new retailer or business model on the horizon, and with iPhone applications better at free music services than enticing purchases, expect digital growth rates to continue their downward trajectory.

Predictions are easy. Being good at them is much harder. As I’ve been working on my predictions for the music industry for 2009, however, three recurring themes seem to be dominating the industry conversation as we begin the new year.

DEMOCRATIZATION -  Giving entrepreneurs, artists and even fans the tools to compete with the major labels and mass media.

DATA -  Gathering and crunching actionable date. As you explore all of these new avenues for music discovery, what is working?  How do you break a band in 2009?

MONETIZATION – If you can’t make money at it, you probably can’t keep doing it. But how do you monetize music in a down economy?

I explore these trends a bit further and name trendsetting companies to keep an eye on the MidemNet blog with a post 3 Trends, 12 Companies & 1 Wild Card To Watch in 2009.

Dissatisfied with the lack of revenue they are getting at YouTube and elsewhere, the four major label groups are exploring the launch of their joint video music site.

“Plans under discussion include a partnership with Hulu, the online television and film joint venture between News Corp and NBC Universal; the creation of a premium service on YouTube, Google’s video-sharing site; or a standalone venture between some or all of the four largest recorded music groups,” reports the Financial Times.

Does another video site? It’s doubtful. But the major’s attitude appears to to be “If you can’t beat them, we better compete with them.”

Gerd Leonhard

Image by  via CrunchBaseImage by via CrunchBase Cross-posted from the MidemNet blog (Dec 6, 2008). A lot of people ask me why I am so seriously into Twitter, why Twitter matters, and why I recommend that every music industry professional should give it a try.    First, for the still-uninitiated: what is Twitter?  It’s a so-called micro-blogging service that allows you to send up to 140 character messages (called Tweets) to people that ‘follow you’, both on the web as well as on the mobile phone. It all started out with the trivial question “what are you doing right now” – and believe it or not, millions of people started sharing those kinds of messages (e.g. ‘drinking coffee at Starbucks on 46th Street’) with each other. Today, Twitter has some estimated 5-7 Million users (and traffic of 30 Million+ uniques per month), and people are sharing ideas, links, news, videos, books, tour-dates, program updates, record releases etc with each other. All this updating is generating a huge flood of calls & responses (I sometimes call this ‘the river’) which is – ADD effects aside – starting to become a very important new way of marketing and promoting something  (sharing is caring, remember?). Ok, ok, I know: who has the time for this?  But trust me: once you know how to juggle things like Twitter, you’ll see first-hand what it does, and your time-wasting concerns will evaporate. You really do have to get wet to swim! All you need to do is go to Twitter.com, sign up for a free account and start following people (here is my list of people that I follow, for starters) and post a few things every day. For handling Twitter traffic and pings I use Tweetdeck which is a great free software app that makes the Twitter user’s life a lot easier. If you want to know more, here are some resources: Video on Twitter for Business (OReilly Webcast), video: Twitter in plain English So here are my thoughts on why everyone in the music industry (really!) should get busy with Twitter: 1) It teaches us the meaning of Conversation – and we need to learn that, urgently. If you don’t tweet anything good (i.e. post relevant messages) nobody will follow you, and if you don’t respond to messages people will stop looking at your tweets, as well. In 2009, the tweets of the top-twitteratis may well become more influential in this industry than anything that Billboard or MusicWeek will write so …get ready.  But as far as marketing our artists and /or services is concerned, Twitter indeed  offers a crucial lesson for all of us in the music business: stop pushing, start talking. Broadcast less, micro-cast more. Stop the monolog and start the collaboration. Win by attraction not Control. 2) Instead of email, use Twitter to transmit news and updates to people: it’s a lot less work, you can do it as often as you want, and nobody will complain about spam.  Think of Twitter as your own, free SMS broadcast service. Example: Artistshouse Music 3) People react very quickly to what you post on Twitter – the more followers you have the quicker you can get your message out there; and with real, tangible results. As an example, when I posted the fact that those cool new Macbooks have DRM’ed displays (!) I received several responses within 2 minutes from people that thanked me for warning them – they were just about to buy one! This is a great example for the power of the Twitter network – imagine this (hopefully the other way ’round) for a new video release by an artist you are trying to promote [I still did buy that new Macbook btw!] 4) Twitter really does create that direct connection, for free, between you (the artist, the label, the writer, the publisher, the agent…) and the people formerly known as consumers, the fans, the users – all you have to do is start the conversation! 5) Twitter is a great new way to monitor the buzz online, whether it’s new record releases, music recommendations via blogs, the discussion around MIDEM , music industry news, what Nettwerk Music Group is up to, the death spiral of CD sales, or the best sushi in London   I use this way of ‘social searching’ all the time, and it has opened up a world of new resources for me. 6) If you are using Twitter on your mobile phone (I use Twitterfon on the iPhone, and the OperaMini browser on my Nokia e71), you can use your Twitter network of followers to source stuff on-the-fly while traveling, incl. last minute tech-help and ad-hoc meetings or local hotel or food recommendations. I have tried it, and if enough people are following you, it works out great. 7) If you think that Twitter is just for timewasters and geeks, you are dead wrong – everyone is getting on twitter as I write this – traffic is exploding, and major brands are coming aboard. Even plants are now on Twitter, too!  But seriously:  Twitter is gearing up to be a fantastic marketing tool for social media ‘products’ such as music – and we will see a veritable explosion of twitter-charged successes in 2009. Some other relevant links: Blip.fm – the Music-Twitter  Britney on Twitter    Find Twitter users in your city Many other great Twitter resources compiled on Mashable. Using Twitter for music promotion and marketing. My bottom line: get on Twitter now, and start tweeting – let’s see who can contribute some success stories when we meet at MIDEM in January.  Cheers,  Gerd Related articles by Zemanta 6 survival tips to prepare for a tough 2009: time-wasters will become life-savers Twitter has officially arrived at the Center of Pop Culture, Britney Spears now twittering and sharing content on new ‘bloggy’ site, and Ning Community, too! The New Music Economy: Music 2.0 At Picnic 2008 Amsterdam

vrijdag, 20:41

Image by  via CrunchBaseImage by via CrunchBase

Cross-posted from the MidemNet blog (Dec 6, 2008). A lot of people ask me why I am so seriously into Twitter, why Twitter matters, and why I recommend that every music industry professional should give it a try.   

First, for the still-uninitiated: what is Twitter?  It’s a so-called micro-blogging service that allows you to send up to 140 character messages (called Tweets) to people that ‘follow you’, both on the web as well as on the mobile phone. It all started out with the trivial question “what are you doing right now” – and believe it or not, millions of people started sharing those kinds of messages (e.g. ‘drinking coffee at Starbucks on 46th Street’) with each other. Today, Twitter has some estimated 5-7 Million users (and traffic of 30 Million+ uniques per month), and people are sharing ideas, links, news, videos, books, tour-dates, program updates, record releases etc with each other. All this updating is generating a huge flood of calls & responses (I sometimes call this ‘the river’) which is – ADD effects aside – starting to become a very important new way of marketing and promoting something  (sharing is caring, remember?).

Ok, ok, I know: who has the time for this?  But trust me: once you know how to juggle things like Twitter, you’ll see first-hand what it does, and your time-wasting concerns will evaporate. You really do have to get wet to swim!

All you need to do is go to Twitter.com, sign up for a free account and start following people (here is my list of people that I follow, for starters) and post a few things every day. For handling Twitter traffic and pings I use Tweetdeck which is a great free software app that makes the Twitter user’s life a lot easier. If you want to know more, here are some resources: Video on Twitter for Business (OReilly Webcast), video: Twitter in plain English

So here are my thoughts on why everyone in the music industry (really!) should get busy with Twitter:

1) It teaches us the meaning of Conversation – and we need to learn that, urgently. If you don’t tweet anything good (i.e. post relevant messages) nobody will follow you, and if you don’t respond to messages people will stop looking at your tweets, as well. In 2009, the tweets of the top-twitteratis may well become more influential in this industry than anything that Billboard or MusicWeek will write so …get ready.  But as far as marketing our artists and /or services is concerned, Twitter indeed  offers a crucial lesson for all of us in the music business: stop pushing, start talking. Broadcast less, micro-cast more. Stop the monolog and start the collaboration. Win by attraction not Control.

2) Instead of email, use Twitter to transmit news and updates to people: it’s a lot less work, you can do it as often as you want, and nobody will complain about spam.  Think of Twitter as your own, free SMS broadcast service. Example: Artistshouse Music

3) People react very quickly to what you post on Twitter – the more followers you have the quicker you can get your message out there; and with real, tangible results. As an example, when I posted the fact that those cool new Macbooks have DRM’ed displays (!) I received several responses within 2 minutes from people that thanked me for warning them – they were just about to buy one! This is a great example for the power of the Twitter network – imagine this (hopefully the other way ’round) for a new video release by an artist you are trying to promote [I still did buy that new Macbook btw!]

4) Twitter really does create that direct connection, for free, between you (the artist, the label, the writer, the publisher, the agent…) and the people formerly known as consumers, the fans, the users – all you have to do is start the conversation!

 5) Twitter is a great new way to monitor the buzz online, whether it’s new record releases, music recommendations via blogs, the discussion around MIDEM , music industry news, what Nettwerk Music Group is up to, the death spiral of CD sales, or the best sushi in London   I use this way of ‘social searching’ all the time, and it has opened up a world of new resources for me.

6) If you are using Twitter on your mobile phone (I use Twitterfon on the iPhone, and the OperaMini browser on my Nokia e71), you can use your Twitter network of followers to source stuff on-the-fly while traveling, incl. last minute tech-help and ad-hoc meetings or local hotel or food recommendations. I have tried it, and if enough people are following you, it works out great.

7) If you think that Twitter is just for timewasters and geeks, you are dead wrong – everyone is getting on twitter as I write this – traffic is exploding, and major brands are coming aboard. Even plants are now on Twitter, too!  But seriously:  Twitter is gearing up to be a fantastic marketing tool for social media ‘products’ such as music – and we will see a veritable explosion of twitter-charged successes in 2009.

Some other relevant links:

Blip.fm – the Music-Twitter 

Britney on Twitter   

Find Twitter users in your city

Many other great Twitter resources compiled on Mashable.

Using Twitter for music promotion and marketing.

For decades the major labels have operated within a clearly defined ecosystem. You might forgive them if their behavior didn’t change immediately as the environment around them made a dramatic shift. Like any species would, their first reaction was to attempt to apply their existing knowledge to an unfamiliar situation. When the old lake dried up, they simply looked for the next biggest watering hole (iTunes, Amazon MP3, MySpace, etc.). They claimed the territory as their own and still attempt to destroy anything they perceive as a threat.

 While this is working to a degree, I think we can all agree that there’s a little less meat on their bones these days. The label with the most pronounced ribcage would be EMI. Unable to hold their own, they’ve been chased from the pride and now find themselves in new territory. With the relentless forces of nature at work, we’ll soon find out if this castoff has the wits to survive on its own.

 EMI has been licking its wounds for a while but the company seems to have regained enough of its bearings to attempt an offensive move. The result being the launch of their new “direct to fan” site, EMI.com (not accessible outside the US and UK). While this is certainly a new behavior for EMI, those of you in the indie space should take it as a good sign. The reason being EMI’s new moves are remarkably similar to an indie label’s natural behavior. Instead of sitting around like a fat cat with his eyes closed, eating whatever happens to jump into his mouth, EMI is going out on the prowl, observing, trying to understand behaviors and developing new strategies to engage face to face.

 EMI’s move is a good indicator that the environment is now more supportive of indie-style behavior than the native behaviors of the majors. It tells us that those companies that have struggled to survive on the outskirts for so long should now find the soil they’re standing on is suddenly the best in the land. In fact, EMI is helping to fertilize the land all the more by training fans to look for music away from the old familiar spots. If EMI succeeds in re-training their existing fans, those fans will become much more receptive to other independent sources.

 The land is ready for the independent community to explode. The herd is dividing and the Majors are no longer able to keep everyone within their hunting grounds. The Indie that recognizes the rules have turned in its favor has the opportunity to get very fat indeed.

Just days after getting banned from MySpace, Project Playlist has struck a licensing deal with Sony BMG. The deal gives Project Playlist users direct access to the Sony BMG catalog of both music tracks and videos. Financial details were not disclosed.

The major-label licensing deal is a big step forward for the playlist-sharing service, which is being sued by the other three major labels – Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and EMI Music – as well as the RIAA for copyright infringement. Project Playlist allows users to upload music to create playlists that other users can then stream, but until the Sony BMG deal has done so without paying labels a licensing fee.

On Friday, MySpace blocked the playlist-sharing service from the entire social network, citing requests from several major label partners.

“MySpace has received notices of infringement about Project Playlist at different times from several of the major music companies currently suing Project Playlist,” reads a MySpace statement. “Per our policy of taking very seriously the requests of rights holders to block access to third party sites that are believed to be infringing, we have evaluated the requests of the major music companies and determined that it is in our best interest not to allow Project Playlist widgets on MySpace, and effective immediately, we will no longer be allowing these widgets within the MySpace platform.”

While the service is now gone from MySpace, it remains active of competing social network Facebook. The company claims more than 40 million users.

If the music industry truly wants digital distribution to make up for falling CD sales, it needs to stop treating retail CDs as its primary revenue generator by this time next year, according to a recent Gartner research report.

In “Christmas 2008: The Last Year of the Retail CD” the analyst group recommends the music industry distribute music online first, through digital retailers, social networks and direct-to-fan models. It recommends limiting CDs to promotional items that can be sold or given away at concerts.

“By propping up the CD business, rather than fully investing in online distribution alternatives, the major labels and the larger music industry have neither succeeded in stamping out piracy nor done much to recreate the business models of the old ‘record business,’” says Gartner research VP Mike McGuire in a statement. “Music labels should instead emphasize ‘digital first,’ making all new releases and catalog issues via digital services and moving CDs to an on-demand publishing mode.”

McGuire points to the freefall drop in CD sales worldwide – from 91% of revenue in 2005 to 77% in 2007 – as well as the shrinking floor space dedicated to CDs by retailers as his rationale. Meanwhile, 77 million U.S. households will have broadband connections by 2012