Led Zeppelin landmarks now on Google Maps

Check out the historic locations online now

4 hours ago

Led Zeppelin's greatest landmarks have been added to Google Maps and Google Earth.Fans can now tour virtually around sites that were pivotal in the group's history, including Olympic Studios and Jimmy Page's Scottish mansion Boleskine House.Also included are the O2 Arena and drummer John Bonham's grave.A handful of locations in the US are also pinpointed, including Madison Square Garden, where the group filmed their concert documentary 'The Song Remains The Same' in 1973.Go to Google Maps to view the Led Zeppelin landmarks

Downloading is killing music industry

XS4ALL mag van Buma/Stemra niet zomaar online liedjes aanbieden. Ook niet nu alle betrokken artiesten en platenmaatschappijen expliciet toestemming hebben gegeven om de gespeelde liedjes gratis aan te bieden aan iedereen die het wil downloaden.
De Buma eist 8 eurocent per gedownload liedje - en dat is dan nog bij wijze van grote gunst. Het reguliere tarief bedraagt 13 procent van de winkelprijs, met een minimum van 20 eurocent per track.
Eerdere emotionelere verzoeken om gratis muziek te draaien, waren ook afgewezen, liet de organisatie hooghartig weten, inclusief verzoeken om het speciaal gecomponeerde herdenkingslied 'Candle in the wind' rechtenvrij te draaien bij de begrafenis van Lady Di. Dus ook voor het 'auteursrechtenvrij' festival maakt de rechtenorganisatie geen uitzondering.
Dit summum van monopolistengedrag wordt mogelijk gemaakt door onze uit 1912 stammende Auteurswet. Sinds 1913 heeft de Buma het wettelijk monopolie op het uitbaten van de rechten van componisten en tekstschrijvers. Daar kwam ruim twintig jaar later de Stemra bij, die de rechten int voor het vastleggen en verveelvoudigen van muziek, en sinds 1993 de SENA, die de zogenaamde 'naburige' rechten int. Binnenkort gaan ze fuseren, helemaal in stijl.
Met een gezamenlijke omzet van bijna 230 miljoen euro in 2002 hebben de organisaties inmiddels een zeer lucratieve business. Daar kun je wel een lobby van betalen. Van daadkrachtig toezicht of reguliere inspraak van de groep die aangeduid wordt als de 'betalingsplichtigen' is geen sprake. De regeringscommissaris die sinds begin vorige eeuw belast was met het toezicht is eerder dit jaar weliswaar vervangen door een onafhankelijk college van toezicht, maar als het gaat om de inhoudelijke koers heeft het college slechts recht van advies.
Die inhoudelijke koers van Buma/Stemra is in mijn ogen vooral een oorlogsverklaring aan de burger, die al heel lang laat merken graag via internet naar muziek te willen luisteren. Maar het is ook een oorlogsverklaring aan de muzikant, de eigenlijke rechthebbende. Muzikanten en componisten hebben immers geen keuze: als ze zich niet inschrijven bij de monopolist, moeten ze afzien van hun rechten. Er is geen alternatieve organisatie, dus de Buma kan alle vernieuwingen stelselmatig frustreren.
Verzoeken om bijvoorbeeld flexibele contracten, waarbij muzikanten hun rechten soms wel en soms niet laten innen, worden steevast weggebureaucratiseerd met een beroep op het belang van de collectiviteit van rechten-inning.
Ik koester een beschermingshoes voor een plaat - ik denk uit de jaren 70 - met een plaatje van een cassettebandje erop, doorkruist door twee botten, het internationale symbool van piraterij. 'Hometaping is killing music industry!!!' staat er in chocoladeletters onder. Jammer voor de optimisten, die toen repliceerden: "And it was about time". Want de belangenbehartigers hebben de radio, het cassettebandje en de cd niet alleen overleefd, ze hebben er ook telkens nieuwe inkomstenbronnen door aangeboord. Toch lijken de rechtenorganisaties in het zicht van nieuwe technologie telkens maar één reactie te hebben: verbieden! Of het nu gaat om DAT-recorders, om minidisks met digitale opnamemogelijkheid of om bestandsruilprogramma's op internet.
Nieuwe technologie gaat meestal ten koste van oude. Dat bracht de advocaat-generaal vorige maand in herinnering in zijn advies aan de Hoge Raad in de zaak van Kazaa tegen Buma: "zoals het spoor natuurlijk ten koste ging van de trekschuit". Door de rituele verbodsgebedszangen van de Buma lijken de meeste mensen te vergeten dat er allang voorzien is in een regeling om muzikanten en componisten tegemoet te komen voor thuisgebruik van muziek, via de heffing op tapes, blanco opneembare cd's en dvd's. Die heffing bedraagt nu in Nederland 14 eurocent voor data-cd-r's en 42 eurocent voor officiële audio-cd-r's.
Ik betaal die heffing graag, ondanks het feit dat ik maar een klein deel van die schijfjes gebruik om er muziek op te zetten. De meeste schijfjes vul ik met back-ups van bijvoorbeeld e-mail en zelfgemaakte digitale foto's. Het belangrijkste voordeel vind ik de door Buma zo bejubelde collectiviteit: omdat het een algemene heffing is, is het niet nodig om de individuele lees- en luistergewoonten van iedere internetter te bewaren en te analyseren. Maar alle ontwikkelingen met Digital Rights Management wijzen juist de andere kant op, richting totale controle over ieders elektronisch gedrag. De heffingen worden daarbij steeds vaker een obstakel genoemd.
Downloading is killing music industry. Of is het zelfmoord? De huidige doodsstrijd duurt in ieder geval wel erg lang

Open Mic Night Magic

There is a lot of talk on this site about the importance of playing live to building up an audience for your band, but what if you have never played live before, and the prospect of taking to the stage has you quaking in your boots? There is a place where you can get some on-stage practice under your belt without braving the crowds at a big show - your local open mic night. Open mic nights sometimes get a little a bit of a bad rap, but not every open mic night is associated with earnest performances of poorly written pseudo-beat poetry. In fact, many towns have established open mic nights that are great places to catch the best up and coming local talent, and if you need to hone your stage act, these nights can be just the place to build up your comfort level on stage in a supportive environment. The crowds that turn up to see open mic nights are genuinely interested in hearing new music, and there also tends to be a good sense of community between the musicians taking part. Once you feel like you know how to own the stage, those same musicians you meet at open mic nights could be the contacts you need to get on your first concert bill. Open mic nights aren't also great for new musicians. They also offer band who are old hats at playing live a place to try out new songs and experiment a little bit with their sound. If you are trying to move your band out of your local scene, hitting up open mic nights in another town is a good way to get a foot in the door with the music scene in that area. All in, open mic nights offer you the chance to practice your live set and build your confidence - plus, they can be a lot of fun. If you have written off the open mic night as an option for your band, don't knock it until you've tried it.

Music industry attacks Sunday newspaper's free Prince CD

Music industry attacks Sunday newspaper's free Prince CD

Katie Allen, media business correspondent

The Guardian

Friday June 29 2007

The eagerly awaited new album by Prince is being launched as a free CD with a national Sunday newspaper in a move that has drawn widespread criticism from music retailers.
The Mail on Sunday revealed yesterday that the 10-track Planet Earth CD will be available with an "imminent" edition, making it the first place in the world to get the album. Planet Earth will go on sale on July 24.
"It's all about giving music for the masses and he believes in spreading the music he produces to as many people as possible," said Mail on Sunday managing director Stephen Miron. "This is the biggest innovation in newspaper promotions in recent times."
The paper, which sells more than 2m copies a week, will be ramping up its print run in anticipation of a huge spike in circulation but would not reveal how much the deal with Prince would cost.
One music store executive described the plan as "madness" while others said it was a huge insult to an industry battling fierce competition from supermarkets and online stores. Prince's label has cut its ties with the album in the UK to try to appease music stores.
The Entertainment Retailers Association said the giveaway "beggars belief". "It would be an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career," ERA co-chairman Paul Quirk told a music conference. "It would be yet another example of the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception of value around recorded music.
"The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday."
High street music giant HMV was similarly scathing about the plans. Speaking before rumours of a giveaway were confirmed, HMV chief executive Simon Fox said: "I think it would be absolutely nuts. I can't believe the music industry would do it to itself. I simply can't believe it would happen; it would be absolute madness."
Prince, whose Purple Rain sold more than 11m copies, also plans to give away a free copy of his latest album with tickets for his forthcoming concerts in London. The singer had signed a global deal for the promotion and distribution of Planet Earth in partnership with Columbia Records, a division of music company Sony BMG. A spokesman for the group said last night that the UK arm of Sony BMG had withdrawn from Prince's global deal and would not distribute the album to UK stores.

Steve Jobs: "The music industry nobs have finally fugured out what we're doing".

So you've no doubt seen this story or one like it explaining that Universal Music Group won't renew its iTunes deal. And you've seen people saying that the majors are trying to "recalibrate" their relationships with us. Actually what's happening is they're crapping in their pants. They woke up one day and realized that we've got 80% share of digital downloads. Suddenly all the power in the value chain resides in one player. Oops.Here's the thing. These guys could have done what we did. In the early days of the Internet, everyone figured the majors would build digital distribution arms. But they didn't do it, because they didn't understand technology, and they didn't want to invest in building this expertise, and they were freaked out about piracy and paralyzed with fear. So we stepped in. We made the big investment. We hired programmers. We developed software that's easy to use and works flawlessly. (If you think that's trivial, think again. It's huge.) We ran the system. We promoted it, we marketed it, we haggled with all the majors and struck deals. We took all the risk, which was considerable. Now we're reaping the reward. And the majors want a bigger slice. Um, for what? We did all the work. Ain't gonna happen, slick.Here's the back story. The music companies are in a dying business, and they know it. Sure, they act all cool because they hang around with rock stars. But beneath all the glamour these guys are actually operating two very low-tech businesses. One is a form of loan-sharking: they put up money to make records, then force recording artists to pay the money back with exorbitant interest. The other business is distribution. They’ve got big warehouses and they control the shipment of little plastic boxes that happen to have music in them. The guys running the labels are pretty stupid -- most are just dirtbags who started out as band managers or promoters -- but now at long last they are kinda sorta finally vaguely getting clued in to the fact that both parts of their business model are fucked. Their loan-sharking business is being eliminated by low-cost digital recording technology that lets people make an album for very little money. And by letting us build the online music store they've taken themselves out of the distribution business. In the days of vinyl and then CDs, the labels managed to control the value chain by having loads of retailers in a highly fragmented market, and playing them off each other. In the digital world they've got us. And that's it. Ironically the mistake the major labels made was the same one that IBM made when it gave the DOS franchise to Microsoft nearly 30 years ago. They were faced with a new market that they didn't understand. They had a piece of work that they couldn't do on their own or didn't want to do on their own and they didn't view it as critical or important, so they outsourced it to a partner. The partner turned that seemingly unimportant work into a way to accrue power and create a monopoly and control the industry. Today in the music business we're about where IBM and Microsoft were in 1989, when IBM finally got hit with the clue stick and realized what Microsoft was doing. How will it play out this time? I don't know, honestly. But I like our chances.

The Problem With Music

Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed. Nobody can see what's printed on the contract. It's too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody's eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there's only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says "Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim again, please. Backstroke". And he does of course.
Every major label involved in the hunt for new bands now has on staff a high-profile point man, an "A & R" rep who can present a comfortable face to any prospective band. The initials stand for "Artist and Repertoire." because historically, the A & R staff would select artists to record music that they had also selected, out of an available pool of each. This is still the case, though not openly. These guys are universally young [about the same age as the bands being wooed], and nowadays they always have some obvious underground rock credibility flag they can wave.
Lyle Preslar, former guitarist for Minor Threat, is one of them. Terry Tolkin, former NY independent booking agent and assistant manager at Touch and Go is one of them. Al Smith, former soundman at CBGB is one of them. Mike Gitter, former editor of XXX fanzine and contributor to Rip, Kerrang and other lowbrow rags is one of them. Many of the annoying turds who used to staff college radio stations are in their ranks as well. There are several reasons A & R scouts are always young. The explanation usually copped-to is that the scout will be "hip to the current musical "scene." A more important reason is that the bands will intuitively trust someone they think is a peer, and who speaks fondly of the same formative rock and roll experiences. The A & R person is the first person to make contact with the band, and as such is the first person to promise them the moon. Who better to promise them the moon than an idealistic young turk who expects to be calling the shots in a few years, and who has had no previous experience with a big record company. Hell, he's as naive as the band he's duping. When he tells them no one will interfere in their creative process, he probably even believes it. When he sits down with the band for the first time, over a plate of angel hair pasta, he can tell them with all sincerity that when they sign with company X, they're really signing with him and he's on their side. Remember that great gig I saw you at in '85? Didn't we have a blast. By now all rock bands are wise enough to be suspicious of music industry scum. There is a pervasive caricature in popular culture of a portly, middle aged ex-hipster talking a mile-a-minute, using outdated jargon and calling everybody "baby." After meeting "their" A & R guy, the band will say to themselves and everyone else, "He's not like a record company guy at all! He's like one of us." And they will be right. That's one of the reasons he was hired.
These A & R guys are not allowed to write contracts. What they do is present the band with a letter of intent, or "deal memo," which loosely states some terms, and affirms that the band will sign with the label once a contract has been agreed on. The spookiest thing about this harmless sounding little memo, is that it is, for all legal purposes, a binding document. That is, once the band signs it, they are under obligation to conclude a deal with the label. If the label presents them with a contract that the band don't want to sign, all the label has to do is wait. There are a hundred other bands willing to sign the exact same contract, so the label is in a position of strength. These letters never have any terms of expiration, so the band remain bound by the deal memo until a contract is signed, no matter how long that takes. The band cannot sign to another laborer or even put out its own material unless they are released from their agreement, which never happens. Make no mistake about it: once a band has signed a letter of intent, they will either eventually sign a contract that suits the label or they will be destroyed.
One of my favorite bands was held hostage for the better part of two years by a slick young "He's not like a label guy at all," A & R rep, on the basis of such a deal memo. He had failed to come through on any of his promises [something he did with similar effect to another well-known band], and so the band wanted out. Another label expressed interest, but when the A & R man was asked to release the band, he said he would need money or points, or possibly both, before he would consider it. The new label was afraid the price would be too dear, and they said no thanks. On the cusp of making their signature album, an excellent band, humiliated, broke up from the stress and the many months of inactivity. There's this band. They're pretty ordinary, but they're also pretty good, so they've attracted some attention. They're signed to a moderate-sized "independent" label owned by a distribution company, and they have another two albums owed to the label. They're a little ambitious. They'd like to get signed by a major label so they can have some security you know, get some good equipment, tour in a proper tour bus -- nothing fancy, just a little reward for all the hard work. To that end, they got a manager. He knows some of the label guys, and he can shop their next project to all the right people. He takes his cut, sure, but it's only 15%, and if he can get them signed then it's money well spent. Anyways, it doesn't cost them anything if it doesn't work. 15% of nothing isn't much! One day an A & R scout calls them, says he's 'been following them for a while now, and when their manager mentioned them to him, it just "clicked." Would they like to meet with him about the possibility of working out a deal with his label? Wow. Big Break time. They meet the guy, and y'know what -- he's not what they expected from a label guy. He's young and dresses pretty much like the band does. He knows all their favorite bands. He's like one of them. He tells them he wants to go to bat for them, to try to get them everything they want. He says anything is possible with the right attitude.
They conclude the evening by taking home a copy of a deal memo they wrote out and signed on the spot. The A & R guy was full of great ideas, even talked about using a name producer. Butch Vig is out of the question-he wants 100 g's and three points, but they can get Don Fleming for $30,000 plus three points. Even that's a little steep, so maybe they'll go with that guy who used to be in David Letterman's band. He only wants three points. Or they can have just anybody record it (like Warton Tiers, maybe-- cost you 5 or 7 grand] and have Andy Wallace remix it for 4 grand a track plus 2 points. It was a lot to think about. Well, they like this guy and they trust him. Besides, they already signed the deal memo. He must have been serious about wanting them to sign. They break the news to their current label, and the label manager says he wants them to succeed, so they have his blessing. He will need to be compensated, of course, for the remaining albums left on their contract, but he'll work it out with the label himself.
Sub Pop made millions from selling off Nirvana, and Twin Tone hasn't done bad either: 50 grand for the Babes and 60 grand for the Poster Children-- without having to sell a single additional record. It'll be something modest. The new label doesn't mind, so long as it's recoupable out of royalties. Well, they get the final contract, and it's not quite what they expected. They figure it's better to be safe than sorry and they turn it over to a lawyer--one who says he's experienced in entertainment law and he hammers out a few bugs. They're still not sure about it, but the lawyer says he's seen a lot of contracts, and theirs is pretty good. They'll be great royalty: 13% [less a 1O% packaging deduction]. Wasn't it Buffalo Tom that were only getting 12% less 10? Whatever. The old label only wants 50 grand, an no points. Hell, Sub Pop got 3 points when they let Nirvana go. They're signed for four years, with options on each year, for a total of over a million dollars! That's a lot of money in any man's English. The first year's advance alone is $250,000. Just think about it, a quarter million, just for being in a rock band! Their manager thinks it's a great deal, especially the large advance. Besides, he knows a publishing company that will take the band on if they get signed, and even give them an advance of 20 grand, so they'll be making that money too. The manager says publishing is pretty mysterious, and nobody really knows where all the money comes from, but the lawyer can look that contract over too. Hell, it's free money. Their booking agent is excited about the band signing to a major. He says they can maybe average $1,000 or $2,000 a night from now on. That's enough to justify a five week tour, and with tour support, they can use a proper crew, buy some good equipment and even get a tour bus! Buses are pretty expensive, but if you figure in the price of a hotel room for everybody In the band and crew, they're actually about the same cost. Some bands like Therapy? and Sloan and Stereolab use buses on their tours even when they're getting paid only a couple hundred bucks a night, and this tour should earn at least a grand or two every night. It'll be worth it. The band will be more comfortable and will play better.
The agent says a band on a major label can get a merchandising company to pay them an advance on T-shirt sales! ridiculous! There's a gold mine here! The lawyer Should look over the merchandising contract, just to be safe. They get drunk at the signing party. Polaroids are taken and everybody looks thrilled. The label picked them up in a limo. They decided to go with the producer who used to be in Letterman's band. He had these technicians come in and tune the drums for them and tweak their amps and guitars. He had a guy bring in a slew of expensive old "vintage" microphones. Boy, were they "warm." He even had a guy come in and check the phase of all the equipment in the control room! Boy, was he professional. He used a bunch of equipment on them and by the end of it, they all agreed that it sounded very "punchy," yet "warm." All that hard work paid off. With the help of a video, the album went like hotcakes! They sold a quarter million copies! Here is the math that will explain just how fucked they are: These figures are representative of amounts that appear in record contracts daily. There's no need to skew the figures to make the scenario look bad, since real-life examples more than abound. income is bold and underlined, expenses are not.
Advance:
$ 250,000
Manager's cut:
$ 37,500
Legal fees:
$ 10,000
Recording Budget:
$ 150,000
Producer's advance:
$ 50,000
Studio fee:
$ 52,500
Drum Amp, Mic and Phase "Doctors":
$ 3,000
Recording tape:
$ 8,000
Equipment rental:
$ 5,000
Cartage and Transportation:
$ 5,000
Lodgings while in studio:
$ 10,000
Catering:
$ 3,000
Mastering:
$ 10,000
Tape copies, reference CDs, shipping tapes, misc. expenses:
$ 2,000
Video budget:
$ 30,000
Cameras:
$ 8,000
Crew:
$ 5,000
Processing and transfers:
$ 3,000
Off-line:
$ 2,000
On-line editing:
$ 3,000
Catering:
$ 1,000
Stage and construction:
$ 3,000
Copies, couriers, transportation:
$ 2,000
Director's fee:
$ 3,000
Album Artwork:
$ 5,000
Promotional photo shoot and duplication:
$ 2,000
Band fund:
$ 15,000
New fancy professional drum kit:
$ 5,000
New fancy professional guitars [2]:
$ 3,000
New fancy professional guitar amp rigs [2]:
$ 4,000
New fancy potato-shaped bass guitar:
$ 1,000
New fancy rack of lights bass amp:
$ 1,000
Rehearsal space rental:
$ 500
Big blowout party for their friends:
$ 500
Tour expense [5 weeks]:
$ 50,875
Bus:
$ 25,000
Crew [3]:
$ 7,500
Food and per diems:
$ 7,875
Fuel:
$ 3,000
Consumable supplies:
$ 3,500
Wardrobe:
$ 1,000
Promotion:
$ 3,000
Tour gross income:
$ 50,000
Agent's cut:
$ 7,500
Manager's cut:
$ 7,500
Merchandising advance:
$ 20,000
Manager's cut:
$ 3,000
Lawyer's fee:
$ 1,000
Publishing advance:
$ 20,000
Manager's cut:
$ 3,000
Lawyer's fee:
$ 1,000
Record sales:
250,000 @ $12 =$3,000,000
Gross retail revenue Royalty:
[13% of 90% of retail]:$ 351,000
Less advance:
$ 250,000
Producer's points:
[3% less $50,000 advance]:$ 40,000
Promotional budget:
$ 25,000
Recoupable buyout from previous label:
$ 50,000

Net royalty:
$ -14,000
Record company income:
Record wholesale price:
$6.50 x 250,000 =$1,625,000 gross income
Artist Royalties:
$ 351,000
Deficit from royalties:
$ 14,000
Manufacturing, packaging and distribution:
@ $2.20 per record: $ 550,000
Gross profit:
$ 7l0,000
The Balance Sheet: This is how much each player got paid at the end of the game.
Record company:
$ 710,000
Producer:
$ 90,000
Manager:
$ 51,000
Studio:
$ 52,500
Previous label:
$ 50,000
Agent:
$ 7,500
Lawyer:
$ 12,000
Band member net income each:
$ 4,031.25
The band is now 1/4 of the way through its contract, has made the music industry more than 3 million dollars richer, but is in the hole $14,000 on royalties. The band members have each earned about 1/3 as much as they would working at a 7-11, but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month. The next album will be about the same, except that the record company will insist they spend more time and money on it. Since the previous one never "recouped," the band will have no leverage, and will oblige. The next tour will be about the same, except the merchandising advance will have already been paid, and the band, strangely enough, won't have earned any royalties from their T-shirts yet. Maybe the T-shirt guys have figured out how to count money like record company guys. Some of your friends are probably already this fucked.
Steve Albini is an independent and corporate rock record producer most widely known for having produced Nirvana's "In Utero".

The Day The Music Indusrty Died

From The Sunday Times
October 7, 2007
The day the music industry died
There is no money in recorded music any more, that’s why bands are now giving it away
Robert Sandall
Having waited four years for their heroes to finish another record, Radiohead fans were understandably excited last week to learn that the band’s seventh album, In Rainbows, will finally be released on Wednesday. But what really rocked the fanbase – and heightened the air of gloom enveloping the global record industry – was the news that In Rainbows could be preordered and downloaded perfectly legally for as little as 1p at Radio-head.com.
Currently out of contract and thus entitled to dispose of their recordings as they see fit, one of the most popular bands in the world had decided to let the fans decide how much their latest album was worth. An MP3 file of In Rainbows would have no price tag. Honesty boxes, it seemed, were the new rock’n’roll.
If the Radiohead faithful appeared somewhat nonplussed by this move – “The danger is that people will stop seeing their music as important,” one fan posted in a blog; “I will gladly pay $20 knowing the artist will get the money,” pledged another – the band’s strategy was anything but mad, and not even that revolutionary. Last week the Charlatans announced they would be giving away their new album as a free download. Earlier this year another rock band, the Crimea, did the same.
In July Prince arranged for 2.5m copies of his new album to be cover-mounted on a Sunday newspaper and issued several hundred thousand more free of charge to anybody attending his London concerts in August. The scale of this charitable epidemic can be measured by a quick browse of the Free Albums Galore blog that lists more than 800 albums by a range of artists – from the Beastie Boys to some unsigned metal bands – all of which are free to download.
function pictureGalleryPopup(pubUrl,articleId) {
var newWin = window.open(pubUrl+'template/2.0-0/element/pictureGalleryPopup.jsp?id='+articleId+'&&offset=0&§ionName=Music','mywindow','menubar=0,resizable=0,width=615,height=655');
}
Related Links
Radiohead: In Rainbows
What looks like commercial suicide is, in today’s reality, sound business sense. Records, CDs or downloads now have all become downgraded to the status of promotional tools – useful to sell concert tickets and fan paraphernalia. While there is still good money to be made in music, and particularly on the concert circuit, the record business – blame it on piracy, too many CD giveaways or the advent of the recordable CD – is a busted flush.
A revealing story doing the rounds in America tells of a young rock band who decided to stop selling their CDs at gigs after they discovered that by offering their CDs for $10 they were cannibalising sales of their $20 T-shirts. The truth now is that a rudimentary cotton garment with a band logo stamped across it that has probably been manufactured for pennies in a Third World sweatshop costs about twice as much as an album recorded in a state-of-the-art western studio. And even at that price, recorded music isn’t selling.
Album sales are currently in freefall all over the world. The 10% drop in the UK over the past year is dwarfed by a 15% slide in the US, 25% in France and a whopping 35% in Canada. The bankruptcy this summer of the CD retail chain Fopp, HMV’s announcement that its profits halved in the first six months of this year and Richard Branson’s recent decision to dump the Virgin Megastores – which have reportedly lost him more than £50m in 2007 – are only the most visible signs of a crisis that has rocked the music industry on its axis.
The point isn’t just that people are buying fewer CDs; they are paying as much as two-thirds less in real terms today for the music they listen to on their iPods than they used to when the compact disc first took over the market. Twenty years ago a chart CD cost about £14. Today you can buy the same in a super-market for £9.
The online market may have grown recently, but not enough to fix the hole. Here, too, margins have shrunk. A download of a single track now costs 79p against the £4 a CD single cost in 1999.
The impact on the bottom line of the record labels has been catastrophic. When EMI’s subsidiary Virgin put out the Spice Girls’ debut album in 1996 the company cleared roughly £5 in profit on each copy sold. That margin has since shrivelled to around £2 – and only then for albums that are significant hits. Industry insiders estimate that only one of the new British acts that has “broken” in 2007 – the pop diva Mika – will actually make his record company any money.
This has not gone unremarked in the City. When the private equity firm Terra Firma bought EMI recently it paid about a third, in real terms, what the company nearly fetched 10 years ago when a sale to its competitor Universal was mooted. That decline mirrors what has happened over the same period to the retail price of new CDs, and it also reflects the scale of the cull of EMI’s workforce, which has shrunk in 10 years from more than 10,000 worldwide to about 4,000 today.
The mood of panic is palpable, and there are no obvious solutions in sight. In America the recently appointed co-chairman of the Columbia label Rick Rubin, formerly a record producer by trade, has spoken of his ambition to turn the company around by refocusing it along the lines of a cable TV business – making Columbia’s entire catalogue downloadable to customers who pay a monthly subscription.
Another senior figure at Columbia has dismissed this plan as “potentially the last nail in the coffin”. The recent establishment of a “word of mouth” department at the label reflects the loss of control felt within a business that has lost a grip on its market.
One – fading – hope of the major labels is that they can somehow grab a share of the profits their artists make elsewhere. When Robbie Williams resigned to EMI in 2002 for a reported £80m this new deal guaranteed the label a piece of the action from Williams’s highly lucrative concert tours. But many young artists since have become wary of such composite arrangements. Some have decided to bypass the major record companies altogether.
One of the hottest new names to emerge here this year, the rave metal band Enter Shikari, refused to sign to anybody and in March released their debut album, Take to the Skies, on their own label Ambush Reality. In the past these tiny, so-called indie labels have usually been funded by majors anxious to covertly purchase credibility for their products with a young audience traditionally distrustful of big music corporations.
But that is not how it is with Ambush Reality. The marketing of Take to the Skies was largely down to the band themselves, who have played nearly 700 gigs since forming in St Albans in 2003. Word of mouth, coupled with a band presence on MySpace, has done the rest.
In November 2006 Enter Shikari became only the second unsigned act after the Darkness to sell out the leading London rock venue the Astoria. Take to the Skies entered the album chart at number four in March. In May they undertook a major tour of America – the first British band to do so without the support of a big record company.
This upending of the music business was neatly predicted back in the 1990s by the guitarist of the American hardcore band Anthrax who described their new album as “the menu; our concert is the meal”. This comment recalled the Beatles’ producer George Martin’s observation about his protégés’ first LP, Please Please Me from 1963. It was, Martin said, “just a memento of a concert”. Now, likewise, bands sell CD recordings of their performances at the end of the night.
The reprioritisation in recent years of live music over the recorded variety has been dramatic. Attendance at arena shows rose here by 11% last year. By the time 2007 bows out, 450 music festivals will have taken place in the UK.
Every week brings news of another frenzied assault on the box office. Last Monday Ticket-master reported that 20,000 tickets for the Spice Girls’ first reunion concert at London’s O2 arena in December sold out in 38 seconds, with 1m fans registering to buy. Three weeks back more than a million clamoured for seats at the forthcoming Led Zeppelin reunion. Glastonbury disposed of its 135,000 weekend passes for this year’s event within two hours – taking more than £21m in the process.
Ticket prices, especially for Alist artists, have soared as the price of CDs has tumbled. You could have bought Madonna’s entire catalogue for less than half what it cost to see her perform at Wembley Arena last summer where the best seats in the house went for £160. With the Rolling Stones at Twickenham a view from the pitch would have set you back £150.
Now that live music rules, nobody bothers to complain about what it costs any more. Euphoria at the news earlier this year that the Police had reformed obliterated all concerns that it cost between £70 and £90 to see them play at Twickenham in September. I spoke to many fans at one of those gigs; not one complained about the ticket price.
In the light of these numbers, the probability is that music fans now are spending more money on their passion than they were in the heyday of the CD. They have rediscovered an ancient truth that music is, at root, a communal experience as much as it is something that goes on between your ears.
Interestingly the band now tolling the death knell of the record industry, Radiohead, seem currently to have mixed feelings about live work.
“They probably will be playing some dates next year,” a spokesman said last week. “But Thom Yorke doesn’t like touring much.”

Steve Jobs' thoughts on the music industry

With the stunning global success of Apple’s iPod music player and iTunes online music store, some have called for Apple to “open” the digital rights management (DRM) system that Apple uses to protect its music against theft, so that music purchased from iTunes can be played on digital devices purchased from other companies, and protected music purchased from other online music stores can play on iPods. Let’s examine the current situation and how we got here, then look at three possible alternatives for the future.
To begin, it is useful to remember that all iPods play music that is free of any DRM and encoded in “open” licensable formats such as MP3 and AAC. iPod users can and do acquire their music from many sources, including CDs they own. Music on CDs can be easily imported into the freely-downloadable iTunes jukebox software which runs on both Macs and Windows PCs, and is automatically encoded into the open AAC or MP3 formats without any DRM. This music can be played on iPods or any other music players that play these open formats.
The rub comes from the music Apple sells on its online iTunes Store. Since Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others, primarily the “big four” music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. These four companies control the distribution of over 70% of the world’s music. When Apple approached these companies to license their music to distribute legally over the Internet, they were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied. The solution was to create a DRM system, which envelopes each song purchased from the iTunes store in special and secret software so that it cannot be played on unauthorized devices.
Apple was able to negotiate landmark usage rights at the time, which include allowing users to play their DRM protected music on up to 5 computers and on an unlimited number of iPods. Obtaining such rights from the music companies was unprecedented at the time, and even today is unmatched by most other digital music services. However, a key provision of our agreements with the music companies is that if our DRM system is compromised and their music becomes playable on unauthorized devices, we have only a small number of weeks to fix the problem or they can withdraw their entire music catalog from our iTunes store.
To prevent illegal copies, DRM systems must allow only authorized devices to play the protected music. If a copy of a DRM protected song is posted on the Internet, it should not be able to play on a downloader’s computer or portable music device. To achieve this, a DRM system employs secrets. There is no theory of protecting content other than keeping secrets. In other words, even if one uses the most sophisticated cryptographic locks to protect the actual music, one must still “hide” the keys which unlock the music on the user’s computer or portable music player. No one has ever implemented a DRM system that does not depend on such secrets for its operation.
The problem, of course, is that there are many smart people in the world, some with a lot of time on their hands, who love to discover such secrets and publish a way for everyone to get free (and stolen) music. They are often successful in doing just that, so any company trying to protect content using a DRM must frequently update it with new and harder to discover secrets. It is a cat-and-mouse game. Apple’s DRM system is called FairPlay. While we have had a few breaches in FairPlay, we have been able to successfully repair them through updating the iTunes store software, the iTunes jukebox software and software in the iPods themselves. So far we have met our commitments to the music companies to protect their music, and we have given users the most liberal usage rights available in the industry for legally downloaded music.
With this background, let’s now explore three different alternatives for the future.
The first alternative is to continue on the current course, with each manufacturer competing freely with their own “top to bottom” proprietary systems for selling, playing and protecting music. It is a very competitive market, with major global companies making large investments to develop new music players and online music stores. Apple, Microsoft and Sony all compete with proprietary systems. Music purchased from Microsoft’s Zune store will only play on Zune players; music purchased from Sony’s Connect store will only play on Sony’s players; and music purchased from Apple’s iTunes store will only play on iPods. This is the current state of affairs in the industry, and customers are being well served with a continuing stream of innovative products and a wide variety of choices.
Some have argued that once a consumer purchases a body of music from one of the proprietary music stores, they are forever locked into only using music players from that one company. Or, if they buy a specific player, they are locked into buying music only from that company’s music store. Is this true? Let’s look at the data for iPods and the iTunes store – they are the industry’s most popular products and we have accurate data for them. Through the end of 2006, customers purchased a total of 90 million iPods and 2 billion songs from the iTunes store. On average, that’s 22 songs purchased from the iTunes store for each iPod ever sold.
Today’s most popular iPod holds 1000 songs, and research tells us that the average iPod is nearly full. This means that only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store and protected with a DRM. The remaining 97% of the music is unprotected and playable on any player that can play the open formats. It’s hard to believe that just 3% of the music on the average iPod is enough to lock users into buying only iPods in the future. And since 97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store, iPod users are clearly not locked into the iTunes store to acquire their music.
The second alternative is for Apple to license its FairPlay DRM technology to current and future competitors with the goal of achieving interoperability between different company’s players and music stores. On the surface, this seems like a good idea since it might offer customers increased choice now and in the future. And Apple might benefit by charging a small licensing fee for its FairPlay DRM. However, when we look a bit deeper, problems begin to emerge. The most serious problem is that licensing a DRM involves disclosing some of its secrets to many people in many companies, and history tells us that inevitably these secrets will leak. The Internet has made such leaks far more damaging, since a single leak can be spread worldwide in less than a minute. Such leaks can rapidly result in software programs available as free downloads on the Internet which will disable the DRM protection so that formerly protected songs can be played on unauthorized players.
An equally serious problem is how to quickly repair the damage caused by such a leak. A successful repair will likely involve enhancing the music store software, the music jukebox software, and the software in the players with new secrets, then transferring this updated software into the tens (or hundreds) of millions of Macs, Windows PCs and players already in use. This must all be done quickly and in a very coordinated way. Such an undertaking is very difficult when just one company controls all of the pieces. It is near impossible if multiple companies control separate pieces of the puzzle, and all of them must quickly act in concert to repair the damage from a leak.
Apple has concluded that if it licenses FairPlay to others, it can no longer guarantee to protect the music it licenses from the big four music companies. Perhaps this same conclusion contributed to Microsoft’s recent decision to switch their emphasis from an “open” model of licensing their DRM to others to a “closed” model of offering a proprietary music store, proprietary jukebox software and proprietary players.
The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.
Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.
In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.
So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.
Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries. Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free. For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard. The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company. EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company. Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.

What’s the Future of the Music Industry?

What’s the Future of the Music Industry? A Freakonomics Quorum

By Stephen J. Dubner

Before I was in the writing industry, I was in the music industry.
While the economics of journalism have changed a lot over the past 20 years — witness the demise of Times Select and the potential demise of the Wall Street Journal’s pay site — many other aspects of the writing industry haven’t changed much at all. If you are a non-fiction writer who writes books, for instance, the economic setup is pretty much the same as it was, in large part because book publishers still primarily offer hard copies of books to people who pay money for them.
But the music industry of today looks almost nothing like the music industry of 20 years ago. There are a ton of reasons, most of them having to do with digital technology. If you are a young journalist starting out today, you may still aspire to get a big publisher to give you an advance and widely publish your book; but if you are a young musician starting out today, do you want to get a big record advance or do you want to sell the music yourself, like these folks do, and like Jane Siberry does? If you are a record label, what do you do about illegal downloads, and do you keep putting out “albums” that nobody buys or do you instead try to release only individual songs, as many people seem to prefer?
It strikes me as ironic that a new technology (digital music) may have accidentally forced record labels to abandon the status quo (releasing albums) and return to the past (selling singles). I sometimes think that the biggest mistake the record industry ever made was abandoning the pop single in the first place. Customers were forced to buy albums to get the one or two songs they loved; how many albums can you say that you truly love, or love even 50% of the songs — 10? 20? But now the people have spoken: they want one song at a time, digitally please, maybe even free (yikes: big can of worms, which is addressed ably below).
So what really happened to the music industry, and what will it look like in five or ten years?
That’s the question we put to five smart people in our latest Freakonomics Quorum. I found their answers to be incredibly interesting, full of real information and clear-eyed thinking. (If you haven’t already done so, you should also read Lynn Hirschberg’s really good recent profile of Rick Rubin in the Times Magazine.) Huge thanks to all our participants.
Koleman Strumpf, professor of business economics at the University of Kansas Business School whose papers include “The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales”:
Many dire assessments have been made about the record business. Unfortunately, these claims are rarely supported with data. As such, I will provide specific numbers about the industry’s health, put those numbers in perspective, and discuss several factors that might explain recent trends.
Let me begin by discussing the current state of the U.S. record industry. As has been widely reported, sales are down. According to Nielsen SoundScan, album sales fell 18 percent between 2000 and 2006, after accounting for paid digital downloads from online stores like iTunes. While these numbers are not good, other industries have experienced similar downturns. For example, new car sales are down 22 percent for U.S. automakers.
It is important to remember that sales downturns are not atypical in the music business, and that investors remain interested in selling records. The current situation closely mirrors the post-disco bust in the early 1980s. Specifically, real revenues fell by the same percentage during the years 1979 to 1985 and 1999 to 2006. The record industry also continues to generate profits and attract interest from investors. For example, a private equity firm just last month completed a ₤3 billion takeover of EMI, and an investment group purchased the Warner Music Group in 2004 for $2.6 billion.
Investors seek out high returns, and these large investments suggest that many believe that they can make money in the record business. It also implies that the industry is still profitable. While profit data can be hard to come by, we get a small window from Warner, the only publicly traded standalone record company in the U.S., which enjoyed operating margins of 7 percent and 10 percent from its recorded music segments in 2005 and 2006.
Putting profitability aside for now, what is the explanation for the sales reduction that has occurred? The most obvious culprit is illicit file-sharing on networks such as Napster, KaZaA, eDonkey, and BitTorrent. While linking the two seems tantalizing — file sharing rose to prominence at roughly the same time that record sales started to fall — there is surprisingly little evidence to support the claim that file sharing has significantly hurt record sales. I co-authored a paper with Felix Oberholzer-Gee of the Harvard Business School in which we studied this link using download data from file-sharing networks. If file sharing hurts record sales, then albums that are more heavily downloaded should experience lower sales than comparable albums that are less downloaded. But, after controlling for the role of popularity, we found that downloads had little effect on album sales.
There are several other factors that might explain recent sales trends. First, recall the industry’s similar problems in the early 1980s. Then, as now, sales were down as consumers stopped purchasing albums from a previously popular genre (in the ’80s it was disco; now it’s teen-pop). So one explanation is that the industry has failed to find genres that capture the interests of consumers.
Second, much of the reduction in sales is the direct result of industry cost-cutting. The major record labels have cut large numbers of staff and severed ties with many artists. Such moves are not necessarily bad business choices, but they suggest that less attention should be given to revenues and more to profits.
Third, recorded music has had trouble competing against other products that vie for consumers’ entertainment spending. Consider home video products like the DVD. It does not seem implausible that a good chunk of the $11 billion rise in spending on home video products since 1999 represents foregone CD sales. (Music industry revenues only fell $2 billion over this period.) Entertainment spending was also likely channeled into cell phones and video games, both of which experienced large sales growth and have been particularly popular with the key teen demographic.
A fourth and final factor to consider is the rise of paid digital downloads made popular by iTunes. While this model is often described as a competitor of illicit downloading, there is little evidence that file-sharing users also use iTunes (plus genres like classical music, which are largely ignored on file-sharing networks, are very popular on iTunes). More problematic is the likelihood that music consumers who used to purchase whole albums now download only one or two songs, so rather than getting $15 for an album sale, the industry gets two downloads at $2. While there is no direct evidence that cannibalization is occurring, the growing size of paid downloads makes this factor an important one to consider.
As for the future, I am dubious about making forecasts. Much will depend on the choices the major labels make on key issues (will they run experiments to determine the optimal pricing of digital downloads?) and the arrival of still-unforeseen technologies (which could allow labels to more cheaply distribute music, or lead to new forms of piracy). At the same time, I reject the argument that recorded music is close to death, simply because the financial incentives to create music have never been particularly high. In 2005, less than one in five albums were released on a major label, and even among those releases, fewer than one in fifteen went gold (the usual measure of record success). With such daunting odds, recording an album may have seemed like a pointless task. But in that year, nearly 44,000 albums were released — enough to provide almost three consecutive years of listening. Regardless of what happens to companies that produce and distribute music, I am sure that recorded music will continue to be made.
Fredric Dannen, author of Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business:
Two decades ago, I was interviewing David Geffen for Hit Men, and he offered a warning about what he saw as a grave threat to the record industry: digital audio tape. If record companies started issuing albums on D.A.T., Geffen said, they would effectively be distributing their master tapes, “obviating the need for catalog.” At the time, Geffen’s admonition made sense; but D.A.T. never caught on with the consumer. The failure of D.A.T. got me thinking, and before long I believed I had discerned something about the consumption of recorded music — something startlingly obvious that has somehow eluded the record industry throughout its history, and led to the industry’s irreversible decline.
My epiphany, if you want to call it that, was simply this: consumers of recorded music will always embrace the format that provides the greatest convenience. No other factor — certainly not high fidelity — will move consumers substantially to change their listening and buying habits. The single exception to this rule was the introduction of two-channel stereo in the late fifties.
Let me state this more clearly, by example. When the long-playing record (LP) format was introduced by Columbia Records back in the late 1940s, the industry as a whole resisted it, and many predicted it would never take off because 78s sounded better. Without question, early LPs did not sound nearly as good as 78s. But given the choice of listening to all of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on two sides of one record versus sixteen sides of eight records, the consumer opted for convenience and simplicity (not to mention less shelf space).
The industry also resisted the audio cassette. Who in their right mind would prefer a format with an ever-present hiss over the pristine sound of an LP? The answer: nearly everybody. Cassettes were much easier to handle than records; they didn’t scratch, and you could listen to them in your car, or while walking or jogging.
Starting about twenty years ago, the CD took off like a rocket, burying both the LP and the audio cassette in a few short years. At that time, the CD was the last word in simplicity and convenience. I remember meeting an audiophile at a record-industry convention in the late 1980s. The popularity of the CD appalled and befuddled him. Couldn’t people hear that digital sound was cold and harsh compared to the warm, luxurious sound of an LP? Sure. But most consumers of music are not high-end audiophiles. Now you could hear all 74 minutes of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on one side of one disk.
I myself am something of a music nut. I cannot get through a day without listening to music, and my personal collection of recordings is enormous. By the early 1990s, I longed for a format even more convenient than the CD. And, based on my own listening habits, I was pretty sure I knew where we were headed. In short, I wanted to be able to run my music library from my home computer, and dispense with disks altogether. What I did not foresee was the advent of MP3 compression. As soon as MP3s hit the scene, I embraced them ecstatically. I was the first person I knew to own a Diamond Rio, the first portable MP3 player.
In 1999, I wrote an editorial for the New York Times predicting that MP3 was an unstoppable force that would destroy the oligopolistic power of the record industry. This paper did not believe me; the editorial ran instead in the Los Angeles Times.
It was an easy prediction to make. You can always count on the record industry to cling to the past, and to fight innovation. (Apart from resisting the LP, the cassette, and the CD, the industry also fought MTV.) The industry could have adopted and embraced MP3 as the new dominant format, had it understood why it was unstoppable. But the business’ failure to understand has been striking for its persistence. By the time Napster hit the scene, the industry had a Hobson’s choice: accept MP3, or die.
We all know what happened next.
George Drakoulias, music producer, artists & repertoire executive at American Recordings, and veteran of Def Jam Recordings:
There are many factors contributing to the industry’s current decline. The biggest ones include the inability of record companies to take advantage of new resources like Napster and American Idol, the continuous churning out of bad music, and, of course, greed, greed, and more greed. I think it is clear how we got here; but where we’re going remains very uncertain.
For starters, while we’re still in agreement as a society that people want music, I’d say music is not as important now as it once was. Instant gratification has removed some of the the demand. Music feels like it has become more disposable and cheap, with less staying power. As a result, it becomes a lot harder to commit to newer acts knowing they may not be around a year from now. I don’t see many kids nowadays wearing the T-shirts of the latest fad bands, but I do see a hell of a lot of AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd shirts out there.
In a way, the blogosphere has removed all sense of mystery from the entertainment industry as a whole. For example, everyone knows what Heath Ledger looks like as the Joker in the the new installment of Batman, which won’t be in theaters for almost a year. We see previews of magazine covers weeks before they hit the stands. The Christmas Eve-type excitement and anticipation that used to accompany entertainment seems to have disappeared.
As far as how the music industry fits into this scheme, the old business model is dead. In five years, the CD should be over. Someone will take a stab at a subscription service — though the right way to make that work is a mystery to me. Maybe it will involve several like-minded acts getting together and starting a co-op, such as the bands of Ozzfest, etc. Meanwhile, music executives still need some sort of filter to help them navigate the new playing field.
Without stating the obvious, the future is really in the hands of the consumer. The public will dictate to whatever is left of the record industry (it’s funny that we still call it that — long live vinyl!) the way in which it wants its music delivered. The final product will most likely involve computers, and will give you the ability to take your music with you in your phone, car, bathtub, skydiving parachute, etc.
What am I going to do in the midst of all this? It may sound simple, but my plan is to work as hard as I can to make the best music possible and try to educate the listener. A few years ago, I worked on a record called The Last DJ by Tom Petty. The songs on the album addressed the problems we are currently dealing with in the industry. I thought the record would be a wakeup call for consumers; but it’s hard to tell kids, “Eat your broccoli, it’s good for you.” I’ll try to nurture new talent and make records that sound exciting, emotional, and timeless, and to bring some level of craft back into record-making, ensuring that the artists I work with have the ability to play live and move an audience.
One option that doesn’t seem feasible is making everything free and eliminating copyrights. Hopefully, someone smarter than I am will come up with the right formula to get music to consumers in the way that they want it, and to collect fees that are distributed accordingly. I hope that person shows up soon.
Peter Rojas, founder of Engadget and co-founder of RCRD LBL, a free, online-only music label launched by Downtown Records.
The short answer is that the Internet happened.
I never thought studying Adorno and Horkheimer in college would come in handy (much as I loved them), but they did a good job of identifying how the rise of mechanical reproduction went hand-in-hand with the birth of mass culture. Whether it was television, radio, newspapers, or records, huge media companies were able to take advantage of a curious sweet spot in history — mechanical reproduction made it possible to churn out cheap, identical copies of a book, newspaper, record, etc., but creating and distributing those cheap, identical copies required the sort of capital to which very few individuals had access. In the case of music, a handful of major labels could more or less monopolize the creation and distribution of music.
The Internet changed all that. We’d already been slowly shifting from analog to digital reproduction, but it was digital reproduction combined with the a ridiculously cheap distribution channel (the Internet) that really mucked it up for the major labels. The emergence of Napster (the original one) was the wake-up call, but the record industry would be in trouble now even if no one had invented peer-to-peer file sharing.
The fact of the matter is that the majors thrived in an era of inefficiency, when there was value in physically producing and distributing music. There isn’t any value in that any more (or at least, it’s very quickly declining), and there’s no good way for labels to compete given that the cost structure of the business was designed around physical releases. Major labels need blockbusters, because the costs inherent with producing, distributing, and marketing each physical release means it’s easier to make money from one mega-hit that sells 10 million records than 100 small hits that each sell 100,000 records. In a digital world, you could make money from those 100 small hits almost as easily as you could from that one mega-hit. (See Chris Anderson’s theory of the Long Tail).
If this was merely the extent of the problem, the record industry might be doing okay right now. The majors could have adjusted and reinvented themselves for the digital era. Instead, they took too long to start selling music online (and even when they did agree to start selling digital downloads, they screwed it up by insisting on digital rights management). The lack of legal, paid-for downloads created a vacuum in the pre-iTunes era, one that numerous peer-to-peer file-sharing networks were happy to fill. A generation of kids got used to the idea that music was free, and given the infinite amount of freely — if illegally — available music out there, it was hard to argue with the facts on the ground. Music seemed free, so it was free. It didn’t help that the industry had been gouging consumers for years with high CD prices; prices rose even as the cost of producing CDs plummeted. Digital downloads should have made it possible to slash prices for recorded music, but the majors have done their best to keep prices at around a dollar a track — an artificially high price point that makes piracy more attractive than it should be.
I don’t pretend to know what the industry will look like in ten years, but the funny thing about all of this is that music itself is healthier than ever. The Internet, combined with low-cost (or even no-cost) digital tools, has led to an explosion of creativity, with millions of amateurs making music for every conceivable genre, sub-genre, and microgenre, and then sharing their creations online. Andrew Keen might look down on these results, and no doubt 99.9 percent of the music being created today is terrible; but that’s besides the point. Even that one-tenth of one percent means that there is more great music being created than any of us will have time to listen to — and that’s not even taking into account all of the “professional” music that still manages to get made. Many professional artists are discovering that, regardless of how well their music sells, they’re still able to make a healthy living from live appearances, merchandise, and licensing — and the Internet only makes it easier for them to build a fan base. It’s the Britney Spearses of the world that are hit hardest by all of this change. Manufactured pop doesn’t do quite so well when consumers have better options to choose from.
The majors thrived in an era of artificial scarcity when they were able to control the production and distribution of music. Today, we have an infinite number of choices available to us, and when content is infinitely abundant, the only scarce commodities are convenience, taste, and trust. The music companies that are successfully shaping the Internet era are recognizing that the real value is in making it easier to buy music than to steal it, helping consumers find other people who share their music tastes, and serving as a trusted source for discovering new music.
Steve Gottlieb, president of TVT Records:
The decline in record sales over the past year was entirely predictable. The technology that has wreaked havoc on the industry was developed 8 or 9 years ago, and, while certain features of it have improved, the individual elements that comprise it — an institutionalized standard for non-protected music files like MP3s, music search and swapping protocols, and rip/burn hardware — are not new. Combining these elements allowed CDs to go from a storage medium to a broadcast medium. As such, the passing along of burned CDs now constitutes the primary means of music acquisition. The cycle of reduced demand causing retail channels to reduce distribution pipelines in advance of the marketplace began in earnest last year, when not a single retailer saw enough value in Tower Record to outbid liquidators.
This tale of technology leveling the record industry demonstrates its unique character. Record companies seem unable to digest change, redefine their businesses, and, perhaps most importantly, resist the temptation to seek unfair competitive advantages over one another. The failure of record labels to take collaborative action against piracy has led to the industry’s current bizarre circumstances — in a world of skyrocketing demand for music, the development and sale of recorded music offers ever-decreasing economic returns.
This set of circumstances was entirely avoidable. Many of the blunders that created the current mess were heavily anticipated, as was the recent decline in sales. Major industry mistakes included shutting down Napster after its commitment to begin paying rights holders, suing consumers without clarifying to the public what constituted personal use, and failing to squarely address CD burners and iPods as strategies to sell hardware by bundling them with unlimited access to freely-copied music.
For as long as the woes of MP3s, file sharing and CD burning have existed, solutions to them have existed as well, although their attractiveness and cost of implementation may have changed. These solutions include combining advertising with free consumption, subscription services, and transactional unit-based sales of secure formats. Given the fact that the public has gotten used to sharing music for free, getting people to abandon this notion will be extremely difficult.
Regardless of what created this mess, if we accept that free music has become the model for consumption, then we have little choice but to invest in advertising-supported free services that will make this type of consumption profitable. This step will require patience, leadership and a long-term view. After formulating a way to recapture the revenue it’s losing, the industry can then address the development of a new, secure file format that offers audio, meta-data, and other digital features superior to those of MP3s. This should be an easy task, and will give the industry access to both ad-supported free “iPod quality” MP3s, and higher-quality digital products that can be sold directly.
Unless the labels actively reinvent themselves and embrace change, they will continue to find themselves in an expanding music marketplace that rewards their efforts less and less.

Techno, House and Electro Meet @ Nopeisdope

De toekomst van House zal niet alleen in de house muziek liggen, en daarbij de toekomst van het house publiek ook niet. Op den duur zal het house publiek kennis maken met stijlen als techno, minimal en electro. Stijlen die nu vooral nog meer underground zijn, vergeleken met house, zullen in de toekomst ook terug te vinden zijn in de grotere clubs van Nederland. Rockstarz zal housejunkies op vrijdag 30 november kennis laten maken met deze opkomende stijlen in de dance scene! In combinatie met Nopeisdope, wat voor de derde keer in Eindhoven te vinden is, zal Rockstarz op deze avond haar nieuwste feest lanceren: “The New Revolution”. The New Revolution, een combinatie van house, techno, minimal en electro, zal zoals de naam al vertelt een nieuwe revolutie zijn in de dance scene. House liefhebbers zullen kennis maken met techno, minimal en electro; minimal liefhebbers met house, techno en electro etc.! Maar wat vooral bijzonder zal zijn is dat al deze stijlen op vrijdag de 30e onder één dag te vinden zijn, namelijk in CLUB REMBRANDT! Techno liefhebbers zullen deze avond los gaan op minimal beats, Minimal addicts zullen House lovers ontmoeten, Elektro zal kennis maken met techno en house junkies zullen een gru-we-lij-ke avond hebben en nooit meer wat anders willen! En bij de lancering van een nieuw feest hoort natuurlijk een super line-up! New Revolution Area Bart Skils 2000 and One Warren Fellow Gfreaxx Ille Bitch Darko Esser Nope Area: House Kenneth G Quintino Afrojack Sidney Samson D-Rashid Yasmin le Bon Miss Sugaware MC Roga Dope Area: Eclectic Billy the Klit Irwan Jamie Westland Lina Ann Marvelous K MC Shanairo Talent stage Bassjackers Groovenatics Veron Basti Lourenz New Revolution Area De eerste indruk van The New Revolution moet natuurlijk goed zijn, daarom heeft Rockstarz gekozen voor een ijzersterke line-up! Rockstarz heeft met Darko Esser, Ille Bitch en Warren Fellow een paar DJ’s geboekt die in Nederland behoren tot de top DJ’s in de techno en minimal scene. 01.00 – 02.30 Bart Skils 02.30 – 04.00 2000 and One Met erg veel boekingen en een paar erg vette gigs op verschillende grote festivals in Nederland is Bart Skils afgelopen zomer definitief doorgebroken! Éen van zijn hoogtepunten moet zijn b2b set samen met ‘2000 and One’ op Awakenings geweest zijn. Met zijn eigen clubavonden is Bart Skils op dit moment één van de meest bekende DJ’s in de Nederlandse dance scene. 2000 and One zal The New Revolution afsluiten met een 1,5 uur durende set. Naast alleen DJ is 2000 and One nog eens een erg goede producer met een paar vette releases afgelopen tijd! NOPE AREA: In de Nope Area zullen Rockstarz finest; Afojack, Kenneth G en Quintino hun kunsten laten zien. Deze drie jongens hebben de afgelopen maanden duidelijk laten zien dat ze binnenkort niet meer weg te denken zijn uit de house scene. De remix van Erasmus (Gregor Salto) door Quintino die op de mix cd, AAAAAA, van Roger Sanchez en Laidback Luke terug te vinden is geeft aan hoe ver deze drie DJ’s het kunnen gaan schoppen! Ondersteund door Sidney Samson, D-Rashid, Yasmin le Bon en Miss Sugaware zal er in de Nope Area een house feestje gebouwd worden zoals jullie van Nopeisdope gewent zijn! De Nope Area zal gehost worden door MC Roga. DOPE AREA: Billy the Klit heeft afgelopen maanden bewezen een echte Nopeisdope DJ te zijn, met zijn sets vol power en afwisseling weet hij er altijd voor te zorgen dat iedereen, en dan ook echt iedereen, helemaal uit zijn dak gaat! Na sets op een aantal vorige NID edities is hij dan ook zeker één van de DJ’s waar naar uitgekeken mag worden! Naast Billy zullen Jamie Westland, Irwan, Lina Ann en Marvelous K in de foyer achter de draaitafels plaats nemen. MC Shanairo zal als Mc deze zaal onder zijn hoede nemen! Talent stage: Zoals de laatste tijd vaker gebeurt zal Rockstarz deze avond ook een aantal talentvolle DJ’s de kans geven om zich op dit podium te bewijzen. Bassjackers, Groovenatics, Gfreaxx, Veron en Basti Lourenz zullen er alles aan doen om een onvergetelijke indruk achter te laten, dus vergeet deze talentvolle DJ’s de 30e niet!

A Book with a Theme Song?

Published: Tue, 13 Nov 2007, 08:32:46 GMT

DALLAS, Texas - Nov. 13 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) -- It's not a song book or a singing book, though technologically possible, but buyers of the new novella anthology, "The Pilgrimage & Dark Spaces: Collected short works of fictional drama" (ISBN: 9780978713003), are asked to broaden their reading experience with a little original music accompaniment. The book written by Randy Doyle Hazlett and newly released by Christian Artist's Workshop directs readership to contemporary music extras found at http://www.DarkSpaces.info which were written specifically for the book.

The music is freely downloadable for listening pleasure and available in popular ringtone formats (mp3, MIDI).Music or not, the book (see accompanying cover photo) contains a soul-searching slice of Americana. In "The Pilgrimage," we are invited into the home of a dysfunctional family exposed to tragedy. The family is fragmented and struggles to express emotion in any constructive form. At the death of a parent, the family is partially reunited, but the road long chosen takes some beyond the possibility of redemption.

The departing gift of an old woman well-versed in the sins of others enables the eldest to rekindle life's most essential element - love. Veteran Broadway actor, writer and producer Albert T. Viola of Princeton University parallels "The Pilgrimage" to the works of Nobel-prize winning American playwright Eugene O'Neill and says of Dr. Hazlett, "He writes with breathtaking realism, clarity and grace." Regarding the second feature, "Dark Spaces" is a spiritual short story trilogy which follows the fictional lives of three couples separated in time.

The intrigue of the short story collection in dramatic prose is both emotionally captivating and intellectually stimulating. In the genre of C.S. Lewis, "Dark Spaces" challenges readers to formulate their own theology and, in the process, reconnect with their eternal friend - their soul. In "The Pilgrimage and Dark Spaces," Randy Doyle Hazlett has thrown us a lifeline of faith, hope, and love. This is Dr. Hazlett's second out-of-the-box book release of the year, with the first being the acclaimed nonfiction work, "Negotiate Like a Phoenician," coauthored with friend and business partner Dr. Habib Chamoun-Nicolas.

With the success of that book, which draws heavily on Biblical accounts of the deal behind the construction of Solomon's Temple, a series of workshops on best business practices of the ancient Phoenician trading masters is being unveiled for 2008 at Camp Allen near Houston. In conjunction with the workshops, Dr. Hazlett is designing a suite of fun learning games for future commercial development. While entry into print media is new news, publishing is not. Loads more original music and additional ebooks reside in cyber metastasis at www.FreeChristianStuff.net.

Music, fun, and games aside, Christian Artist's Workshop is nominating "The Pilgrimage & Dark Spaces: Collected short works of fictional drama" for a PEN/Faulkner Award and National Book Critics Circle Award consideration. The book is currently available in trade paperback online or directly via Pathway Book Services (800-345-6665) and Ingram or Baker & Taylor channels (ISBN: 9780978713003, LCCN: 2006905615) at a suggested retail price of $16.95. Speaking engagements and author interviews are by arrangement through website contacts

Universal Music puts its faith in memory cure for sliding sales

Universal Music, the world’s biggest music company, is to release singles on USB memory sticks this month, in an attempt to arrest the decline in music sales.

The Vivendi-owned company plans to charge about £4.99 for USB singles starting on October 29 with releases from piano rock band Keane and Nicole, the lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls. That compares with £2.99 for a typical CD single.

However, the hope is that fans will be willing to pay extra because the extra storage capacity on a USB allows the addition of videos and other multimedia.
Brian Rose, the commercial director for Universal UK, said: “This is aimed at the younger, 12 to 24 year olds, who no longer believe that the CD is as cool as it used to be”.

Hurt hard by music piracy and legal downloads, sales of CDs are down by 19 per cent in the US and 10 per cent in the UK in the first half of the year.
But with physical music more profitable than downloads, the music business is eager to find formats that will keep consumers coming back to record stores.

Universal’s move is being gradually followed by the other three majors, although by contrast their efforts only amount to dipping their toe in the water, with EMI planning to release Pink Floyd’s studio albums on the format, while Warner Music is aiming squarely at the younger market with a November release of a part-album from electro-punk band Hadouken!
An agreement between the music companies and the Offical Charts Company, which runs the Top 40, means that USB sticks are eligible for inclusion in the chart. That now justifies making them available at the same time as a normal release.

Eric Daugan, vice-president, of digital business in Europe for Warner Music, said: “The CD is an old technology that has not evolved. Fortunately people still want to own a physical product, so with the extra storage, the idea is to offer a better consumer experience”.
Warner Music is hoping that Hadouken!’s USB will retail at £7.99. Promoted as being “halfway between a single and album” by the record company it includes six new songs and five old ones, with links to multimedia content on the internet, and an interface whose job it is to replace the look and feel of the paper album cover.

For Universal, the UK is the test market for the USB format worldwide, partly because it believes the UK is the last important market for singles.

The company hopes to release USB albums before the end of the year from acts such as Kanye West and Amy Winehouse – although rivals privately query its emphasis on the technology when there are alternatives such as MVI, a DVD-based format that combines music and video.
Mr Rose said: “We’re hoping that people will see USB singles as a piece of merchandise. There’s obviously a demand for collectable physical music the kind of format people want to stick up on their wall”.

Concerten op USB-stick

Een Weens bedrijf gaat live concerten op USB-stick uitbrengen, zo meld webwereld. Na afloop van concerten kunnen bezoekers dan voor €17 een USB-stick aanschaffen met daarop de verse opnamen van die avond.

Muziek voortaan ook op USB

Platenmaatschappij Universal gaat voortaan muzieknummers op USB schijf verkopen. De doelgroep: 12 tot 25-jarigen die niets met cd's hebben.
Op 29 oktober wordt een nummer van Keane via USB stick ter beschikking gesteld. Daarna is Nicole, de zangeres van de Pussycat Dolls, aan de beurt.

Kopers zijn met USB sticks wel duurder uit. Een cd single kost gemiddeld zes dollar en een single op iTunes gemiddeld 99 dollarcent. Muziek op USB gaat 10 dollar kosten.

Behalve Universal zijn ook Warner en EMI van plan om muziek op USB uit te brengen. Warner komt naar eigen zeggen met een 'gedeeltelijk album' van de band Hadouken. EMI gaat in de nabije toekomst muziek van Pink Floyd op USB uitbrengen.

De Official Charts Company, de samensteller van de Britse Top 40, laat de verkoop van voorbespeelde USB stick voortaan meewegen bij de berekeningen van zijn hitlijst.

NEW music industry

This is an articale about the new music industry.

http://cobrapunchers.blogspot.com/2007/04/new-music-industry.html

Rethinking The Music Industry Business Model...

For all the complaints we have about the way the RIAA conducts its business, we have always been optimistic that things would get sorted out eventually. It wasn't the music industry that was in trouble at all -- just the traditional recording labels. People often accuse us of hating the music industry, which is totally incorrect. When we discuss music industry strategies it's hoping that they recognize that these new business models have the potential to be much bigger than the old ones.

This is based on a few simple ideas that really shouldn't be that hard to grasp, unless you're desperately tied to an existing business model and unwilling to change. First, treating all your customers as criminals doesn't create much loyalty or willingness to buy your product. Especially in a market where the product is based on being a fan, not filling a need. You want your fans to be happy -- not pissed off. Second, the basic economics are there. On the supply and demand curve the supply of digital goods is infinite, meaning that the trend over time will absolutely be for the price to get pushed towards zero. It's just the way the market works.

That's not a bad thing if you embrace it and recognize that, rather than lost revenue, free content represents free promotion. After all, the hardest part of becoming a success in the music business is the marketing to get your product known. The third, and final, aspect of this is how new technologies have dramatically decreased the costs of every other aspect of the music business. Creation, publishing and distribution are all now much cheaper due to the onward march of technology, forcing a shift in how we think about copyright issues.

Based on all of this, it's not hard to come up with a variety of different business models that are based on (1) using the music as a promotional good to get a lot more attention in a crowded market (2) offering customers what they want, and offering them plenty of different ways to get it and (3) building tremendous loyalty from happy customers who feel much closer to the musicians and are much more willing to spend money on secondary products (merchandise, concerts, access). Plenty of musicians have figured this out, and now it's moving further and further away from being a "fringe" idea and into the mainstream music business. Wired

Magazine is running a bunch of articles about how the industry is realizing this, with two pieces that are definitely worth reading. There's an interview with Beck where he discusses continually giving fans more ways to interact with the content, and not worrying about things appearing on the internet. However, even more interesting is the article about Canadian music management and music label firm Nettwerk. You may remember that name from their announcement earlier this year that they would pay the legal fees for a teen sued for file sharing one of their own artists. The article also discusses how Nettwerk recognizes all of what we discuss above, in that it's encouraging each band on its roster to build its own label, and focus not just on how to "sell a CD," but on selling the entire experience of the music. When you look at things that way, it means you don't worry if some of the music is heard for free, because that just encourages more interest in other things the band is selling.

It's also looking to try experiments similar to the recently announced Sellaband, who focuses on getting people to "invest" in a musician to help them pay for a recording, in exchange for a share of the later profits. In other words, the industry is evolving -- in many of the ways that plenty of people have been predicting all along. This is a good thing -- and one of these days the old record labels will finally recognize the mistakes they've made... or simply disappear

Universal Music Wants YouTube to Pay Up

Universal Music Wants YouTube to Pay Up

Universal, the world's largest music company, has decided that free promotion for their artists via music videos shown on YouTube is actually costing them money, and they are ready to send the internet startup a big bill.Universal, in a move that could be a sign of things to come from other music labels, is claiming that YouTube owes the label tens of millions of dollars," according to an article in the New York Post. Universal Music chief Doug Morris is quoted as saying

YouTube and other sites "owe us tens of millions of dollars. How we deal with these companies will be revealed shortly."

The news comes at a bad time for YouTube, as the online video site is considering offers from buyers, as well as a possible IPO in the future. Any such plans could be put on hold if the threat of future lawsuits is realized.

Universal, as well as Warner Music, EMI and SonyBMG, have all been in ongoing talks with YouTube about licensing arrangements.

Microsoft Strikes Deal for Music

In a rare move, Microsoft said yesterday that it had agreed to pay a percentage of the sales of its new portable media player to the Universal Music Group.


Universal Music, a unit of Vivendi, will receive a royalty on the Zune player in exchange for licensing its recordings for Microsoft’s new digital music service, the companies said.
Universal, which releases recordings from acts like U2 and Jay-Z, said it would pay half of what it receives on the device to its artists. The company is expected to receive more than $1 for each $250 device, according to executives who were briefed on the pact.

The deal represents a big departure from the standard set by Apple Computer, which pays record companies for songs sold through its iTunes service but does not give them a cut of the sales of its hugely successful iPod.

Under the deal, Universal, the world’s largest music corporation, will receive a percentage of both download revenue and digital player sales when the Zune and its related service are introduced next week.

The pact comes after weeks of tense talks and averts a standoff that might have crippled Microsoft’s attempt to compete against the iPod.

The accord also could represent a sea change in the dynamics between technology developers and the media companies that provide the content that plays on their devices. It illustrates how music companies are scrambling to attach themselves to fast-developing online businesses. The move also reflects Universal’s recognition that, for all the runaway success of gadgets like the iPod, consumers are still not buying enough digital music to make up for declining sales of music on compact disk. Universal said it was only fair to receive payment on devices that may be repositories for stolen music.

A recent study estimated that Apple has sold an average of 20 songs per iPod — a fraction of its capacity. The rest of consumers’ music files — 95 percent or more — come from ripped CDs, possibly including discs from their own collections, and illegal file-trading networks, the study said.

As a result, music companies have long coveted the revenue being generated through devices like the iPod. But so far, they have had little recourse.
In 1999, a federal appeals court ruled that one of the earliest digital music players, the Diamond Rio, was not covered by a federal law that required makers of certain audio recording devices to use anticopying technology and pay a royalty to the record labels.
In announcing the deal with Universal, Microsoft said it would now offer similar royalty deals to the rest of the industry. In discussing the rationale for the royalty, Chris Stephenson, general manager for global marketing in Microsoft’s entertainment unit, said the company “needed people to rally behind” the new device and service.

“It’s a higher-level business relationship,” he said.
In addition, the deal may provide leverage for Universal to insist on a cut of future iPod sales when its existing contract with Apple expires next year.
“It’s a major change for the industry,” said David Geffen, the entertainment mogul who more than a decade ago sold the record label that bears his name to Universal. “Each of these devices is used to store unpaid-for material. This way, on top of the material people do pay for, the record companies are getting paid on the devices storing the copied music.”
He added: “It certainly changes the paradigm.”

Under federal legislation passed in the early 1990s, the recording industry receives a royalty on sales of certain audio devices like digital-audio tape machines. But the devices covered by the law do not generate much: the nonprofit organization that oversees those royalties distributed just $3.5 million to labels and artists last year, according to its Web site.
But Universal Music’s chairman, Doug Morris, has been increasingly vocal about securing compensation for the company’s music.

Two months ago, Mr. Morris took a public swipe at user-driven Web sites like MySpace and YouTube, telling a Merrill Lynch investor conference that “these new businesses are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars.” (Universal later struck a licensing deal with YouTube.)

“I’m hopeful that technology companies and creative companies will understand how each other’s futures are intertwined,” Mr. Morris said last night. “It can only work if one doesn’t try and take advantage of the other, and so far we’ve come out on the short end.”
Given the industry’s sluggish sales, Mr. Morris has had plenty of reason to try new business models. CD sales continue to decline, and digital music has not offset the drop. In addition, the pace of growth in digital sales has been slowing by some measures.

Microsoft ultimately had plenty of incentive to make a deal with Universal. Microsoft is laying a huge wager on the Zune. If it had not struck a deal, it would have been left in the position of trying to mount a credible challenge to the iPod without Universal, which accounts for a third of new albums sold in the United States. Microsoft also stands to benefit by cultivating a fan-friendly image with the notion that artists — not just corporations — will share in the Zune’s sales.

Steve Gordon, an entertainment lawyer, said that Universal was saying, in effect: “Look, we know new technologies are here to stay. We know CDs are like typewriters, and are being replaced. ”

When the companies initially licensed Apple’s fledgling iTunes service, “they didn’t figure he’d make tens of billions of dollars from the iPod,” said Mr. Gordon, author of the book “The Future of the Music Business.”
“This time they’re saying, ‘Well, we want a piece.’ ”