1 2 3 ... Letzte Seite >>
source www.minblog.net
Fresh impulse for music sharing
31/05/2010 /
SoundCloud has more than 1 million registered users
SoundCloud founders Eric Wahlforss and Alexander Ljung recently announced the music sharing site had now attracted 1 million users, giving "a bigger than words thank you to every single one of you, building SoundCloud for you truly is a great pleasure".
Just over a year ago the site had 100,000 registered users but has grown from strength to strength. The two start-up entrepreneurs went live with a beta version of SoundCloud in 2008, shortly after moving to Berlin from their native Sweden. Ljung and Wahlforss both had a passion for electronic music and immersed themselves in the city's club culture - they mixed business with pleasure and began networking with DJs, musicians and club owners, sometimes even promoting their business on sweaty dancefloors at 4am.
They have since cooperated with major international labels, artists and organisations, including London's legendary Abbey Road Studios. Since the end of last year, musicians can submit their tracks to audio engineers at Abbey Road and have their music mastered on the same type of equipment that was used to add the finishing touches to Beatles and Pink Floyd tracks.
www.abbeyroadonlinemastering.com/soundcloud
The SoundCloud CEOs have even gone as far as to declare the death of download culture. At this year's SXSW, Ljung predicted that streaming services would grow in importance. "Downloads are stupid. I'd rather stream it from a hard drive that someone else is managing. When consumers press 'play,' that file will be managed by someone else," he said. The SoundCloud founders have also published a book 'on interpersonal trust in web-mediated social spaces', which is available here.
How does SoundCloud work? The site's main function is to help musicians, producers, and other music professionals share and collaborate on music tracks. In the days before SoundCloud, it was much more difficult for people to transfer and work on audio tracks because of their large file sizes. Users can now stream songs via SoundCloud's servers, with the option of allowing their peers to download songs. One of the site's most striking features is an embeddable music player, which can be shared via blogs and social media. The player lets users comment directly on a specific part of a track. Here is a demonstration of how it works.
source www.minblog.net
Mobile phones last resort to buy music
21/05/2010 /
Mobile phones are apparently the last place users will purchase music says a new report from ComScore.
Less than 2% of mobile users actually download music, which means that the mobile music market has a long way to go before they can start turning a real profit.
Contrary to seeing young kids blaring music through their phones down the street, most people listening to music on their mobile phones (24%) get their music from a computer.
Since iTunes stranglehold on the mobile/internet music market for the last decade, Nokia and Spotfiy have both launched their own services in order to break up the iTunes monopoly, mostly unsuccessful until now. Nokia, with its Comes With Music and Spotify both launching in late 2008.
11% of people owned a MP3 player in 2005, but most people remain brand loyal to iTunes and Apple, with a 28% share -1.2 million people across those five countries downloading music from their site.
This is only the beginning of the mobile music market, other start ups like Beyond Oblivion which News Corp. just took over will hopefully help change the whole dynamic of the industry.
(ComScore's data was gathered from users aged 13 and over in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United States.)
Sources:
http://kn.theiet.org/news/may10/mobiledownloads.cfm
Ari Stein
source www.minblog.net
China, the future of music?
18/05/2010 /
Brighton,UK recently hosted the mammoth music industry showcase, The Great Escape, better known as the SXSW of Europe. The Great Escape brings hundreds of new acts to the UK's shores with the hope of exposing themselves to the right people.
With that in mind, plenty of debates and discussion was taking place at the festival, one in particular that held alot of interest for people, was the potential of music industry in China.
Ian Hogarth, founder of Songkick, winner of the Brit Council's UK Young Music Entrepreneur Award
For a long time China held no persuasion in the west for the music business, but only until recently with the enormous expansion of the markets, a population of 1 billion people and industrial growth has the west really noticed China's potential as a huge market for the music industry.
The British council as part of the Brit Council′s UK Young Music Entrepreneur Award chose five new entrepreneurs as finalists. The following present participants at the TGE were, Nikhil Shah from Mix cloud; Karen Piper from Radar Maker; Storme Whitby-Grubb from Little Touring Ltd and Ian Hogarth from Songkick.
Whilst there are still only a mere, 5000 shows a year in China, Ian Hogarth who was eventually chosen as the winner of the entrepreneur award with £5000 had these inspiring words to say about the future potential of China's industry.
"China's nascent music industry has leapfrogged that of the West. In China recorded music is a promotional loss leader, deals are 360 degree by default, and live and online are the core growth areas of the industry. Songkick plays at the intersection of live music and the web, helping fans to track their favourite artists and never miss an amazing concert, so China is a place for us to learn, and a place to grow"
We are all aware of the ever-present red tape surrounding China and its creative industries. Google left China only this year because of that same problem; also Bob Dylan was denied a visa because of his risky threat as a performer in the country.
What remains clear is the potential, "nearly 40% of Asian youth are listening to even more music than they were a year ago, according to Synovate Music Matters Survey, and there are more than 300 million broadband internet users in China - a 42% increase in only two years, as cited by China Internet Network Info Center."
source www.minblog.net
Lime Wire in the deep end
14/05/2010 /
In what some say is unprecedented for the copyright world, peer-2-peer company, Lime Wire was recently found guilty of committing and inducing copyright infringement.
The case which was brought about by various record labels like Sony BMG, Virgin Records and Warner Bros. Records been pending since August 2009. It went through the US District Court in New York and on Tuesday a 59-page verdict was handed down: Lime Wire is guilty.
The decision certainly doesn't bode well for other peer-2-peer companies, in the current climate of music pillaging, pro-industry voices like the RIAA are doing all they can in order to prevent a further slide into the sales abyss.
Lime Wire started out in 2000, initially setting up a large file sharing network in which million of users could trade files with one another across several platforms.
In a counterclaim suit against the RIAA from Lime Wire, representatives issued this statement:
”[The RIAA]′s goal was simple: to destroy any online music distribution service they did not own or control or force such services to do business with them on exclusive and/or other anti-competitive terms.
RIAA hit back at Lime Wire, insulting the motivation of the New York based company:
"While most commercial illicit P2P networks have ultimately abided by the Supreme Court's unanimous decision, Lime Wire is a conspicuous holdout... A kitchen sink of frivolous charges doesn't change the law, the Supreme Court's ruling or the fact that Lime Wire has built a business based on theft and continues to profit from it."
The reality of the situation is that Lime Wire stands outdated amongst the file sharing networks, many other start up companies have popped up in the last few years, carrying the torch for illicit copyright infringement.
Ari Stein
Sources:
http://news.cnet.com/Lime-Wire,-squeezed,-files-countersuit/2100-1030_3-6119646.html?tag=mncol;txt
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/major-copyright-defeat-tastes-sour-for-limewire.ars
source www.minblog.net
GEMA puts its unreasonable foot down on YouTube
12/05/2010 /
German collection agency GEMA recently ordered YouTube to remove 600 videos from its site after contract renewal talks broke down on May 10th.
Talks for its renewal had been in place for over year, but its 18-month contract with YouTube expired March 31, 2009.
GEMA have seemingly become unreasonable and over-demanding with YouTube and might also be a step out of reality. Not only do GEMA already charge 130 times more than Britain does for usage of music on YouTube. (Currently at a rate of €0.1278 for every song up to five minutes).
But the collection agency also want a share of advertising profits and aligned growth revenue, hardly viable for YouTube, if all publishing collection agencies decided to do this.
GEMA have taken a stand alongside the support of eight other collection agencies such as AKM (Austria), ASCAP (US), BMI (United States), SABAM (Belgium), SACEM (France), SESAC (United States), SIAE (Italy) and SUISA (Switzerland), hoping that their defiance will lead to improved royalty rates for artists and collection arms.
GEMA CEO Dr. Harald Heker was quoted as saying, ”GEMA wants to take a stand and stress the fact that music has its price."
The collection agency GEMA looks after a large amount of copyrights namely 60,000 composers, lyricists, and music publishers, also representing over 1 million copyright owners all over the world.
In Google's defense Patrick Walter, who is the director of video partnerships for the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) stated that "Nobody can expect that YouTube is going into a business where it loses money each time a music video is [played]. This simply is not sustainable."
Sources:
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-youtubes-german-music-royalty-talks-break-down/
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i327b3ab8972bdc8e06c3f112824ccce8
Ari Stein