Music Business [view: normal]

• The Orchard's shares doubled on stock buyout news.
• Did Qtrax tell another lie? Search deal with Baidu may be less than claimed.
• Falling traffic at MySpace will mean $100 million less in ad payments from Google.
• MobBase introduced a d.i.y. music iPhone apps. But with 100,000 apps will it get lost?
• iLike & MySpace offer free tracks to promote new enhanced Google music search. And artists are...

stats via Alexa

Falling traffic at MySpace will cost it $100 million in payments from Google ads according to estimates offered by executives of parent company News Corp. In 2006 Google agreed pay $900 million for the exclusive right to provide search advertising to MySpace over three years based on traffic volume. “We’re still losing traffic,” admitted Chase Carey, chief operating officer of News ...

(UPDATED) Earlier this week, we reported that a little known U.S. based download site BlueBeat.com had begun selling previously unavailable tracks from The Beatles for just $.25. Everyone knew something strange was going on, but no one knew just how strange. Perhaps this message at the bottom of the company's web page should have been a tip-off:

All audio-visual works copyright © 2009 (reg. # PAu ...

Imagine a gaggle of trench coated indie rock nerds walk around NYC with blaring boom boxes helos over their heads and you've got a bit of the flavor of this pr stunt involving indie rockers Llyod Dobler Effect. The press release tries to explain, but only the videos do it justice:

A Lloyd Dobler mob – “Mobler” – took over New York City on the release date of November 3rd! Wearing white t-shirts a...

• Early Results From Google’s China Music Service (paidContent)
• The indie rock scene and record labels to support it are flourishing in Olympia, WA. (Weekly Volcano)
• Nokia gets some exclusives on the new Rhiannon release. (press release)
• Live Nation/Ticketmaster U.K. merger inquiry extended. (Billboard)
• The Beatles on iTunes: Don’t Hold Your Breath (PC World)
• Surprisingly (to me at least) Sirius XM Radio announced its 2009 third quarter fiscal results today, with the satcaster reporting its fourth straight quarter of positive pro forma adjusted income from operations . (FMQB) Sunscriber burn was 2%
• The Listener, not your Content, is the "Product" (Hear 2.0)
• EU backs internet access restrictions for pirates. (Music Ally)
• Twitter tests a new retweet feature. (Twitter)

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Following a slightly profit report to shareholders last week that included a continuing downturn in subscribers to its Rhapsody music service, RealNetworks is laying of 70 or about 4% of its 1700 person workforce according to All Things Digital.

This round of layoffs come a year after RealNetworks let go of 130 abiut a year ago and just days after the mighty Microsoft pink slipped 800 as part of ...

Search Deal With Baidu May Be Far Less Than Qtrax Claimed

The missteps by ad supported music download site Qtrax are legendary. In 2008, the company held lavish parties at MIDEM to announce deals with all four major label groups that each label denied just hours later. Since then, Qtrax has missed almost every self-stated deadline and in July of this year bounced a $1.8 million check to tech pro...

Kyle Bylin, Assoicate Editor

In recent news reports, it’s becoming more and more apparent — that at a time when the record industry is reeling from changes that it barely understands — other industries are beginning to experience many of the same transformations. Take, for instance, the recent pricing war between Wal-Mart and Amazon – where 10 book titles were dramatically discounted by the big-b...

Apple announced this week that developers have created more than 100,000 apps for its App Store for iPhone and iPod touch customers in 77 countries. Users have downloaded two billion apps to date.

Some music apps are instant hits. “With 10,000 downloads a day, worldwide customer response to our I Am T-Pain App has exceeded our wildest expectations,” said Jeff Smith, CEO of Smule. “The App Store ha...

Yes, this is a real product. River Cuomo told Rolling Stone back in May that he and his Weezer bandmates were in talks to produce an official "wuggie" version of the body blanket that's been dominating off-hour tv commercials in recent months. Now River's dreams have come true and Snuggie is producing a special edition with the Weezer logo plastered on the front and packaged with a copy of the ...

Global recording industry trade group the IFPI predictably responded to a new UK study that downloaders of unauthorized music also spend more money than average adding to their music collections legally.

"The net effect of illegal file-sharing in the UK and elsewhere has been to reduce legitimate sales. This is why spending on recorded music has fallen every year since illegal file-sharing began ...

• If you are involved in marketing music, don't miss today's Music Consumer Behavior online seminar. Thanks to NARM, Hypebot has invites.
• Trouble @ MySpace: Losing Money and Traffic & Blowing Google Guarantees. (MediaMemo)
• Will Virgin Media and UMG unveil final details of their music service today? (Music Ally)
• Does the RIAA let defaulters off the hook? Judging by the number of times it has happe...

An expanded move by EMI into live concert recordings offers a glimpse both at a much needed revenue stream for record labels and an additional income source for many artists.

Abbey Road Live, EMI's new live music audio and video recording and instant production service, will allow fans to purchase high quality live recordings of shows they've just attended. Mixed and mastered on site, the recor...

Six months ago Topspin and The Berklee College of Music announced a partnership to offer an online course teaching implementation of the Topspin digital music marketing and sales platform. The course is now ready and the registration is open for the course which begins January 11th.

Non-credit registration costs $995 ($200 more to get college credit) and includes a Topspin account. The course als...

It's not quite the 10 million that YouTube says watched last week's U2 online concert, but 440,000 tuning in to see a net only concert by the Foo Fighters via Livestream and Facebook certainly shows the potential of direct online broadcasting .

440K is only 1/3 or so of the more than a million viewers that see an appearance on Kimmy Kimmel or Last Call and 1/10th of the viewers that an appearance on the Tonight Show attracts. But direct web casts which also add chat, sharing and even purchase capability to the experience provide a different kind of platform for the artist that's free of time and format restrictions (in this case a 2 hour and 45 minute concert) and attracts a more engaged fan.

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Digital distributor IODA has inked a number of new content deals. Labels include V2 Benelux, Union Square Music, Agriculture, Asian Man, Barge, Catsup Plate, Captured Tracks, Jade Tree and NooN Music IODA also has signed the recently reunited band That Petrol Emotion, who will be digitally re-issuing their albums Fireproof and Final Flame as well distributing their debut album Manic Pop Thrill v...

The Echo Nest will help power MOG's All Access music offering when it launched near the end of this month. Echo Nest is a proprietary machine learning platform that listens to and reads about music across the web to power better music search, recommendation and interactivity.

According to David Hyman, CEO of MOG, "MOG All Access will use Echo Nest in combination with other tools to create a revo...

• I wrote about Beatles downloads being available for the first time on Bluebeat last week and asked if it could possibly be legal. EMI doesn't think so and is suing the site on California court. (Epicenter) An authorized digital release is on the way before Christmas of a limited edition $280 USB drive containing the entire digitally remastered EMI catalog. (official store)
• Congress Seeks Neg...

(UPDATED) To showcase their new partnership with Google for enhanced music search, Lala and MySpace/iLike will be offering exclusive tracks and free MP3 downloads for a limited time. These tracks can all be found through a simple Google search, and can be previewed full-length.

Free MP3 downloads from Lala include:

• Tim McGraw - "Still"
• Phoenix - "Lasso (2 Door Cinema Club RMX)"
• Major Lazer - "Keep It Goin' Louder (Diplo Remix)" [Exclusive]
• Mos Def - "History (a capella)" [Exclusive]
• Zee Avi - "Darling (Acoustic)" [Exclusive]

Exclusive tracks on Lala include:

• AFI - "Torch Song (Demo From Crash Love Sessions)"
• Arctic Monkeys - "Catapult"
• Bon Jovi - "We Weren't Born To Follow [Acoustic Version] (Recorded Live From Inside The Actor's Studio)"
• Dead by Sunrise - "Let Down [Live]"
• Green Day - "Know Your Enemy [Live In Tokyo]"
• Kings of Leon - "Crawl (Miike Snow Remix)"
• Lady Gaga - "Paparazzi (David Aude Remix)"
• Linkin Park - "New Divide [Live]"
• Luke Bryan - "Better Than My Heart"
• Norah Jones - "Young Blood"
• One Republic - "All The Right Moves (Live)"
• Paramore - "Where The Lines Overlap [Acoustic Version]"
• Snoop Dogg - "Upside Down (Featuring Nipsey Hussle)"
• The Fray - "Be The One (Demo Version)"
• Trey Songz - " LOL :-) [feat. Gucci Mane & Soulja Boy Tell 'Em] [Logan deGaulle Remix]"
• Weezer - "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To (Live In Kansas City)"
• Zac Brown Band - "Chicken Fried [Live From Bonnaroo]"

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This guest post comes from David Rose who created the Indie Artist X experiment. David Rose is also the Managing Editor at KnowTheMusicBiz.com and a Partner at The PlazaBridge Group.

Background:

About.com Music Careers, Artists House Music, KnowTheMusicBiz.com, MusicianWages.com, Revolution Number 3and Hypebot banded together to create a basic, actionable music marketing plan designed ...

Universal Music Group's Doug Morris will step aside next year and international chief Lucian Grainge will assume the role of CEO, according to BusinessWeek. Morris, who is 71 this month, will remain as Chairman and reportedly has no plans to retire.

Doug Morris has seen Universal through some of the rockiest times in the history of the music industry retaining the company's position as the world's...

Along with Lala's new deal to provide enhanced music search results for Google alongside MySpace and others comes word that indie artists and label will be able to control and improve the content of their search results according to Matt Rosoff on CNet's Digital Noise.

"Eventually, artists will be able to use Lala's platform to ensure that specific content, such as a new song, shows up in the musi...

(NEWS & ANALYSIS) Shares of digital distributor The Orchard rose 38.9% during the trading day yesterday and then jumped another 70% after hours on news that majority shareholder Dimensional Associates was moving to acquire all additional stock of the company that it did not currently own. Shares which began the day at $1.05 and ended at $1.45 were selling at $2.47 overnight. In a late Friday filin...

The National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) is inviting Hypebot readers to attend an online seminar this Thursday, November 5th that will examine the results of a recent study of U.S. music consumer buying habits. Membership in NARM is not required.

Under President Jim Donio and Bill Wilson, Director Of Business Development & Digital Strategy, the trade group has worked take a lea...

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