.. Record Stores: Out of Sight, Not Obsolete ..

J B Reed for The New York Times

Charlie Grappone, who continues to sell albums even though his store, Vinylmania, closed in 2007. He uses the offices of a distributor, Downtown 161. 

Published: September 29, 2009

It was Wednesday at Downtown 161, and that meant it was Vinylmania day.

Most of the time Downtown 161, a record distributor in Lower Manhattan, is off limits to the public. But once a week it becomes an unusual kind of record store for friends of Vinylmania, a Greenwich Village shop that closed in 2007. Customers run their hands over items in fancy packaging, chat with the seller and brag about their collections — all the typical stuff that grows more endangered every time another store closes.

“In the old days, when I was really selling a lot of records, this was verboten,” said Charlie Grappone, a dance-music specialist who opened Vinylmania in 1978. “You would never let people off the street into a wholesale distributor. Because why would they buy in a store if they could come in here? But it’s changed now. There aren’t any stores left.”

He’s exaggerating, of course: there are still dozens of stores in Manhattan alone. But thousands have vanished around the country in recent years, following the rise of digital music and the cliff-dive of CD sales. In New York the losses this year have included two Virgin Megastores and Etherea in the East Village; the three-level Mondo Kim’s has moved and consolidated into one considerably less mondo floor.

Yet some former store owners have not given up so easily — or, left with thousands of unsold records, cannot — and continue to serve their customers in unconventional ways. Mr. Grappone has been hosting the Vinylmania sales almost every week since his store closed; its 100th gathering will be on Wednesday. Others, including the garage-rock haven Midnight Records and the reggae outlet Jammyland, sell by appointment at their owners’ homes.

At Downtown 161 one sunny Wednesday recently, patrons greeted one another with hugs, then a few minutes later could be spotted with armfuls of records, hovering intently over the turntables there. In one corner of the small office was a simulacrum of Mr. Grappone’s old store, complete with wall racks. The sales began as an invitation-only event for Vinylmania’s 100 or so top spenders. Word has since gotten out, and a new face appears now and then, but still, the population of 12-inch dance collectors is not large. (Mr. Grappone also sells CDs, but only a few.)

To survive in a market in which most products are just a click away, the dealers serve micro-niches, catering to ever fewer but more discriminating customers. One Vinylmania shopper, Jusoong Sun, 47, said he preferred the tactile and social aspects of nonvirtual retail: “To me the whole experience of buying is coming here and feeling the record, putting on the turntable. It’s still tangible.” There are other benefits to in-person shopping: Mr. Sun snagged an autographed test pressing of a new single by a producer, Antonio Ocasio, who stopped in.

J. D. Martignon, 57, a wry and wiry Frenchman who opened Midnight Records in Chelsea in 1984, has continued to sell in his nearby apartment since the store closed five years ago, a victim of rising rents and a lengthy legal battle with the Recording Industry Association of America over bootlegs. The apartment is laid out much like his old store, with alphabetized bins of LPs for browsing. Garage-rock fanzines are arranged by a window, and even the kitchen has some vinyl on display.

Mr. Martignon said he got a customer or so each day; sometimes they just browse, but sometimes a whale comes along. “I get these Japanese guys that spend a few thousand bucks,” he said. “All out-of-print rockabilly stuff.”

Some sellers take appointments simply to unload their old stock. In March Richard Kim, 36, closed Etherea, which carried a range of alternative and electronic music, but he still has at least 6,000 albums, he estimated, and keeps them in two plain rooms in a Brooklyn office building, occasionally letting in an old customer who tracked him down. He said he had no interest in staying in the music business and wanted to liquidate his collection: he is training to be an emergency medical technician.

Ira Heaps ran the tiny East Village reggae shop Jammyland from 1992 until last year, and now sells his leftovers in his even tinier apartment nearby. Boxes of albums and singles fill up the space beneath a loft bed, and the walls are lined with yet more boxes. Mr. Heaps said old customers sought him out after the store closed.

“It started with D.J. friends of mine,” he said. “ ‘Come on, what happened to your stuff?’ I said mainly it’s in my apartment. They said, ‘Can we come over?’ I said sure.” Mr. Heaps, 45, still sounds bitter about the demise of his store. “Jammyland ruined me,” he said. “I gave it 16 years of my life. It ruined two marriages. I have nothing to show for it.”

Actually, what he has to show for it is encyclopedic knowledge — he rhapsodized for 15 minutes about “Bam Bam,” a 1982 hit by Sister Nancy, and would not let a reporter leave without buying a dozen carefully chosen singles — and a central position in a network of collectors who, he said, found him even during a period when he had disconnected his phone.

And Mr. Heaps said he simply liked hanging out with fellow music lovers, a sentiment echoed by many former store owners. Mr. Grappone, a cheerful 58-year-old who has hundreds of thousands of records in storage, said he did most of his business through eBay and other online outlets, but liked to see his old customers. And then there’s the thrill of handling cash. “There’s nothing like it,” Mr. Grappone said, vigorously chewing his gum as he counted out the bills for a $158 sale.

Mr. Martignon was more ambivalent. He started selling records out of his apartment in 1978, and said that after the store closed, “I thought maybe the best thing is to go back to my roots.”

“But at this point it’s a little boring to be in the same place all the time, working there and sleeping there,” he continued, pointing to the two contiguous zones of his apartment.

Will he continue to do it, though?

“Yeah,” he said with a shrug. “Why not?”

Source: NY Times

Women More Ravenous for Music Sites, Nielsen

Oct 1, 2009

-By Ken Hein

Whether checking on rapper Fabolous’ health scare or Alicia Keys love life, women are far more likely to be heading to music news or listening sites than men, according to Nielsen NetView data.

In August, women made up 56.1 percent of the Web traffic to music sites. Overall, music sites pulled in 42.5 million unique female visitors last month.
 
While it might seem like young girls would be scouring sites for the latest news on the Jonas Brothers, it is actually women 35-60 who make up about a third of visitors to music sites.
 
Females age 35-49 make up the largest group. More than 14.5 million women within that demographic visited online music sites in August. This made up 19.2 percent of all visitors to music sites during the month.
 
Less than a fifth (15.6 percent) of U.S. females 18 or older said they purchased music online within the past six months. Sixteen percent said they bought a music offline during the same span, per Nielsen@Plan Fall 2009 Survey. Slightly more than 8 percent of women watched or listened to music online.
 
The top two sites visited by women for the month of August were: AOL Music (11.8 million unique visitors) and Yahoo Music (9.9 million). MSN Music was a distant third with a unique audience of 3.9 million.

Mediaweek is a unit of the Nielsen Co.

China appeals WTO ruling on book, music and film imports
Category: Music

China Appeals WTO Ruling on Book, Film, Music Imports (Update3)

By Jennifer M. Freedman

Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) — China appealed a World Trade Organization ruling that found its curbs on the sale of books, films and music from the U.S. are unfair.

WTO judges concluded on Aug. 12 that China was violating its free-trade commitments by requiring importers to channel foreign publications and audiovisual products through state-run companies. The panel also urged China to allow foreign companies to sell music over the Internet, which would be a boon for Apple Inc., with its iTunes software.

“The audiovisual case touches upon China’s entire censorship/information-control system,” said Iana Dreyer, a trade analyst at the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels. “Whereas there is no need for a trading monopoly to import publications and audiovisual products, it’s easier to keep control over what information the Chinese receive when there’s an import monopoly. China is trying to gain time.”

U.S.-Chinese trade relations have soured amid allegations about market-access restrictions, trade protectionism, copyright infringement, currency manipulation and claims that Chinese exporters are undercutting higher-cost American manufacturers. The U.S. has lodged eight complaints against China at the Geneva-based WTO — more than any other government — while four of China’s five trade complaints are against the U.S.

While China previously tended to backtrack when a panel was requested and settle matters diplomatically, the Asian nation has become more confident about legal battles and now makes full use of the WTO’s dispute settlement system, said Tu Xinquan, a deputy director at the China Institute for WTO Studies at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.

Trade Surplus

“China will become more active in using the WTO rules to defend itself as the nation’s huge trade surplus makes it one of the biggest targets for trade disputes,” he said. “China wants to gain results that are more favorable to the nation via the appeal, because this case is about more sensitive subjects.”

The U.S., the world’s biggest exporter of entertainment products, sees higher sales of cultural goods as a way to narrow its trade deficit with China, which totaled $103 billion in the first half of 2009. While foreign films and music are popular in China, suppliers face competition from the country’s thriving black market. President Barack Obama’s trade chief, Ron Kirk, has made getting China, Russia and other nations to clamp down on piracy of American-made goods one of his top goals.

Lost Revenue

China’s copying of movies, music and software cost companies $2.2 billion in 2006 sales, according to an estimate by lobby groups representing Microsoft Corp., Walt Disney Co. and Vivendi SA.

Revenue generated from films in China climbed 27 percent last year to 4.2 billion yuan ($615 million), according to the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television. Foreign movies grossed 1.7 billion yuan, up 8 percent from 2007.

Imported films can be distributed only by two state-owned enterprises, a unit of China Film Group and Huaxia Film Distribution Co. China Film controls most of the 20 import licenses that grant foreign films the right to a modest slice of their box-office earnings, usually about 13 percent.

While WTO judges didn’t rule against the import quota of 20 foreign films a year, they said China Film “can no longer be the monopoly importer.” The panel also agreed that China has the right to ban foreign films and publications that government censors deem objectionable. China bans foreign social networking Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

‘Very Unwelcome’

The Obama administration won’t lodge an appeal in the case, said Deborah Mesloh, a spokeswoman with the U.S. Trade Representative’s office in Washington. WTO appellate judges have up to 90 days to rule on China’s appeal. If the WTO’s August ruling is upheld, China will have to change the way it imports audiovisual products or face retaliatory trade measures from the U.S.

“This is very unwelcome in a period when China is desperate to keep its exports flowing and when the U.S. is only too keen to restrict trade with China,” Dreyer said. “However, since the case is a very borderline case with important political ramifications, it is uncertain whether China would be diligent in changing its practices.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Jennifer M. Freedman in Geneva at jfreedman@bloomberg.net.

Source: Bloomberg

The VMAs

Madonna was narcissistic, Kanye demonstrated he knows no limits, the Michael Jackson tribute was lacking oomph, a neutered Russell Brand was strangely unfunny, but none of that truly mattered.  What we saw last night was a television network that was once different, playing to a disenfranchised younger generation, employing the same damn playbook as the networks.  And have you caught the networks’ ratings recently?

In an era where the niche is king, where the mainstream is shrinking, MTV tried to be all things to all people.  Like a cheerleader being nice to the nerds for a few hours.  But didn’t MTV get the memo, THE NERDS RULE!

MTV established a monoculture.  There was no longer an underground, there was no FM to compete with AM, it was what MTV played and everything else, winners and losers.  And to think it was about music is to believe visual stimulation holds no weight, that seeing Britney Spears shake her hips titillates you not a whit.  MTV was the paragon, driving hell-bent into the distance, defining youth culture, for those truly young and those who desired to be young.  But, MTV never saw the cliff ahead, never saw the nascent Internet, a village off to the side.  Hell, the whole entertainment industry didn’t see the Internet and still doesn’t.

Suddenly, we’re back in the sixties.  You’re either with us or against us.  Either you’re wired or your irrelevant.  Either you can tweet, update your social networking site and text all at the same time, or you’re hopelessly out of date.

Facebook and Twitter are tools.  Frameworks wherein individuals place their content, not for everyone, but for their accumulated mass, which could be two or three or a few thousand, but which is rarely millions.  If Whitney Houston can be all over mainstream media and only sell three hundred thousand albums in a country of three hundred million, do you really think the mainstream counts?  The mainstream has become a sideshow!

We had VJs fawning over irrelevant pop stars.  Lady GaGa changed outfits so many times she insured she was perceived as a joke.  Hell, she could barely talk with her neck propped up in a medieval torture device and one eye covered like the Phantom, and when she won her damn award, she had to pull off her Spider-Man mask to speak.

Green Day and the house band proved that music doesn’t work on TV.  And Muse was just a joke.  Real band, trying to merge old with new, refuses to lip-synch so ends up sounding terrible on TV.  Did Muse really need this opportunity? Does anybody need TV?  Don’t they see that you’re inherently subservient to the medium?  That television flattens everything, that all content is grist for the mill?

Madonna, barely looking like herself, made her Michael Jackson tribute about her.  Like we still care about what she has to say, like we’re still in thrall to her throw it all out there, be naked, manipulative persona when millions are revealing their truth online, girls are e-mailing topless photos, it’s like grandma showed up to scold her grandkids, telling them you’ve got to do it her way, dammit.

Kanye…  All the celebrities castigating him today.  You won’t stand up for health care, you won’t risk alienating a single potential fan, but you pile on Kanye when the audience knew he was an egomaniac with no limits years ago?  This is news?

No, this is the kind of moment MTV lives for, the unscripted.  But we used to have RuPaul in a tete a tete with Milton Berle.  Now, we’ve got someone who loves the spotlight so much I’m stunned he doesn’t go door to door, telling everyone how fucking great he is.

Janet Jackson…  Explain what your talent is again?  You shook your surgically enhanced breasts and shapely body to beats crafted by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, you’ve got no innate talent.  As for those dancers replicating Michael Jackson’s moves to the big screen presentation of “Thriller”, it reminded me of nothing so much as a screening of the “Rocky Horror Picture Show”.

And the closing moment with Jay-Z?  This is supposed to drive patrons to the live gigs?  Explain to me how this works in an arena again?  People go to share what the albums mean to them, feel the energy, but what comes out of the speakers…is barely comprehensible.

And Green Day complaining that MTV should play more videos?  Even Tom Freston, who ran MTV, told me years ago that MTV was never going to play more videos, that clips were an on demand item on the Web.  He got fired, but do you really think people are going to sit in front of the box and wait for their favorite video to appear?

Kings Of Leon were nominated, but they didn’t win.  Because they’re not visual enough, on MTV it’s about train-wreck, not music.

Wilco, the critics’ band, they were nowhere in attendance either.

Rather this was a party.  A made for television event.  With sponsors woven into the script (Verizon Wireless anyone?) so a big bad corporation, Viacom, can add to its bottom line.  But have you checked Viacom’s bottom line recently, it’s awful!

If you thought the show sucked, you’re right.  But what you fail to grasp is the silver lining inside all this crap.  Yes, if it’s this bad, what are the odds something better will appear?

EVERYBODY knows the show sucked.  It was just a Sunday night diversion.  With trained seals clapping at appropriate moments to give you the impression that what was going on was important, like on a game show.  But it had nothing to do with music.

MTV is about fame.  For a while there, the two merged, music and fame were interwoven.  But then fame came to rule. Look good, be a pawn in our game and we’ll hook you up with songwriters and stylists, we’ll create a product that will make you famous!  But is that really why anybody picks up an instrument?  For fame?  Is there no reward in music?

Today, when the fame game pays fewer dividends than ever before, we’ve got whores who are trying to hold on to the little that’s left of the old paradigm, and newbies who’ve chucked it all, who are trying to make it on what comes out of the amplifiers, not what you see on the screen.  The only people who have not caught on are those in the mainstream media, flogging each other’s products like they truly matter.  But if NBC is putting Jay Leno on in prime time, and can make money and will be satisfied with a 1.5 rating, which is fewer than 2 million households, does it really make sense to overpay to produce this tripe that so few are truly interested in, that generates less revenue than ever before?

It’s about music.  It’s about generating an audience the old-fashioned way, through hard work and what comes out of the speakers.  Getting lucky on TV doesn’t work, because no one’s paying attention, the active audience is in front of the computer screen, or focusing on their phone as opposed to passively sitting in front of the box.

That’s the revolution the oldster media just doesn’t get.  The days of passivity are done.  We’ve got an active audience. Which is engaged by truth.  All we saw last night was phoniness, an irrelevant train-wreck with the nutritional value of Froot Loops.  You didn’t miss a thing.

Sep 17, 2009

Music Industry Wants Royalties From iTunes 30 Second Samples

Music Industry Wants Royalties From iTunes 30 Second Samples
By Adam Frucci, 11:30 AM on Thu Sep 17 2009, 5,906 views

Dear music industry: go fuck yourself.

Music royalty groups ASCAP and BMI are harassing online music stores such as iTunes to pay performance fees not only for the songs that they sell, but for the short clips that they use as previews. You know, the things that entice people to pay for music. They want to be paid for advertisements for their product.

Just how backwards is this industry? How many years can they continue to just not get it in such an extreme way? You would have thought that maybe it would have taken a few years for them to figure out the internet, but we’re way beyond that. This entire industry seems to be run by people who don’t just not understand the internet, but are aggressive about not understanding the internet. They have their old way of doing business and the old way the world works, and they’ll be damned if any new fangled thing like a complete upheaval in the way people acquire and listen to music is going to change that.

It’d almost be funny if the people who were really being harmed by these jackasses weren’t the artists. Bands aren’t the ones pushing for something that will only end with their best form of advertising being pulled from the iTunes Music Store (because make no mistake, that’s what will happen before Apple pays for fucking song clips). It’s these royalties idiots, the same people who almost killed off Pandora.

So here’s the bottom line, guys: you’re doing it wrong. And you’ve been doing it wrong for a while. You need to figure out a new way of doing business, and that doesn’t mean just shifting fees around and charging where you clearly shouldn’t be charging. Earn your paychecks, because unlike the bands you purport to be representing, you’re still getting them. [CNET via Electronista]

Source

DARRYL DYCK/ THE CANADIAN PRESS

With few exceptions, this year has been a dismal one for organizers of music festivals.

Once upon a time, fans were crazy for multi-day music festivals. But 40 years after Woodstock enthusiasm may be running dry. What happened?

Aug 27, 2009 04:30 AM
Nick Kyonka Staff Reporter

If Woodstock represented the North American music festival in its infancy, this year’s Virgin Festival is its midlife crisis.

Unlike the most famous of festivals 40 years ago, this weekend’s V-Fest has been acting strangely as of late – making impulsive decisions, fretting over the economy, and doing whatever it can to shake the sinking feeling that it’s just not as popular as it used to be.

But in a summer concert season that industry insiders say is perhaps the worst on record, it’s little surprise that this weekend’s event was scaled back.

“I’ve been doing this for 25 years and I think this is the hardest time it’s ever been to put on a concert,” says music promoter Elliot Lefko. “And festivals in general are one of the hardest things to do in the music business.”

With few exceptions, this year has been a dismal one for festival organizers. Many were forced to slash tickets costs. Edgefest, for example, cut prices in half, even though the show was held at the same venue (Downsview Park) and featured roughly the same number of acts as last year.

Others, like the recent inaugural 1000 Islands Music Festival, have seen fan turnout rates at about one-third of what was anticipated.

That brings us back to Virgin Festival. Citing fan complaints about the long drive to Burl’s Creek Park north of Barrie, on Aug. 14 Virgin organizers announced the two-day concert would move from the camper-friendly field to Toronto’s Molson Amphitheatre.

The move makes the show more accessible to anyone within the city, but it also downsizes the event. The Amphitheatre holds about 5,000 less people per day, and many of the tickets had to be marked down.

Other V-Fests across the nation have faced difficulties too. Calgary’s festival this month saw a 10 per cent drop in attendance from last year, and a July 4 concert in Halifax drew large numbers only when it was announced the show would be free after headliners The Tragically Hip withdrew from the lineup.

Unlike the proverbial 45-year-old accountant who buys a Harley on a whim, the music festival has more than just itself to blame for its midlife crisis. Reached by phone this week by the Star, several insiders gave some thought as to why festivals have taken a hit this summer.

Recession: Most promoters point to the sputtering economy as a chief reason for the festival downturn. This problem is magnified in cities like Toronto, where a seemingly endless line of concerts and other exhibitions provide plenty of cheaper entertainment options.

“People only have a certain amount of dollars to spend on entertainment,” says Ross Winters, a program director at the Edge.

This is especially bad news for shows like the Virgin Festival, which is sandwiched between the busy midsummer festival season and sold-out fall shows for big bands like U2 and Metallica.

“There’s already been a lot of money spent on concerts this summer,” Winters notes.

Who’s on the ticket: Having a strong lineup of popular bands is always one of the best ways to draw fans to a festival, organizers admit. But even with some of the biggest names in music on the bill, there’s no guarantee the fans will show.

This month’s 1000 Islands festival is a prime example. Held in the town of Gananoque, east of Kingston, many fans were skeptical the concert could draw the big names it had promised, organizers say.

“I don’t believe that people actually thought Snoop Dogg and Akon were going to come to play this festival on a farm,” says E1 Entertainment’s Eric Alper, who helped organize the concert.

Other factors can hurt too. Though Virgin Festival headliners Nine Inch Nails are among the kings of alternative rock, they already performed in the region twice in the past 10 months, meaning even some diehard fans might feel less inclined to shell out $60 to see them again so soon.

Weather: For an industry that relies on good weather, this summer’s storms and cool temperatures have been devastating. Typically, most festivals sell about one-third of their tickets in the week before a show, promoters say. But when forecasts are constantly calling for rain, those sales can dry up in a hurry.

“No matter how great the concert is, people don’t want to spend a lot of time outside if it’s raining,” says Alper. “They just don’t want to sit around all day in the soaking wet.”

Worse still for organizers, the psychological effects of the rain can affect ticket sales for concerts that are months away, says Nathan Rosenberg, the chief marketing officer for Virgin Canada. “This is going to sound quite weird, but on days where it’s sunny, we sell more tickets than on days when it’s raining,” he says.

Logistics: Having to drive for hours to get to a concert is bad enough, but throw in the long lineups for entrance, food and beer, and many fans might rather just listen to their favourite CDs at home. The solutions aren’t always easy.

“You want people to have a really good time and just get them in as fast as possible,” says Lefko, a former Edgefest promoter from its days at the old Molson Park in Barrie. “But you want to make it as safe as possible too.” This leads to slow traffic on the roadways and, of course, long lines at the beer tent as security and police check for IDs.

Culture: “The heart of the concert business has always been the outdoor festivals in Europe,” says Gary Bongiovanni, editor in chief of Pollstar magazine, a trade publication. But aside from two or three annual American gigs, that success has never materialized in North America.

Part of the reason, Bongiovanni says, is that North Americans are more accustomed to bigger indoor shows. But because most European cities lack a big concert venue, their citizens are often forced outside, where they learn to enjoy the bad weather when it hits.

“(Europeans) may be a little bit heartier in their willingness to put up with mud and rain,” he says. “It’s almost a tradition in the summer in Europe.”

So is this the death of the music fest?

The good news is, despite the factors working against them, promoters will continue to run big North America festivals. But just like that middle-aged accountant on a motorbike, they may be going through some serious changes.

“I don’t think festivals are dying,” Winters says. “I just think they have to be done differently.”

Ticket prices will continue to drop, the experts agree, but so will the fee for bands. Corporate advertising might also go up.

In the end, Winters says, it’s innovative ideas like the “meet-the-band tent” at this year’s Edgefest that will likely keep the fans coming out.

“Like everything else, these festivals have to be rethought and innovated on,” he says. “People who put them on will just have to figure these things out.”

Source: The Star

Warner Music reorganizes Nashville office NEW YORK (AP) — Warner Music Group Corp. on Tuesday announced a reorganization of its recording businesses in Nashville, Tenn., ousting the head of operations there.

The company said it will combine the recently re-established Atlantic Nashville record label in a new division with the Warner Bros. Nashville and Word Entertainment label.

John Esposito, who has served as the president and CEO of Warner Music Group’s sales and marketing division, will head the new operations, collectively named Warner Music Nashville.

Mike Jbara, the marketing division’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, will take over for Esposito, the company said.

Bill Bennett, executive vice president of Warner Bros. Nashville, is leaving the company as part of the shake-up.

Unlikely as it may seem, since other ad-supported music sites are finding things challenging lately, Spotify may actually be bringing record labels a big pay day - well, at least in its native Sweden.

“In five months from the launch, Spotify became our largest digital source of income and so passed by iTunes”, according to Per Sundin, managing director of Universal Music, the world’s bigget major, in Sweden (via SwedishWire). “It’s a fantastic development, explained by the fact that Spotify really has exploded”.

Spotify’s arrangements with royalty collectors are closely guarded, at least in the UK, so it’s difficult to say exactly how much it’s paying out. But bear in mind that Sundin referred to Spotify’s streamed service itself, not the white-label affiliate music retailers like 7Digital that power its buy-to-own downloads…

If true, this begins to pose some problems for Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), and begins to validate Spotify’s business model - if it can pay out more money from ad income than iTunes is from a la carte purchases prices, that would be a watershed.

But it would also be surprising - bit by the ad downturn and ongoing royalty outgoings, Last.fm has introduced radio subscriptions in some countries, YouTube has pulled premium music in the UK and Germany while baulking at royalty outgoings; We7, too, is experimenting with premium offerings on top of its core free. So we’ll keep our eyes peeled for now. Spotify has been courting labels for other territories and hopes to roll out in the U.S. in Q3 or Q4.

Source: Paid Content UK

Breaking: MySpace Close To Acquiring iLike For $20 Million
Category: Music

Breaking: MySpace Close To Acquiring iLike For $20 Million

by Michael Arrington on August 17, 2009

MySpace is close to acquiring popular social music service iLike, we’ve confirmed with multiple sources. The deal, which should close this week, will be MySpace’s first acquisition since new CEO Owen Van Natta took control of the company in April 2009. The price is “around $20 million.”

iLike, which launched in late 2006, is a social music recommendation service that now has more than 50 million registered users. It tracks what you listen to and like and gives you recommendations on new music based on that data as well as what your friends are listening to. It is the top music application on Facebook, Bebo, Hi5 and just about every other social network other than MySpace, which has MySpace Music.

iLike also hosts band pages which are second in popularity only to MySpace Music. By acquiring iLike, MySpace solidifies their already leading position as the most popular online identity for bands. Last week iLike also launched their own music download store.

Details are still flying in, but at first blush the deal is particularly interesting for two reasons.

First, simply because iLike is so deeply integrated into the Facebook experience. Nearly 10 million Facebook users use the iLike application every month. And iLike has also been a key part of Facebook’s ongoing struggles with what-to-do-about-music. MySpace is now going to own this.

Second, it’s MySpace, not the MySpace Music joint venture with the music labels, that is acquiring iLike. We’ll have more to say on this shortly. We’re hearing that a key driver of the deal is the iLike team, particularly founders Ali Partovi, Hadi Partovi and Nat Brown, and the underlying technology.

Competitor Last.fm was acquired by CBS in 2007 for $280 million. June 2009 Comscore stats show Last.fm with 12.9 million monthly unique visitors. iLike had just 3 million monthly unique visitors, but that doesn’t take into account the massive usage of the service on social networks.

The company has raised a total of $16.5 million from the founders, Scott Banister, Bob Pittman, Vinod Khosla and Ticketmaster to date. But their last round of funding was in 2006, where Ticketmaster put the bulk of the capital in via a third round of financing that valued the company at a whopping $53.2 million.

In Q4 2008 Ticketmaster wrote down a number of their venture investments, including a $5.8 million charge for iLike. Internally, they valued that $13.3 million investment at just $7.5 million. Last month we reported that iLike was considering a new round of financing that would cash TicketMaster out of the company.

Neither MySpace nor iLike would comment on this story.

Source: TechCrunch

By JIM FUSILLI Chicago

One lesson of this year’s Lollapalooza, held this past weekend at Grant Park here, is a confirmation rather than something new: ­Recorded music drives fans to live shows. Thus, it can seem like the recording industry exists to support the concert business.

View Full Image

Getty Images

Andrew Bird at this year’s Lollapalooza.

“The music business is upside down,” said alt-country singer-songwriter Robert Earl Keen. “You don’t tour to support your record. You put out a record to support a tour.”

“Do you see people going ­record shopping? No,” said Perry Farrell of Jane’s ­Addiction. “Downloading free music. Yes. Going out for live music. Yes. I love recorded music, but the best bang for my buck is the night I go out.”

Jane’s Addiction Performs at Lollapalooza

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Jane’s Addiction performs at Lollapalooza 2009 in Chicago.

Mr. Farrell seemed to anticipate the changes in the music industry when he launched ­Lollapalooza as a multiact touring show in 1991. He helped it find a home here in 2003; the festival is committed to the city until 2018. Clearly, he doesn’t believe the yearning among fans for live music will soon disappear.
Nor does he think the audience for it has been thoroughly tapped. Bands whose principal appeal is to an older fan base are now regulars at the major festivals.

“Who went to the first Lollapalooza?” Mr. Farrell asked rhetorically. “People who have children now. So they come to see Lou Reed, Depeche Mode, us and Tool.
“I’m 50 now,” he said. “I love going to festivals. I want to go out to hear what music people are making.”
For artists such as Andrew Bird and Dan Deacon—two of the many musicians here who have, or should have, ­cross-generational appeal—­appearances at major festivals are mandatory, if risky.
Mr. Bird, whose charming and very clever chamber pop made for one of the best sets here, told me: “These festivals are kind of a crapshoot. It’s hard to control the sound. It’s throw and go. You have to be a really good band. A record is kind of a moment in time. Maybe you nailed it, maybe you didn’t. It’s far more interesting to do it differently every night.”
A festival, Mr. Deacon said, “is a great way to play for a bunch of people who otherwise wouldn’t see you. Digital media is so devalued. Real value is in live shows.” Here, he brought about 30 musicians on stage to play his kind of joyful, experimental electronica.

There was much of almost every genre on today’s rock and pop menu at Lollapalooza ‘09, though we could have used a bigger dose of Chicago blues, given the festival’s location; maybe it was witnessing 10-year-old blues prodigy Quinn Sullivan jamming with Buddy Guy that made me hunger for more. Band of Horses, Blind ­Pilot, the Greencards and Mr. Keen represented alt-country and Americana. Thievery ­Corporation and Zap Mama were among the acts that blended world sounds to come up with a thing of their own. At least five bands featured trumpets, not a customary instrument in rock.
If you’ve attended festivals in the past year or so and turned up here, you would have seen how Alberta Cross, Delta Spirit, Fleet Foxes, Friendly Fires and the Heartless Bastards have continued to grow, the confidence that comes with acceptance adding muscle to their music. And you might have had the joy of stumbling upon a band you’ve never heard of. For me, Miike Snow was an unexpected treat, as singer Andrew Wyatt’s voice floated over its pop electronica. Another surprise was Carney, a talented group from L.A. that drops jazz inflections into its anthemic rock.
Many times the schedule ­offered the 75,000 attendees each day at least two interesting bands at the same hour. To see Portugal. The Man or Bat for Lashes? Mr. Bird or Of Montreal? Kaiser Chiefs or the Airborne Toxic Event? Glasvegas or Santigold? When I made a list that would allow me to hear continuous music, it seemed inevitable that the bands I picked were at opposite ends of the mile-long park, where it rained on Friday and was roasted by temperatures in the mid-90s for the rest of the event.
But what I saw satisfied, including Mr. Reed, who explored his 2000 masterpiece “Ecstasy,” and the Decemberists, who I’ve now witnessed perform their rock opera “The Hazards of Love” three times at festivals in the past five months. Depeche Mode played with panache and Tool with power. Mr. Farrell delivered his promised spectacle, but the Jane’s Addiction set was built on a platform of Stephen Perkins’s extraordinary drumming and Dave Navarro’s flashy guitar. I’ll not soon forget the rain-soaked audience singing along with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, his falsetto matched by the sweet sound of the crowd. And I regret missing Ida Maria, but given the explosion in the number of similar events in the U.S., Canada and around the world, I have a feeling I’ll catch her soon.
There’s a trap for artists in the rapid growth in the number of festivals. Lollapalooza, All Points West in Jersey City, N.J., Denver’s Mile High Music Festival, the coming Austin City Limits Music Festival and others may be regional concerts, but they book like national events. Some bands feel they have to play every one to build an audience they might have found in the past with an album marketed well and wide by a major label.
“I like to do festivals in moderation,” Mr. Bird said. “I don’t want to become a band that writes music to fit that scene.” Too many bands can overload a music lover. “At worst, it can feel like a musical mall,” he said.

Source: Wall Street Journal