Interesting post by Echo's Mark Montgomery about his dinner with Topspin's Ian Rogers. Less on the actual meeting and more on strategies and the evolution of the business. A sample:

the reality of today is that several models are going to emerge, and the folks that add value are going to stay in the foodchain, the folks that don't, will be eaten. we intend to be the hungry one for the foreseeable future.[music jobs] Director of Content at Dada Entertainment; New York, NY.

From The Deal's Tech Confidential:

An industry source with knowledge of the company's executive search tells me that one of MySpace Inc.'s top dogs -- either CEO Chris DeWolfe and COO Amit Kapur -- will be its official interim CEO as the new site is launched, presumably within a few weeks."

This report is in line with various reports over the week about MySpace Music's search for and inability to nab (or disinterest in nabbing) numerous candidates. And there have been reports that the MySpace Music staff has requested that a CEO not be brought in while they are preparing for launch.

As for the launch date, mid-September is the rumored time but there has been no substantive report or official news release.

[music jobs] Director of Content at Dada Entertainment; New York, NY.

I see a few big problems with the rollout of Nokia's Comes With Music. First, as I mentioned earlier, there were reports today that the initial Nokia handset to offer Comes With Music, the 5130, will not offer over-the-air downloads. The service works only with pay-as-you-go plans. Carriers have yet to offer CWM subscribers free reign on their networks. This means CWM lacks the immediacy that should be one of its greatest strengths. Want to hear a song? Write yourself a note and download it the next time you're in front of your PC.

More likely confusion comes from the wording in the marketing, as can be seen in the Carphone Warehouse press release about CWM. When the companies use phrases like "the downloaded tracks can be kept on the users handset or PC forever" and "customers can keep all of their music," there is a certain expectation that the files are not protected or at least will be hassle-free. In the case of CWM, files will have Microsoft DRM. I think people may read "forever" and "keep" and think of either portability (not happening) or MP3s (different file format). At best this is poorly worded. At worst...well, let's just say I'm sure the people who wrote it chose their words very carefully.

[music jobs] Director of Content at Dada Entertainment; New York, NY.

Selling Radiohead's OK Computer for $1.99, as Amazon.com is doing, strikes me as a good way to combat free. Recent titles in the $1.99 bin have been Beirut's Gulag Orkestra (still on sale) and Inxs' Kick. For $1.99 I'm sure some people would rather buy it than dig up the CD and rip the songs to their hard drives. Laziness has its price.

No doubt these albums are actively traded on file-sharing networks. As long as people prefer P2P, that will be the case. Some people will be enticed to buy a title on sales Amazon.com's MP3 store, and the album would move (fewer) units even at regular price. iTunes faithful stick with their favorite store regardless of the higher prices. This tendency to acquire music at certain places can be explained by the venue hypothesis that was outlined in the recent Economic Insight paper by the MCPS-PRS Alliance titled "In Rainbows, On Torrents" (get PDF here). From the report:

The venue hypothesis suggests that even when the price approaches zero, all other things being equal, people are more likely to act habitually (say, using The Pirate Bay) than to break their habit (say, visiting www.InRainbows.com). The implication of this 'venue hypothesis' is that if you wish the customer to deviate from his habitual action (and try a new venue), then you must offer him an improved venue, at least in his perception.

In this case, it's not as simple as asking if Amazon.com's MP3 store is an improved venue. There are information aspects to consider: How many iTunes shoppers even know about these sale prices at Amazon.com? And consider both price and frequency of sales. Even a handful of on-sale titles can't compete with the free selection of songs found via P2P.

I see a good strategy at Amazon.com: Lure people with short sales that are almost too good to pass up, offer a broad selection of well-placed titles at higher prices, and incorporate digital music into the broader shopping experience. It's the Best Buy method of selling cheap music, only the selection is much broader. People are still going to shop at iTunes and eMusic, some people will continue to get music on file-sharing networks, and people will still share music with friends, but I think Amazon.com has a good approach in using impulsive, totally incremental sales that could lead to greater loyalty and more frequent visits.

[music jobs] Director of Content at Dada Entertainment; New York, NY.

• British retailer HMV reported improved revenues in its most recent quarter. Music sales were down 7% as the company increased its emphasis on video games. (Bloomberg)

• "Andy Schuon, the former CEO of Universal Music Group's International Music Feed and past president of CBS Radio, is being considered for the job along with a long list of others, said two music industry sources." It's slow going at MySpace Music. You know, I looked up "myspace music" at LinkedIn the other day, just out of curiosity, and found four employees listed. A search for "imeem" turned up about 90. (CNET News)

• Handleman Company has completed the sale of its Canadian music operations to Anderson Merchandisers. (Press release)

• Napster will offer a free 14-day trial to purchasers of new Lenovo computers in the U.S. and Canada. (Press release)

• A study of 36,000 people around the world revealed that music tastes and personality are closely linked. "One of the most surprising things is the similarities between fans of classical music and heavy metal," said the professor who performed the research. "They're both creative and at ease but not outgoing." Scroll down for a list of music styles and personality traits. (BBC News)

• There have been many reports on this, so I'll mention it here: Nokia's Comes With Music service will not come with over-the-air downloads on the initial handset. To acquire songs, the user must get them on a PC and sideload them to the device. (T3)

• Sony BMG has named Bill Campbell to be its SVP U.S. Business Development, Global Digital Business. (FMBQ)

[music jobs] Director of Content at Dada Entertainment; New York, NY.

In the early part of the decade, many people thought Metallica was doomed. But Metallica's activism against the original Napster has not harmed its career. Its decision to keep its songs off iTunes for many years has not harmed its career. The band's new album leaked and it appears to be taking it in stride. The band is all over the news and rarely is it negative.

This shows that consumer anger can be short-lived and that good material and live concerts are what matter. People may be angry at the industry, and there will always be a stubbornly negative and vocal crowd, but at the end of the day people understand it's just entertainment. And they want to be entertained. Without the subtext, hassle and threats.

And there are greater implications here. If Metallica and its fans can move on, so too can the greater industry and its consumers. Dropping DRM is a start. Working with ISPs to curb digital piracy is an improvement over suing individuals (although that hasn't stopped yet). Looking for new ways to monetize music, whether its an ISP-based subscription or mobile plans, is a better direction. First seeking solutions with infringing startups will induce the kind of creativity that would be killed if they were quickly sued out of existence. Progress has come at an excruciatingly slow pace, but it is visible to the naked eye.

I don't expect Jimmy Carter to broker a peace agreement any time soon, but Metallica's album buildup shows the industry is no closer to its predicted demise than it was a few years ago.

[music jobs] Director of Content at Dada Entertainment; New York, NY.

I've spent some time going through SoundUnwound, the new Wikipedia-like music encyclopedia created by IMDb and Amazon.com. The site allows users to create and edit pages for artists, albums songs and labels (you can log in with your Amazon.com user ID and password). Unlike a typical Wikipedia entry for an artist, album or song, the pages at SoundUnwound are so far sparse or completely blank -- and sometimes far more poorly written than a typical Wikipedia entry. Radiohead's entry is fine, for example, while Robert Earl Keen's entry is paltry. Since the site was only recently launched, so I imagine the quality and scope of the entries will be greatly improved over time.

In terms strictly of usability, SoundUnwound has a lot to offer. Along with text entries are YouTube videos, external website links and easy-to-browse, comprehensive discographies pulled from Amazon.com's database. It succeeds in offering the quick artist history that makes Wikipedia so valuable for research. An album page has a list of the tracks and the ability to stream a clip or purchase the track at Amazon.com. I have not run across a buy button for a complete album, and purchasing the CD requires navigating to an Amazon.com page. The genre pages benefit from Amazon.com purchase history by offering a selection of top ranked titles. (If you're curious, check out the pages for Latin, shoegaze, bebop or doom metal.) Hopefully some serious sub-genre wonks will fill out those pages well. The artist timeline page is a nice feature, although it is not contained within the main artist page.

The main differences between SoundUnwound and Wikipedia are the business model and the motivations of the users. SoundUnwound has advertisements -- currently the main page has only a single ad, for a mortgage company, near the bottom of the page -- that will contrast with Wikipedia's ad-free, volunteer-driven ethos. Amazon.com is a for-profit company, which means SoundUnwound could miss out on the unpaid crowdsourcing idealism.

How much money can be had in this sort of operation? It could probably amount to a considerable bit of revenue eventually. There are some companies that run a similar operation and try to subsist mainly on affiliate fees. In this case, Amazon.com gets the best of both worlds -- sales from page traffic without payouts to an affiliate.

More than money, at least for the first year or two, SoundUnwound can help Amazon.com serve a greater purpose: Become further ingrained in music fans' shopping habits and build awareness around its MP3 store. For download buyers, Amazon.com is far less familiar than is iTunes. This may be a good strategy to help with that.

For more commentary on SoundUnwound, read posts at Listening Post, Motley Fool and Lifehacker.

[music jobs] Director of Content at Dada Entertainment; New York, NY.

Starting with the topic of Atlantic's "artificial scarcity" experiment with Estelle's album Shine, the LA Times' Jon Healey veers off into a thought-provoking post on pricing, demand and digital downloads. He spoke with Frank Luby, a partner at Simon-Kucher & Partners and co-author of "Manage for Profit, Not for Market Share." It's mandatory reading. Here's a sample.

Luby's central assumption is that when people want to buy a song, they're insensitive to the price. That's not the same as saying the demand for music shows no price elasticity; Luby acknowledges that sales of some titles and types of music may increase disproportionately to a cut in price. But lower prices won't stimulate demand from fans of a band or a particular song, Luby argued, because they've already made up their mind to buy. In fact, he believes that labels should be raising the price of popular singles in order to generate more album sales. The right price might be $1.49 or even $1.99, Luby said. "If I've got to spend $1.99" to get each of two singles from an album, he said, "I might as well just make the leap and buy the album."

As the post later explains, the inflexibility of single track pricing and the lack of experimentation do not allow for any conclusions to be drawn. In theory, though, labels could both enable music discovery and encourage album sales if given the flexibility (and the technology, would would assume). "You can't say `Discovery' and push that on the one side," said Lubby, "and then have a strategy that is forcing people to exclusively buy an album." Agreed. On the surface it may appear that MySpace streams and other free alternatives (imeem, last.fm) could allow consumers to sample the single (which they have already heard since it is Top 10 hit). But downloads allow people to live with a song for a while, give it portability and allow a person to better judge the artist.

If hit singles did cost $1.99, would demand drop enough that labels and artists would collect less revenue? With standard wholesale and mechanical rates, sales of a $1.99 hit single would have to drop more than 46.6% for total revenue to be less than if the single was priced at $0.99. If the higher price encouraged more album sales, as Lubby suggested may happen, an even further decrease would be acceptable. The main problem with that strategy, with maximizing revenue at the expense of unit sales, is that more fans are usually better than fewer fans (I say usually because even a small yet fervent fan base can be lucrative). Ticket sales, merch and other revenue streams could be negatively affected. Maybe those marginal fans wouldn't bring much additional revenue, but again, more fans are better than fewer fans.

By the way, if you're into pricing strategies, I have read parts of "Pricing on Purpose" and thought it was very good and very insightful.

[music jobs] Director of Content at Dada Entertainment; New York, NY.

• Slipknot debuted at the top of the album chart with sales of 239,516 of All Hope Is Gone. The Game's LAX took second with sales of 238,382 units. Sales were up 2.3% from the previous week and were down 6.5% from the same week last year. (Billboard.biz)

• Bloomingdale's is getting into music. The retailer has partnered with Sony Music, Gibson guitars and Steinway pianos for a campaign to be introduced this week. Bloomingdale's stores will host in-store concerts and sell CDs and DVDs by Sony artists. (IHT)

• Wippit is placed on the ash heap of P2P history. (paidContent UK)

• A profile on online lyric provider Metroleap, which now licenses content from Gracenote. The site has had 23 million visitors since December. Said a co-founder, "Everybody in this business knows that in order to really have something that is sustainable ... you need to be on the legal side of business." (Business in Vancouver)

• Tumbltape, for users of Tumblr, is the latest replacement for Muxtape. (Mashable)

• An wide-ranging interview with the American Association of Independent Music's president, Rich Bengloff. "A number of A2IM members are concerned that (orphan works legislation), if enacted, would make it very difficult to stop parties from using our music in ways we don't want or haven't consented to and, further, it puts the burden of finding uses on the copyright owner rather than putting the burden on the user who wants to use our music." (DailyTech)

[music jobs] Director of Content at Dada Entertainment; New York, NY.

The above chart shows the percent increase/decrease in album sales in each week of 2008 versus the same week in 2007. It's obvious most of the curve is below zero, but the thing I have seen lately is that the trend is upward in the second half of the year.

Right now, according to the numbers published at Billboard.biz, album sales are down about 10.8% year to date. Through early June, they were down 11.7%. Through a stretch in June and early July, album sales were down 9.8%, and through late July and August they are down 9.3%.

Those numbers show continued format substitution and challenges for the album format. There are some positive takeaways. After much shelf space was lost in 2007, CD sales are still down but are more stable in 2008. An improved release schedule is also a cause for the gains. The year-over-year improvement in the latter half of the year is a recurring trend over the last few years, and it is exactly what I forecast in my State of the Compact Disc report released last month.

In my opinion, a 10% drop is not akin to falling off a cliff, a phrase often used for the drop in recorded music sales. An annual drop in albums sales in the area of 10% is manageable -- it's going to have to be for music companies to transition into an era in which albums will not dominate music as greatly as they have in the past few decades. CD sales are down by greater than 10%, a drop that is cushioned by a roughly 30% increase in digital albums.

[music jobs] Director of Content at Dada Entertainment; New York, NY.

Vivendi released its operating results for the first half of 2008 on Monday. Universal Music Group's EBITDA increased 17.7% to €259 million. Revenue for that period was €2,044 million, a 2.4% decrease.

Such a margin is far ahead of that of Warner Music Group (6% operating margin in its most recent quarter) and Sony BMG (-1% operating margin for its most recent quarter). Terra Firma does not release specifics on EMI's financial performance, but we can assume overhauling a struggling company takes more than a few years.

So why is UMG doing so well relative to the other majors? It has increased its market share, it acquired BMG Publishing and Sanctuary, and it regularly tops the charts in numerous countries. Rather than sit on its catalog, as EMI has hinted it may do, UMG aggressively goes after new acts. And the latter half of the year will see a strong release schedule, according to the release: The Killers, Fall Out Boy, Bon Jovi, Black Eyed Peas, Pussycat Dolls and Ne-Yo, among others.

There are, however, some underlying issues. UMG's revenue has been more or less flat in spite of continued acquisitions. Digital growth is tapering off, as it is at other music groups. Physical formats are under pressure and no new revenue stream -- not mobile, not ad-supported services -- is offering a clear path to revenue growth. Like everybody else, UMG is swimming against a current and trying to keep from going backwards. There is no silver bullet that will recapture lost revenues, but UMG is doing a very good job at muscling out one success at a time.

[music jobs] Director of Content at Dada Entertainment; New York, NY.

• The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization is putting its catalog of Broadway musical show tunes and standards up for bid. The price is in the $150 million to $200 million range. In addition to major music companies, hedge funds and private equity firms are also said to be interested in the catalog. (Reuters)

• eMusic president David Pakman is criticizing "quid pro quo" deals between record labels and ISPs that he worries could harm existing download stores. (Financial Times)

• Microsoft will release a 120MB Zune. (Zunerama)

• A profile on Songza, a music search site that pulls audio from YouTube. An upcoming version of the site will include videos. The site gets 120,000 streams per day and pays performing rights organizations -- but not labels. (Bits)

• Music Row magazine's parent company, SouthComm Communications, is launching a bi-weekly email publication called Open Source. Music Row's David M. Ross and Craig Havighurst will cover technology, media, digital politics. (Music Row)

• "Gridlock Economy," the new book by Columbia University Law School professor Michael Heller, discusses what he calls "fugutive resources" (like music) and suggests content owners will collectively grant blanket licenses except in cases where the value of the content is known. (Forbes)

• It looks like proposed copyright legislation in Canada will have to wait until it is reintroduced by a new Parliament. (National Post)

[music jobs] Director of Content at Dada Entertainment; New York, NY.

• We7 now has 400,000 tracks from the EMI catalog. The service, which added Warner Music Group last month, offers both downloads and free, ad-supported streaming (the ads are targeted audio clips). (Brand Republic)

• What happens when a song isn't available on iTunes? A cover version appears...and sells well. "Only last week a cover of Estelle's American Boy (a former UK No 1) by Studio All-Stars debuted in the Billboard chart at No 85 following the original's removal from iTunes America at the behest of Estelle's record company, Atlantic." (The Guardian)

• The city of Minneapolis is spending almost $1 million to improve the acoustics of the Target Center. AEG operates the arena for the city. (Star Tribune)

• New Stream Media, the digital content partner to The O2 and indigo2, has inked licensing deals with Universal Music UK, Virgin/EMI, Warner Music UK and SonyBMG. The deals will allow New Stream Media to record and distribute concerts at the O2 and indigo2 venues. (Press release)

[music jobs] Director of Content at Dada Entertainment; New York, NY.

There's finally news about the launch of Nokia's Comes With Music. UK consumers will get the first crack at the music service through the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic phone. Comes With Music has over two million tracks from three majors (EMI is still a holdout) and many indies. Pricing has not been announced, but the head of Nokia in Greak Britain told Forbes the handset would retail for "significantly" more than the current model. The Financial Times reported Nokia has found that its pay-as-you-go customers will pay between £100 and £300 for the handset and the music service. A 5310 handset without the service currently sells for £70 to £80. Nokia will offer more information on October 2.

The service will be bundled with the handset and included in its price. Users can download an unlimited number of tracks for one year. Those tracks can be kept indefinitely but will be accessed only on the handset if the service is not renewed after one year. Nokia and most reports are quiet on the issue, but Comes With Music is said to use Microsoft DRM.

As of today, one thing that could hamper the rollout of Comes With Music is the lack of carrier participation. Nokia does not yet have a mobile partner for the service.

[music jobs] Director of Content at Dada Entertainment; New York, NY.

• Director of Content at Dada Entertainment; New York NY ...Dada Entertainment, a joint venture owned 50% by SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT and 50% by Dada USA, offers the next generation web and mobile personalization and entertainment services, combining a wide variety of music content from full length audio and video tracks to ringtones, with a rich Web 2.0 and social networking experience.

  We are seeking a highly experienced, motivated and self-starting Director of Content to be responsible for all of Dada Entertainment’s content activities, including Content Acquisition, Management, Programming & Merchandising and Promotion....
  

  See the full listing.

• 
  

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[music jobs] Director of Content at Dada Entertainment; New York, NY.

Last week The Wall Street Journal ran an article on some artists' and labels' dissatisfaction with single track sales on iTunes hampering album sales. Kid Rock, for instance, doesn't offer most of his albums at digital stores. So what exactly happens when a track is removed from iTunes and consumers are given only the option of purchasing the album? It's hard to say, but now we have a sample of one instance that won't teach us much but shows how strategies for a singles-driven album make the results hard to control.

Reports (outside of the U.S., which is on holiday) today claim Estelle's album Shine took a dive when the album was removed from iTunes in order to increase CD sales. The BBC says Shine dropped to #159 on the U.S. album chart after peaking at #38. (Dropped from what? When did it peak? Unfortunately the BBC didn't bother mentioning the number of spots on the chart Shine lost after the single was pulled.) Estelle's hit single, "American Boy," dropped to #37 from #11, which wouldn't be a big deal if an increase in album sales made up for lost singles sales.

But I'm getting mixed signals. Maybe the album dropped at iTunes, but it's currently at #20 at Amazon.com. And Australian music news site Undercover claims sales of Shine increased 35% after the single was pulled at iTunes.

If there was a large drop in album sales, it probably was not caused by pulling the single from iTunes. I have a hard time believing CD sales could be so strongly influenced by what is going on at iTunes. There are all sorts of reasons the album could drop. Maybe the album was losing steam. Maybe there's not enough product in the market and iTunes had an unusually large share of sales. (Although one would assume WEA, WMG's distribution arm, would have sorted that out before the album was pulled from iTunes.) Maybe the people buying Estelle are more digital album buyers than CD buyers. That would explain why the CD is #360 at Amazon.com while the digital album is at #20.

But Kid Rock has had great success even though his album is not available at digital stores. Why the difference? Well, one is an established superstar with a current hit single. The other, Estelle, is an almost unknown British newcomer with a hit single. To buy a Kid Rock album is far less a risk than to buy an Estelle album. Like I said in my post about the WSJ article, pulling a single by a new artist can have artist development issues. A superstar can offer only albums and get away with it. A new artist has a long way to go before asking so much from the public. Estelle is known for only one song. If she wins the Mercury Prize the album will have stronger legs to stand on.

And pulling out of iTunes is different than never being available on iTunes. At least Kid Rock is consistent.

[music jobs] Wanted: A Software Engineering Manager who Loves Music;Boston, MA. more music jobs.

• Eric Nicoli, the former CEO of EMI Music, will assume an advisory role at music marketing, management and publishing firm Nick Stewart & Associates. The firm counts as its clients The Eagels, Don Henley, Vangelis and Neil Diamond. (The Times Online)

• 7digital now offers songs from the Universal Music Group catalog in 320kbps MP3 format. I have no idea how much of the catalog is offered but a few spot checks (including Pussycat Dolls and Sonic Youth) all turned up 320kbps tracks. (TechCrunch UK)

• Madonna is reportedly about to sign a deal that will pay her $25 million for two concerts in Dubai. Live Nation has a 65% stake in Dubai-based promoter Mirage Promotions. (Ahlan! Live)

• Various groups are asking the British government to intervene after being the victims of fraudulent secondary ticketing transactions. (Music Week)

[music jobs] Director of Content at Dada Entertainment; New York, NY.

Napster has once again hired UBS to seek out a buyer for the troubled company. As dissident shareholders press for changes within the company, Napster insists it "committed to enhancing value for all Napster stockholders." OK, but how great can shareholder value actually be enhanced?

Buying Napster's subscribers (and keeping maybe half of them) is one way for Rhapsody to up its subscriber base. It's got to be cheaper than launching an MP3 store, with a $50 million marketing campaign, that has among its goals to upstream buyers to its subscription service. Napster paid about $43 each for AOL's subscribers in January 2007 (about half of them actually took up and stayed with Napster). That would value Napster's subscribers at $30 million. Given the state of the subscription model, as well as the lack of competing bidders, I have to assume each subscriber would fetch far less than $43. Any way you slice it, its subscribers are one of the few things about Napster with much value. In spite of this, the company is currently trading at roughly cash on hand.

[music jobs] Director of Content at Dada Entertainment; New York, NY.

• EMI's global functional matrix continues to take form. Former Capitol COO Jeff Kempler has been given the newly-created position of COO, A&R labels, North America, UK and Ireland. He will report to Nick Gatfield, the president of A&R labels, North America, UK and Ireland. (Music Week)

• CD duplication company MediaTechnics has signed a letter of intent to purchase Global Music Group, the company that recently was awarded the assets of Death Row Records. What a sad story for a once-strong label. (Variety)

• The EFF and some public interest groups filed comments today with the Copyright Office urging it to "clarify the process for licensing digital music services" of the Section 115 compulsory license. "It's the music publishers that represent the last great obstacle to streamlined licensing," wrote Fred von Lohmann, "in large part because there are so many of them." This is really good reading for you copyright and licensing wonks. (EFF Deep Links blog)

• Comcast is setting a 250GB monthly limit on its broadband customers. According to the company, that amounts to 62,500 songs, 125 standard-definition movies or 50 million emails. (San Francisco Chronicle)

• Another vinyl article, this one about Warner Bros and its "Sound Matters" campaign. Said Warner/Reprise VP Tom Biery, “But it’s not about making huge profits, because vinyl sales are still a small fraction of overall sales. ... It’s about branding us. People at this big record company are really committed to having things sound righ