Double, Double, Newt’s In Trouble.
With the Republican primaries approaching an end, I am sure a few candidates and their advisors have been thinking of ways to motivate voters. The power of music has long been recognized to move people and stir emotions. So if Orpheus could convince Hades to free his beloved Eurydice from the underworld, surely “Eye of The Tiger” could at least have some sway on voters. Unlike Newt Gingrich however, Orpheus was not living in a world of copyright law.
Facebook has launched a lawsuit against Adscend Media, alleging that they developed and encouraged others to spread spam using a variety of tactics, but most notably clickjacking. Facebook is not going at this alone. The State of Washington has filed suit, alleging violations of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM), 15 U.S.C. §§7701-7713 and other laws, against Delaware-based Adscend and co-owners Jeremy Bash and Fehzan Ali. Both Facebook and The State of Washington allege the advertising company has profited by collecting money from clients for every Facebook user misdirected to an advertisement or subscription offer.
With the recent shutdown of Megaupload and the arrest of Kim “Dotcom” Schmitz (founder of Megaupload and formerly the number one ranked Call of Duty player) for massive amounts of alleged copyright infringement, other legal news relating to Megaupload might be overlooked. Well, have no fear, here is some information about the lawsuit filed by Megaupload weeks before its shutdown.
The 2011 end of the year numbers are in! Was 2011 the year when the music industry went back to black?
Well that depends on what numbers you compare and who you ask. The Nielson-Billboard 2011 Music Industry Report indicates that music sales for 2011 are up for the first time in seven years (thanks to lower album prices and Adele), while others claim that the recorded music industry remains “plagued” by declining CD sales with digital revenue failing to make up the difference.
The proposed legislation goes by many names— COICA, PIPA, SOPA—but the goal is clear: protect intellectual property and prevent online piracy. Congress has made big moves this year to push its anti-piracy agenda. Both the House and Senate have introduced bills that purport to regulate the Internet, while modernizing our criminal and civil laws to meet changing technology and “bad” consumer social habits. The two recent iterations of these bills are PIPA and SOPA. What affect will these proposed bills have on the music industry? Lets find out.
Earlier this year one of the music industry’s powerhouse companies, Warner Music Group (“Warner”), began accepting bids for its recorded music and publishing companies. While Warner preferred bids for the business as a whole, there were numerous bidders who placed bids for one or the other. The bidders included Live Nation, Sony Music Entertainment, and Universal Music Group. However, Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries was amongst the crew that placed a bid for the entire company, which indeed ended up being a successful move for the private equity firm. On or about May 6, 2011 Warner agreed to sell to Blavatnik for more than $3billion . . . $3.3 billion to be exact.
Welcome to ReDigi: “The World’s First Online Marketplace For Used Digital Music.”
Yes, you read that sentence correctly. Launched in beta version last October, ReDigi markets itself as a “recycled music market place.” In reality, it’s an online digital music store that allows users to buy/sell used digital music files.
Less than two months ago, Nyasha Foy asked, “Is Music Streaming Worth The Cost?” Well, this week, ST Holdings provided a definitive “No.” ST Holdings, a UK-based independent music distributor of 238 indie record labels (Dub Police and Naked Lunch), withdrew all their music from Spotify and similar digital streaming services including Rhapsody, Mog, and Rdio.
By now everyone has heard of Spotify, the Swedish-founded, UK-headquartered music streaming service launched in 2008. This past summer, Spotify joined a long (and growing list) of music subscription services available in the United States, including Rhapsody, Mog, and Rdio. Already established in Europe (including Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and recently in Denmark), Spotify is quickly gaining popularity thanks to a recent partnership with Facebook.
But all is not as perfect as it seems. A recent Forbes article seems to suggest that Spotify is not the profitable business venture that it appears to be. Here are some interesting numbers that you should know:
For those who don’t know, the simplest way to describe Baidu in a soundbite is “the Google of China.” Although somewhat of a misnomer (afterall Google does operate in China), it is a fitting place to begin.
Baidu is free music download service in China. The name for Baidu is inspired by a poem written more than 800 years ago during the Song Dynasty. The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one’s dream while confronted by life’s many obstacles. “…hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly, I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood.” Baidu, whose literal meaning is “hundreds of times”, represents a persistent search for the ideal (according to the company’s own mission statement).
Founded in 2000, Baidu became the first Chinese company to be traded on the NASDAQ-100 index in 2007. It commands a 75.8% share of China’s search engine market, according to Beijing-based research firm Analysys International, placing Google at a distant second, with just under 20% of the market-share. And what is the market-share? How about an estimated 477 million users as of mid-2011. ‘Search’ became the most widely used service for Baidu in 2010, at around 82%, with ‘music streaming and downloading’ at 79%.
These are just some of the reasons why a recent deal between Baidu executives and the world’s largest record labels may be groundbreaking. It is too early to tell of course, but the closing negotiations that took place last month between Baidu and One-Stop China, a joint venture between the Universal Music Group,
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