Talking Music Making with Andrea from Digital Music Trends

Digital Music Trends – Episode 76.

Mobile music slump holds back Warner Music Group’s digital growth

Well what a surprise that record labels are feeling the pinch on ringtone sales…maybe they should consider the ringtone model a little more carefully, with fans  creating ringtone content that is remixes of those fans favorite artists…oh I guess that’s what my company does! Warner, EMI, Universal Music and Sony, feel free to get in touch!

Major label Warner Music Group’s digital revenues grew by just 1.6% in Q4 last year, thanks to a slide in ringtone sales.

Warner Music Group reported its latest quarterly results yesterday, and they included yet more proof that the ringtones market has declined faster than expected.

WMG reported digital revenues of $187 million for the quarter, up just 1.6% year-on-year. “Our revenue growth in downloads and streaming services was more than offset by ongoing declines in ringtone revenue,” said chairman and CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr.

However, he said WMG is looking forward to new devices and digital services spurring renewed growth in this aspect of its business going forward.

“Digital innovation will evolve rapidly on many levels, including cloud-based music services, tablet launches, bundles subscription distribution, and connected devices,” said Bronfman.

“I think you’re going to see, I hope, very significant expansion of streaming services in 2011, and the introduction, I hope, of some very significant cloud-based services also in 2011.”

Bronfman was also asked directly about streaming music service Spotify, and while he batted back a question about whether WMG is any nearer to licensing the service in the US, he had warm words for its impact in Europe.

“We do see a very real growth from Spotify and we do see Spotify and services like Spotify as being ever more meaningful to our results, and I think you’ll be able to see that in our fiscal year 2011 and as the calendar year proceeds beyond that,” he said.

WMG’s overall revenues fell 14% year-on-year to $789 million in Q4, so despite digital’s sluggish growth, it now makes up 23.7% of the company’s total sales.

#MIDEM Bruce Houghton: On the Road to MIDEM 2011: How Much Has Really Changed?

Hypebot’s Bruce Houghton, a frequent contributor to MIDEMBlog, shares the prevailing pre-MIDEM mood: when will things take off at last…?!

By Bruce Houghton

As I pack my bags to attend MIDEM, I do so with a touch of apprehension because, while so much in the music industry has changed, so much remains the same:

• Overall music sales are a fraction of what they were, but strong new sources of income have yet to emerge.
• The same major labels still dominate most sales and airplay charts.
• While new faces fill the digital slots, the senior executive suites at those majors remain controlled by men who have a proven resistance to real change.
• Few strong new independent labels have emerged to challenge this old guard.
• Even if Spotify were to use MidemNet to announce a U.S. launch, rightsholders stalled for far too long. And too many other worthy music services remain in an ill-defined line waiting for licencing.
• In most countries, copyright laws are still unequipped to handle an age of digital music creation and consumption.

#MIDEM IFPI publishes Digital Music Report 2011

RESOURCES – IFPI publishes Digital Music Report 2011.

Social 50 Music Chart : Which artists are maxin’ it on Facebook

I read somewhere that there is a whole server at Twitter HQ data centre that is dedicated the Justin Bieber…or was it the data centre at Facebook? Anyway its a shed load and will only get bigger as these artists see even greater potential for promoting themselves and the stuff they love and endorse……

That reminds me, if I have a shave with a Gillette will I end up in the ‘off couse’ mess that Tiger Woods was in? Here’s hoping, as I never did like golf – spoils a good walk.

Social 50 Music Chart | Billboard.com.

MySpace’s Demise And Why Facebook Doesn’t Need A Music Product Strategy

MySpace has announced that it is cutting half of its staff and are closing its international operations. It may not be a huge deal for social networking more broadly, but it does have significance for the music space. MySpace may not have been a force in the social networking marketplace for some time, but it’s still a force in music discovery. This announcement though is no surprise. Back in December 2009, MySpace were though unlikely to admit it, but the mainstream social networking race against Facebook is as good as over. By contrast they remain the No. 1 destination for artist communities online, yet without a major reinvention they’ll start to feel the competitive pressure bite there also.

The major reinvention came far too late, and it was too little.

Ironically, even though MySpace let basic usability and functionality stutter, artists stuck with it because that’s where their audiences were. A host of much more competitive and differentiated alternatives came to the fore, focusing on subsets of the broader MySpace music value proposition. Sites like Sellaband, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, and PledgeMusic each have very different value propositions, but all took from MySpace the baton of developing the artist-fan relationship and ran with it.

Interestingly, despite all this innovation and the continued demise of MySpace as a social networking destination, it clung on to its position as the place for artists on the Web.  Until, that is, Facebook finally started to take the space seriously. After a slow start, artist pages on Facebook have rapidly stolen the momentum. Artists are flocking in their droves to Facebook, leaving their MySpace pages to wither and many are even closing down their own websites. After all, where else are you going to get access to an audience of the scale that Facebook brings?

And there’s the rub. Facebook doesn’t (yet) offer the same depth of discovery tools and artist tools that MySpace or other artist sites do, but it’s where artists’ fans are. Almost every artist’s fans. That is an invaluable asset that artists, their managers, and their labels are waking up to, and fast.

For a long time now, people have asked when Facebook will get into music. It already is. This is the play that makes sense for it. It doesn’t need to launch a music service.  Facebook’s platform play enables the likes of iLike to provide music experiences and vendors such as MXP4 and RootMusic to enrich artist pages.

Whilst MySpace has its life support turned off, Facebook can sit back and watch artists continue to come its way. MySpace helped revolutionize the artist-fan relationship, but it learned the hard way that it’s the  early follower that typically wins, not the first mover.

SongHi going to MIDEM – swing by and say hi

If there ever was any doubt, the invitation to join MIDEM, the showcase for cutting edge digital music innovations, proves that SongHi.com is one of the select few elites in contemporary music industry.
SongHi.com is a free browser based music making application created by SongHi Entertainment Ltd. The players attempt to become the most popular virtual star in SongHi.com by competing with other players by making, sharing, and publishing songs that are made with the application’s own music engine.
SongHi offers a new revenue stream and promotional tool for artists, record labels and entertainment brands through the sales of virtual items and in-game advertising. These items include original artist voice samples, look-alike instruments, clothing and accessories, and user created ringtones.
The service’s exceptional promise has not gone unnoticed by MidemNet, who hand picks the companies with most potential in mobile, B2B and B2C applications and music services to participate in MIDEM, an annual event bringing together the music industry’s influencers, decision makers and innovators from all around the world.

MIDEM is held from 22 to 26 January, in Cannes.
SongHi.com will participate in a panel on Monday 24.1., and MidemNet Lab on Tuesday 25.1.
At other times, SongHi.com representatives can be found at the Musex stand.

midem
MidemNet Lab unveils its international and innovative line-up of music start-ups: http://www.midem.reedmidem.com/ebrochures/press/MidemNetLab_3_UK.html
The home page of SongHi: http://www.songhi.com/
The home page of SongHi Entertainment: http://www.songhientertainment.com/

SongHi.

Playdom Veterans Move On Into Mobile Startups

Interesting to see some of the veterans form the world of social gaming now moving into the mobile space

Six months after Disney acquired Playdom for up to $763 million, a host of senior executives and producers have already left to start new companies or join early-stage ones.

Notably, a couple of these are mobile gaming-related ideas. Playdom co-founder Rick Thompson’s Wild Needle Games just scooped up $2.5 million in funding from Shasta Ventures and Thompson himself. The plan is to build mobile games that really take advantage of the phone’s location awareness and “always-on connectivity” to social networks. Booyah’s MyTown might serve as a forerunner to what Wild Needle plans to ship.

There are others too. Craig Dos Santos, who headed up Playdom’s mobile games group, is working on an e-commerce project called Portable Cupcake out of Tapjoy headquarters in San Francisco. And while this isn’t a completely mobile dependent startup, former Playdom vice president of product Jesse Janosov has taken the chief executive role at FooMojo and is poaching others to join the virtual pets-focused company. FooPets has a number of virtual pet iPhone apps from Marmaduke Dog to Tuxedo Kitten.