For Which Team is Lefsetz Cheerleading?

Cayocosta

There is no way to compete with free, and the proof is that no one has been able to figure out how to do so in the last decade - and there's been plenty of incentive in the form of boatloads of money waiting for whoever could put it together.

Yet, Mr. Platitudes continues with the straw man argument that the majors need to find a solution to music piracy that accommodates the pirates.

Lefsetz's allegiance is obviously with the tech crowd as he is clearly a spokesperson for their goals with regard to IP content - a shill for the geeks.

Have a look at this recent statement from his blog regarding ISP filtering:

DO NOT FOLLOW PAUL MCGUINNESS! DO NOT WASTE ANOTHER DECADE IN A FUTILE ATTEMPT TO GO BACK TO THE NINETIES! ACCEPT REALITY AND DEAL WITH IT!

This is a guy that appears quite desperate here.

(Lefsetz also goes out of his way to unnecessarily trash U2 and McGuinness; as well, he again resorts to utilizing hackneyed pro-piracy rhetoric throughout the post. Talk about going back to the nineties - he himself should accept "reality" and knock off this aged and condescending populism.)

Lefsetz - now clearly - is not only anti-label, but anti-artist and anti-music.

U2 Manager: ISPs Should Cutoff Pirates, Artists Mistreated

From BBC:

The manager of rock band U2 has urged internet service providers (ISPs) to help end illegal music downloads, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Paul McGuinness called for policies on disconnecting those who acquired tracks illegally, using a speech in France to urge governments to take action.

McGuinness told the Midem conference in Cannes that it was time for artists to stand up against what he called the "shoddy, careless and downright dishonest way they have been treated in the digital age".

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Vivendi Chief: Music Industry Doom Exaggerated

From Reuters:

Vivendi Chief Executive Jean-Bernard Levy has no plans to spin off the music unit Universal and he said on Saturday he believed the gloom surrounding the industry had been over done.

Speaking at the annual Midem conference, Levy said the music industry was going through a huge transition at the moment, with new business models for mobile and Internet services appearing all the time.

But he predicted there would still be a viable market for physical products like CDs for many years to come and he said the industry's future lay, as always, in spotting the right creative talent.

"I think altogether today there is an exaggeration in the industry," he told the conference. "Of course it is not doing that well, but look at us, we have flat revenues, a good two digit margins and it's not as dark as what many people describe."

"Back in 2003 the numbers didn't look very good," he said "(But) as a shareholder of Universal, I have seen the numbers go up quite sharply. We had in '03 a 3 percent operating margin business and we have today a 12 percent operating margin business.

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IFPI: Governments Should Force ISPs to Fight Music Piracy

From CNN:

Speaking to Dow Jones Newswires IFPI CEO John Kennedy, said that piracy was still was still a major problem for the music industry. "For every music track downloaded legally, 20 are downloaded illegally," he said.

Thursday the IFPI renewed calls for governments to intervene to force internet service providers, or ISPs, to play a bigger role against digital music piracy, which has contributed to the decline in music sales and has prompted a wave of lawsuits by the industry against unauthorized downloaders.

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From Telegraph:

Music Pirates 'Should Be Banned From Internet'

Warner Music Acquires French Tour Company Camus

From Reuters:

The French division of Warner Music Group has acquired one of the country's leading tour production and promotion companies, Jean-Claude Camus Productions, for an undisclosed fee.

Camus Productions, which has staged concerts in France for international acts such as Madonna, Michael Jackson and the Rolling Stones, will remain largely autonomous and will continue to be led by Jean-Claude Camus.

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More Hack Journalism Courtesy Chicago Tribune

Cayocosta

Amazing that virtually no one in journalism is willing to stand up and support artists and the industry against piracy.

Greg Kot of Chicago Tribune writes:

In the last few years, the music industry has combated tumbling revenue by suing costumers (sic), decimating artist rosters and laying off thousands of employees.

Tumbling revenue is employed here as a euphemism for piracy; and as usual, customers is used to describe music pirates.

But in the last few days, one important segment of the music industry actually came up with a rescue strategy that didn’t smack of panic, malice or desperation.

The Songwriters Association of Canada is proposing a $5-a-month licensing fee on every wireless and Internet account in the country, in exchange for unlimited access to all recorded music.

Bad idea and I'm not about to waste my time explaining why, as no one ever bothers to explain the opposite when proffering such nostrums.

Personally, I think it's a terrible idea to ask everyone to pay for those that refuse to; however, the industry and its artists have no other choice. Writing about the looting that is occurring but blaming the providers for it while obfuscating its immorality and direct consequences - for fear of alienating those engaged - is simply reprehensible.

EMI, Warner Bid for Chrysalis

From AP:

LONDON (AP) -- EMI Group, which recently outlined a painful restructuring plan, has made a bid for independent music label Chrysalis Group PLC, a newspaper reported Friday.The report in The Times also said that Warner Chappell, the publishing arm of Warner Music Group Corp., had also made an offer.

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Cost of Piracy

Cayocosta

Guy Dixon, in his article Music: A New Era of Selling Out for Globe and Mail takes a shot at EMI for seeking corporate sponsorship to help underwrite the development of its artists:

Guy Hands, who is now chairman of EMI after his London-based investment Terra Firma bought the company and its many sublabels ranging from Virgin to Parlophone last year, said yesterday that artists may be in for a new era of selling out, with his suggestion that bands could be sponsored like British sports teams: "Football teams have very distinct corporate sponsorship. Why shouldn't some of the leading bands have the same sort of relationships?" the Financial Times quoted Hands as saying.

Unfortunately - and as usual - nowhere is it mentioned that piracy has contributed greatly to this development, as well as the loss of thousands of jobs and the cratering of record company valuations.

Mr. Dixon writes as though these things are occurring in a vacuum.

With regard to fans being jaded; perhaps artists are becoming a little fed up with the notion of playing minstrels to an audience consisting in large part of spoiled brats that hold them in contempt and consider their work worthless.

Motley Fool Trolls for Music Pirate Traffic With Hack Business Sense

Cayocosta

Want easy traffic? Publish some pro-piracy dreck.

(Of course, no media outfit online is going to defend artists and the industry against piracy because that would result in the loss of the free-music advocate portion of their readership via boycott.)

"RIAA Blasts Its Customers, Again"

Let's get this straight once and for all, music pirates aren't customers.

Common sense dictates that should the RIAA cease going after people for piracy, the result would be that music would be considered free to download - greatly accelerating the decline in CD sales - and the industry would face imminent bankruptcy.

Representing the fight against piracy as resistance to technological innovation is ridiculous.

Motley Fool publishes this populist anti-RIAA nonsense for one reason - to lure traffic. However, it comes at the expense of their reputation for sound business and investment advice.

WMG Rebounding on Heavy Volume

Cayocosta

WMG appears to have run into resistance last Wednesday at ~4.60, with buying into very heavy (4x) volume following on Thursday and Friday in an otherwise bearish market. Up another 2.7% this morning to 5.26.

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EMI to Cut 2000 Jobs, Focus on Catalog

From Joseph Schuman, Wall Street Journal:

EMI tomorrow plans to announce a restructuring that could cutup to 2,000 jobs and emphasize the profitability of its catalogue -- with the likes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Norah Jones -- rather than its recorded-music division, the Times of London reports. Guy Hands, head of Terra Firma Capital Partners, which acquired embattled EMI last year, is expected to stress how half of the company's profits come from the catalogue division, which employs 1,100 people, compared with the 4,500 who deal with newly recorded music, the Times says. Mr. Hands wants to centralize sales, marketing and other support functions and also scrap EMI's current bonus regime for managers -- which is based on album shipments -- and replace it with one based on group profits, the paper adds.

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Amazon MP3 Store Adds Sony BMG DRM-Free

From Ed Christman, Billboard:

Sony BMG Music Entertainment is joining Amazon's MP3 party, and will allow its music to be sold via the unprotected format on the digital download store. The move comes on the heels of Sony BMG's announcement that it will sell album specific digital download gift cards that will be redeemed in the MP3 format.

While the latter announcement was limited in scope to 37 albums, the Amazon agreement represents a broad acceptance of the MP3 format by Sony BMG, which up until now, had been the major deemed the most resistant to abandon the concept of music protected by digital rights management software.

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Washington Post Corrects Marc Fisher's RIAA Hit Piece

From Washington Post:

A Dec. 30 Style & Arts column incorrectly said that the recording industry "maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer." In a copyright-infringement lawsuit, the industry's lawyer argued that the actions of an Arizona man, the defendant, were illegal because the songs were located in a "shared folder" on his computer for distribution on a peer-to-peer network.

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Sony BMG To Debut MP3 Album Cards

From Ed Christman, Billboard:

Sony BMG Music Entertainment will roll out its Platinum MusicPass series of digital album cards beginning Jan. 15 at Best Buy, Target and Fred's, with Trans World and Winn-Dixie coming to the party by the end of January.

In Canada, participating retailers include Best Buy, CD Plus, Shoppers Drug Mart, and Wal-Mart with HMV coming on board sometime during the first quarter.

The digital album gift cards, which retail for $12.99, will be artist-specific and feature album artwork, and will come with bonus material. The card will contain a scratch-off that will reveal a PIN number that can be redeemed for a download at MusicPass.com.

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WMG Acquires Insound.com

From Ed Christman, Billboard:

The Alternative Distribution Alliance, an independent distributor owned by the Warner Music Group, has acquired Insound.com, the only indie music lifestyle store, sources confirm.

ADA apparently will use the Insound digital sales infrastructure as a back-end to allow its labels and indie accounts to open their own online download stores.

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Trans World To Close 138 Stores

From Ed Christman, Billboard:

Trans World is preparing to shut down 138 of its 962 stores in another year-end pruning of its real-estate portfolio. Going-out-of business sales for the planned closures began on Dec. 7 and the closings are expected to be completed by the end of January.

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Total Music Purchased Up 14% In 2007

From FMQB:

Nielsen SoundScan has released its annual year-end sales figures, and while total overall music purchases were up, album sales continued their steady decline in 2007. Overall music sales; which combines albums, singles, music videos and digital tracks; increased to 1,369,000 from 1,198,000 with a 14 percent increase. While overall album sales (which includes 'track equivalent albums') fell by 9.5 percent, total album sales were down by 15 percent from 588.2 million to 500.5 million. The purchasing of physical CDs online grew by 2.4 percent. Also, 20 percent of total album sales for the year took place in the last six weeks of 2007.

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Trent Reznor: Saul Williams' Sales "Disheartening"

From Trent Reznor:

I have to assume the people knowing about this project must either be primarily Saul or NIN fans, as there was very little media coverage outside our direct influence. If that assumption is correct - that most of the people that chose to download Saul's record came from his or my own fan-base - is it good news that less than one in five feel it was worth $5? I'm not sure what I was expecting but that percentage - primarily from fans - seems disheartening.

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Sony BMG to Drop DRM

From Catherine Holahan, BusinessWeek:

In a move that would mark the end of a digital music era, Sony BMG Music Entertainment is finalizing plans to sell songs without the copyright protection software that has long restricted the use of music downloaded from the Internet, BusinessWeek.com has learned. Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony and Bertelsmann, will make at least part of its collection available without so-called digital rights management, or DRM, software some time in the first quarter, according to people familiar with the matter.

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Bon Jovi Joins Van Halen in Scalping Game

From Alfred Branch, Jr., Ticketnews:

It appears that you can add Bon Jovi to the list of artists scalping tickets to their own shows for hundreds, even thousands, of dollars above face value.

Bon Jovi joins Van Halen and other artists in the ticket scalping game as a way of maximizing revenues on their current tour. Band, promoters and venues are now routinely withholding blocks of premium tickets from fans, which they later resell at significantly higher prices through various means, such as StubHub!, fan sites, Ticketmaster or auction sites.

They typically get away with it because the identity of the reseller is not always obvious, but they also face a potential firestorm, as in case of the wildly popular Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus tour, if fans believe they are being duped.

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Apple Label Speculation

Cayocosta

Should Apple launch a record company, would the rest of the music industry continue to license content to iTunes - which would then represent a direct competitor's captive retail outlet?

Unlikely.

Such a move makes sense however, if Apple anticipates eventually losing some or all of its current agreements and/or working relationships with the majors.

Actually, Apple buying WMG might make considerable sense in that case.

U.K. Shops Fees Rise to Play Music

From Richard Tyler, Telegraph:

Shop owners face inflation-busting rises in the cost of playing music to entice customers into their stores from Tuesday.

The smallest shops - those up to 100 sq m - will see the royalty payments they have to make each year to play background music increase by 13pc. Those with larger premises face slightly smaller rises, with, for example, a 1,001 sq m shop now paying £495.50 a year to play CDs or the radio, up 6pc.

The Performing Right Society, which represents over 50,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers, said that increased shop opening hours and the growing the importance of music "in creating a brand and attracting customers" justified the price rises. It said it also planned to review the tariffs charged to other workplaces, like offices, pubs and restaurants.

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Beijing Court Sides With Baidu in Music Piracy Case

From AFP:

BEIJING (AFP) — A Beijing appeals court has found top Chinese search engine Baidu.com not guilty of property rights infringement for posting links to websites offering illegal music downloads, state media said Monday.

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