Last.fm Loses Warner Music on Demand

From Peter Kafka, Silicon Alley Insider:

Warner Music Group (WMG) has pulled its catalog out of Last.fm's "on demand" free streaming service, which the CBS-owned service launched to great fanfare in January. Users can still hear Warner artists via the site's "radio" option, which doesn't allow you to select individual songs. But you can't order up individual songs from WMG artists.

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Why Advertising Supported Free-Music Ain't Gonna Happen

Cayocosta

Lots of hype and bluster about ad supported free-music solutions lately. Well, it ain't gonna happen, and here's why:

Two ways to offer ad subsidized music: streaming and downloads.

The problem with downloads is that once the track is downloaded, the ad is no longer attached; unless the ad is audio and embedded in the tune - which would kill the idea.

Which brings us to DRM. DRM protected tracks with proprietary players would allow ads to be served while tracks are played. But again, limiting the use of tracks to certain players would kill the concept.

Streaming on dedicated players that serve ads is not a bad idea, but limited in application as a live internet connection is required to stream in real time. Thus, ad-supported streaming is DOA.

Remember, the industry is competing with free, unfettered mp3 downloading and listening (albeit illegally).

Beyond all this is the amount paid to the content providers.

For downloads, Amazon and Apple are charging .80 to .99 per track and netting back 70 cents or so to the labels. There is no way ads can generate anywhere near as much.

Now, why would the industry accept mere cents on the dollar when they are already receiving 70 cents per track for paid downloads?

Why then would the industry voluntarily kill the remaining CD business and developing paid download business - for a fraction of the music's market value?

Then there's the precedent. Should the industry allow music to be free - subsidized via anything else - it would be nearly impossible to return (if so desired) to charging for downloads.

Hence, for free-music subsidized via advertising to work, the industry would:

1.) have to accept much less than the market value of music.
2.) hasten the decline of its remaining CD business.
3.) render obsolete its burgeoning paid download business.
4.) have to accept sharing fractional revenue with third parties (portals).
5.) once and for all, establish that recorded music no longer has any intrinsic value in the marketplace.

Humbug.

In the interim however, should a tech player offer millions of dollars for the rights to stream (no downloads) content under an ad supported platform (imeem, for example), the labels will rightly take the money and run.

Rhapsody Streams Full-Songs (with Limitations) To Facebook

Seems a bit silly to limit full streams to Rhapsody subscribers, as registered imeem users can already do so for free - as well as embed tracks and playlists anywhere.

By Antony Bruno, Billboard:

Rhapsody has beta-launched a Facebook widget designed to extend full-song music streaming into the popular social network.

Existing Rhapsody subscribers will be able to play an unlimited number of full songs, while non-subscribers will be limited to the 25 free songs a month that are offered under the company’s ad-supported model.

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Tech Companies and Public Interest Groups Form Coalition to Expand Broadband Access

From Kevin Bogardus, The Hill:

Tech giants and public interest watchdogs joined forces Wednesday in a new coalition to support new portable wireless devices that will utilize underused parts of the spectrum for Internet service.

The Wireless Innovation Alliance (WIA) is a new group comprised of IT companies like Google and Hewlett-Packard as well as watchdog groups such as Free Press and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. They have teamed up as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) considers rules for devices designed to provide broadband access using “white spaces” — unused parts of the spectrum that typically would be occupied by television frequencies.

“All government is doing is setting the road signs,” said Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), speaking at the press conference announcing the alliance. “But the private sector can’t move ahead until the road signs are established.”

IT companies such as Microsoft — a WIA member whose headquarters reach into Inslee’s district — are developing the devices with the promise they will provide superior broadband access. The white spaces occupy prime real estate on the spectrum, and the enhanced access could spur more innovation and broaden Internet availability to more Americans.

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UMG Imeem Details Emerging

From Saul Hansell, New York Times:

It is still unclear how many sites will be able to make enough money from advertising to pay what the labels want. Imeem has given Universal some stock and a large upfront cash payment. The Financial Times reported that the payment was $20 million, although Imeem has disputed that figure.

The record labels have given Imeem a break on their normal fee of one cent every time a song is played. But in return they have asked for a share of the advertising, not just on the pages related to music, but on the whole site. So I’m not entirely sure how this model will work on a site that is simpler to use than Imeem and thus has fewer pages on which ads can be sold.

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Imeem Deal Vindicates Music Industry

Cayocosta

Ironically, last month's Shmoo turns out to be this week's shark, as Doug Morris (having held out until Universal was the last in line) reportedly negotiated a royalty for each stream originating from imeem, in addition to a standard share of advertising revenue.

Correction: WSJ got it wrong, UMG will receive streaming payments only in the event that ad revenue falls short of the contractual amount.

This move also goes a long way towards silencing industry critics who after having had a field day two weeks ago chastising the majors for being technology ignorant on the heels of the Morris interview, find themselves with much less basis to do so today; as well, proponents of file-sharing are now short one "obstinate industry" justification.

So far, bloggers have indeed had little to say about this new development, yet the few that have spoken up are attempting to spin the deal as equivalent to the legalization of file-sharing - even though downloading is not facilitated by the service (of course, there are ways to capture streams, but there's little incentive for anyone to do so in this case) and the content owners and artists are actually paid under this system.

Looking back at the series of events that took place over the last two weeks: Morris appears to have played possum in the Wired interview, UMG then truncated streaming on MySpace, and today imeem gets the last piece of the content puzzle. Imeem now has industry-wide unrestricted content to compete directly with MySpace - and four powerful partners.

However, the question remains: how well can imeem monetize music? YouTube, if any indication, has been criticized for not adequately monetizing video; yet on the other hand, from Barron's:

"Greenfield writes that MySpace is now generating “in excess of $30 million” a month in revenue, with about $24 million in domestic revenue and $6 million internationally. He adds that monthly revenues should more than double over the next 12 months, and “at very high incremental revenue margins.” So in 12 months, he’s saying, MySpace should be doing more than $60 million a month in revenue, for an annual run rate in the neighborhood of $750 million a year. Not too shabby."

(Unfortunately, parent company News Corp. has not disclosed bottom-line revenue.)

For streaming to really take off, it must be accessible from any location and device (that's going to take a while) and for this reason, the advertising model may not become standardized, for phones and players won't accommodate the delivery of ads very well - if at all; unless the ads are in audio, which would ruin the experience. Therefore, it doesn't appear a stretch to imagine a subscription platform eventually emerging - perhaps on several services.

In any event, at least this is the first streaming service that appears to offer complete catalogs from all 4 majors - which is of course, a prerequisite to any comprehensive solution - and this alone should suffice to sign up a ton of folks. Moreover, moving beyond the download to pure streams potentially solves the problems of DRM, RIAA lawsuits, and piracy.

It's indeterminable at this time how artists might be compensated by labels; however imeem entered an agreement with SNOCAP earlier this year indicating that at least some royalties will be paid to artists by the service itself.

In closing; Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, EMI, and imeem have taken a big collective step today.

Imeem Lands UMG, Now Streaming All Four Major's Content

By providing free (advertising subsidized), on-demand, full-length streams of all four major record companies' content, imeem sets the precedent for potential subscription services offering higher bitrate audio and ubiquitous access.



From BusinessWire:

Universal Music Group (UMG) and imeem today announced an agreement that will provide the imeem community with on-demand, interactive streaming of Universal’s extensive digital music and video catalog. With this announcement, imeem is the first social networking company to offer full-length, streaming access to the entire music and video catalogs of all four major music companies on an advertising-supported basis.

Beginning today, imeem’s audience of over 19 million users can listen to and express themselves with music and video from UMG’s digital catalog, which includes many of the world's top-selling artists such as Kanye West, Amy Winehouse, Fall Out Boy, 50 Cent, Black Eyed Peas, The Pussycat Dolls, Gwen Stefani, The Killers, Snow Patrol, Maroon 5 and Nelly, among many others.

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Stars Are Aligning for Subscription Music

From Peter Burrows, BusinessWeek:

For years, Steve Jobs has insisted that people want to own their music. And thanks in part to the iPod's near-monopoly, selling songs for 99 cents a pop has become the prevailing business model. Meanwhile, subscription services—renting access to millions of songs for a monthly fee—have gone almost nowhere.

Now, changing consumer behavior is giving subscription advocates new hope. Members of the Facebook Generation are bombarded with music recommendations every day, and don't necessarily want to pay a buck to check each one out. And since people are used to getting e-mail, appointments, and news feeds streamed to smartphones and other devices, many industry watchers assume they'll want the same for music. "If I can access whatever I want whenever I want," says Ted Cohen, who led EMI's digital music efforts and now runs an entertainment consultancy called TAG Strategic, "why do I need to own it?"

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Universal Snipping Artists' MySpace Streams To 90 Seconds

From Maura Johnston, Idolator:

It's not as big as the Led Zeppelin maybe-news, but Bob Lefsetz's latest mailbag also passed along a MySpace bulletin from singer-songwriter Colbie Caillat, whose career was assisted in part by her songs streaming from the social-networking site (not that her family connections didn't help, too). According to Caillat, the powers that be at Universal have decided to cap MySpace streams at 90 seconds, in an effort to stop crafty kids from ripping really crummy streams of songs to their hard drives and covering them in onions. Or something like that.

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Verizon Opens Way to More Options in Handsets, Software

From Wailin Wong, Chicago Tribune:

For years, mobile phone customers have been frustrated with the strange economics of the wireless industry: Consumers could choose the phone they want, or the carrier, but often not both.

But the balance of power now may be shifting, giving consumers much more control over their choice of phones, features and carriers.

On Tuesday, Verizon Wireless, the nation's second-largest carrier, said it planned to open its network to any device or application that meets certain standards. The result means that subscribers will be able to choose from a far broader array of handsets and software for downloading music, watching videos or browsing the Internet by the end of 2008.

Further ahead, assuming software developers and other technology
providers accept Verizon's offer, many more kinds of gadgets will be hooked into the wireless network, ranging from digital cameras to portable gaming systems to
home appliances.

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CBS Clears Pirate Bay to Include Last.fm Widget

From Chris Williams, The Register:

Last.fm, the music recommendation site owned by US media conglomerate CBS, has today given Pirate Bay the thumbs up to use its servers to add radio streams to BitTorrent searches.

The Swedish anti-copyright site has added a Last.fm widget to results pages as part of a new drop-down of extra information on artists (blog post here).

A spokesman for London-based Last.fm told The Reg that while it would not seek to endorse Pirate Bay, it has no control over who uses its API.

Even if it did, to stop Pirate Bay wouldn't be "in the spirit of" the API, he said."

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Dell To Launch Wireless Music Streaming Portal?

From Erica Ogg, CNET:

If you haven't heard of Zingspot.com yet, you soon might.

It was recently registered by none other than Dell, which also applied for a trademark on the name.

Zingspot is likely related to Zing Systems, a company that Dell acquired in August. Zingspot.com is described in the document filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as "an online consumer portal for digital entertainment content acquisition and distribution."

Dell had little to say when it acquired the tiny, Mountain View, Calif., company that makes streaming audio software.

But Zing makes a pretty nifty technology, one that SanDisk licensed for use in its Sansa Connect. It's software for real-time audio streaming--meaning you can get music wirelessly from an online source and from other portable devices.

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Wolfgang's Vault Adds Country Concert Streaming

Just a fantastic service.

From the site:

We have just completed a fairly major overhaul of our site and would like to share with you the thinking behind these changes.

In the two years since we launched the last design of Wolfgang’s Vault, we have added several major components to the company (Concert Vault, Crawdaddy!, Mojam and now Country Music Vault). We forced a few links on different pages to connect these sites, but it got to the point that without some unifying navigation between them we were going to end up with a jumble of sites sitting by themselves. Secondly, we felt that our internal search needed some significant upgrading. You can now search across all of our sites and refine your searches much more easily than in the past.

In addition to the new look, there are two big collections of content that we added with this launch. The first, and most obvious, is the addition of Country Music Vault. We had some great country shows that were getting buried a bit within Concert Vault and we wanted to make sure this music was given its proper due. We have added almost 150 new country shows to the site to bring the number of live country concerts to 200, which will grow weekly. We have also added 100 classic interviews from the mid 70’s through 2001 with a who’s who list of rock legends.

Our hope is that the new design will feel familiar to our longtime visitors while being easy to navigate on your first trip to the Vault. We intend to build on top of this and add more new features in the coming months. Let me add a quick thank you to all the people at Wolfgang’s Vault who put in some long hours to get the design, the code and the content ready to go. Please let us know what you think.

Cheers!

Wolfgang

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Songza: It's Like Google for Music

From Rafe Needleman, Webware:

Songza is a new music search engine and player. It's got the cleanest interface to a music library that I've ever seen, and it's great fun to use. It is limited, though.

To play music on Songza, you just type in the band or the song name, and a list of results pops up. From the list you can play tunes directly, or queue them to your playlist. You can also share the track, either by e-mail or with HTML code you can embed on your own Web page.

All of Songza's music comes from the YouTube API. Essentially, Songza is just an audio player for the YouTube music category, and when I first saw the site I thought it couldn't be legal. Songza's Scott Robbin assured me that the site sends a lot of traffic back to YouTube, and that clicking on the "buy" link on a track redirects to Google Checkout. This is true, but what Checkout displays and what YouTube plays may not be the same. If you're playing a cover of a track and you click "buy," you're likely not going to see the cover as the first track listed in Checkout.

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Social Streaming: Music's New Business Model?

From Bridget Carey, Miami Hearald:

Cyloop.com, a social networking site based in Miami Beach, is making music industry history by partnering with major labels to let users stream unlimited music for free.

Soon, you'll be able to hear the entire music catalogs of labels like Warner and EMI for free, without commercial interruptions, on a social networking site called Cyloop.com.

Members can stream as much music as they want and create playlists to save and share with other members. The catch: You have to be logged in to Cyloop.com to play the music. And, forget about downloading the songs to your computer.

The partnership is a new chapter in the evolution of the music industry, as labels are experimenting with new technologies to make up for money lost on in-store album sales and from illegal downloads.

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Share Music Within ITunes and Winamp

From Eliot Van Buskirk, Wired:

Looking for a good way to share music with your friends without a lot of hassle? Simplify Media (free) opens up iTunes and/or Winamp, so that you and your friends can listen to -- but not download -- the unprotected AAC, MP3, WMA, and Apple Lossless music in each others' playlists.

As for the legality issue, the company tackles that thusly:

Is this legal? Yes. Music is streamed friend-to-friend, and only within small, private groups. There are limits to how many friends can be on your Media List and how many listeners can concurrently stream music from your computer. Friends cannot burn remote songs to CDs, transfer them to an iPod or MP3 player, or access them when you are logged off.

Copyright holders might have a different take on this, but should take solace in the fact that no downloading occurs over the program. I suppose that if you really wanted to, you could use Winamp's wave-out DLL to record streams of your friends music onto your computer, but it'd be a lot easier to use BitTorrent for that anyway.

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Wolfgang's Vault - Stream Vintage Concerts Online For Free

Shows include: Led Zeppelin - Fillmore West 1969, Pink Floyd - Oakland Coliseum 1977, Bruce Springsteen - Winterland 1978, Genesis - Shrine Auditorium 1975 - plus tons more.

From the site:

There's only one place you can hear Bill Graham introduce the Allman Brothers at the Fillmore East, Steve Miller ask for more PA volume at Winterland, or Robert Plant kill time with the Fillmore audience while Jimmy Page re-tunes in the background. It's the same place you can listen to the greatest live music of all time in full concert format.

It's not Heaven, though it may feel like Heaven to rock music purists. It's the Concert Vault, the world's greatest collection of vintage concert recordings.

Where does it come from? In 2003, Wolfgang's Vault acquired master recordings from the archives of Bill Graham Presents. These live concerts were recorded at legendary venues like the Fillmore East and Winterland between 1965 and the late 1980s.

In early 2006, we augmented the Graham archives by acquiring the archives of the King Biscuit Flower Hour, the nationally famous syndicated rock radio broadcasts of live concerts from the 1970s and '80s. We also added the Silver Eagle Cross Country archive of country music concerts in 2006, and we haven't stopped there. Keep an ear out for additions to the Concert Vault in the near future.

Since we launched it in late 2006 the Concert Vault has offered high quality streamed versions of all of our concerts for free, with no advertising. You can personally rate each concert, maintain a Favorite Concerts list and personal Playlist, and meet kindred souls in the Concert Vault Forum.

Link (Thanks, Doc Magoo!)

Breakup Lets Clearwire Pursue Other WiMax Partners, Including Google

From Matt Hamblen, Computerworld:

After announcing today that their formal WiMax partnership agreement was dissolved, both Sprint Nextel Corp. and Clearwire Corp. said separately that they will continue informal discussions with each other on ways to advance the high-speed wireless technology.

Still, the most significant impact of their plans to tear up a July letter of intent to deploy mobile WiMax together is that Clearwire now has the freedom to find other partners to help roll out the technology, said Berge Ayvazian, an analyst at Yankee Group Research Inc. in Boston.

Potential new partners with Clearwire could be satellite operators or even Google Inc., which expressed interest in purchasing 700-MHz spectrum at a federal auction in January that could be used with WiMax, Ayvazian said. "Wireless broadband from Clearwire could run alongside of dish satellite technology and others," he said in an interview. Possible partners with Clearwire on WiMax could be "satellite operators, why not? Even Google, why not?"

Analysts noted that there are many backers of WiMax, including those that Sprint still has lined up, such as Intel Corp. The chip maker has said it is prepping chips for laptops and smaller devices that will run WiMax.

"If push comes to shove, Intel will force the issue," said Jack Gold, an analyst at J.Gold Associates LLC in Northboro, Mass. "They'll put more money into it."

A spokeswoman for another interested supplier of WiMax equipment, Motorola Inc., said in an e-mail that despite the dissolution of the letter of intent, "Motorola sees no change in the pact of the buildout of the overall U.S. WiMax network." She said Motorola will continue to be a leading infrastructure vendor for Sprint's Xohm network and the only vendor working on Clearwire's portion of the U.S. WiMax network.

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Related: Music Streaming

Sony Ericsson K660 Phone - HSDPA Mobile Broadband

From Wireless and Mobile News:

London, UK - - Sony Ericsson announced the launch of the K660, an HSDPA (‘mobile broadband’) enabled phone with clever features like illuminated shortcut keys that only become active when surfing the Net, and desktop tickers that provide regular updates from your favourite websites; all designed to make Web browsing on the move as simple and convenient as at your computer.

The K660 is engineered to ensure that you’re not kept waiting for the news or content that matters to you. Music, video or email - HSDPA technology lets you download it all at speeds that are up to four times faster than regular 3G.

The K660 is a UMTS/HSDPA 2100 and GSM/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 phone that will be available in selected markets from Q1 2008.

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Related: Why Music-Piracy and DRM Ultimately Don't Matter

AT&T Streaming Radio to Certain Phones

Now if only AT&T would facilitate streaming individual tracks on demand, we'd really be getting somewhere. - Cayocosta

AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) today announced that Pandora, the popular and rapidly growing Internet radio service, is now available on select wireless phones from AT&T. With Pandora, AT&T's wireless customers can discover new music, listen to their favorite artists and create their own personalized radio stations on their handsets.

"Pandora allows our customers to access their customized radio stations wherever they are without the need to carry an extra device, and that provides the ultimate convenience," said Mark Collins, vice president of Consumer Data for AT&T’s wireless unit. “Pandora’s unique approach to radio, combined with AT&T's already robust mobile music platform, supports consumer demand for more wireless music offerings. This service is another example of the many innovative ways that AT&T connects our customers to more of the music they want at the moment they want it."

"Pandora is a great way to discover new music that you may have never found otherwise," said Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora. “Now, listeners can have personalized music throughout the day — with the stations that they created — whenever and wherever they want. With this launch, AT&T and Pandora are continuing the ongoing expansion of Internet radio across all forms of listening."

Pandora is available for a free trial for the first five days and then costs $8.99 a month. AT&T recommends selecting a MEdia Max bundle, which not only provides unlimited mobile Web-browsing with MEdia Net but also unlimited access to streaming video, CV and basic content. The MEdia Max bundle is $19.99 a month and includes 200 text messages.

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