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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