hypebot

Music 2.0 Week In Review: Handleman Out, Baidu Boycott & Much More

> IN DEPTH: Can the Music Industry Save Itself? Part 5: Release More Records

> Wal-Mart supplier Handleman is exiting the music business

> Chinese and international music companies urge an ad boycott of Biadu

> Singer/songwriter Lisa Loeb on free music, 360 deals, AimeSt, her new album and more

> Asia will be 40% of world music market by 2011

>  Are high fuel prices effecting touring acts? Michelle Shocked speaks out

> Flat fee digital distributor Tunecore cut some fees

NEW IN MUSIC ON THE WEB:

• Qbox indexes music on the social web
• FanFoodle pays fans to sell indie music
• ArtistData free service eases web update time crunch
• Last.fm spreads to other major sites
• CncertAttack is a live music social network

QUICK HITS: IODA Spain Launches, Barak Obama's Victory Soundtrack, Major labels sue Spanish P2P's, EMI Ups Sexton to EVP Worldwide Licensing, This Week's CIMS Indie Chart
Amazon.com was down 3 hours Friday

Amazon Servers Down 3 Hours - Updated

SATURDAY AM UPDATE: Yesterday's outage lasted about two hours with problems persisting for an additional 90 minutes.  No reason for the outage has been provided by America's largest online retailer thus far. See details and a time line below:

Tunecore Cuts Some Fees

Starting June 20th, flat rate digital distributor TuneCore will deliver a single track into any 11 digital stores of the customer's choice for a flat rate of $9.99.  Current stores include: iTunes US, iTunes Canada, iTunes Japan, iTunes Australia/New Zealand, iTunes UK/Europe, AmazonMP3, eMusic, Napster, Rhapsody, LaLa, and Groupie Tunes. Shockhound and Amie Street will be added in the near future.

I've written previously about downward pricing pressures on all digital distrinbutors, but Tunecore is leading the way and indie musicians and labels are the winners. As always with Tunecore, the artist keeps all their rights and receives...

Coalition of Independent Music Stores Charts For 6/04/08

CIMS Top 20 Debuts for Tuesday, June 3, 2008

1 WEEZER WEEZER (RED ALBUM)
2 FLEET FOXES FLEET FOXES
3 DISTURBED INDESTRUCTIBLE
4 OPETH WATERSHED
5 MANN,AIMEE !SMILERS
6 RADIOHEAD BEST OF RADIOHEAD
7 LADYTRON VELOCIFERO
8 TING TINGS WE STARTED NOTHING
9 FUTUREHEADS THIS IS NOT THE WORLD
10 SHEARWATER ROOK

Read the rest of the Top 20 Debut, Vinyl and CIMS Top 200 after the jump.

Are High Fuel Prices Effecting Touring?

With record sales plummeting touring is touted as the savior of music. After all, bands can still make money on the road. Or can they? Hypebot is asking artists how high fuel prices are effecting them. Perhaps you have a story to share? First up is an artist who always has something interesting to say in song or on paper - Michelle Shocked.

"I always thought that commuting to work by airplane was excessive, but Southwest and JetBlue fares just made it too tempting...It's possible that summer traffic is responsible, but in general I'm assuming that when the fall comes around the prices won't go back down to their 'cheaper to fly than drive' rates...I thought about converting my tour bus to biodiesel, but in the end I just donated it to the church for a building fundraiser.

I've had to develop orbit rhythm sections for the regions of the country...

Major Labels Sue Spanish P2P's

$20 MILLION IN DAMAGES SOUGHT

Promusicae, which represents  the  recording  industry  in  Spain,  has  filed  a  claim  in  the  Madrid  Court  for  Commercial  Matters  against  P2P pioneer Pablo  Soto  Bravo, the  creator  of Blubster,  Piolet  and  Manolito. The suit claims that these sites supply users with software to "facilitate the illegal interchange of copyrighted music" and Sony BMG, Universal, EMI and WMG have joined in support.

But Soto Bravo is not going quietly. "We intend to vigorously defend ourselves against this shake down attempt by the major label cabal," says the founder and CEO of MP2P Technologies. "Rather than embracing technology, they have chosen a path that will ultimately lead to their own demise...

ConcertAttack: Live Music Social Network

ConcertAttack is a new a live music social network and destination for artists and fans to share concert experiences through pictures, reviews, videos and tour journals. ConcertAttack also organizes concert content by artist, location and date, without user privacy restrictions, providing a place where concert content is easily accessible.

FIRST LOOK: A quick tour of the site showed content from fans of both superstars and newcomers plus live music news organized in an intuitive and graphically pleasing layout. Good stuff for live music fans, but I can't help but think that they'd be better served if imeem, Last.FM, Pandora or some broader music site added ConcertAttack as a live music component.  After all, how many different communities can people stay active in?

Friday's Music 2.0 Briefing: UK P2PWarnings, Weezer, Coldplay & More

HYPEBOT FEATURES:

• Are Fuel Prices Effecting Touring?
• Major Labels Sue Spanish P2P's
• ConcertAttack: A Live Music Social Network
• Burma: It Can't Wait Campaign

> UK ISP Virgin Media says it will start warning customers that are downloading illegally. (Telegraph UK)

> Weezer is telling fans to bring their instruments along and perform with them onstage and off during their upcoming Hootenanny Tour. (FMQB) This band brings its fans along for the party as well as anybody. Watch them and learn.

> Coldplay's new Capitol album Viva La Vida, which will be released June 17 is the #1  pre-order in iTunes history. Insiders feel it's a lock to beat the 140k first-week sales record set by Jack Johnson's Brushfire/ Universal Republic album, Sleep Through the Static, set in February. (HITS via EMI)

> Full text of U2 manager Paul McGuinness' speech this week attacking ISP's and other communication companies for profiting from illegal music and demanding change. (U2)

> Missouri University of Science and Technology requires students to pass a six-question quiz on digital copyright law in exchange for six hours of access to P2P they can use to share music and movies online. (AP)

Burma: It Can't Wait Campaign

Entertainment driven social shopping site Fantasia has launched the Burma: It Can't Wait campaign to highlight the needs of the cyclone victims. Sheryl Crow, Damian Marley, and Jackson Browne have all done PSA'a and here is up and comer Brett Dennen's musical contribution:

Qbox Indexes Music Of Social Web

SINGLE PLAYER DRAWS FROM MULTIPLE SOURCES

With tens of millions of users, social networking sites have become a destinations for music discovery. But they limit music search to their own sites, are largely browser-dependent, and offer limited listening and bookmarking options. Qbox eliminates these boundaries.

Now in beta, Qbox indexes the music on MySpace, YouTube and Bebo and empowers users to search, organize, and listen to the entire catalog of music available through a single point of access.

Qbox is an integrated hybrid desktop/web application,... 

Asia 40% Of Global Music Market By 2011

THE NUMBERS:

• By 2011, the Asia Pacific region will represent 33% of the global music market, and 40% of global digital revenues.

• The Asia Pacific music market will grow from 9 billion dollars US to 10 billion dollars by 2011

• Physical sales will decline at a 9% compound annual rate
• Digital music will grow at 30%

• Asia constitutes 60% of the world's mobile music market. That's 3 times the size of the US with Japan, China and S. Korea cornering 95% of the Asian market.

From PriceWaterhouseCoopers' Global Entertainment and Media Practice Leader Marcel Fenez in his presentation at Music Matters via Radio and Music.

Thursday's Music 2.0 Briefing: ISP Attack, Koch, Pandora & More

HYPEBOT FEATURES:

• Asia will be 40% of global music market by 2011
• Lisa Loeb on free music, AmieStreet, 360 deals and more.
• Qbox indexes the social web
• Last.fm spreads to major sites across web with new widget

> U2 manager Paul McGuinness continues his attack ISP's at Asia's Music Matters. (Variety)

> Koch has signed distribution deals with several urban labels: Viper, TLL, Seas International Entertainment and Iceman Music Group as well as expanded an existing deal with Suburban Noize. (Billboard)

> Pandora finally launches a desktop client to mixed reviews. (ars)

> A growing number of HD stations are signing up with Apple to enable listeners to tag a song for later download via iTunes. (IBD)

> Details via press release of the EMI Qtrax deal. (pdf)

> Blip is like Twitter for music discovery. Send a friend the song your listening to. (Mashable Podcast)

> Top Greek music downloads sites go all mp3. (press release)

INNAPROPRIATEBUNNY - Another new music destination has launched. "expect a bit of music news, a bit of web news, a lot of band, gig and album reviews and not a small amount of rambling on and on about our own self important and badly spelt views about things."

Last.fm Spreads To Major Sites

"IN-A-BOX" BRINGS LAST.FM TO OTHER MAJOR WEB PROPERTIES

Last.fm has announced "In A Box" a new initiative that gives partners sites access to the company's personalized streaming radio services without leaving the host sites. "Last.fm In a Box" will be available via Bebo, Billboard.com, Break Media, CBS Television Stations, CBS Affiliates, eMusic, Frengo, Gigya, iGoogle, Live Nation, Meebo, MP3.com, Netvibes, Ning, Pageflakes, Photobucket, Piczo, Six Apart, Stardoll, WAYN.com and WordPress.com.

The service is dubbed "Last.fm in a Box" because...

Lisa Loeb On Free Music, AmieSt, 360's & Much More

Lisa Loeb, Grammy nominated singer-songwriter, actress, and television producer, spoke to Laurence Trifon for Hypebot recently at Digital NARM. The now indie artist is embracing the digital space to market her music, and understands the challenges ahead.

HYPEBOT: There has been some debate among at Digital NARM about free music, and the trade-off between its promotional value and its potential to cannibalize music sales.

LOEB: It’s a fine line. When I was a kid we traded mixed tapes. And even now people give me entire CDs that they’ve burned that I might enjoy...

FanDoodle Pays Fans To Sell Music

FanDoodle.com enables fans to distribute downloads for artists and labels and get paid for it. Unlike the Burnlounge pyramid scheme, which I understand finally went out of business, FanDoodle is straight forward and artist friendly.

Once music has been uploaded, fans place banner code or text links in their emails, websites, MySpace or Facebook pages, blogs, or forums. When someone purchases a download, the fan keeps 20%. While the ability to distribute downloads is not new, the ability to...

Barak Obama's Victory Soundtrack

Scott Thill at Wired's Listening Post deserves 100% of the credit for this great soundtrack for a great moment inspired by Barak Obama clinching the Democratic nomination for President and the candidate's love of old school funk.

Quotable: "Are you ready to...take control?"

".. Are you ready to climb up and take control?"

"Then make great music.  Respect your audience.  Give people the tools to spread the word, never rip them off.  Know that growth will be slow.  But that the edifice you're building is solid, that it will pay dividends like the old record company pension plan, but now the beneficiary will be you, not the fat cats." - Bob Lefsetz

Wednesday's Music 2.0 Briefing: EMI & Qtrax, Yahoo Sued, Vinyl Surge & More

HYPEBOT FEATURES:

• FanDoodle pays fans to sell indie music
  
• Barak Obama's victory soundtrack
  
• Hypebot is now posting news throughout the day
• Wal-Mart supplier Handleman is exiting the music business
• China's music sector is calling for an ad boycott of Baidu
• IODA Spain opens

> EMI joins Universal in offering its catalog of recordings free via ad supported Qtrax. (press release) EMI also signed a deal with ad supported SpiralFrog. (FMQB)

> Yahoo is being sued by an Indian music company for copyright infringement. (PC World)

> Boston's Newbury Comics chain is selling $100,000 a month in vinyl records. (Boston Globe)

> Wolfgang's Vault has added download sales from its rare concert archives. (Reuters)

> Radiohead's catalog is up on iTunes both as albums and single tracks, something the band said it would never do. (MacWorld)

> Peter Gabriel launches personalized media reccomendation service The Filter. (AP)

> A look at a variety of products designed to offer improve music sound quality online and off. (USA Today)

News Throughout The Day

You may have noticed in the last couple of weeks that we've been posting throughout the day. Unlike some others in the Music 2.0 space, we believe that if industry news breaks, you shouldn't have to wait until the next morning to read about it.

So check back often or fire up your RSS reader (sign up here) and we'll do our best to keep you informed. Your tips and suggestion are always welcome. Email us here.

COMING SOON: HYPEBOT MOBILE

Handleman Exits Music. WalMart To Anderson

You know that things are bad when the exclusive supplier of the nation's top brick and morter music seller decides to call it quits.  In another sign of declining sales, Wal-Mart rack jobber Handleman is exiting the music business in North America.

The company is selling its music inventory and other assets related to its Wal-Mart business in the U.S. to Anderson Merchandisers of Amarillo, Texas. Sales to Wal-Mart constitute a substantial majority of Handleman's U.S. music sales.

More Tuesday Music 2.0 News: Frog Grabs EMI, imeem Ads & More

> SpiralFrog adds EMI as its second major. Universal was first. (AP)

> EMI Music Publishing has extended its long-term relationship with Grammy Award winning songwriter and performer Ben Harper.

> imeem is adding short audio ads between some songs. (Ad Supported Music Central)

> And don't forget our usual morning briefing here.

DiscMedi Partners For IODA Spain

Digital distributor IODA is opening IODA Spain (IODA ES) in partnership with DiscMedi, an independent record label, publisher and distributor in Spain and Portugal.  DiscMedi  leveraging IODA's technology to form iDfd (Independent Digital Format Distribution) to offer digital sales and marketing services.

China's Music Sector Urges Baidu Boycott

The Music Copyright Society of China, the China Audio-Video Copyright Association, the IFPI in and an alliance of local and international labels and publishers are calling on all major corporations including the advertising industry, “to support copyright through practical action, and avoid providing any direct or indirect financial support to copyright infringers, but in so doing, also prevent their own brand equity from being misused and diluted by these pirates in any way.”

"It's reached a point where Baidu's huge profits at the expense of everyone including local artists and labels is finally getting to everyone. Everyone in China is well aware that Baidu is just using "search" as an excuse to justify its piracy while it has a hand in the stealing for profit business that it's nicely set up," Asian music watcher Maths comments.

“Resolutely countering Baidu, which is the largest and most incorrigible purveyor of pirated music in China has become a common goal...

Can The Music Industry Save Itself? Part 5: Release More Records

PREVIOUSLY: Introduction,  1. Off With Their Heads, 2. Cut The Fat, 3. Build Label Brands, 4. Serve The Niches.**

The music industry is facing many challenges. How can the major labels and the entrepreneurs that seek to replace them adjust to compete in this new and evolving environment?

Part 5. RELEASE MORE RECORDS -
If you are selling fewer copies of each release, the only way to grow market share is to release more records. I don't mean the old throw it out and see if it sticks release schedules. I'm talking about looking realistically at what an artist is likely to sell based on genre and its status in the marketplace and setting the recording and marketing budgets based on a realistic sales goals.

Labels must invest in career growth, but why not do it incrementally? Set a budget to record and launch the release. Maybe its digital only at first or a series of low priced 3 -4 song EP's. If buzz starts, move into Phase 2 of the plan.  Sales are growing? Step into Phase 3...and so on. It's almost impossible to force a hit anymore; so why try? Listen to the marketplace and spend accordingly. 

But who is going to execute the plan?...

ArtistData Eases Net Update Time Crunch

TOO MANY SITES. TOO LITTLE TIME.

In the new music industry landscape, musicians must maintain relationships with fans across a growing number of social networking sites. Keeping up can be a full-time job, forcing artist to spend more time online than making music. ArtistData works to solve this dilemma, enabling users to post info on any site in their network through a single interface.

Their free service allows simultaneous updates at Eventful, Jambase, MySpace, Pollstar, PureVolume, ShowClix, VIRB as well as just added Last.fm, Mojam and Musi-cal. ArtistData will soon ad updates to AmieStreet, Buzznet, Beta Records, Famecast, indie911 and Hoooka.

More plus video demo after the jump...

Tuesday's Music 2.0 Briefing: BMG For Sale, Amos Goes Indie & More

HYPEBOT FEATURES

• Can The Music Industry Save Itself? Part 5: RELEASE MORE RECORDS
• ArtistData relieves the social networking update time suck.
• UPDATE: Universal Music catalog safe from fires.
• R.I.P. Bo Diddley

> Bertlesmann is intensifying talks with Sony about selling its share of the Sony BMG label partnership. (NY Times)

> Retail giant f.y.e. is testing f.y.e. Tunes Filling Station mp3 download kiosks. (Fye Tunes)

> Tech journal ARS takes a look at Tunecore and the democratization of the music business. (here)

> EMI sells Christian music destination HearItFirst.com to Spinnaker Media. (paidContent)

> Tori Amos will go indie with her new release. (Billboard)

> The world's first Blu-ray music album is released in Norway. (DMW)

Universal Fire Destroys Music History

NEW BUSINESS COULD EMERGE FROM THE ASHES

UPDATED: "We moved most of what was formerly stored there earlier this year to our other facilities," Universal Music told Digital Music News.  "Of the small amount that was still there and awaiting to be moved,  it had already been digitized so the music will still be around for many years."

I guess my idea for a new melted vinyl based business will just have to wait.  But read on. It was a great idea.

Universal Music apparently rented space in the video vault which suffered heavy fire damage yesterday. A source told Deadline Hollywood (via Daily Swarm) that inside were 1000's of original Decca, MCA and ABC masters including Bing Crosby, The Andrew Sisters, Judy Garland and The Carpenters.

If true, it's sad the masters were not stored in a more fire proof environment. On the bright side, perhaps UMG can turn around its fading fortunes by going into the ash tray and snack bowl business.  "How To" video follows.

R.I.P. Bo Diddley

A founding father of rock is dead at 79. (more)

EMI Ups Sexton To EVP Worldwide Licensing

Cynthia Sexton has been promoted to EVP, Global Brand Partnership, Licensing and Synchronization for EMI Music.  In this expanded role, Sexton’s is responsible for worldwide licensing of all EMI assets for film, television and branded products and services.  She will also oversee new initiatives to develop relationships between EMI’s labels, artists and consumer brands. 

Monday's Music 2.0 Briefing: ArtistDirect Misfires, TVT & More

Hypebot's Music 2.0 Week In Review provides a quick overview of last week's top music industry stories. Make sure you didn't miss anything important.

> Another blow for ArtistDirect as their MediaDefender division launched a controversial attack that knocked legit P2P distributor Revision3 offline. (cNet) Now innocents are getting caught in the Hollywood/RIAA crossfire.

> Former TVT Sr. VP of Promotion Joey Carvello has opened Upstream Music featuring urban and alternative marketing and promo, several other TVT refugees and an E/A label by the same name. (FMQB) Here is a list of TVT creditors. What does it say about the industry when this post has become one of our most popular ever?

> Virgin Radio has been sold by SMG to one of India's largest media companies for £53.2m but the Vorgin Brand reverts back to our hero Richard Branson. (Telegraph)

> Making films that achieve critical and commercial success “is not rocket science" says Miramax chief Daniel Battsek. (FT) Record execs could read and learn...choose the night product, act quicly, watch costs, repeat.

> Popular artist services site Reverb Nation has launched Gig Finder to help its members get more live work.