The popular EU ad-supported music streaming site Spotify is broadening its reach according to three articles in today's Telegraph UK. The new initiatives include:
Rumors of a US launch continue to swirl.
Ad supported music service SpiralFrog went dark yesterday. The company's limited assets have been surrendered to creditors.
SpiralFrog, like other ad supported music services, began life stunted by major label liscening demands. Then once finally birthed it failed to gain traction with consumers
bothered by a combination of ads and restrictive DRM required by the labels.
Upheavel in a contentious executive suite hurt Spiral Frog. But bad timing and the economy did the most to quicken its demise before experimentation with the business model could ever occur. SpiralFrog was also hit by a "a macro-economic perfect storm" a source close to the company told CNet. A devesated global economy along with "the collapse of the capital markets" and "rapid compression of the ad markets" were too much to overcome, said the source.
Ad supported music may be down, but is far from out. Some like the scrappy WE7 are always experimenting and streaming sites like imeem and Spotify are gaining real favor with both fans and the labels.
...and a struggling global economy. (via Media Memo)
A new offering from UK based download store 7Digital experiments with free ad-supported downloads via a partnership with Mountainview, CA based TrialPlay. Consumers can download 15 free songs from 7digital's catalog of 4 million mp3's each time they try or buy an offer from one of TrialPay's 2,000 advertisers. The mix of pay and offer-supported should drive traffic to the innovative download provider who promise a online US launch in 2009.
TrialPay's e-commerce payment platform that lets people pay for products online by buying or trying something else like signing up with Blockbuster, buying clothes from Gap or signing up for an American Express credit card.
Continue reading "7Digital Tips Toe In Free Ad Supported Waters" »
Qtrax, the ad-supported digital music service, today announced a global agreement with Sony BMG to add
their catalog to the Qtrax platform.
The company has already signed licensing deals with: EMI, Universal, Sony/ATV, Warner Chappell, TVT Records, Beggars Banquet and others. (press release)
After months of public beta and multiple iterations, ad support music service We7 is finally going public with a "Big Listen" launch campaign. The service includes:
Is the weak economy a good or bad thing for ad-supported music?
Free ad-supported music download service SpiralFrog is now offering more than three million songs - four times the amount offered a year ago at launch. Music videos for download also increased to almost 5000 and registered users have grown to 2.3 million according to the company. SprialFrog believes this is the largest total number of registered users on any legal, free music download site, but offered no details as to how active the users are.
According to Joe Mohen, founder and chairman, "With the current economic turmoil and the potential threat of a recession looming, the offering of free music is very attractive to budget conscious consumers." SpiralFrog's biggest competion isn't paid downloads, however, it's free pirated mp3's via P2P. It is also unclear how the economic downturn will effect the advertising revenue that all ad-supported sites require.
We7 has added more than 1.3 million tracks from digital distributor The Orchard for ad-funded, on-demand streaming, downloads and paid-for mp3 downloads. We7 users will be able to listen to full tracks and albums on an unlimited basis at no cost, create personal playlists, and share them with friends. We7 plays short, targeted audio ads before each streamed track. (more)
Merlin, A2IM and Koch along with some in the independent music community have complained loudly that the deal offered by MySpace Music doesn't give them the same equity stake as the major labels. "Any independent deal
struck without an equity component (as was done with the majors), will
see independent labels face a situation whereby their major competitors
will profit from the use of their repertoire without an appropriate
upside opportunity being extended to them," states Merlin CEO Charles Caldas.
But The Orchard, one of digital music's biggest aggregators, was happy to sign. "I see MySpace Music's short and medium term potential to provide revenue to artists and labels for doing what they already do: engage their fans on MySpace," Orchard CEO Greg Scholl told Hypebot.
"We were concerned with aggressively negotiating the highest rate possible." he continued. "I see all of this talk about equity as a bit of a red herring. What is equity worth when it can be diluted by new stock offerings and other financial maneuvers? We should be concerned with arguing for a share of the profits" if, for example, there were an asset sale.
The deal that The Orchard signed is "not particularly long term"...
Continue reading "The Orchard's Greg Scholl On MySpace Equity & Why He Made The Deal" »
The launch of MySpace Music has been delayed a few days but should be this week.
Fortune interview co-founder Chris deWolfe predicts boldly: "Think about MTV. Not necessarily what they are right now, but how they created pop culture in the late '80s, early '90s. I think that's what MySpace Music will do now."
COMMENTARY: If the tech works smoothly - and integration into tens of thousands of custom designed sites is no easy task - then MySpace's social music experience has at least the potential to add significantly to music sales, as well as, greatly strengthen Amazon's claim as "the" iTunes alternative.
It's also clear that MySpace is vastly improving its tools that lead to music discovery. But it remains to be seen if young fans will ever view MySpace as a place to actually pay for music - if they ever learn to pay music at all.
We7 will add 400,000 tracks from EMI later this year for both on-demand ad funded streaming and paid MP3 downloads. EMI joins WMG and Sony BMG in signing on to We7's model which plays short, targeted ads before each streamed track. Included in the deal is music from We7 founder and investor Peter Gabriel.
Douglas Merrill, President, Digital Business, EMI Music, said: "We7 represents the new and innovative digital experiments underway in the market today, giving fans another way...
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Our ArtistDish podcast #3 is now available. It's a discussion about fair royalty payments and the possible closures of Pandora and Muxtape. We think that this is one of our best shows yet, so you definitely want to listen now, or subscribe and add the ArtistDish on iTunes.
Special thanks to Dirk Prysby of Rubber Clown Car for providing their song “Coward” for the intro and outro. Your music can be featured ArtistDish. All you have to do is send us an email for consideration. Also, if you would like to suggest a topic for discussion on the ArtistDish, just let us know and we’ll give you props on the show as well. Stay tuned for the next show in about 3 weeks.
Starting in late October, We7 will add tracks from Warner Music UK for on-demand, ad funded streaming and paid MP3 downloads. Users can listen to full tracks and albums free on an unlimited basis, create playlists and embed songs almost anywhere via portable widgets.
We7 plays short, targeted audio ads before each streamed track. Via an integrated download store users can also buy mp3's of Warner Music artists. As part of the agreement, the two companies will provide a range of value-added digital products such as album bundles with additional tracks, videos and interactive booklets.
RAWRIP, a new ad-supported music site and distribution service is paying indie artists 100% of royalties earned from downloaded tracks. Fans can stream music free and store songs in personal music libraries.
Beyond the site, artists can also sell their tracks via a 'Raw Store' widget that pays 100% from sales on websites, blogs, MySpace, Facebook, etc. 'The Rippler' is a proprietary exploration engine that analyzes each track by a number of characteristics that are indexed and cross-referenced with RAWRIP's catalogue of over 1 million songs. Through this, independent artists get recommended (Rippled) via major acts and may acquire new fans. This site appears to have real potential for indie artists and labels who want to spread their tracks virally. I'd love to hear from anyone using it.
Yesterday, I chronicled the trouble I was having downloading and playing tunes from the supposedly relaunched Qtrax site. Others agreed and a quick test showed that the problems continued this morning. Perhaps just a annoying given Qtrax history of not delivering on its promises, is that most hit product by EMI and Universal, two labels who said they were supporting the service, is unavailable and labeled: COMING SOON.
Here is a list compiled by a Hypebot reader of popular Universal and EMI artists that are not available on Qtrax:
Months after a flashy announcement at MIDEM that Qtrax had deals with all four major labels, they have finally inked Universal. Details of the deal were not announced, but given UMG's recent negotiations it's likely that ad supported P2P Qtrax paid a hefty price for North American access to the world's largest label group.
Unlike the first million dollar party announcement in Cannes, yesterday's news came via a quiet release from Universal that said only, "Qtrax will now have access to the most extensive digital music catalogue of chart-topping artists in the world".
SpiralFrog, the free ad-supported music service, has appointed industry veteran and former Maverick and Pipeline GM Russ Rieger to the newly created position of vice president of strategic initiatives.
Rieger will be responsible for securing and maintaining strategic partnerships within the music, media and advertising industries. (press release)
SpiralFrog has announced a licensing agreement with RoyaltyShare to add its independent label customers to the free ad supported service. Indie label MPress has also been added to the SpiralFrog catalog which now tops 1 million tracks.
More on the deals: RoyaltyShare, MPress
SpiralFrog has signed a deal with music publisher Warner/Chappell Music to a
dd their catalog to the free ad-supported download site's growing offerings.
Signing rights from music publishers is a critical element in SpiralFrog’s push to make ad-supported music downloading available. Licensing sound recordings and music videos requires more than just obtaining rights from the recording artists and record labels. The writers and composers of the songs themselves must also be compensated and music publishers license these underlying compositions.
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