Music Biz News: Borders Bankrupt, Pandora Watch, More Cloud Lockers, Shazam, Jambase & More
- Borders files for Chapter 11 bankrupcy protection. (AP) They're closing 200 more stores and every one of them sold CD's.
- Pandora IPO Watch: The perils of being Pandora. (Ars) and How Come No One Calls Out Pandora For False Promise Of Profitability? (Techdirt)
- NewBay launches LifeCache Digital Vault music and video cloud service for operators and device makers; Teams-up with LG. (IntoMobile) Even before the MP3tunes lawsuit with EMI is settled, more and more are jumping into this space.
More News:
- Shazam: In Digital Era, Music Spotters Feed a Machine (NY Times) Pieces of the new music discovery machinery start to fit together….
- Jambase connects to Facebook (press release)
- MTV Experiments With TV “Listening” App IntoNow (Mashable)
- Artist services platform Hello Music has partnered with MobBase to offer its artist community savings on personalized iPhone apps.
- The New-Style Independent Record Store. (CynicalMusician)
- How .music Will Save the Industry. (Billboard)
- RealNetworks CEO Bob Kimball: “The Real Player Is Only 10 Percent Of Our Business” (TechCrunch)
- EMI chief Roger Faxon has optimistic view of future of music business. (LATimes)
- 'Bieber Fever' Is a Symptom of What Ails the Music Industry. (HuffPost)
- Want To Play at SXSW? Crowdsourced A&R Site Can Help You Out. (Mashable)
- Jammie Thomas-Rasset: The download martyr. (CityPages)
- Sirius XM Subscriber Base Up 8% in 2010 to 20.2 Million. (DMW)
- Why Esperanza Spalding Matters (Sorry, Justin Bieber Fanatics–She Does) (LAWeekly)
- What is NoiseTrade? (MusicanCoaching)
- Competing for the Cover of the Rolling Stone. (NYT)
- 10 ways to save on CDs, MP3s and downloads. (Which)
- Ciara: 'I pray my label will release me' (Guardian)
- Vancouver diva Sarah McLachlan splits from Nettwerk management. (VancouverSun)
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Borders’ decision to go all-in on CD retailing in the mid-1990s may have contributed to their problems today. Most Borders “superstores” had CD and DVD sections approaching 20% of the floor space; as those product categories went into steep decline, the rent still needed to be paid on that space. In my favorite Borders store, all of the CDs and all of the DVDs now fit into roughly 2/3 of the space which used to be exclusively for classical music CDs. (That said, Borders made lots of bad decisions that didn’t involve music. The worst were outsourcing the web site to Amazon, and borrowing to fund an expansion frenzy in the go-go years.)
Even in their sharp state of decline, Borders is the next-to-last national storefront retailer attempting to cover the “serious” music genres such as classical, jazz, blues, folk. B&N is the other, and their selection has never been very good.
it’s not like digital music sales have been anything to brag about either. maybe it’s kindle’s fault, eh?
See Ed Christman’s report in Billboard. It’s nearly certain that the music labels who supplied to Borders for holiday 2010 shopping got stiffed, and labels specializing in classical, jazz, world and folk are going to be hit hard.
Also, there is worry that Barnes & Noble was only selling CDs because Borders was doing it, so B&N might pull the plug on music sales. That would end nationwide storefront retailing in “serious” music genres; there would only be a handful of “legendary” independent stores left, such as Waterloo and Amoeba. (Most indie stores focus on what we used to call college or alternative rock and have little stock in classical or jazz.)