Hypebot’s New Music Business Briefing For Wednesday November 22nd, 2006
– A country flavored Coachella festival? It’s a comin’! (Pollstar)
– "You have to go through a lot of crap on YouTube to get anything good."—David Poltrack, Chief Research Officer, CBS and more quotes from the Future Of Television Conference. (here)
– Digital music sales not showing much recent growth. (Pali Research via Digital Music News) And we wonder if restrictive and incompatible DRM, devices and stores and the lack of variable pricing is hurting sales growth?
– Sony BMG apparently does not believe in the long tail of classical music as the head of Sony BMG Masterworks and some staff depart and the division gets 
absorbed. (Billboard.biz)
WORTHY CLICK: The 88 – LA band who know how to use the net, new media and song placement to create a buzz.
concerning digital and overall sales,
these sales figures never take into account the quality of the releases coming out – i.e., the report notices that last quarter 06 is doing better than third quarter 06; one check of the new releases during those times should poin to the reason. Also, at some point digital will level off (versus physical); are we now approaching that time? maybe we should not blame everything on DRM without some hard evidence.
Agreed. DRM and fixed pricing are not the likely causes of the slowdown. The slowdown was expected.
As for Sony BMG, its layoffs can be viewed as a confirmation of the long tail. In the digital era, fewer people will be needed to move product along the supply chain. Tower’s fall was a key ingredient in the layoffs. Time to restructure.