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Just back from the road after some weeks in Philadelphia, San Francisco and elsewhere, all great.
btw the ARC website has been up for some time here. Please let us know what you think and, especially, if you have any shows or artists we should be looking at. Thanks.
Posted: March 14th, 2008 under » Media.
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All you haters, eat crow. On the heels of Jobs’ pointed comments about the Big Four labels and DRM, EMI has announced that it will sell unprotected tracks, at 256 kps (double the standard 128), at the iTunes store and elsewhere. Apple’s press release is here but general coverage is everywhere. This offering will apparently apply to everything in EMI’s (parent of Capitol and others) catalog except The Beatles. Admittedly, both companies had their own motives: EMI has major management headaches and is dead last among labels, and Apple is under pressure by the EU to open up its Fairplay DRM to competitors. But it’s a good thing for consumers, and for the industry as a whole. Chalk one up for progress.
Posted: April 6th, 2007 under » Editorial, » Media.
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Posted by Seth Shapiro
Speaking of which, analysts have speculated for some time on why profitable ringtones are more profitable than full songs. This weekend we took a stroll through the highest Google-ranked free ringtone sites. Guess what? It was cool, and slighty addictive. Mainly they were crap, civilians loading the system with UGC only their best friends would care about. But then just around the corner would be an occaisonal gem, a great Trane riff that looped just right, Beavis as Cornholio, The Munsters. Stuff that made the room say Ho!
Reminding us of what? Of a flea market, or a garage sale, or a 12 year old DJ rooting through his parents’ record collection looking for something funky to cut with.
The true spirit of hip hop is alive and well in the free ringtone cutout bin. Go see for yourself.
Posted: March 18th, 2007 under » Editorial, » Media.
Comments: none
Posted by Seth Shapiro
… look to the numbers. Re reviving the music business via digital, a recent metric speaks volumes: the year’s mobile revs are approximately $600B. The year’s music revenues are $30B. That’s a 20x differential. And how many handsets are there vs. dedicated music players? That delta is clearly a hell of a lot bigger.
Devices = # Users and # Users = Demand. The record industry has spent decades managing by inflating prices, oligopoly and constricting supply by providing $15 albums instead of $2 singles. As we said before, how’s it working for them? Not so good.
Whoever rides the music horse in the direction that TV and mobile move will have the stronger hand. Watch.
Posted: March 17th, 2007 under » Editorial, » Media.
Comments: none