Decisive lawsuit for conclusive stake

The evolution of the music industry through streaming service, ringtones sales, music downloads, etc… asks a big issue for artists: how to consider the value of a sale or a license? How to compute royalties for digital music?

 

A new actor has come on the music industry market.

The major of onlines’sales Amazon outstrips Apple and Google launching a new offer of streaming service in the USA:  Amazon Cloud Player.

This service is composed of Cloud Drive, where you can stock your files, and Cloud Player, where you can read them. Files can be music, pictures or videos.

You can have a free access of 5Go space (1, 000 music titles, 2, 000 pictures or 20 minutes videos) or 20Go if you buy an album on Amazon. Then you can enlarge your space in paying a yearly rate.

Amazon has made available its offer on Android mobile phones but not on iPhones in order to be a competitor to iTunes.

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It's a long old story

Once upon a time, in the music industry, artists were producing their own work to their audience which threw more or less money to the most efficient musician… 

Music for Charity

Labels’ action

Universal Music and the other music Majors are supporting Japan to help the country to back on its feet. The concept of this charity through music is to raise funds in selling a compilation, “Song for Japan”, which is composed of 38 hits and classic tracks. You can buy the album on iTunes since Friday, 25^th March.

Bad results for UMG within Vivendi Group

Universal Music Group is a part of a powerful French company, VIVENDI. It takes 70% of the global turnover in the music industry in North America, where the company is particularly strong.

UMG promotes artists as U2, Amy Winehouse, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Lil Wayne, Jack Johnson, Eminem, Mylène Farmer and Roberto Alagna.

The company has the most important catalogue of registered music and you can find great artists as ABBA, Louis Armstrong, Alain Bashung, James Brown, Eric Clapton, Elvis Costello, Frank Sinatra, Serge Gainsbourg, Bob Marley, Nirvana, Luciano Pavarotti, Édith Piaf, Michel Sardou, The Police, The Rolling Stones, Caetano Veloso and Herbert von Karajan.

iTunes vs. Spotify

The service proposed by Spotify  is a kind of revolution in the world of music streaming.

It is an impulse for iTunes because even though it has more users (150 m subscribers in the world), Spotify which has a big advantage: it offers the possibility to share your music on Facebook or Twitter!

Spotify face a big issue. While trying to make contract with EMI in order to launch its service in the US, Apple isn’t scared.

Music brands' strategy to face streaming service

What strategy should adopt the four Majors music brands to face the fast growth of streaming?

The Majors (Universal Music, EMI, Sony and Warner) want to control the Music Industry and help the music to keep value.

To do so, streaming service websites, like Deezer, Spotify, We7, etc, have to pay a tax to use the music catalogue of a music brand. These taxes are high and new startups cannot make a lot of profit from sales.

The Majors also force streaming service websites to pay an expensive price for each title, as a “streaming rate”.

To use the catalogues streaming service websites have to get an authorization and you can imagine it is very hard. It took 2 years to Deezer to get it!

CD or not CD ?

As expected, the music industry sector is moving and rather frail.

We’ve heard last week HMV “is planning to shut 40 HMV stores and 20 Waterstone's bookshops in an effort to cut costs” according to the website thisisfakediy.co.uk.

It is not the only one! “The last US HMV closed five years ago, Tower Records stopped trading soon after, and the last Virgin Megastore finally closed its doors 18 months ago” says the Guardian. 

"Make your own kind of music" (The Mamas and the Papas)

Hello Reader

Welcome to my blog!

During 10 weeks I will write an article about the Music Industry within the framework of a course, Financial Media and Communication.

I already tried to become familiar with the Forex few months ago and to trade currencies on a virtual account. But I didn’t succeed. It was quite simple using it but you have to be aware of every little thing that happen in the world of finance and big companies. That wasn’t a passion for me, so I have chosen another subject to talk about because the Music world is a business.

Maybe you wouldn’t feel concerned by this subject …

Try nevertheless to read my articles and I hope you will learn from them.

Let’s start!