Barney Wragg, vice president of eLabs at Universal Music International, told MusicBites at the launch of the new video iPod, that the new iPod made the business of downloading both music and videos just plain “simple”. Plus, the new iMac was a potential TV-killer. “I had been thinking about getting a Windows Media Centre at home, plugged into the TV screen. But now it’s definitely going to be an Apple,”
ITC organiser Tony Wilson, alluding to subscription versus download models: “Why does a man want to own a woman and a woman own a man?” Ted Cohen: “Somehow the rental models works quite well in that scenario.”
After one panel session, a source at iTunes sidled up to MusicBites to say that iTunes customers download ‘millions’ of tracks per week’, and not the ‘two or three’ here and there suspected by some in the music industry. But does iTunes know how may tracks are downloaded per user exactly? “No.”
Subscription services ultimately work better than downoad services, according to Ted Cohen , Senior Vice President, Digital Development & Distribution, EMI Music “Right now we have choke points on how music gets exposed to you. On subscription services it’s a more level playing field, because you’re not competing for one of the 20 slots on the front of the music store. You may want to own a song, but if
Ralph Simon (Chairman of the influential Mobile Entertainment Forum – Americas (MEF), the official global body of the mobile entertainment industry) said A&R is changing, and music firms must have a mobile strategy for your A&R. “How should record labels mobilise? What mobile content can artists create? What should artists and mangers plan for? How does A&R interface with “seeding”? “A golden rule of mobile is to use mobile to
Steve Gottlieb, President and founder TVT Records, the most successful indie label in the US spoke passionately at In The City about the future of the music business. He vehemently attacked the technology industry, as using and promoting the concept of free music in order to sell computers. “The Problem for the music industry is it has little defence against and technology advocates like Lawrence Lessig who advocate free music.”
Ted Cohen, Senior Vice President, Digital Development & Distribution, EMI Music, talked about how comparitive pricing of downloadable songs was an idea whos time had come. Cohen says it’s critical it should come. The tools are now amazing, but we’ve taken away the ability to have a sale, like in a store. “I worked on Joss Stone on a lot of interactive products. He would have liked to have her
“Will the mobile phone take over from the iPod”. This was the question discussed by a panel session at In The City, which featured Steve Mayall (mobile music analyst, MusicAlly), Andy Baker (CEO, DX3), Susie Hinchliffe (Head of Content, Filter), Leigh Turnbull (Senior Publicist, WayToBlue) and Danny Van Emden (digital media director, EMI Music). Recent research commissioned by MonsterMob revealed that that there are 935m internet users, but 2 billion
Ted Cohen (Senoir Vice President, Digital Development & Distribution, EMI Music, USA) said the future for mobile future would be wireless. “Having the ability to access music anywhere is future. Sony Stream Man service streams music to your handset. There#039s software now which can stream my hardrive over the Net to my handset. Filter, which did a Bluecasting promotion, was great. That’s wireless.”
Nick Early, CEO of DMX3.net attacked Truetone “soundalikes” at In The City, saying “It is absolutely right that artists should get paid for their work. He said Truetone’s are ‘polluting’ the digital music industry. “Sure the publisher of the soundalike gets paid, but the artist of the original track doesn’t,” he said. Early contends that Realtones actually put money back into the business of finding more artists. A cover version