“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
Up and coming Scottish band Opal Sky says they are looking for a new label, despite doing their best in the digital world. Band spokesman “Tony” said although the band had pushed itself well online, it was still looking for the expertise of a label to give market and distribute the band, which has been compared to Maroon 5 fronted by Aretha Franklin singing Jeff Buckley. Apparently.
MusicBites isn’t in the business of doing the A&R people’s job for them. We’re interested in the business. However. It is very hard to deny the unbelievable raw talent of Katie Forrester, who tore up an underground venue last night with both trad standards and edgy new street vocals. Together with rap act Mayhem Crew, Katie was, in a word, fantastic.We’re no experts. But we’d sign her. Like, er… now?
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“It#039s all about the long tail.” Martin Heath (on the left) of Lizard King Records, continues: “We WERE in a hits driven business, but the business is moving out of that into niches, basically the Long Tail. We are OUTSIDE the hits business now, and it#039s all about niches audiences and building them.”
Sales dive at HMV – Manchester Evening News: The company warned investors today that there were few signs of an upturn on the high street at present. At HMV stores like-for-like sales in the UK fell 11.5 per cent in the three months to Saturday – almost three times as fast as the decline over the previous eight weeks. Shares dived 10 per cent to 213.25p on the news. HMV
Reuters reports that the music industry wants China to shut down pirate music factories and jail the perpetrators if it is going to keep its promise to address the $250 billion-a-year problems, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
In a word? Yes. “Only digital music players that will play the music you’ve purchased are the ones that include Apple’s Fairplay — a technology that Apple not only controls.”