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Author Archives: Eamonn Forde
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Norwegian music sales up 11% in 2013 thanks to streaming

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Full-year figures for the recorded music business in Norway in 2013 have been published today and show the market remains both in rude health and also a digital pioneer.
The headline number is that, in value terms, the market grew a further 11% last year to a worth of NOK 603m ($98m). Streaming is the golden child here, with its value contribution last year increasing by 60% to a value of NOK 394m ($64m). This means that streaming makes up 65.3% of the total recorded music market in the country.

Posted inAnalysis, News

Music manager Tim Clark says artists ‘ain’t making a living out of recorded music’

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Last night saw a debate with the very grand title of Technology, Streaming & The Future Of The Music Industry at Portcullis House in London, the spillover offices from the Houses of Parliament.

It wasn’t a typical music industry conference: less of a conversational debate and more a set of speakers presenting views one after another.

Lord Tim Clement-Jones, sponsor of the Live Music Bill, opened by talking about the challenges of “licensing in an analogue way for a digital world” but was contradicted by Suzie Winter from the Alliance Against IP Theft.

Posted inAnalysis, News

Interview: Moby talks BitTorrent, Spotify and artists’ digital rights

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With a number of artists busily squaring up to both Spotify and the labels about their streaming payments, Moby argues they are focusing too heavily on the short-term issues and becoming beholden to the idea of digital services as immovable monoliths that replaced the cumbersome major label system.

He talks about using BitTorrent as a distribution partner, why railing against piracy is like yelling at the weather, why technology’s state of flux is a good thing and why algorithms can’t replace the arbitrary and surprise nature of human-led discovery.

Posted inAnalysis, News

Mega has 5m users (but copyright infringers ‘don’t like’ it)

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When Kim Dotcom launched Mega a year after his Megaupload online storage service was shut down, there was inevitable suspicion from creative-industry rightsholders.

Yet eight months on, Dotcom has shifted his focus onto another project – music distribution service Baboom – having appointed Vikram Kumar as CEO of Mega. He’s been speaking to Music Ally about the company’s strategy, including why he believes rightsholders are realising that Mega isn’t a haven for copyright infringement.

Posted inAnalysis, News

Rhapsody’s Napster expands across Europe and plots ‘laddered’ pricing strategy

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Nine years since it launched as a legal digital music service in the UK and Germany, Napster has gone live in 14 more European countries.

It is also planning to introduce ‘laddered’ pricing to better attract broader audience segments, rather than rely solely on the £9.99 / €9.99 / $9.99 monthly cost that has become an industry standard for streaming subscriptions.

As a legal service, Napster has been through a series of owners: Roxio, then Best Buy, and since an acquisition in 2011, Rhapsody. However, the new European expansion will NOT be accompanied by a new name: Napster will remain the brand in Europe, while Rhapsody will remain its parent company’s consumer-facing service in the US.

Posted inAnalysis, News

Record label revenues ROSE 0.3% in 2012 thanks to iTunes, Spotify and other streaming music services

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The recorded music industry has finally some good news to celebrate – with global recorded music revenues increasing for the first time since 1999.

The jump may be slight (revenues were up just 0.3% from 2011 to a value of $16.5bn), but the symbolism here is powerful. The IFPI was somewhat circumspect in its wording in today’s Digital Music Report 2013, saying in a press release that “The global recorded music industry is on a path to recovery”.

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