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MIDEM digital stuff
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 19 January 2009
OK, so there’s a plethora of other digital stories this morning because it was the digital bit of music business junket MIDEM this weekend and everyone in the digital sector was speedily dishing out their announcement-filled press packs before the amassed throng headed to the bar. Let’s quickly run through some of them.
First, PRS For Music (look at me, already ‘on brand’) announced a licensing deal with legit P2P service QTrax, best known, of course, for their embarrassing launch at last year’s MIDEM where they said they had all the record companies on board, only for the labels to line up and say no such deals had been done.
For what it’s worth, they do now have three of the four major record companies, a stack of indies and a load of music publishers on board.
The PRS For Music deal means more of the licensing matrix required to offer a legal P2P file sharing system is now in place. Though it’s still not clear how Qtrax will work, and many reckon it won’t work in a way that will attract users of illegal P2P services like Limewire.
Next, Sony Ericsson has a deal in place with Universal Music Publishing which will see new artists signed to the publisher get promotion through the mobile phone maker’s PlayNow Uncut streaming service.
The service, available both online and via Ericsson phones, launched in 2006 (originally as M-BUZZ) and already has a similar deal with the phone firm’s sister music publishing company Sony/ATV.
As previously reported, Ericsson will be expanding its music services this year, including the launch outside of Sweden of a similar unlimited music service to that currently being offered by their rivals Nokia, ie like Comes With Music (only a bit better from what I can see).
Confirming the Universal deal at MIDEM, Ericsson’s Gareth Carter told Billboard: “This is valuable exposure that we can bring with a partnership with Universal Music Publishing”.
Into the presentation rooms at MIDEM, and things kicked off with representatives from the UK music industry (UK Music’s Feargal Sharkey and the BPI’s Geoff Taylor) and the boss of the Internet Service Provider Association Nicholas Lansman discussing that still topical topic of what role the ISPs should have in fighting online piracy.
Nothing much was said in the session that hadn’t been said at MusicTank’s recent series of debates on the issue, with both sides saying there was common ground – both labels and ISPs can benefit from more collaboration – but that there was still a lot of work to be done to reach a consensus on what kind of action ISPs should take against file sharers and what kind of licensing deals the labels should offer ISPs so to offer file-sharers compelling legit services.
The most interesting moment came when prominent music manager Peter Jenner hit out at the record companies rather than the common enemy in the room – the ISPs – saying that despite agreements and talks and negotiations between the labels and the ISPs and digital music providers, the record industry was still failing to grasp the potential of the internet, for the good of their artists.
Jenner said he “couldn’t see anything going on in the record business that will solve what is going on in the market”, adding it was still a “nightmare” for those with honourable ambitions in the digital music market to licence music from the labels.
With ongoing licensing squabbles between content owners and content distributors a theme of the day there was much interest in the keynote being delivered by Google’s VP Of Content Partnership David Eun, mainly because of the recent collapse of their license renewal talks with Warner Music which led to music owned by the major’s record companies and publishing enterprise Warner/Chappell being pulled from Google’s YouTube video service.
As previously reported, Warner, the first major to sign up to YouTube back in the day, pulled its content just before Christmas saying it wasn’t being sufficiently rewarded for the value it brought to the video service (this despite Universal Music saying what a good revenue stream YouTube was now providing).
According to Billboard, Eun said of Warner’s decision to pull its content from YouTube: “I think it’s unfortunate. If you are YouTube and you’re about giving users a sense of infinite choice, you want as much content as possible and effective partnerships with your partners. Unfortunately we don’t have that type of relationship with everyone, we don’t have that type of relationship with Warner Music right now”.
Possibly talking to any Warner execs in the room, Eun stressed that YouTube and Google could offer more than just money to the record companies. He focused on the YouTube Insight tool, which I think allows labels to track who is listening to their music where and when, providing possibly valuable consumer insights.
Referring to the Universal release of Weezer’s ‘Pork And Beans’ last year, which got 4 million plays, he said: “Using Insight, they were able to understand the demographic where they [fans] lived regionally”.
He concluded that the music industry should “allow innovation to thrive” in order to provide “more choice and different revenue streams”.
