label

Apple has inked its licensing pact with Universal Music Group and will reportedly charge $25 a year for an iCloud subscription. That revenue stream--once you factor in splits with the music industry--is essentially peanuts, but the value of iCloud will go well beyond the profit and loss statement.

First the news, CNET's Greg Sandoval reports that Apple has cut a licensing deal with Universal Music. That move gives Apple all the major labels and Universal brings U2 and Lady Gaga to the iCloud party. Meanwhile, the L.A. Times reports that Apple will "eventually" charge $25 a year for iCloud and sell advertising around the service.

When you factor in the revenue split with the music industry--labels 58 percent, publishers 12 percent and Apple 30 percent--Steve Jobs & Co. will get $7.50 in revenue for each iCloud subscription.

As for the rudimentary math, Apple is projected to move 184 million iPhone units in calendar 2011 and 2012, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. We'll assume that half of those iPhone subscribers will ultimately pay for iCloud with Apple getting $7.50. That's $690 million in revenue a calendar year.

Apple is also expected to sell 75 million iPad units over calendar 2011 and 2012. Again we'll assume half of those iPad users buy the iCloud subscription. Those iPad units will deliver $281 million in revenue a year in calendar 2012.

As for the iPod, Apple is expected to move 81 million units over calendar 2011 and 2012. We'll assume one third of those iPod users will get iCloud--it's unclear whether the Nano will be able to… Read more

Apple has cut a licensing deal with Universal Music Group that will enable Apple's online music store to offer songs from the largest of the four top record companies, sources with knowledge of the talks told CNET.

The agreement means Apple now has the rights to offer recordings from all of the major labels. In addition, Apple has reached agreements with some of the large music publishers, the sources said.

Apple announced Tuesday that it would unveil a long-anticipated service called iCloud on June 6 at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Apple did not disclose whether iCloud … Read more

Google threw large sums of money at the four major record labels during negotiations for cloud-music rights, according to a published report.

BusinessWeek magazine is reporting that Google offered the labels $100 million to obtain licenses for a cloud music service. After negotiating for more than a year, talks broke down. Google launched an unlicensed service two weeks ago that enables users to upload their songs to the company's servers but isn't as fully equipped as it might be with licenses.

This is the latest and perhaps most dramatic sign of how important antipiracy efforts are to the … Read more

Facebook and Spotify are creating a new music service that will be offered to the social network's users in countries other than the United States, according to Forbes.

Spotify is still without the necessary licenses to operate in this country after trying to make the move for nearly two years, music industry sources told CNET.

Forbes reported that in perhaps as soon as two weeks, Facebook users could see a Spotify icon on their news feed. Upon clicking the icon, the new service's software will be installed on a user's desktop.

The software will then run in … Read more

Consumers should have an easier time comparing the fuel economy of cars and light trucks once new consumer labels unveiled today go into effect.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson unveiled the new set of labels this morning at a live press conference hosted on the Web.

Prior to this, car labels hadn't been updated for 30 years.

Each new label differs slightly depending on the car's drive train or fuel source. (Click for a PDF of all labels.) Labels in the set include those for gas, flex-fuel gas-ethanol blends, … Read more

Hopes are high in the music sector that Apple will have all the licenses it needs to launch a cloud music service in time for the company's Worldwide Developers Conference, which starts on June 6.

Negotiations between Apple and music publishers have begun in earnest only recently but the amount of money that separates the two sides from reaching a deal is relatively small, according to two sources with knowledge of the talks. That said, these are cloud-licensing contracts, which are new and complex and there are still several ways Apple's service could be delayed, insiders say.

Apple … Read more

Smart, strategic, and frequently inscrutable, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt's comments must often be closely analyzed. Sometimes they're discounted as regrettable, off-the-cuff remarks. Other times, his statements are a window into what is really going on inside his company.

On Wednesday, Schmidt shocked big media conglomerates, federal lawmakers, and apparently even executives within his own company when he told reporters in London that Google would defy U.S. government attempts to remove sites from the Web that are accused of trafficking in pirated goods. Schmidt, who was at Google's helm during an unprecedented decade-long run of online-advertising success, … Read more

Fate smiled on Mark Gorton this week.

The founder of file-sharing company Lime Wire agreed on Thursday to pay $105 million to the Recording Industry Association of America to settle a 5-year-old copyright case. Sure, that's a lot, but consider that the settlement figure is equal to only 7 percent of the $1.4 billion the RIAA sought.

This is likely the final chapter for LimeWire, after 10 years in operation. The two sides agreed to settle a year to the day after U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood ruled that Gorton was liable for willful copyright infringement. Later, Wood ordered that the LimeWire peer-to-peer network be shut down. The financial agreement between Gorton and the labels came amid a jury trial to determine how much Gorton would have to pay in damages.

For fans of cheap, easy-to-obtain music, a few modest reasons for hope sprung up during the two-week-long damages trial.

Edgar Bronfman, CEO of Warner Music Group, one of the four largest record companies, said under oath that he supported the unbundling of music. You might be saying to yourself: "So what?" People have had access to unbundled music for a decade now, thanks to services like iTunes and, yes, LimeWire. All I can tell you is that there are plenty of decision makers at the labels who believe the industry won't recover until consumers are buying albums again. … Read more

More people are listening to music than ever before, but the record companies are all in dire straits. Starting in the 1980s the CD brought booming sales and profits, and the record business fell head-over-heels in love with digital audio. CDs were selling for double the price of LPs at the time, so profits soared.

But what about the music? The 1980s wasn't such a great decade for music; it peaked early with Michael Jackson's "Thriller" in early '83, and then rock music stagnated. Rap and hip-hop, born in the digital era, were the only new … Read more