Sony BMG, one of the top four recording companies, has signed a deal with Mozes, a start-up that connects communities through mobile phones.
Mozes will hand Sony BMG music artists a way to communicate with fans through text and voice messages. Right off, this isn't spam, says the company's CEO Dorrian Porter.
He says Mozes only sends messages to people who have opted into the program. If you're a hard-core fan of musician Teddy Geiger, Porter says, you'll want him texting you with his next concert date or leaving a voice message about an upcoming release (Geiger uses the service, Porter said).
"People want a way to manage their messages," Porter said. "This is a way for people to be in control of who communicates with them on their cell phones."
Under the terms of the deal, Sony BMG artists can send text and voice message updates to fans, who in turn can send their own messages back as well as check out those left by others.
Bands are making their fans aware of the service during concert performances by shouting out their text codes. Concert-goers join the service by texting the performer and opting in.
For Sony BMG, this marketing method can offer a much more directed link to its target communities. Porter said Mozes has deals with a major retailer and NBA team.
Mozes charges companies a monthly fee, but the service is free to consumers. The 22-employee company based in Palo Alto, Calif., raised $11.5 million recently in a second round of funding, according to TechCrunch.
The Pioneer Inno
(Credit: Pioneer)EMI Group is the latest major music label to reach a settlement with XM Satellite Radio over the Pioneer Inno device, the companies announced Tuesday.
EMI, one of several music labels that filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against XM in May 2006, is withdrawing from the complaint. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
The initial lawsuit stems from XM's Pioneer Inno, which has the capability to record and store music delivered over satellite radio. EMI, along with other major music labels, had contended that the device could violate their copyrights.
With the settlement, EMI is joining Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, which in December also reached a settlement with XM. Last February, Sony BMG and XM also settled.
Sony BMG, one of the top four recording companies, is releasing more DRM-free songs through a partnership with Dada USA, a mobile-entertainment company based in Italy.
Songs from Sony BMG artists such as the Foo Fighters, Kelly Clarkson, and The Strokes, will be offered through a new music service, Dada Entertainment, where users can pay $9.99 to obtain 15 tokens. Each token can be redeemed for a music download or ringtone or other content such as games or wallpaper.
The unprotected MP3 files can be transferred to an iPod, mobile phone, or any other digital music-playing device, the companies said Tuesday. Over-the-air downloads aren't ready yet, but Dada said in a statement that it expects to launch that in coming months.
The problems are obvious with this one. Music subscription services such as Napster offer unlimited music for about $13 a month. And the subscription services don't restrict users to a song library exclusively of Sony BMG songs (a Dada representative said the company is trying to cut licensing deals with other labels).
The good news is the music found at Napster is laden with DRM. The songs from this jointly operated service aren't. They are also cheaper than the downloads at iTunes and most other online music stores.
Perhaps most importantly, this is another example of a major label experimenting with songs stripped of copy-protection software.
The RIAA's David Hughes sits next to former IFPI CEO Nic Garnett. To Garnett's right is the MPAA's Fritz Attaway
(Credit: Greg Sandoval/CNET News.com)LOS ANGELES--News of DRM's death has been greatly exaggerated, according to an executive with the Recording Industry Association of America.
At a time when the top recording companies appear to be phasing out digital rights management (DRM), the RIAA is predicting that the highly controversial software will make a comeback.
"(Recently) I made a list of the 22 ways to sell music, and 20 of them still require DRM," said David Hughes, who heads up the RIAA's technology unit, during a panel discussion at the Digital Hollywood conference. "Any form of subscription service or limited play-per-view or advertising offer still requires DRM. So DRM is not dead."
Hughes just stated the obvious. DRM still exists; one can find it at iTunes, RealNetworks' Rhapsody, and at free-music service SpiralFrog just to name a few. But his statement was startling because the top four music labels have seemingly been warming up to unprotected music files.
Last January, when Sony BMG became the last major recording company to sell DRM-free tracks at Amazon, plenty of observers considered the technology buried. Since then, a growing number of online stores have begun offering at least some open MP3s, including Walmart.com, Zune's Marketplace, Amazon, as well as iTunes.
Not so fast, said Hughes, who predicted that DRM would reemerge in a big way. "I think there is going to be a shift," he told the audience. "I think there will be a movement towards subscription services, and (that) will eventually mean the return of DRM."
Hughes also said that DRM must change so that the public sees it less as a sort of policeman that locks music a way. He would prefer a mode where consumers don't notice DRM at all. "People just want music when they want it," he said. "It's about access. If they get that then they don't care about DRM."
Not everybody on the panel agreed. Rajan Samtani, director of business development at Digimarc Corp., a company that provides watermarking technology, said he worked for ContentGuard, a company that tries to help find less obtrusive ways to implement DRM.
"I think it's time to throw in the towel," Samtani said. "These kids have too many ways to get around DRM."
Fritz Attaway, executive vice president at the Motion Picture Association of America said: "We need DRM to show our customers the limits of the license they have entered into with us."
Kudos to Silicon Alley Insider for answering the question about why Sony BMG was not among the major record labels filing a copyright lawsuit against Project Playlist.
Hilary Lewis at SAI reported that Sony BMG is in negotiations with the music start-up.
On Monday, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) claimed in documents filed in New York that Project Playlist makes it easier for users to find unauthorized reproductions. The company provides an embeddable music player used at MySpace and Facebook and claims not to infringe on intellectual property rights because it doesn't host any music files on its site.
A Sony BMG spokesman declined to comment.
What this indicates is that the top record labels are not always in agreement on how to handle copyright cases.
Comes With Music customers will have total access to the music of Alicia Keys as well as every other Sony BMG artist free for a full year.
(Credit: Sonybmg.com)The concept behind Nokia's new music service "Comes with Music" is starting to catch on with the major music labels.
Sony BMG, one of the four top recording companies, announced Tuesday that it has partnered with Nokia to make its music catalog available on select Nokia devices. After buying one of the devices, users will get unlimited free access to the music of Alicia Keys, the Foo Fighters or any Sony BMG artist for a full year.
During the 12 months of the offer, users will be able to transfer their Comes With Music library to a PC as well as to a new Nokia handheld, but they won't be able to transfer it to iPods or other non-compatible devices. At the end of the year, Nokia users will have the choice of acquiring new music by either purchasing downloads from the Nokia Music store or joining its subscription service.
Nokia is expected to launch the Comes With Music service in the second half of the year.
What is groundbreaking about these deals--Universal Music Group was first among the labels to join the service--is that Nokia users can download any song from Sony BMG and keep the music for the rest of their lives. There is no ceiling on the number of songs and the music doesn't disappear at the end of the year.
This is believed to be the labels' deepest foray into free music, and is reflective of the industry's attempt to find new business models that can compete with piracy, shrinking CD sales, and iTunes.
"We think this business model will encourage users to sample a wide range of material, expand their musical tastes, and listen to more music than ever before," said Thomas Hesse, Sony BMG's President of Global Digital Business.
Sources told CNET News.com last month that Apple has discussed a similar offer with the music labels, adding that the concept behind Comes With Music is not exclusive to Nokia.
Should the concept of supplying year-long all-you-can-eat music catch on, other device makers wishing to gain access to music may be forced to adopt similar services.
MySpace is essential for independent artists. Every band I've played with in the last five years has had a MySpace page, and it completely changed how we did things compared with the pre-Internet days. Getting gigs, maintaining mailing lists, fliering--all of those formerly labor-intensive tasks could be accomplished by sitting in front of a computer. One group I played with got 90 percent of our gigs through other bands on our friends list. Another had a couple dozen teenage fans who'd come to every all-ages show when they read about it on our MySpace page. (We were all in our late 30s and 40s and had no idea that ska would appeal to that demographic.)
A truly killer MySpace music service would let users buy downloads and merchandise from any act on the site.
(Credit: MySpace)But there was always a major gap: if we wanted to sell downloads, CDs, or anything else, we had to guide fans to another site or service, such as our own home page with a PayPal account or CDBaby.
Today, MySpace announced a deal with three of the four majors (EMI is sitting out for now) to offer DRM-free MP3 downloads, ringtones, and merchandise through the artist pages on MySpace. This is long overdue: the music industry needs to go where their fans already are, and with 30 million people regularly listening to music on the site, it's a mystery why the labels haven't tried to reach these folks before now.
But major label acts are a small part of the MySpace experience. The only reason you ask The Police or Death Cab to be your "friend" is to show off your impeccable taste to your real friends, the individuals and small-time artists who you're actually connected with. These are the folks who leave individualized comments on your page and send you instant messages, and their gigs appear right alongside Radiohead's on your home page. MySpace is the ultimate long tail site for musicians, where bar bands and small-town heroes can appear in the same context as the biggest bands in the world.
So I'm not sure that MySpace Music will be a game-changer. Fans of big bands already know where to buy merchandise--the band's Web site, or Amazon's CD section, or iTunes, or their local retail store. Sure, big fans who count major-label acts among their "friends" might now stay within MySpace to buy new songs from these bands, and some MySpace users might discover (and buy music from) new acts via friends of friends. But a lot of fans don't know (or care much about) the difference between major and independent artists, and might wonder why only some acts make their wares available for purchase. The inconsistency will be confusing, and drive users back to the traditional music-buying sites (or free file-trading services, which aren't going away).
The real game-changer comes when MySpace offers a full e-commerce store--downloads, CD sales, the works--to every artist with a musician's page on the site. That way, users would never have to leave the site to buy any music they heard on the site. The challenge would be building the infrastructure, but once things like billing and provisioning downloads are in place for the majors, it might not be much harder to set up a CDBaby-like system for everybody else.
A new music service jointly owned by News Corp.'s MySpace.com and three record labels will be announced Thursday, according to a source familiar with the deal.
MySpace Music has been expected for weeks and will offer streaming music, downloads of unprotected MP3s, concert tickets, ringtones, and other merchandise, the source told CNET News.com. The source added that MySpace is hopeful the service will open in the next few months.
The deal immediately catapults News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch into competition with Apple CEO Steve Jobs' iTunes, which offers music and video downloads. Backers are hoping MySpace Music can compete against iTunes by providing MySpace's 110 million worldwide monthly visitors a sweeping range of music services and products that eclipse iTunes' offering.
(Credit:
MySpace.com)
It's been well-reported that label honchos think Jobs and his ubiquitous iPod have amassed too much control. MySpace Music is apparently part of a strategy by the big music companies to find an iTunes competitor, even if they have to help create one.
The music service enables MySpace to leap past competitors Imeem and Last.fm, which beat MySpace to the punch when they began providing free, streaming music to users. But now, MySpace can present everything those services do and much more. Facebook was reportedly also in talks with the major record labels, but the music industry source said that unless something dramatic happens, Facebook is months away from being where MySpace is now.
MySpace Music will launch with songs from three of the top four record labels: Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony BMG Music Entertainment. The only label that hasn't agreed to the deal is EMI Music Group, said the source, who added that MySpace and EMI executives are working around the clock to close the deal and everyone involved is confident that EMI will eventually be part of the service.
All the labels will receive a minority share in the company and a share of all the revenue generated from the site, according to the source, who spoke on condition on anonymity.
Universal Music Group was thought to be holding up the service because of a copyright-infringement lawsuit that it filed against MySpace last year. MySpace has agreed to pay a "huge" settlement, according to Peter Kafka at Silicon Alley Insider.
Looks as if the battle for elbow room in the music subscription market could get a tiny bit tougher if Sony BMG Entertainment follows through on plans to offer its digital catalog to subscribers.
In a story published Monday, the company's CEO, Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper that Sony BMG is working on a subscription service that would in many ways resemble the one contemplated by Apple, which reportedly has been discussing such a service with the four major music labels.
The basics of the proposed Sony BMG plan would include unlimited access to the label's digital library for a flat monthly fee of $9 to $12, and compatibility with all music players, including Apple's iPod, Schmidt-Holtz said, adding that it was possible subscribers "could keep some songs indefinitely--that they would own them even after the subscription expired." Another possible feature of the service: downloads via mobile phone.
No word, though, on when the service might be launched.
MySpace.com is rolling toward closing deals with two of the four top music labels, according to a report published Monday.
Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group are nearing deals with the social network, The New York Post reported, citing unnamed sources.
Agreements could be signed as early as this week, according to the paper.
Last month, CNET News.com reported that MySpace was testing the music industry's interest in a service called MySpace Music, a site that would be free to users and offer music in several different ways, including ad-supported downloads and streaming to PCs, according to a source familiar with the talks.
Social networks Imeem and Last.fm already offer streaming services, and Facebook has also been talking to the top four music labels about offering songs on its site, according to reports.
Representatives from all of the companies involved declined to comment.
For MySpace, the idea is a natural, considering that the site has emerged as a showcase for up-and-coming musicians. The big question is whether the service will offer downloads, which would give it an edge over Imeem and Last.fm. Those services only allow users to hear songs on their computers.
