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MP3Tunes Founder declares online music streaming death

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In a guest post for Techcrunch the founder of MP3.com and MP3Tunes, Michael Robertson, declares the actual online music streaming climate death.

The music selling and radio business is increasingly being commoditized. Profits are being squeezed to the point of unsustainability. This spells pending doom for imeem, Pandora, Myspace Music, Slacker and the newest entrant Spotify unless there is an industry-upheaving royalty rate change.

After analyzing both the massively hyped Spotify and the under Best Buy rebooted Napster he mentions that most similar sites, such as Pandora and MySpace Music, so far have failed in making a paid subscription model a viable solution. Music streaming services world wide are living a hard time and UK-based, but CBS owned Last.fm also switched to a compulsory subscription for users outside of the US, UK and Germany because so far they have failed to monetize ads sufficiently in other pats of world.

These may seem dire times, but unless streaming platforms can become more global, it seems that they will struggle to sell ANY real advertising at all and if, the question is will it be sufficient to pay royalties and the rather high wages developers benefit in startups.

Read the complete TC entry here.

Originally posted on August 8, 2009 @ 1:14 pm

Last.fm founders to leave the CBS ship soon

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In a statement released today on the Last.fm blog 3 of the founders of the London (UK) based music discovery and recommendation service are leaving the CBSi Music company. According to the blog entry this is the latest (last?) step in handing over the reins to CBSi Media, who acquired Last.fm in Spring 2007 for $280million.

From the announcement:

After two years running Last.fm within CBS we feel the time is right to begin the process of handing over the reins. This is the latest stage in a long journey for us founders, which began in a living room in East London in 2002, and took us to the headquarters of one of the biggest media companies in the world.

Felix Miller also announced that the service more than doubled in number of unique monthly users over the last 12 months (Compete stats for last.fm top-url show an increase above 50% over the last 12 months).

Read the complete announcement here

Originally posted on June 10, 2009 @ 12:40 pm

Music Reports announces launch of industry’s first online royalty accounting for digital music services

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Music rights administration provider Music Reports, Inc. has started accounting to more than 12,000 music publishing administrators representing over 50,000 individual music publishers, on behalf of its digital music service clients. This is the first accounting under the recent agreement on the mechanical licensing of interactive streams and conditional downloads, which was reached by NMPA, RIAA, and DiMA, before the Copyright Royalty Board.

Beginning this month, all U.S. music publishing administrators may log in to password-protected websites at www.musicreports.com to view accountings, download monthly usage reports, and update song ownership information.

Music Reports is unique in its ability to administer this compulsory license which is available to digital music services. The company has issued more than 5 million compulsory licenses to music publishers, in addition to negotiating thousands of voluntary licenses, on behalf of its clients.

Originally posted on May 17, 2009 @ 10:22 pm

Napster unveils latest digital music service

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Napster has unveiled its latest music offering combining the freedom of MP3s with the discovery benefits of a high-quality streaming music service – all for one low price. For $5 per month, Napster users get five unrestricted MP3 downloads, and unlimited access to Napster’s on-demand music streaming service.

    Napster users can now:

  • Get five MP3s each month to download, with their choice of songs from the Napster MP3 library that covers all types of music from all the major labels and includes the largest catalog of independent artists available.
  • Purchase additional MP3s at any time from 69 cents to $1.29.
  • Listen to any track, as often as they like, in CD quality from Napster’s catalog of more than seven million songs.
  • Choose from more than 60 commercial-free radio stations and more than 1,400 expertly programmed playlists.
  • Discover new music and artists through personalized recommendation tools.
  • Enjoy the top hits from more than 50 years of Billboard charts. Want to know what was popular when you graduated high school? Now you can.
  • Play MP3s on any MP3 player, including iPod®, iPhone® and music-enabled MP3 mobile phones.

Originally posted on May 17, 2009 @ 10:27 pm

mSpot partners with CBS RADIO, Last.fm

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mSpot, Inc. announced a deal with CBS RADIO and Last.fm that will add over 100 live local radio stations across the U.S. and the Last.fm personalized radio service to mSpot’s expansive mobile radio line-up. The new offering gives AT&T Wireless customers access to one of the most customized listening and entertainment experience in the market, combining the best of personalized radio; local music, sports, news and talk radio stations; and commercial-free music choices.

As a premiere mobile music and entertainment company, mSpot services over 4 million mobile users in North America. Among the stations licensed by CBS RADIO are KROQ-FM (Los Angeles, Calif.), WFAN-AM (New York, N.Y.), and WXRT-FM (Chicago, Ill.). Through Last.fm, users will be able to listen to recommended music, create their own stations, and access artist bios. mSpot’s radio applications allow customers to browse content, skip through songs on select stations, access recently-played stations, and bookmark favorite stations.

mSpot’s radio network currently spans across AT&T, Sprint, Bell Mobility, Telus, and U.S. Cellular. In total, mSpot has over 100 commercial-free music channels, over 200 local stations, and over 30 stations of talk content from popular media firms including ABC, Fox Sports, NPR, Disney, SportingNews, MarketWatch, PRI, AccuWeather and Traffic.com.

Originally posted on May 16, 2009 @ 10:32 pm