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January 7, 2010
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Grad Student Claims Labels Hold Some Blame
For File-Sharing
Grad student Joel Tenenbaum (right), who last year was ordered by a jury to pay $675,000 for his role in digital file sharing, filed court papers on Monday (January 4) seeking a new trial on the grounds that Judge Nancy Bertner improperly ruled that his file-sharing was not fair use. Claiming that the record labels' "continued conduct of releasing their recordings into a digitally networked environment on DRM-free CDs made the proliferation of their recordings on the peer-to-peer networks trivially easy," Tenenbaum said "their aggressive promotion of their recordings made such proliferation entirely predictable. Indeed, their mode of publication all but invited sharing." He also argues that the damage award of $675,000 is unconstitutional because it is "so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportionate to [his] offense." [Full story: MediaPost]
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 At Least Two Companies Reportedly Are Courting Melodeo
Think Apple's purchase of LaLa last year was the last major acquisition of a digital music company? Think again. Melodeo, a developer of music-based applications for the iPhone, reportedly is in talks with at least two companies that lost out on the LaLa bidding war. Melodeo operates nuTsie, a mobile engine that lets users stream music to their phones or any other Internet-connected device. The company also sells various iPhone apps that stream a random selection of music based around either a theme or an artist. The identities of the companies currently courting Melodeo, and the potential sales price, remain unknown; "sources" say the company is planning a major new product launch in the coming weeks. [Full story: Billboard]
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Best Buy Eliminates Napster CEO, President Positions
Best Buy, which in 2008 purchased the reinvented file-sharing company Napster, has decided the firm is too "top-heavy" and has eliminated the positions of CEO and president. Christopher Allen, Napster's chief operating officer, will run the site and has been named its general manager. Chris Gorog, who has been Napster's CEO since before the Best Buy acquisition, observed that "we began with a simple idea - legalizing Napster - and spent almost a decade trying to perfect that dream." Most industry analysts say that dream went largely unfulfilled, at least in terms of building a large audience and generating significant revenue. [Full story: CNET]
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Copyright Changes Force Artists To Find
New Revenue Streams 
Over one hundred fifty years ago Charles Dickens (right) sailed across the pond to ask the United States to stop pirating his works, which American companies were reprinting without his consent - and without paying him a dime. Fast forward one and a half centuries and the U.S. has become the moving force in the defense of copyright protection, although some analysts now believe last year may have marked the year in which copyright enforcement lost valuable ground. "2009 was a watershed year," says David Gratton, founder of Vancouver-based Work at Play, an online service that connects artists directly with their fans. "You wound up seeing industry almost give up the fight on this and realize we now need to think differently. It is not the death of copyright. I think the intellectual property that people have is going to be monetized differently. It is a fundamental change." [Full story: Kelowna]
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 Bono Slams ISPs For Aiding Online Music Sharing
U2 frontman Bono is at it again, this time unleashing a mild tirade against Internet service providers for allowing customers to trade rock records online - branding them "reverse Robin Hoods." The musician accuses wealthy web executives of benefiting from the ailing recorded music industry, and warns that the same problem could cripple Hollywood as the popularity of sharing films over the internet increases. "The immutable laws of bandwidth tell us we're just a few years away from being able to download an entire season of (TV series) 24 in 24 seconds," he wrote in a New York Times column. "A decade's worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators... The people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business." [Full story: MSN Music New York Times]
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L.A. Times: Casual DVD Purchase Illustrates
Piracy Problem
High-quality digital copies pose a real, and frightening, capacity to take a bite out of the legitimate retail DVD market. That's the conclusion of Los Angeles Times writer Michael Hiltzik, who last month casually bought pirated DVDs on the streets of L.A., expecting to find a "crummy camcorder copies, providing the view and sound of a screen...[and] the audience chattering, coughing, and getting up to go to the bathroom." Instead what he discovered was a high-quality digital copy with up-to-date trailers, a navigable menu that (mostly) worked and even some special features." Hiltzik says the source obviously was a DVD stolen from a warehouse...or slipped to a gang of copiers by a confederate at a DVD factory. While this is not directly a story about digital music, it does indicate that "pirates have really got their act together. Product like this has a real, and frightening, capacity to take a bite out of the legitimate retail market." [Full story: Los Angeles Times]
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New Decade Gives U.K. Music Biz "More Options,
More Experimentation"
U.K. music industry economist Will Page reports that the British music sector enjoyed modest growth in 2008 vs. 2007, due primarily to improvement in royalty collections and live performances. He also predicts the coming decade will present "more options and more experimentation." This, Page believes, will spell the end of the "short-sighted generalizations that have plagued the debate about the music industry ever since digital got started. It also means more chances to learn from other people's experiments, which reduces risk, and has a nice self-reinforcing property. Genuine innovation will pay, but assuming one band's innovative idea can be replicated across a whole industry won't work." Note: Figures for 2009 are still being compiled. [Full story: The Skinny]
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Al Bell Presents American Soul Music
If you're into classic and contemporary Soul, R&B, Blues, Gospel, Jazz, Hip-Hop Soul, Rap Soul, and Neo-Soul, we invite you to listen to Al Bell Presents American Soul Music. Former Stax Records owner and Motown President Al Bell personally has programmed this awesome radio station online, presenting your favorites from the 1960s and '70s, some of the best new music that's being released today, and some real gems you haven't heard in a long, long time. Come to www.AlBellPresents.Com and hear it for yourself!
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Al Bell Presents:
Chairman/Chief Executive Officer: Al Bell
President: Jonathan Bell
COO (and Digital Music Digest Editor): Reed Bunzel
Director/Special Projects: Emmanuel Sheafe |
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