Senate, European Commission Taking Hard Look At UMG-EMI Merger
The U.S. Senate's antitrust panel has scheduled a hearing later this month to determine whether Universal Music Group's bid to buy EMI might lead to higher prices for both CDs and digital music. The Federal Trade Commission also is reviewing the deal to ensure it does not break antitrust law, is making inquiries about the pricing power of retailers like Apple and Amazon, as well as the potential dominance of the merged company, which would give it more than 40% of the global music market. At the same time, the European Commission is expected to issue a "statement of objections" listing possible problems with the merger in an effort to ensure the combined entity would not be in a position to shape the future landscape in the digital music market to the detriment of consumers and artists. UMG says it will work with U.S. and European regulators to get the deal approved, which may entail the sale of some assets. The European Commission has set a deadline of September 6 to decide on whether to approve the acquisition. [Full story: ReutersBloomberg]
PwC: Global Digital Entertainment/Media
Spending To Hit $1.6 Trillion By 2016
Record global sales of tablets and smart devices are underlining the rising revenue opportunities for digital delivery of entertainment and media [E&M] content and advertising to increasingly connected and mobile consumers. That's the word from PwC's annual "Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2012-2016," an in-depth study that suggests the entertainment industry is approaching the "end of the digital beginning" with digital now embedded in the core businesses of many companies around the world. The "Outlook" forecasts that global E&M spending will increase from $1.6 trillion last year to $2.1 trillion by 2016, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.7%. The U.S. E&M market will experience 5.2% CAGR, growing to $597 billion in 2016, from $464 billion in 2011. Additionally, growth in digital E&M spending will continue to significantly outpace growth in non-digital spending during the next five years. Digital spending is expected to account for 67% of all worldwide growth in spending during this period, while digital in the U.S. is expected to account for 31.5% of all E&M spending in 2016, up from 21.7% in 2011. [Full story: PR Newswire]
Eight Groups Paid $185 K Apiece To Control New ICANN .music Domain
Eight individual entities have submitted applications to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in a competitive bidding process to become the exclusive operator of the new .music domain. These eight companies include Google (under the name Charleston Road Registry); Amazon (under the name of consultancy Valideus); dot Music Limited; DotMusic/CGR E-Commerce Ltd.; DotMusic Inc.; Donuts; Far Further (under the name .music LLC); and Entertainment Names Inc. Each of the companies paid $185,000 to submit their application for exclusive operation of the .music generic top-level domain (gLTD), and several seem to have an edge in the approval process. As reported by Billboard, one of these is Far Further, which has an executive staff composed of music industry veterans, and apparently is working with a number of music industry associations, including the Recording Industry Association of America [RIAA} and the Recording Academy. Also, a group calling itself .MUSIC has received the support of global government bodies, including the International Association of Music Information Centres. As Billboard notes, the operator of the .music registry could hold considerable power in digital music by granting or withholding a .music domain name based on its views of an entity's adherence to copyright law and respect for intellectual property rights. [Full story: Billboard.biz]
Amazon Launches Cloud Player App For Apple's iOS System
Amazon this week finally launched its long-rumored Cloud Player app for iPhone and iPod touch devices, allowing users in the U.S. to stream and download to their iOS device the music they've stored on the company's cloud. According to a corporate statement, the Amazon Cloud Player is a vault for digital music that offers access to more than 20 million songs and over a million albums, and also allows users to upload full music libraries. By launching on the iPhone and iPod touch (also available on Android and Kindle Fire), Amazon brings its music service - in direct competition with Apple's own could storage system - to millions of iOS device owners offering what it says is the most "widely compatible cloud playback solution available." While Cloud Player music libraries are synced with a user's device, Apple's insistence on taking a 30% cut of all in-app purchases means users won't be able to buy new music via the Cloud Player. [Full story: USA Today]
New ReDigi Program Gives Artists A Share Of Resale Profits
Despite a lawsuit filed in January by Capitol Records, ReDigi has launched an "Artist Syndication Program" designed to allow artists to profit directly from the resale of their music in the secondary market. ReDigi, the controversial "online marketplace for pre-owned digital music" says it will share 20% of the transaction fee with the artist for each digital track that sells. "Artists have always been a great priority of ours," said company founder John Ossenmacher. "When the digital landscape eroded album sales and bands were realizing only a fraction of what they previously earned - not to mention streaming, which has compounded this problem even more - we knew we had an opportunity to do something big to reverse this trend." In addition to being able to store, stream, buy, and sell pre-owned digital music, users now have the option of buying new music through iTunes on ReDigi.com. They can even use the credit they've generated from their pre-owned sales to fund purchases of new music. In its lawsuit, Capitol Records says a service that let users buy and sell previously purchased tracks on iTunes amounted to a "clearinghouse for copyright infringement." The lawsuit filed by Capitol Records has yet to be settled. [Full story: Hypebot]
Would A World Without Apple = A World Without Digital Music?
What would the world look like if Steve Jobs and Apple Inc. had never invented the iPod? That's a question posed by Crave's Eric Mack this week at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, noting that when the iPod launched in the fall of 2001, "Napster had been shut down, the RIAA was on a roll bringing lawsuits to try to curb piracy, and not many people over 25 years of age actually owned [an] MP3 player." Fast forward 11 years and Apple is the dominant player in mobile devices, music players, and online music sales, leading many people to believe the recorded music industry would be a different place without the company's dominance. But Mack offers a contrary point of viewing, observing, "While folks in our timeline spent six years dazzled by a string of iPod iterations until the iPhone changed everything, I believe many more folks in a no-iPod world could have been consuming all kinds of media on their phones years earlier. Further, if the first big hit portable media player had also been a phone, it would have pushed the innovation drive in that area to happen sooner, and we may have seen touch-screen phones and other advances from the likes of Samsung, Research In Motion, or a little startup called Android much earlier. Then again, if you believe the legends, a world without Apple is a world where the music industry collapses and iTunes isn't there to revive it, leaving us with nothing." [Full story: CNET]
Al Bell Presents American Soul Music ... And American Soul TV
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 Records Group President Al Bell personally has programmed this awesome radio station online, presenting your favorites from the 1960s and '70s [and some '80s], a lot 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
The U.S. Senate's antitrust panel has scheduled a hearing later this month to determine whether Universal Music Group's bid to buy EMI might lead to higher prices for both CDs and digital music. The Federal Trade Commission also is reviewing the deal to ensure it does not break antitrust law, is making inquiries about the pricing power of retailers like Apple and Amazon, as well as the potential dominance of the merged company, which would give it more than 40% of the global music market. At the same time, the European Commission is expected to issue a "statement of objections" listing possible problems with the merger in an effort to ensure the combined entity would not be in a position to shape the future landscape in the digital music market to the detriment of consumers and artists. UMG says it will work with U.S. and European regulators to get the deal approved, which may entail the sale of some assets. The European Commission has set a deadline of September 6 to decide on whether to approve the acquisition. [Full story: 
Record global sales of tablets and smart devices are underlining the rising revenue opportunities for digital delivery of entertainment and media [E&M] content and advertising to increasingly connected and mobile consumers. That's the word from PwC's annual "Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2012-2016," an in-depth study that suggests the entertainment industry is approaching the "end of the digital beginning" with digital now embedded in the core businesses of many companies around the world. The "Outlook" forecasts that global E&M spending will increase from $1.6 trillion last year to $2.1 trillion by 2016, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.7%. The U.S. E&M market will experience 5.2% CAGR, growing to $597 billion in 2016, from $464 billion in 2011. Additionally, growth in digital E&M spending will continue to significantly outpace growth in non-digital spending during the next five years. Digital spending is expected to account for 67% of all worldwide growth in spending during this period, while digital in the U.S. is expected to account for 31.5% of all E&M spending in 2016, up from 21.7% in 2011. [Full story: 
Eight individual entities have submitted applications to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in a competitive bidding process to become the exclusive operator of the new .music domain. These eight companies include Google (under the name Charleston Road Registry); Amazon (under the name of consultancy Valideus); dot Music Limited; DotMusic/CGR E-Commerce Ltd.; DotMusic Inc.; Donuts; Far Further (under the name .music LLC); and Entertainment Names Inc. Each of the companies paid $185,000 to submit their application for exclusive operation of the .music generic top-level domain (gLTD), and several seem to have an edge in the approval process. As reported by Billboard, one of these is Far Further, which has an executive staff composed of music industry veterans, and apparently is working with a number of music industry associations, including the Recording Industry Association of America [RIAA} and the Recording Academy. Also, a group calling itself .MUSIC has received the support of global government bodies, including the International Association of Music Information Centres. As Billboard notes, the operator of the .music registry could hold considerable power in digital music by granting or withholding a .music domain name based on its views of an entity's adherence to copyright law and respect for intellectual property rights. [Full story: 
Amazon this week finally launched its long-rumored Cloud Player app for iPhone and iPod touch devices, allowing users in the U.S. to stream and download to their iOS device the music they've stored on the company's cloud. According to a corporate statement, the Amazon Cloud Player is a vault for digital music that offers access to more than 20 million songs and over a million albums, and also allows users to upload full music libraries. By launching on the iPhone and iPod touch (also available on Android and Kindle Fire), Amazon brings its music service - in direct competition with Apple's own could storage system - to millions of iOS device owners offering what it says is the most "widely compatible cloud playback solution available." While Cloud Player music libraries are synced with a user's device, Apple's insistence on taking a 30% cut of all in-app purchases means users won't be able to buy new music via the Cloud Player. [Full story: 
Despite a lawsuit filed in January by Capitol Records, ReDigi has launched an "Artist Syndication Program" designed to allow artists to profit directly from the resale of their music in the secondary market. ReDigi, the controversial "online marketplace for pre-owned digital music" says it will share 20% of the transaction fee with the artist for each digital track that sells. "Artists have always been a great priority of ours," said company founder John Ossenmacher. "When the digital landscape eroded album sales and bands were realizing only a fraction of what they previously earned - not to mention streaming, which has compounded this problem even more - we knew we had an opportunity to do something big to reverse this trend." In addition to being able to store, stream, buy, and sell pre-owned digital music, users now have the option of buying new music through iTunes on ReDigi.com. They can even use the credit they've generated from their pre-owned sales to fund purchases of new music. In its lawsuit, Capitol Records says a service that let users buy and sell previously purchased tracks on iTunes amounted to a "clearinghouse for copyright infringement." The lawsuit filed by Capitol Records has yet to be settled. [Full story: 
What would the world look like if Steve Jobs and Apple Inc. had never invented the iPod? That's a question posed by Crave's Eric Mack this week at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, noting that when the iPod launched in the fall of 2001, "Napster had been shut down, the RIAA was on a roll bringing lawsuits to try to curb piracy, and not many people over 25 years of age actually owned [an] MP3 player." Fast forward 11 years and Apple is the dominant player in mobile devices, music players, and online music sales, leading many people to believe the recorded music industry would be a different place without the company's dominance. But Mack offers a contrary point of viewing, observing, "
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 Records Group President Al Bell personally has programmed this awesome radio station online, presenting your favorites from the 1960s and '70s [and some '80s], a lot 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 
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