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In August, NPD Group released its Top 5 ranking of U.S. music retailers for the first half of 2008.  Apple was number one and Amazon rising.  In the related press coverage, Walmart, though a significant seller at number two, seemed almost a future footnote.  The prevailing view was to write them off.  Now, with Best Buy trying to secure its digital footing via Napster, Walmart is making moves to regain ground (or at least maintain it) too.

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Layoffs.  Write-offs.  Weak Guidance. Turbulent Times. Uncertainty.  Foggy Futures. Cracked crystal balls.  Caution. Concern.  

In recent weeks, bad financial news has been like a mosquito you know is there but can’t swat.  It’s been a constant, inescapable drone to a market fearful and in need of reassurance; a market in need of Napoleon’s kind of leader.

Tuesday, though Steve Jobs doesn’t typically participate in earnings calls, Apple’s chief made a rare exception to try and offer just such reassurance.  About fifteen minutes in the conference call, he took the helm stating, “Against the backdrop of this global economic slowdown, it seemed a good time to make a few remarks.”

Together with CFO Peter Oppenheimer and COO, Tim Cook, Jobs helped deliver news that was at once both positive and, looking forward, prudently conservative. Click to Read More

In the 2007 movie August Rush, the title character says “The music is all around you, all you have to do is listen.”  That’s especially true online.  From iTunes to Amazon, from Pandora to Slacker, from Facebook to MySpace and imeem, the songbooks and song vendors border on ubiquity.  You can buy a DRM-Free download or tune in to a free stream; you can catch a new single or embed a sample as soundtrack to your personal corner of the web.  And in case that’s not enough, if those options don’t overwhelm, now there will be another.  The Financial Times reported Wednesday that EMI, the smallest of the world’s Big Four music labels, is preparing to launch a digital music portal of their own in time for the holidays.

Few details have been released but the FT reports the service will offer both audio and video content, some paid and some free. 

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It was the “showdown,” the looming crisis, digital music’s “Ok Corral.” If you believed the headlines and bought into the sensationalism, the fate of iTunes, the future of the world’s leading digital music store, hinged on the decision of the obscure three judge Copyright Royalty Board (CRB).   The reality was hardly so dramatic.

Thursday, the CRB was set to announce its decision on the mechanical royalty rate: the default per song license fees paid to music publishers for the sale of their music.  It was the first time since 1980 a government hearing addressed the rate, the review the result of last year’s expiration of a 1997 agreement.

Lobbying on one side of the aisle sat the National Publishers Association.  They were seeking a rate hike from the current 9.1 cents a song to 15 cents.  On the other side, the Digital Music Association, representing music sellers like Apple and Amazon,  lobbied for a price cut down to 4 cents per download.

The court, whose three judges are appointed by the Librarian of Congress had heard testimony and was set to break the stalemate.

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MySpace controls 67.5% of the social networking marketplace in the U.S. (Hitwise).  Thursday, the News Corp owned company moved to strengthen its position with the launch of a sweeping new music service.

First announced in April, the service is a joint venture built with the participation of all four of the major music labels (Sony BMG, Universal, Warner Music and late entry to the partnership, EMI).  It offers free, on-demand, ad-supported streamed songs from a massive musical catalog.   Listeners are able to pick and choose what they want to hear, when they want to hear it.   To encourage sharing and interaction, they can also create and share an unlimited number of playlists, each compiled with up to one hundred songs.  The service is live now.

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Efforts by the major music labels to find new revenue sources that will replace eroding CD sales often have the feeling of things being thrown at the wall to see what sticks.  Today, the Big 4 (Sony BMG, Universal, Vivendi and Warner Music Group) threw a flash memory card with a little help from a hardware maker.

SanDisk, the world’s leading supplier of flash memory cards announced the new initiative to sell the tiny memory chips preloaded with full albums of MP3 music.  Plug the card into your MP3 capable phone, or portable player and it’s ready to go.  It’s near instantly accessible tunes in the palm of your hand. 

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It would probably be entirely reasonable if all the financial news published on Monday focused solely on the banking world: the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch, the ongoing saga of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Books will be written about these events.  Analysts and academics will probe the “why’s” and “where’s” of what happened and try to lay out a map of how to avoid repetition.  Policy makers may even push legislation to prevent recurrence (as was the case with Sarbanes-Oxley following the scandals at Enron, Tyco, Adelphia, Worldcom and others). 

Compared to these big headlines, the rest of Monday’s business news was small to the point of seeming irrelevance, still there was plenty going on of merit within other markets.  As one analyst’s comments suggested, the collapse of Lehman Brothers doesn’t stop Microsoft from selling software or consumers from shopping at Wal-mart.  Life, and business, will adjust and move forward.

One piece of interesting news in the media, entertainment and technology sector was an announcement by retail giant, Best Buy, that they were purchasing digital music service Napster (press release). Comparatively tiny, in scale and scope, the news could be more significant that it might otherwise appear.  

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