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It falls short of formal collusion but the world’s big four music labels tend to move in a herd.  Where one tentatively steps, the others follow if the ground proves solid.  Where two go, the rest stampede.  In the digital rights management (DRM) debate, EMI was the first to choose a new path.   Last week, Warner Music was the third to withdraw from a staunch DRM Stance.  Now, Business Week is reporting Sony BMG is on the verge of dropping the copyright encryption programs too.

According to the Business Week report, which sites the famously vague “sources familiar with the matter,” Sony BMG will sell digital music free of burdensome copyright encryption at some point during the first quarter of this year.  The expectation is the DRM-Free music may even appear as early as February.  That would allow Sony BMG to participate in a massive music give-away promotion Pepsi is running for the Super Bowl.

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The music industry’s iron-clad grip on digital rights management (DRM) encryption is starting to loosen.  Today, Warner Music Group announced they will follow the path blazed by EMI, and then adopted by Universal Music.  Effective immediately, they’ll sell their music DRM-Free through certain retailers (e.g. Amazon and not iTunes).

For the better part of the past few years, the Big 4 music labels, which represent the majority of music sold at retail, have embraced a digital encryption strategy for the sale of their music online.   Up until last year, Click to Read More

Concert promoter Live Nation cut off contract renewal talks with Ticketmaster in August.  They’ve now found their replacement.  Beginning January 1, 2009, following the expiration of their current Ticketmaster deal, Live Nation will launch their own competing ticketing service.

The infrastructure for the new ticketing venture will be licensed from CTS Eventim, the world’s second largest ticket agency.   Live Nation will operate the platform in North America.  CTS Eventim will handle ticketing services via partnership in the UK and Europe.

Full details won’t be provided until a conference call in January.  Among the items likely to be discussed will be a secondary market (resale) ticket platform that Live Nation hopes to implement as well.

Since being spun off from Clear Channel in 2005, Live Nation has been in the process of transforming itself from a narrowly focused concert promotion business to a comprehensive music services company.  In their marketing materials, the company bills itself as “the future of the music business.”  It’s a vision defined by Click to Read More

Just a few weeks ago, hybrid Internet music service Slacker was riding high.  After months of talk, their much anticipated portable was finally ramping up for distribution.  Aimed at making portable music convenient, buzz was building. On their website, they were taking orders.  Shipment of the WiFi enabled net radio device was targeted for December 13.  About a week ago, that quietly changed.  

On December 6th,  popular Wall Street Journal tech writer, Walt Mossberg, published a review after testing two prototypes of the Slacker player.  He noted that while sound was good and the WiFi link worked, his two prototype test units were “hobbled by bugs and glitches.”   One unit often failed to connect to his account.  Both sometimes failed to wake up after going to sleep.

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It’s four in a row for imeem.  After settling a lawsuit signing a deal with Warner Music Group in July, the social music site has won over the rest of the Big 4 music labels. Sony BMG signed up in late September.  EMI inked paper at the end of October.  Now Universal Music Group has crossed over too.

Imeem is a free social networking service built around streaming digital music.  Unlike most music sites which build a library of content to then offer to their users, imeem works partly in the reverse.  Subscribers can upload music which is, in  turn, added to the catalog.  As a member of the site, you can create playlists, upload music, or listen to streams of music already in the catalog.  Members can also use embeddable code to add the stream of a chosen song to a blog posting or a personal webpage (including profiles on some social networks).

The hook for imeem is the songs are not available for download.  To hear the music, or watch equivalent video content, you must access it as a digital stream, either on the imeem site, or through embedded code elsewhere.  Click to Read More

Slacker’s a relatively old word.  It’s been around since at least the 1890’s and had a variety of meanings, most negative in tone.  San Diego based Slacker, a technology company of the same name, is focused on music distribution and hoping to give the word new life and new meaning; something traversing from lazy and laissez faire to easy to use and can’t live without.  Their biggest test is almost here. 

Though recent fanfare and marketing has been limited, on December 13, barely in time for the holidays, Slacker will ship their portable music player. 

The device is modern and slick in appearance.  With a four inch diagonal screen, on-board WiFi and a ten hour battery life, it might be mistaken as another iPod competitor.  It’s not, at least directly.  Slacker’s aiming for something altogether different.   Instead of targeting Apple head on, they’re competing for the same purchasing dollars but going after the radio market, trying to be Radio 2.0. 

The brainchild of three former music company executives, Slacker, the company, launched commercially last March with high hopes for changing music distribution.   Their concept was built around integrating three music delivery channels into a single interconnected product line.

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Those listening to music online are probably familiar with Pandora.  The popular and fast growing company has been a pioneer in net radio.   On Thursday, they announced a mobile version of their highly personalized service will be available via AT&T Wireless on select phones.

Pandora’s traditional offering is built around an extremely sophisticated personalization engine.  Drawn from what was called the Music Genome Project, Pandora analyzes and catalog songs by as many as 400 musical attributes.  All that data is then correlated against music a listener’s likes and dislikes in order to build a profile and stream comparable music.  If I like music by Eric Clapton, B.B. King and The Rolling Stones, for example, Pandora’s engine will recognize the underlying blues riffs, they’ll recognize whether the songs are up tempo, or slow, whether acoustic or electric.  Then, when the song’s I’ve chosen are done playing, Pandora will play something similar – maybe something from the Allman Brother’s, or Buddy Guy.  They will recommend music my patterns suggest I might like. Click to Read More