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When Natalie Cole released Unforgettable, a duet that paired her vocals with those of her long deceased father, it was a groundbreaking demonstration of music technology.    That was June 1991.  Back then, state of the art computer chips from Intel were 386 chips running at 20 to 40MHz.   Back then, the Mosaic internet browser hadn’t been released yet.   Back then, Hewlett Packard introduced the first color scanner, a 400 dpi flatbed that was priced at $1995 or more. 

A lot has changed in sixteen years, especially in technology.  Today, a garage band with a decent starting track could probably pull off the same feat with an iMac and a little perseverance.   A professional with a full soundboard? Well, chances are they can do a lot more.

Friday, the world will likely have a chance to see just how much better things can be done today. Click to Read More

Last week, on August 8th,  when Blockbuster acquired Movielink, the purchase price for the transaction was widely reported to be a steal at an amount less than $50m and maybe even less than  $20m.  How low a price, or how much less than those numbers, however, was unclear at the time.  

Today, just how much of a bargain Blockbuster got came to light.  According to  Blockbuster’s official 8-k filing, the purchase price (less adjustments for cash and working capital) was a tiny $6.6m.

That’s an off–the–back–of–the–truck, fire–sale get–it–off–my–hands kind of bargain price; Click to Read More

Every Tuesday is new release day for songs in Apple’s iTunes music store. Today’s release announcement was a big one: John Lennon’s joined the party.

One band member at a time, Apple has been bringing the Beatles to iTunes. As of today, sixteen of Lennon’s solo albums will be available digitally. They’ll join the already available solo works of Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr as well as music from Lennon’s wife, Yoko Ono, and sons Julian and Sean. Only George Harrison, who passed away in 2001, remains missing from the digital domain (along with the catalog of the band as a whole).

The ability to offer Lennon’s music is a significant achievement for Apple, and likely a significant source of revenue for all involved. Some 27 years after his untimely death, Lennon remains an icon and his star power is still a tremendous royalty engine. In 2006 he ranked number 4 on Forbes Click to Read More

Monday, Sonicbids, a Boston company focused on trying to connect musicians and promoters raised its first round of venture capital; a $4.5m round from Edison Venture Fund.  Sonicbids is focused on one of the biggest challenges of a new creative effort: audience discovery and connection. 

Arguably, the most trying step of any new venture is the initial marketing; the discovery phase where a project begins to seek its audience.   Whether it’s a blog, a website, a new product, or a new book, absent deep pockets for marketing expense, the process is usually an exercise in patience and frustration.  After months of toil, someone labors to find their viewers, their listeners, the readers –  the audience who will give their product or creation life outside the author’s domain.

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Mark Twain once quipped "Facts are stubborn but statistics are more pliable." That may often be true. Surveys and their results can skew depending on what, or who, is asked. Still, for quickly digested factoids little wets the appetite better than a small taste of information. Today, in a revival of a prior series of consolidated statistical data, the lens turns to the gaming industry. Below is a sample of gaming industry related statistics and data points.

(Other Metue ‘By the Numbers’ pieces are linked at the bottom of this post).

   One in four Internet users worldwide play online games, or a total of nearly 217 million people.  Among online game sites, Yahoo was the biggest with about 53 million unique users in May, MSN Games was second with around 40 million  (source: comScore). Click to Read More

Social networking services from MySpace to Bebo continue to increase in popularity, and as they do, for many in the music industry their kinds of service offerings represent a significant marketing opportunity. 

According to a recently published survey by Entertainment Media Research (and OLSWANG) two in five social network users have music embedded in their site profile, and on Bebo and MySpace that number jumps to 65 and 63 percent respectively.  27 percent of respondents in the same survey also indicated their social network services were regular sources for discovering new music.

Armed with this kind of data, and more, Blue Note, the venerable Jazz label owned by EMI,  has planned to relaunch their promotional website as a branded social network and music store of their own later this month (According to a Billboard report) .

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As part of a massive management reorganization months ago, game publisher Electronic Arts created a division to focus solely on a class of games that fit into a category called “casual gaming.”  The classification is meant to include games, whether console, mobile or PC in origin, that are widely accessible, do not have a steep learning curve and can be played incrementally in small blocks of time.

Kathy Vrabel, the former president of Activision was hired to run the division.   Today, her Casual Gaming Division at Electronic Arts announced their first major deal.   EA and traditional game/toy maker Hasbro have signed an exclusive multi-year licensing deal.

Click to Read More