Tag Archives | Music

Yahoo Music Gets Friendly With YouTube, iTunes, Others

Posted by Jared Newman on April 6, 2009 at 4:46 pm

YahooTomorrow, Yahoo will embrace all sorts of third-party widgets at its Yahoo Music pages, allowing visitors to create their own layouts of videos, listening stations and online stores.

The relaunched Yahoo Music intends to become a “starting point for music fans,” according to the press release. The logic goes that curiosity or love for a recording artist will compel you to visit the artist’s page on Yahoo Music, which acts as a content hub. Widgets, or “modules,” can be added, removed or moved around the page for each individual viewer, allowing you to nix iTunes if Amazon is your preference and dump Pandora if you prefer Last.fm. There are modules for YouTube and Rhapsody as well.

Yahoo Music currently hosts 500,000 artist pages, but down the line, the company wants to open artist page creation for any musician or record label. That sounds like an ambitious undertaking, but it could work well for indie bands with enough devotees.  A spokeswoman tells me that other modules will follow, such as online merch shops. CNet says this is all part of the company’s “Open” strategy of adding third-party features to its existing Web services.

I poked around the old Yahoo Music site today, and actually enjoyed its current form. The listening limit on the embedded Rhapsody links are a downer, but otherwise the site was clean and easy to navigate. Hopefully, the addition of extra modules won’t clutter the screen or grind down on my poor little netbook.

My other concern is remembering to visit when my first instinct for any curiosity is to plug a search into Firefox’s Google toolbar. Yahoo searchers will find the stuff easily, but it’d be really great if Yahoo Music could get enough Google juice to land on the front page of those Web searches, above or near Wikipedia. That would probably be too friendly.

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MySpace Music Reinventing Itself After Foul-ups

Posted by Jared Newman on April 3, 2009 at 5:11 pm

myspaceWired has an interesting feature on MySpace Music, which was supposed to be a boon for the music industry when it launched a half year ago. Free streaming music from all four major record labels and support for playlists seemed like a good idea.

Unfortunately, the service had some serious usability issues, such as limits on playlist size and a slow music player, and the song selection wasn’t comprehensive. Courtney Holt, who stepped in to lead MySpace Music in January, three months after launch, is candid about the problems in his chat with Wired, calling the original service “plumbing and a playlist.” He covers similar ground as he did in a New York Times Bits interview from March, when the service started adding new features and improving the interface. Perhaps Holt is trying to get the word out that MySpace Music isn’t all bad anymore.

And for a free service, it could be worse. The ability to search for bands and build playlists directly from the results is nice, and I like the pop-out player. I’m wondering why playlist management is stunted — it can’t be done in real-time and new songs add themselves to the top of the list, rather than the bottom — but as a tool for discovering new music, it’s functional enough. Links to the Amazon MP3 download for each song are enticing, too.

Holt is also looking to “bring back the album,” as Wired puts it. Entire pages will be dedicated to individual albums, packed with bonus features and a forum for fans to discuss the music. With greater support for indie bands, MySpace Music is starting to look pretty robust.

If I were the record labels, I’d be looking to duplicate this service on other social networks. Design-wise, I’ve always found MySpace to be sloppy, and that’s keeping me away more than the content or the way it’s managed. Obviously adding streaming music to my network of choice (Facebook) can’t happen overnight, but I’d much rather get two dozen streaming track recommendations from friends than read 25 of their obscure personal details.

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First Blog From Major Record Label Emerges. Seriously.

Posted by Jared Newman on April 2, 2009 at 6:39 pm

theinsoundfromwayoutThe music industry is notoriously slow on the Internet uptake. To drive that point home even further, EMI Australia’s new blog, “The In Sound From Way Out,” is apparently the first ever from a major record label. It’s appropriate, then, that the title is borrowed from a 13 year-old Beastie Boys album.

Posts began unceremoniously in late February with a few Pet Shop Boys videos (kudos to Wired for picking up on this now) and continues along at a post or two per day, with sporadic days off. On its face, the blog looks like any other site dedicated to the latest music happenings. There are announcements regarding a variety of groups — the text doesn’t explicitly mention that they’re all EMI bands, but they are — and embedded links to music videos. Today, there’s a post on a really interesting demo package that showed up at the A&R office.

The bloggers seem open to hearing about unsigned bands, too; a box at the top of the screen encourages readers to send tips, and promises to sign groups that the staff really enjoys.

Scanning a couple pages, I quite like the relaxed and open feel of the blog, and that seems to be the point. “As far as we can tell, we are the only major label with this level of openness about who we are and what we do,” the blog’s About page reads. “We hope you respond to that with openness of your own.”

Indeed, the music industry is often stigmatized as a bunch of cold, careless suits. Whether or not music industry blogs such as this can translate into sales is up for debate, but the young, smiling faces of the In Sounds staff are, at minimum, great PR.

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Please, World, Like Subscription Music, Won’t You?

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 6, 2009 at 1:10 pm

Over at CNet, Greg Sandoval has a good story up on subscription music services such as the one that Microsoft offers for its Zune devices. They were supposed to be a big deal, but the idea never spawned any breakout hits. Yahoo and others exited the business, Rhapsody and Napster are niche successes at best, and it wouldn’t be the least bit surprising to see Microsoft say bye-bye to it at some point as well. Meanwhile, Apple has sold billions of non-subscription, buy-it-and-own-it song downloads. Yet Greg’s story says that Microsoft and the music industry are still insisting that subscribing to music is a model that makes sense.

Rationally, subscription music seems like it makes sense: It lets you spend $15 to get access to unlimited music, versus spending the same amount or thereabouts to buy one album. But consumers are simply nowhere near as interested as the industry thinks they should be. Greg mentions one factor in his story: The fact that people appear to want to own their music rather than renting it. I think another big factor is copy protection. It’s neatly mandatory for subscription music (eMusic is the only subscription service that doesn’t lock up its tracks). And even if you can live with the notion of DRM, the technologies that have been used to shackle subscription music have proven to be particularly flaky. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Windows Media.)

Another factor: Subscription music is difficult to explain. Especially the part about it going away if you stop subscribing. Buying music is a notion that we all get.

I still know smart people–including some journalists–who think subscription music will catch on eventually. Maybe it will. Right now, though, I think that its ongoing failure is proof that it doesn’t matter how theoretically logical an idea is if it fails to capture the imagination of consumers.

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Zune’s Swoon–Doom Soon?

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 23, 2009 at 2:29 pm

Microsoft ZunePodcasting News’s Elisabeth Lewin notes an interesting tidbit in Microsoft’s Form 10-Q SEC filing: Microsoft says that its Zune-related revenue “decreased by $100 or 54% reflecting a decrease in device sales.”

The 10-Q doesn’t seem to say how many Zunes Microsoft sold, and the company has slashed prices. So it’s a little tough to tell whether the plummeting revenue stems from consumers not buying Zunes or from them buying cheaper Zunes. As a frame of reference, Apple reported earlier this week that it sold three percent more iPods in the last quarter than it did a year ago, but made 16 percent less dough doing so.

No matter how you slice it, you can’t turn Microsoft’s Zune revenue number into evidence that the company is making any real inroads on the iPod hegemony. In an era of Microsoft layoffs, cutbacks, and other tough decisions, does that mean that Zune is toast? Tough to say. If you consider Zune to be an MP3 player, it appears to be a disappointing seller that’s in decline, and doing away with it might make sense. But I’m assuming that Microsoft sees Zune as a platform–involving devices, services, and software–and that there’s a good chance it sees it as being strategic enough that’ll continue to invest.

Even so, the Zune name feels permanently tarnished. Suggestion: Microsoft has another entertainment-related brand that’s thriving and which overlaps increasingly with the Zune’s domain. That would be Xbox. Might it be time to retire the Zune name and roll the platform into the Xbox universe?

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iTunes Goes DRM-Free, Gets More Expensive…and Gets Cheaper?

Posted by Harry McCracken on January 6, 2009 at 2:10 am

ituneslogoIt might or might be announced this morning at Macworld Expo, but it seems inevitable: CNET is reporting that Apple has hammered out a deal to sell DRM-free music from Sony BMG, Universal, and Warner, joining EMI’s iTunes Plus DRM-less music in the iTunes Store. The agreement would finally give Apple DRM-free music from all the major labels–something it really needs given that Amazon.com and most other major purveyors of music downloads have lost the copy protection.

Amazon.com also undercuts Apple’s pricing on many tracks; CNET reports that Apple’s deal with the labels will force it to drop its flat 99-cent fee in favor of variable pricing, with hot new stuff sometimes costing more, and back-catalog songs going for 79 cents. Seems like a reasonable concession to me (and complete albums already go for varying prices at the iTunes Store).

I don’t recommend buying DRM-hobbled music, which means that don’t recommend buying the protected songs that still comprise the majority of Apple’s offerings. It’ll feel good if I can stop warning folks about the iTunes Store–and I’ll bet Apple is looking forward to losing the DRM as much as anybody at this point.

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Digital Music Continues to Take Off

Posted by Ed Oswald on January 2, 2009 at 10:33 am

One has to wonder if RIAA’s decision to stop suing file sharers may have anything to do with the fact that digital music is quickly becoming the format of choice among consumers. A survey released by Nielsen indicates that digital music continues to become a larger portion of the overall music pie.

A record number of both digital albums and tracks were sold during 2008, sporting increases of 32 and 27 percent respectively. 1.07 billion digital tracks were purchased, while 65.8 million albums were downloaded.

Overall, albums seem to be falling out of favor, with a 8.5 percent decrease in sales to 535.4 million units. Interesting factoid? Vinyl is back in style apparently: 1.8 milion LPs were sold during the year, nearly double that from last year.

In the digital realm, Leona Lews “Bleeding Love” took top honors in the singles category, followed by Flo Rida’s “Low” and Rhianna’s “Disturbia.” In albums, Coldplay’s Viva La Vida was the best selling album, followed by Jack Johnson’s Sleep Through The Static and the soundtrack to the 2007 film Juno.

Universal Music Group continues to be the largest purveyor of digital albums and tracks, garnering market shares of 27.8 and 31.8 percent respectively.

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iPods? How About iFrauds?

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 22, 2008 at 6:40 am

ifrauds-teaserLast week, for reasons too complicated to explain here, I wandered into a “liquidation sale” near my home. I didn’t find what I was looking for. But I encountered a bevy of bizarre music players that tried, with varying levels of energy and success, to look like Apple iPods. I snapped photos, and bought a freaky “iPlay.” If you’ve got a strong stomach, check out my report on all this, which I’m calling “iFrauds.”

View iFrauds slideshow

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iFrauds: The Fakest iPods Ever!

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 22, 2008 at 6:33 am

ifrauds-splash2

Last week, I went to a “liquidation sale” in San Francisco. Along with the alarming 64-ounce bottles of perfume, leather jackets made from the skins of unspecified animals, and Shamwows, the show’s dealers offered music players. Ones that shamelessly rip off the iPod. Scads of them. I took crummy pictures with my iPhone–and, I’m ashamed to admit, bought an iFraud of my own.

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Wake Up, World! Amazon’s MP3 Store Deserves Better. Doesn’t It?

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 15, 2008 at 5:33 pm

amazonmp3Over at All Things Digital, Peter Kafka is saying that Amazon.com’s DRM-free MP3 download store is a “miserable failure” as an iTunes Store rival at the end of its first year of operation. Judged in terms of market share, dollars, and cents, it’s hard to argue that it’s anything else: Kafka says that Amazon appears to have around seven or eight percent of the music download business, compared to Apple’s seventy-plus. If it’s possible to put a serious dent in Apple’s supremacy, Amazon hasn’t figured out how to do it…and neither have other DRM-free music merchants such as eMusic, Rhapsody, Wal-Mart, and Lala. iTunes is to digital music what Windows was for years to operating systems: A player so utterly dominant that it’s hard to figure out a scenario in which its share shrinks, let alone make it happen.

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