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Grex > Music2 > #112: Changes in the Music Business | |
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Message |
| 8 new of 189 responses total. |
krj
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response 182 of 189:
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Jan 4 19:15 UTC 2001 |
News item from mp3.com passes along a press release from musicmaker.com,
reporting that their board has voted to "liquidate and dissolve the
company." The web site seems to be gone, though I have been having
erratic browser problems today, so...
Musicmaker.com provided custom-made CDs where the customer selected
the tracks to be burned. I am fairly sure that musicmaker.com handled
the big Pepsi promotion of custom-made CDs this summer, which we talked
about somewhere else in this forum. (I don't actually have my Pepsi
CDs here to check.) Musicmaker.com was also trying to
sell legitimate music downloads.
Perhaps musicmaker.com was a victim of Napster, which offers a better
song selection.
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dbratman
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response 183 of 189:
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Jan 6 04:27 UTC 2001 |
Someone - I think it was Mitch Wagner on sff.net - having tried Napster
and found bad sound quality, incomplete files, and mislabeled songs -
said that he's discovered how copyright owners will maintain a paid
market for their wares in the cold new economy.
Two words: Quality control.
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other
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response 184 of 189:
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Jan 6 20:52 UTC 2001 |
/. reports that Napster has followed up their agreement with Bertelsmann
with a similar agreement with Edel AG, another major European media
group.
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krj
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response 185 of 189:
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Jan 27 00:51 UTC 2001 |
New York Post, http://www.nypost.com/01252001/business/20975.htm:
EMI and BMG are reported close to a merger deal. European regulators are
unwilling to see the five major labels consolidate down to four, so
the plan is to sell EMI's Virgin label to independent label Zomba,
home of N'Sync, Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears, and then claim
Zomba becomes a fifth major label.
Another web site somewhere pointed out that such a merger would bring
the Nipper icon back into general use. Currently the USA rights to
Nipper are controlled by BMG, while the European rights to him are
controlled by EMI. As the classical music industry is now doing global
manufacturing and packaging, it's often not been feasible for BMG to
stick Nipper on American releases.
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dbratman
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response 186 of 189:
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Jan 27 17:26 UTC 2001 |
How many people are there today, I wonder, who wouldn't realize, on
seeing the Nipper icon, that the strange-looking thing he's listening
to is a type of phonograph?
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krj
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response 187 of 189:
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Jan 30 02:43 UTC 2001 |
BMG announced today that the for-pay Napster goes up in June.
Supposedly "digital rights management" will be an integral part of the
experience. Sources at Napster did not appear to know anything
about this. Source: www.wired.com, I think, and probably cnet too.
I'm puzzled by it; it sounds like a somewhat ignorant BMG exec
rushing into press with something he doesn't understand.
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ashke
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response 188 of 189:
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Jan 30 18:40 UTC 2001 |
That sounds about right to me...they have a habit of doing that.
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krj
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response 189 of 189:
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May 2 23:50 UTC 2001 |
News media everywhere report that the proposed merger of EMI and BMG
has been dropped. The two labels could not get European regulators
to go along with reducing the number of major music companies from
5 to 4, and they were unable to come up with a spinoff proposal to
somehow create a new fifth "major."
This is EMI's second failed merger attempt in about a year.
EMI and BMG remain the weakest of the five major record companies
and they still look vulnerable to takeover by somebody.
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Some time back, Rykodisc, the largest independent American label,
was acquired by Chris Blackwell's new company Palm Pictures.
All is not sweetness and light: Joe Boyd, who sold his Hannibal label
to Ryko back in the early 1990s, has left Hannibal/Ryko/Palm.
There's an interview with Boyd in the new issue of Folk Roots magazine.
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This is really becoming the Music Business Conference, isn't it? :/
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