Gawker
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music videos
What If We Don't Want Our YouTube TV?
The record labels like to think they built MTV — and have been punishing every new idea for promoting music since. That self-defeating dynamic could destroy a nascent YouTube partnership between Google and Universal Music. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by SandhayaHammer: Wrong wrong wrong. MTV is irrelevant, not the form. As someone who's been involved with music videos for the past... 2 Responses | Other threads
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failure
Microsoft Preparing to Put Zune Out of Its Misery
When political candidates concede a campaign, they praise the "long journey" and talk about how much they've "learned." In the same mode, Microsoft's CEO has all but said he's given up on the Zune. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by mimigoliath: Aww, I have the 80GB Zune and I love it. 8 Responses | Other threads
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embargo breakers
David Cook wants me to pretend his new single got leaked
Remember when the music industry said MP3s on the Internet were going to destroy music? Here's an inside glimpse at how much things have changed since Napster. Today, publicists contact me to try to arrange stories about songs their clients have intentionally "leaked" onto the Internet. American Idol David Cook is the latest in a long line. David, I love your act, but next time bypass the "mobile-only social network" and upload yourself straight to YouTube. Here's the pitch, minus the name of the hanger-on tech company trying to ride along with Cook's fame: More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by Danilo Campos: Dammit, I'm going to miss the Embargo Breakers tag so much. 1 Responses | Other threads
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Mike Sheridan
Project Playlist hires a second ex-Facebook exec
A tipster tells us that Project Playlist, the online-music startup which has just hired former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta and raised $15 million, has hired Mike Sheridan as its CFO. Sheridan served less than a year at Facebook, where he was replaced by Gideon Yu. -
owen van natta
Ex-Facebook COO takes Project Playlist CEO gig
Be careful what you wish for. Owen Van Natta, the former Facebook COO who left the social network in February, has gotten the CEO job he said he wanted — as the new chief of Project Playlist, an online-music startup. (It's been widely reported that MySpace wooed him to run its MySpace Music spinoff. He also had conversations with social-news site Digg and shopping search engine Nextag, among others.) Van Natta's an investor in Project Playlist, and the company has just announced funding from former AOL CEO Bob Pittman's Pilot Group. But powerful backers won't change the toxic business environment all online-music startups face. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Figaro: Don't you just wish you could short startups? more » | Other threads
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jackpot
Rock Band creators get $300 million rock-star bonus
Eran Egozy and Alex Rigopulos, the MIT-educated creators of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, have earned a $150 million bonus from Viacom, whose MTV unit bought the game. The pair are on track to earn an even bigger bonus in 2009. (Photo by Newsweek/John Huet)
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By Paul BoutinComment by sample032: Fuck this shit. Some of us can actually play a guitar. 4 Responses | Other threads
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digital music
MySpace wants to sell MP3 players
Want a MyPod? MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe hints that the social-networking site might sell MySpace-branded MP3 players to make its MySpace Music spinoff a more plausible competitor to Apple's iTunes. Last we checked, this plan did not work for Napster, either. [BetaNews]
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Comment by daruma_mac: Is it going to sneak up on me with emo music(or nickelback for that matter), and scare my dog... like... more » | Other threads
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owen van natta
MySpace Music's fruitless CEO search
Why can't News Corp. find anyone to run MySpace Music, the spinoff from its social network which is part-owned by major labels? No one seems able to state the obvious: MySpace Music is a feature, not a company. The outside investment it garners is just an elaborate way of cutting in the labels on MySpace's music-related profits. No wonder former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta turned down the job; TechCrunch reports that he cleverly tried to get MySpace to buy Project Playlist, a music startup he'd invested in, as part of the deal. Van Natta picked the right test: If MySpace had been willing to fold Project Playlist into MySpace Music, it would have proven that the music venture really had some independence. Any other CEO candidate should ask the same questions Van Natta raised with his quid-pro-quo deal.
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By Owen ThomasComment by nirreskeya: Was Owen planning on moving to LA, or just commuting from the Bay? Both sound terrible to me. more » | Other threads
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digital music
MTV Music too little, too late — except for one thing
Imagine a website where you can view every music video known to man. Yes, that's what MTV.com should have been 10 years ago. Now that MTVmusic.com exists, what is it good for? Oh yes: A whole new way to rickroll your friends.
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By Owen ThomasComment by irrational-exuberance: since when has MTV had anything to do with music? 1 Responses | Other threads
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justin ouellette
Muxtape creator explains how to be an overnight failure
Justin Ouellette's music trading site Muxtape, shut down after failed talks with the RIAA, the music labels' copyright cops, may not have earned him a fortune. But it has secured him a modicum of infamy. He got invited to speak earlier this week at the WebbyConnect Summit in Laguna Niguel, explaining to others on how to replicate his overnight success with making a website deeply popular with Brooklyn's most outspoken Internet users. As Ouellette elaborates in this interview, the key is to just make up something that people want. Guess what? Just because people want free music doesn't mean you can give it to them. Ouellette never figured that part out.
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Comment by Ted Dziuba: You know what else everybody wants? Money. I have a startup idea: we print money. Anyone want... 2 Responses | Other threads
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bill nguyen
Lala founder forgets to lay off 20 percent
Serial entrepreneur Bill Nguyen just relaunched Lala's music service in the middle of layoff mania. The new version — high audio quality, no DRM — is pretty good. But I have to ask: Why bother, Bill? This is Lala's fourth or fifth attempt at a business model. Nguyen could get funding for another boring enterprise wireless startup like Onebox or Seven tomorrow. Those things make money. More » -
digital music
Imeem lays off 20, seeks buyer
Imeem is laying off a quarter of its 80-person staff, PaidContent reports. The music-centered social network has been more adept than many of its rivals at navigating the cutthroat music business. But one of its backers is Sequoia Capital, the ruthless VC firm which has ordered its portfolio companies to slash expenses. Imeem is also seeking to sell itself, with the help of investment bank Montgomery & Co. Imeem may be better than most digital-music startups — but it is still a digital-music startup, faced with fickle consumers, thin margins, and antagonistic partners in the record labels. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Shadowlayer: Oh noes! where will we get out daily dose of terrible 4kids hiphop now? more » | Other threads
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digital music
MySpace inflates its music numbers
Remind us: Were we supposed to be impressed that MySpace's minor update to its music feature, dressed up as a joint venture with the record labels, has streamed 1 billion tunes in "a few days"? Before the launch of MySpace Music, MySpace was already streaming 5 billion songs a month, largely thanks to the blaring, automatically played music on most of its users' profiles. How many days are "a few"? In the ordinary course of business, MySpace would play 1 billion songs anyway — whether anyone liked it or not. You'd have to be sleeping with a MySpace flack to think this was a big story.
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By Owen ThomasComment by nevermind_y: @Owen Not sure if you know this. Every big site inflates its numbers. At Yahoo, as well as Google too! ;-) more » | Other threads
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digital music
Want to buy music from Amazon.com on MySpace? Not so fast
Most MySpace Music customers won't go searching for the obscure stuff. The big money is in pop hits. The industry's top 10 singles are all available to preview on MySpace Music — and they're all on Amazon.com's MP3 store as well. But that doesn't mean it's one-click easy to buy the music via MySpace. Trying to purchase downloads of 6 of the 10 directly from MySpace's new music widget failed. And those that worked required plenty of clicks and drop-down menus. [Idolator]
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By Jackson WestComment by nirreskeya: Owen (Van Natta) wouldn't have allowed this. Or maybe he did. Who is the CEO over there, anyway?... more » | Other threads
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digital music
Wal-Mart and Best Buy will sell MP3s on flash-memory cards
SlotMusic is SanDisk's attempt to replace the CD as the brick-and-mortar media for music. Flash-memory cards, preloaded with music files, will be sold in stores like Best Buy and Wal-Mart. There aren't many other details yet, aside from a press release and the "Check back soon" SlotMusic.org site. Here's a primer on the format: More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by QADude: This sounds like let another desperate attempt by the record companies to control their music. I just love it when companies... 2 Responses | Other threads
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search
The ad Yahoo ought to air
Instead of wasting its time telling people to "start wearing purple," Yahoo should air a campaign boasting of cool features it has that Google and MSN don't. Yahoo could start with a video much like the one here, which shows off a new Yahoo Search feature that allows searchers to play a song straight from a search results page. Google doesn't do that — and Yahoo shouldn't make Internet users read a Google-watching blog to find out that Yahoo does.
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Comment by Bassem B.: That's a seriously cool feature, and the video does a good job of getting the point through. more » | Other threads
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digital music
Best Buy snapping up remains of Napster
Over the years, the reports of Napster's death have been greatly exaggerated. But electronics retailer Best Buy may just manage to put a stake in its heart. Best Buy is buying the online music-subscription service for $121 million — $54 million, really, after setting aside the cash in Napster's bank account. A great return on investment, considering Napster's assets last sold for $5 million out of bankruptcy in 2002, right? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by sample032: I love cats, but I hate the Naptser cat. Not sure why, though. more » | Other threads
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digital music
MySpace Music — like Muxtape, except people who wear deodorant will use it
MySpace Music, a joint venture between the News Corp. social network and music labels Universal, Sony and Warner,finally launches next week, says Fortune, though it still won't have a CEO. MySpace users will be able to listen to and organize playlists full of songs from all three music labels for free. (EMI is the lone holdout, which means no coldplay.) Playlists will include affiliate links to Amazon.com's MP3 store. MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe says ad revenues and song kickbacks are going to save the music industry, replacing lost CD sales. More »
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Comment by socialmediamojo: Funny how the imeem reference got cut off there.... I'm pretty much expecting myspace music to be a clone of imeem... more » | Other threads
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digital music
Metallica's new album leaked, but band's just happy they still have fans
Lars Ulrich, Metallica's Internet-hating drummer, explained to a Bay Area radio station that he's glad the band's new album got leaked all over the world. A copy of the album was bought in a French record store and quickly uploaded to the Internet. The band's new stance is a big jump from 2000, when they sued Napster for distributing their music without permission. Since then Metallica has worked out ways of selling their music online by themselves, finally relenting to iTunes sales in 2006. If you still have a taste for Metallica, head on over to your favorite torrent site. Lars said it's okay.
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Comment by cschack: How come Metallica still gets shit for suing Napster in order to try and protect their interests, but when other... 1 Responses | Other threads
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SoundUnwound
Amazon.com launches database for bands
Amazon is releasing a site called SoundUnwound — a version of IMDB for musicians, editable by anyone like Wikipedia. Few know that IMDB, the movies database, is owned by Amazon.com. But the universal vendor seems to value the data therein — knowing which obscure movies a now-famous actor starred in helps cross-sell DVDs. Most of SoundUnwound's information comes from YouTube, Wikipedia, and MusicBrainz — another open-content music database. You can find out who the sound engineer for Amy Winehouse's studio debut was, if you're so inclined — okay, it's Jimmy Hogarth. With free data, Amazon gets what it pays for, in the form of broken track listings and unknown playtimes on songs, but it's still good enough to help upsell you more MP3s from its struggling music store.
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Comment by macbeach: I didn't know they bought IMDB, but I hope they make some improvements. I'm generally disappointed with what I... more » | Other threads
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acquisitions
Napster really hoping someone will buy it
Online-music service Napster's management says the company is "open to a sale" — to anyone, that is, except the activist shareholders trying to get on its board. [PaidContent] -
digital music
Kid Rock has a hit without iTunes
"All Summer Long" is one catchy tune. Built on the groove of the late Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London," spiced up with Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama," the song nonetheless soars on Robert James Ritchie's down-homey delivery of one of the best ballads to hit the airwaves in years. I've heard it on Top 40, country and classic rock stations in the past week. Kid Rock's album, Rock 'n Roll Jesus, is now at #2 on Billboard's chart. All this without iTunes. Why on earth would record labels withhold an album from America's largest music retailer? More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by Tim Faulkner: But "Amen" -- boy, that song blows. The Wal-Mart set'll love it. 1 Responses | Other threads
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rumormonger
Muxtape's spending real cause of music site's shutdown
Muxtape founder Justin Ouellette says he's shut down the mixtape-hosting website because of a problem with the Recording Industry Association of America. A statement from the RIAA itself seems to confirm the story. Bu we hear another reason Muxtape is shutting down is that it got too expensive for Ouellette to keep up. More »
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Comment by socialmediamojo: This makes complete sense, I mean we all know the RIAA is pissed but sites don't shut down until public... more » | Other threads
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digital music
Pandora throws temper tantrum over music rates
The days of marveling over online music service Pandora's ability to know that you hella heart Oakland's own Digital Underground may soon be over. A court decision adored by the recording industry doubled the royalties Web broadcasters have to pay. Radio stations pay nothing to for rebroadcast rights to recordings, but do pay publishers a royalty. Satellite broadcasters pay nearly half what online music providers are charged. Pandora reports that the charges, payable to royalty collector SoundExchange, will amount to $17.5 million of their $25 million in annual revenue. Which would permanently mangle the company's business model, according to CEO Tim Westergren. The flip, convenient thing to do here is to blog about the evils of the rapacious music industry. Sure, SoundExchange is notorious for its long list of artists it can't find in order to pay, while it naturally collects royalties regardless. But after Muxtape's run in with the RIAA today, one has to think there's blame to spread around. What did these music entrepreneurs expect? More »
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By Jackson WestComment by mdoublej: Terrestrial radio stations now have to report to, and pay money to SoundExchange as well for music played over the... more » | Other threads
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copyfight
RIAA "problem" shutters online-music startup Muxtape
Muxtape, a New York-based online-music startup much favored by the Tumblr set, has shut down its website, citing a "problem" with the RIAA, a music-industry organization which polices copyright. Could it have anything to do with the ease with which users can download music files from the site, despite founder Justin Ouellette's efforts to block them? The company blog elaborates, barely: "No artists or labels have complained. The site is not closed indefinitely. Stay tuned."
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By Owen ThomasComment by cooterpunch2: Where am I going to get my electro-wave dance party on now??? [farm4.static.flickr.com] more » | Other threads
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developers, developers, developers
Google's Android now a fake OS for more gadgets
Google's mobile OS Android might have a future in "set-top boxes for televisions, mp3 players and other communication and media devices and services," reports VentureBeat. Silicon Alley Insider confirms the story — or at least the fact that Google's working on Android-loaded cable boxes — and wonders if maybe Google will move them as a part of its partnership with Clearwire. None of this will happen anytime soon, of course. More »
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Comment by Passerby: Yeah I'm going to code an app on the Android Emu called "wagdroid" for snarky on the go..... more » | Other threads
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hires
MySpace music venture lonely at the top
MySpace Music, the joint venture between the social network and three big record-label groups, is struggling to find a CEO, according to The Deal. There's a long list of prospects who have turned the News Corp.-owned social network down: Ian Rogers, the former head of Yahoo Music; Jim Bankoff, formerly of AOL; Eric Garland, the highly quotable head of file-sharing research firm BigChampagne; and former Launch CEO Dave Goldberg, who now works at Benchmark Capital as an entrepreneur-in-residence and is married to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, which makes the L.A. job geographically undesirable. But what's most amusing about MySpace's failed CEO search is the excuse MySpace is now giving for putting off a hire: The team is so close to delivering a product that hiring a boss now would just screw things up. Makes sense — but it raises the question, why hire a CEO at all?
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By Owen ThomasComment by colonelpanic: Actually, a dusty old 1998 530i is retro-cool ironic. THIS car is the automotive embodiment of a MySpace page: more » | Other threads
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digital music
Napster finds music-buying sucker market shrinking
Napster — or rather, the pathetic music store which picked up the famous file-sharing service's brand — reported a drop in quarterly revenues to $30.3 million, despite the launch of an MP3 store. Subscribers fell from 760,000 to 708,000 in a quarter's time. Here's Napster's latest commercial, obviously not effective at drumming up business. [PaidContent] -
google
Google plays catchup in China with MP3 search
Google announced today a search service, available only in China, to find and download MP3s from popular artists through partner Top100.cn, a Chinese music site funded by basketball star Yao Ming. Baidu, the search company which emerged from China's homegrown bubble and producers of crazy ads, has had MP3 search available since 2005, and many attribute its lead in its home market to that feature. [News.com] -
digital music
Buckcherry apparently too drunk to spoof BitTorrent
The grindy reporters at the Wall Street Journal have confirmed what the guys at TorrentFreak figured out a couple of weeks ago: Hard rockers Buckcherry (I recommend listening to "Lit Up" and "Ridin'" as a primer) leaked their own single "Too Drunk ..." from a computer at their manager's office in early July. The band had issued a faux-outraged press release over the pretend act of piracy. Their complaint: "We want our FANS to have any new songs first.” Uh, guys, isn't that exactly what happened?
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By Paul BoutinComment by WagCurious: Has piracy finally become the new slinky black cocktail dress that simply must be included in each marketer's wardrobe? The... more » | Other threads
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careers
$700k salary can't get Sony BMG a digital exec
After EMI hired paisley-shirted IT exec Douglas Merrill away from Google to run the record label's digital business, other music groups have been on the hunt for a digital savior. Sony BMG, we hear, has been trying to fill an EVP position to run its digital music ventures. But after dangling a $700,000 salary in front of prospects for 8 months, its search firm, Korn/Ferry, still hasn't been able to fill the job. What this tells us: No one wants the job. One requirement: The candidate must "have a keen eye to find money on opportunities at hand." That graspingness is precisely why the record labels are so unpopular with musicians, their fans, and the the technologists creating the online tools through which people are increasingly stealing — sorry, "discovering" — music. The industry's in such a pathetic state, we thought we'd help Sony BMG and Korn/Ferry by airing the confidential job listing: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by BrighamAlectrona: Does anyone know what role Blain Jason is playing, Global Media Strategist and Business Developer +EVP, Business Development and Strategic... more » | Other threads
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digital music
Amazon limps its way to 4 percent of U.S. digital-music market
eMusic CEO David Pakman estimates that Amazon.com's MP3 store may have sold 27 million tracks since opening 6 months ago — which sounds good until you consider that Apple's iTunes moves 2 billion songs a year. Pakman also estimates that Amazon's store is adding $7 million, after the labels' take and expenses. At least people are looking forward to a new Kindle, right? [Silicon Alley Insider] -
digital music
MTV launches another surely doomed music service
MTV is continuing its push into digital music, despite its long litany of failures in the past, by introducing a music recommendation service and social network called Soundtrack. Most of the song recommendations will be based off of MTV's list of shows such as The Hills, Shot at Love, and G's to Gents. RealNetworks' Rhapsody, which recently dropped copyright protections on its music files, will help MTV sell those songs, as well — though a tipster reports Rhapsody been having customer service and outage issues for weeks.
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Comment by marcsiry: If iTunes was having outages for weeks, it would be a New York Times story. Rhapsody, you need a 'tipster'... more » | Other threads
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copyfight
EMI sues Hi5 and VideoEgg for listening to EMI
Record label EMI may have tired of suing individual file sharers for copyright infringement. But a number of music-industry plaintiffs, all partners and subsidiaries of EMI, are suing social network Hi5 and advertising startup VideoEgg in New York Southern District Court for copyright infringement. According to the complaint [PDF]: More »
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By Jackson WestComment by transparency: very green of you: this story recycled from techcrunch 6/27 [www.techcrunch.com] more » | Other threads
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digital music
Bono agrees with U2 manager's attack on Internet service providers
U2 frontman Bono disagreed with manager Paul McGuinness's judgment on the failure of Radiohead's Web busking for In Rainbows, but like McGuinness, he lays the blame for the death of the music industry's business model at the feet of those greedy Internet service providers in his open letter to New Music Express: More »
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By Jackson WestComment by harshmellow: I fell asleep when I read the word "ringtones" in McGuinness' piece. (ZZZZZZ) But then I woke back up in... more » | Other threads
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digital music
Trent Reznor is showing show business how it's done digitally
Trent Reznor is busy demonstrating how a bankable artist can go independent, give away music for free, and still make a mint. Though he initially expressed concern over an album he produced for hip-hopper Saul Williams that was released as a "pay what you will" download, he's changed his mind and now considers it a success — mostly because Williams made more money even with only twenty percent of fans paying for the album than he ever did at a label. And maybe more importantly, far more people heard the music. As for Reznor? His own giveaway of his latest album did pretty well in the marketplace as well, with a limited-edition box set garnering $750,000 and half a million CDs sold. So what, exactly, is the problem with the music business? As usual, greedy labels. More »
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By Jackson WestComment by raincoaster: Certainly you're right that he couldn't produce a show like he does on a tiny budget, but that's also NOT... more » | Other threads
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d6 live coverage
Paula Abdul to get her game on at D6 conference
CARLSBAD, CA — The hot gossip this morning at the Wall Street Journal's D6 conference: American Idol judge Paula Abdul, seen here in the video for "Dance Like There's No Tomorrow," is in the building. My bet: something to do with Activision CEO Bobby Kotick's appearance, since his company's music game, Guitar Hero, was advertised heavily on the show's final week. Could a new American Idol videogame — one that's not utterly horrible, like the one released last year — be on deck? Update: A tipster inside the ballroom reports: More » -
digital music
Zune no longer taking up valuable GameStop shelf space
Microsoft's iPod imitator, the Zune, will no longer be sold at videogame and electronics retailer GameStop according to GameStop CFO David Carlson. They probably need that space for Grand Theft Auto IV, which has sold more copies in a few weeks than Microsoft's portable media player has sold since launch. [Digital Daily]
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By Jackson WestComment by Widget Economist: Can we agree that both [stop, spot, (shop)] are as boring and eager to get our damn money? more » | Other threads
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clips
Weezer understands how to work YouTube: allude to these 24 viral videos
Weezer has been geek rock since before I was logging onto the Internet using Prodigy in fifth grade. And who among us never wondered: what's with these homies, dissing my girl? Point is: the band gets the geeks. So it's no surprise that they understand one of the easiest way to go viral on YouTube and across the Web is to make multiple references to videos gone viral before. Check out the band's latest video above, "Pork and Beans," and then below, embeds of all of the viral videos referenced.More »
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Comment by CA5El3EER: I believe I have assembled the full list of included videos. there are two that I did not know... more » | Other threads
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digital music
Nine years later, Napster repeats its feat of making MP3s widely available
The celestial jukebox is back, far too late to matter. Napster is now selling a library of 6 million songs, from all four major labels, as MP3 files, a format which lacks copy protection and hence is compatible with any number of devices — most importantly, the iPod. In other words, the state of affairs that existed nine years ago at Napster's original launch, save for the 99-cent fee now charged per download. Egghead Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen notes the irony without explanation. For the slightly less brilliant among us, here it is: The record labels, having killed Napster once, have now rallied behind it, hoping to weaken Apple, a company whose iTunes store is already the dominant music retailer in the U.S.
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By Owen ThomasComment by MalcoveMagnesia: Why do record labels despise Apple so much? If they succeed in weakening ITMS or killing it, do the labels... more » | Other threads
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