Gawker: valleywag, online music

Apple and other online music retailers get their way

Jackson West — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 18:20:00 EDT

The Copyright Royalty Board, an obscure agency which has been thrust into the spotlight thanks to its role in arbitrating rates for digital music distribution, has frozen the price online music stores have to pay to artists and labels at a little over nine cents. The music industry had been lobbying for an increase to around fifteen cents, would likely have erased the notoriously slim margins Apple enjoys at the iTunes Music Store. Not that Apple would have cared, since it's all about the iPod business anyway and the company was ostensibly willing to shut down digital download sales if it didn't get its way.

5 questions Viacom doesn't want Valleywag to ask Philippe Dauman

Owen Thomas — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:20:00 EDT

Touchy Viacom flack Jeremy Zweig called Valleywag up to let us know personally that we'd been disinvited from next week's press-only screening of Tropic Thunder. Such a pity! Because we had a list of questions we were going to ask Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman:

Does the fact that you're screening Tropic Thunder for a bunch of local tech reporters rather than the usual film critics suggest that you're not particularly confident in the film's critical reception?
How will the lost $450 million financing deal for a slate of movies that would have included Tropic Thunder affect your Paramount movie studio?
Why do you keep making poor Jeremy Zweig tell reporters that your lawyers didn't ask for YouTube users' personal information when you did, in fact, ask for their usernames and IP addresses — information most Internet users would consider personal? And what's he supposed to say now that you've agreed to mask them?
Isn't Viacom's investment in social network Flux at best an irrelevancy and at worst a mess?
Why is Viacom's MTV, after 13 years of trying, incapable of running an online music service anyone wants to use?

Founder of music startup Muxtape learns art of obfuscation from his master

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:20:00 EDT

Interviewing Muxtape's Justin Ouellette for Listening Post, Eliot Van Buskirk asked "How many users are there at this point? How many muxtapes?" Ouellette's response — "more than the population of Germany, less than the population of Japan" — puts the number between 82 million and 127 million users. Compete.com puts the number around 52,000. Ouellete might have been joking, but Van Buskirk published the numbers without comment. And remember, with Ouellete and his Muxtape partner Jakob Lodwick, whom Barry Diller fired from his post as founder of online-video site Vimeo, you can't judge what's actually going on based on what they say.

When asked about his involvement with Muxtape, Lodwick first denied it before backtracking. Then, after sources told us Lodwick might have broken his severance agreement in hiring Ouellette away from Connected Ventures to start Muxtape, Ouellette emailed us to say: "I created Muxtape by myself, thank you very much." We emailed back: "Who pays the bills at Muxtape?" No reply, but we've heard the answer is Lodwick.

Music vendor can't resist pimping out Ashley Alexandra Dupre

Melissa Gira Grant — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:01:39 EDT

Online music vendor Amie Street wants you to know just how exclusive their deal with Ashley Alexandra Dupre is. Amie Street's flack's email after the jump. Who's whoring now?

From: "Zane Groshelle" Date: March 13, 2008 12:21:40 PM PDT To: zane@amiestreet.com Subject: Ashley Alexander Dupre's Music only on Amie Street
Hello,

I'm sure you are hearing a lot about Ashley Alexandra Dupre and the Spitzer scandal. Ashley is also an R&B singer and her music is exclusively available on AmieStreet.com The songs can only be listened to and downloaded on amie street. As of now, her myspace has been taken down.

Ashley has been an artist on the site since last November, and her music, like all music on amie street, is initially free and priced based on public demand. She has clearly been receiving a lot of attention in the past day, and the songs have risen very quickly to 98 cents on the site. She just added a brand new track this morning.

check out her music:

amiestreet.com/ashleyalexandradupre

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/nyregion/12cnd-kristen.html

Warner Music has signed a deal with 7digital.com...

Jordan Golson — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:50:03 EST

Warner Music has signed a deal with 7digital.com to sell its entire catalog DRM-free in the U.K., Ireland, Germany, Spain and France. What's 7digital, you ask? An online music store that's not Apple's iTunes, which seems to be Warner's only requirement in a partner these days. [Crave]

You just can't quit Napster. Literally

Paul Boutin — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 08:21:50 EST

Wired music writer Eliot Van Buskirk decided to cancel his online subscriptions. His anti-DRM talk made me sleepy, but what woke me up was the ludicrous amount of time Van Buskirk spent on the phone with Napster and Rhapsody. No doubt many subscribers hang up after half an hour and let the charges accumulate. The real moneymaker for these companies may not be DRM, but CRM.

Amazon and Pepsi to pair up for music giveaway

Jordan Golson — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 19:19:47 EST

Amazon.com and Pepsi have teamed up for a year-long free music promotion, very similar to one Apple and Pepsi had several years ago. The promotion, scheduled for a Super Bowl launch, will have consumers collecting five Pepsi bottle caps for one free music track from Amazon. In short, Amazon is making a major play against iTunes. The Super Bowl is the highest-profile advertising venue in the world, and Amazon will get tons of attention from the Pepsi promotion. For free music, plenty of people will take advantage of the promo — but will they stick around to buy music when it's finished?

Amazon has captured 3 percent of the digital download market since its music download store launched to little fanfare in September. The store did force Apple to drop the prices on its DRM-free music to the standard 99 cents, but it's had little impact besides that. Amazon certainly has the name recognition to make a store work, but with iTunes and the iPod so overwhelmingly in control of the music player market, it will be a tough sell to get the average iPod owner to download a song from Amazon, copy it into iTunes and then load it on his iPod. Three steps to get a song versus one step with iTunes? Apple actually licensed Amazon's 1-Click technology for the iTunes Store. Too bad Jeff Bezos has forgotten what he taught Steve Jobs.