Music Sales Down To One Album Per Person Per Year

New figures out of the USA on the state of the music industry show music sales for 2009 in the USA had fallen to one album for each person for the year. Note - that is a 2009 figure, not 2010. Undercover reports.

Data from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) shows that while digital downloads have had healthy increases by percentage, the revenue generated by the sales of the downloads goes nowhere to replacing the revenue lost from physical sales.

The golden age of the music industry was 1992 – 1999 when the average person purchased around 3.5 albums per year but since 1999 sales have been in steep decline. By 2003, sales had dropped to 2.6 albums per person and have rapidly declined for every year since.

Read full article. Image from Apartment Therapy.

Music labels making millions from YouTube, says Google

YouTube has revealed that its music partners, which range from Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI to independents and individual artists, have doubled and in some cases trebled their monthly revenues over this time last year. [via The New Zealand Herald]

Patrick Walker, senior director of content partnerships for YouTube in Europe, Middle East and Africa, said that after a slow start, the labels saw the site as an important revenue stream. "A few years ago the cheques were pretty small," he said.

"We laugh about that now." There are currently 3 billion "monetised" video hits a week, 50 per cent higher than in May.

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iTunes could get cloud-based backup solution

According to TUWA, Apple is reportedly looking to use the cloud for iTunes, not as a streaming service, but as "insurance," a sort of backup system for the music you already own and have downloaded to your own computer.

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Ideo concept shows how RFID tags could be used in the music industry

Design consultancy Ideo has developed a concept music player that uses cards embedded with RFID tags to generate music playlists. Near Field Communications World reports.

The idea here was to find a physical representation of the elements of modern musical life that we've come to love (such as playlists and shuffle), but not give up on that retro mixtape, twelve inch vinyl physicality," the company explains. "What if we could touch our music again?"

To play the music stored on an RFID-enabled card, users simply drop the card onto the firm's prototype C60 music player. Multiple cards can then be placed on the player at one time to generate a playlist:

c60 Redux from IDEO on Vimeo.

In Brazil, the Future of the Music Business is in Cell Phones–And Already Here

After the death of popular music download sites Napster and Kazaa, Brazil went in a very different direction it came to buying songs. Fox News Latino reports.

According to Universal Music Group, 30% of revenue in the country comes from digital sales. Within this amount, 30% of the sales are online and 70% comes from cell phones – almost the opposite from the rest of the world, where online represents 80% of the total. The music industry sees this as a new breath in sales in the biggest market of Latin America.

Read full article. Image from noovo.

Free Trove of Music Scores on Web Hits Sensitive Copyright Note

The International Music Score Library Project allows free downloads and is raising copyright concerns among traditional music publishers. The New York Times reports.

It claims to have 85,000 scores, or parts for nearly 35,000 works, with several thousand being added every month. That is a worrisome pace for traditional music publishers, whose bread and butter comes from renting and selling scores in expensive editions backed by the latest scholarship. More than a business threat, the site has raised messy copyright issues and drawn the ire of established publishers.

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Apple in talks to improve sound quality of music downloads

Apple and other digital music retailers are in discussions with record labels to improve the quality of the song files they sell, executives involved in the talks say.
As a result, online music stores could eventually offer songs that sound truer to their original recordings, perhaps at a premium price.

[CNN via Gizmodo]

Japan. Ringtone monopoly ruling upheld

According to the Daily Yomiuri Online, the Supreme Court has ruled against Sony Music Entertainment (SME) and two other firms that had sought reversal of a lower court verdict that they violated the Antimonopoly Law regarding online ringtones distribution.

Rejecting the firms' appeal, the second petty bench of the top court agreed with an earlier Tokyo High Court ruling that the trio had prevented competitors from entering the online ringtone distribution business.

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Billboard Chart App for iPhone

60 years of Billboard chart history is now available on your iPhone.

Released Thursda< in the iTunes store, the Billboard Chart App features 15 charts, from the Hot 100 and Billboard 200 to genre rankings and ringtones. Users can view 60 years of chart history, search by artist, album or song, view ranking details, listen to 30 seconds of music and make purchases directly through iTunes.

The Billboard Chart App is updated weekly with Billboard's traditional chart release schedule and features each ranking's previous week's position, number of weeks on the chart, and peak chart position. Users can search for specific artists, albums or songs, and search by date.

Google will launch iTunes music store competitor with upgrade to Android

Google is to launch a music service to compete with Apple's iTunes music store as part of a forthcoming upgrade to its Android mobile operating system, according to Sanjay Jha, chief executive of Motorola Mobility, which will soon launch one of the first machines able to run the software.

[via The Guardian]

IntoNow app identifies TV choices by sound

Early iPhone app Shazam was unmistakably cool. Hold a phone up while a song was playing in the background and Shazam could name that tune.

Now, according to USA Today, there's a clever and free iPhone app called IntoNow that works similar magic with television.

Tap a green button, and four to 12 seconds later IntoNow can figure out from the audio what you're watching. IntoNow can tell whether the show is live. It serves up a brief descriptor of the episode.

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Find Songs, A Directory of TV Series' Music

To help TV viewers of popular television shows to download their favorite songs, find-songs.com has launched an online portal that serves as a directory - linking to Amazon or iTunes.

Full press release.

One-person barbershop quartet sings "I Wanna Be Like You"

Multitrack barbershop singer DanWright32 has a stirring rendition of the Jungle Book's best song, I Wanna Be Like You on YouTube. Wonderful!

[via boingboing]

In Digital Era, Music Spotters Feed a Machine

Here's a job not many people have heard about. Music scout for Shazam. The New York Times reports.

Charles Slomovitz, a music industry veteran, spends his days tracking down hot new artists — but not for a big record label. Instead, he works for Shazam, a company whose popular application identifies the name of songs being played.

As the major record labels shrink, Shazam and other start-ups are thriving by offering people new ways to discover and listen to music. That is creating new kinds of jobs in the music business, from foragers like Mr. Slomovitz to the developers building software that recommends the perfect song for a particular listener.

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Pandora Eyes $100 Million Stock Offering

The popular Internet radio service, which has 80 million registered users in the U.S., outlined its plans for an initial public offering.

Pandora Media Inc. started streaming songs over the Internet in 2005. It now has 80 million registered users in the U.S.

[via npr]

Sony might withdraw from iTunes

Sony has signalled it may withdraw its artists from Apple's iTunes store and withhold its games from the iPhone in a sign the two companies are on the brink of all-out war.

Sony plans to open a competitor to iTunes, a music streaming service called Music Unlimited, in Australia soon.

[via stuff]

Last.fm calls time on free mobile radio service

Users of online music site Last.fm will have to pay for its mobile phone service starting from next week, according to the BBC.

Until now, the site has provided its personalised radio for free for mobiles, making money by placing adverts between songs instead.

However, it now says this is "not practical" and is instead asking users to pay for an ad-free service.

Listening via the web will remain free but charging is a "rational" move, the site's Matthew Hawn told BBC News.

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RanDinger App Offers Millions of Ringtone Previews for $2.99

RanDinger, a new Android App, allows the user to preview over 10 million tracks as their ringtone for $2.99 - the cost of the app. Each new call features a different tune based upon user choices.

[via ExpertClick]

Free Music Can Pay as Well as Paid Music, YouTube Says

As record labels, digital music stores, and music subscription services continue their struggle to convince music fans to pay for music, Google’s YouTube — itself a major repository of recorded music — claims that giving away music for free generates as much money for copyright holders as charging for it. Wired reports.

According to what YouTube executives told Evolver.fm this week, YouTube can make as much money for labels as paid services, following a massive, 200-to-300 percent increase in the revenue it generates for copyright holders over the past year.

They said the growth was due to traffic increases, particularly on mobile phones.

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