There's a fascinating-if-probably-not-quite-true TechCrucnh post from Michael Arrington which says, in effect, he's been told by a music industry insider that they know they're doomed; they're just taking what they can from the old business model as it fades away. Kind of like the way in On The Beac...

Universal and Sony backed TotalMusic, Tunepost - it's recently launched music widget, and Ruckus - the college music subscription service the company purchased last year have all shut down . The failure of TotalMusic is a tale of false starts, bad acquisitions and a music industry bleeding cash whil...

Yesterday, The Guardian ran a piece praising Spotify: Now Spotify is here, a completely legal service which tries to get close to that universal jukebox idea, where all you have to do is either pay a monthly fee (£10 in the UK) or listen to some ads at the start of a track (and see them on the appl...

Google delivered ads for Sony BMG and other legal music companies have been helping to keep the lights on at the world's third largest BitTorrent site isoHunt.  Whlle Google has a policy of not supporting copyright infringement, these ads come via ad service reseller Ask.com and like all Google ads...

Recent surveys have shown YouTube's growing influence as a place for music discovery, but now its becoming a significant source of  revenue as well. No one is releasing hard numbers, but at least one major label, Universal, admits that payments from YouTube now measure in the "tens of mill...

Two years after Steve Jobs declared that DRM was dead and a year after Amazon launched its DRM-free download store with all four major labels, the vast majority of tracks on iTunes are still delivered with a little piece of code that restricts transfer and use. What is taking so long? Perhaps deep d...

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK OF THIS APPOINTMENT.  I'll share the best as well as my opinions in a special post. "EMI is delighted to announce the appointment of Elio Leoni-Sceti as Chief Executive  of its recorded music division, EMI Music. Mr Leoni-Sceti joins from Reckitt Benckiser, the ...

LEE TRINK AND JASON FLOM'S DAYS APPEAR NUMBER According to Fox News, Lee Trink, president of Capitol Records sill be leaving the label as of June 30th. Jason Flom, head of Virgin Records Both labels are part of EMI Music. This is all part of a promised restructuring by parent EMI's new owners Terra ...

Warner Music Group has pulled its content from CBS owned Last.fm: "...the fees related to the existing free service have been far less than it had hoped. Last.FM pays the labels a fee for every track it plays and a percentage of the revenue it earns from advertising displayed while the songs ar...

PART III - 3. BUILD LABEL BRANDS, 4. CHASE THE NICHES PREVIOUSLY: Introduction, Part II - 1. Off With Their Heads, 2. Cut The Fat The music industry is facing many challenges. How can the major labels and the entrepreneurs that seek to replace them adjust to compete in this new and  evolving en...