From the archives – November 2000: Services in which the majors had equity
As part of Music Ally’s series looking back at a decade of digital music, we will be digging some really memorable past features out of the archives. Today we re-publish an article from our November 2000 report which examined the digital strategies of the four major labels (this was four years before Sony and BMG merged) and particularly the online music brands in which they owned equity. 
Sign up for a free two-week trial to Music Ally and get access to all our past reports and bulletins plus a suite of research tools including market data, a deal tracker and an analyst forecast tracker. In the most recent PDF Report you can find a rundown of 2009’s big events plus an extensive timeline detailing the key digital music happenings of the past ten years.
And continue reading after the jump to read our 2000 report on major labels and their stakes in various digital music services…
Now, Music Ally comments:
The dot com crash and the sluggish, unpredictable nature of the early digital music market meant that labels reduced their emphasis on taking equity in digital music services during the mid 2000s. Imagine if the majors had negotiated an ownership stake in iTunes!
But this article shows where the majors’ strategies were at the beginning of the decade – which interestingly is a similar direction to the one some labels have been taking over the past couple of years. Whether it’s YouTube/Vevo, Lala or Spotify, the majors once again are looking to gain benefit via equity.
| Label | Activity | Has Equity in… |
| EMI | Launched Digital Download service in July. Settled with MP3.com | Music technology company Supertracks, Digital Rights company Preview Systems, Liquid Audio, downloadable music and custom CD retailer musicmaker.com, online entertainment company Launch Media and downloadable music directory Listen.com. Merchandise retailer ArtistDirect and Music portal Entertainment Blvd (vidnet)
A nonexclusive deal with Online Entertainment in the US will see music events from EMI artists being broadcast live over the Internet. In return EMI have stakes in On-Line and its parent company, GlobalNet Systems. |
| BMG | Launched Digital Download service in October. Settled with MP3.com. Partnership with Napster. | BMG Entertainment maintains a stake in download site Riffage.com, latin music portal. Eritomo.com, ArtistDirect.com. Listen.com. Jointly owns (with with Seagram Co.’s Universal Music) GetMusic.com web retail site. Investor in Musicbank through its VC arm Bertelsmann Ventures. |
| Sony | First of the majors to launch a download service – quietly began selling about 50 songs through its own online music store in July 2000. Announced a joint venture subscription service with Universal in November. Developing its own music storage service unsurface.com. Settled with MP3.com | Sony Corp. and its music division maintain stakes in Platform.net, Launch Media, OnRadio, Talk City, Entertainment Blvd (vidnet) ArtistDirect, Yupi Internet and digital TV service Interactive Broadcasting Communication. Unsurface.com |
| Universal | Launched Bluematter download initiative in August (announced for UK in September). Launched music video broadband initiative. Beta testing a subscription service with Farmclub and www.com . Won an infringement case against MP3.com. | Latin Music Portal Eritmo. Search directory Listen.com. ArtistDirect, Musicbank. Founded Farmclub.com which will provide the subscribers for the subscription trial. |
| Warner | Announced it will begin a limited download trial in November. Settled with MP3.com. | Through AOL Warners are involved with Webcast portal Shoutcast, and Nullsoft which creates the MP3 player Winamp and also the filesharing application Aimster. Also Listen.com, Artistdirect, Musicbank |
Tags: bmg, EMI, equity, majors, record label, share, Sony, stake, universal, Warner
December 21st, 2009 at 11:46 am
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December 21st, 2009 at 12:57 pm
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