Music Ally

In the seventh part of our series looking back at the Decade of Digital (read part one on 2000, part two on 2001, part three on 2002, part four on 2003, part five on 2004 and part six on 2005 published last week) we examine 2006.

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 take a look back at the year 2006, as we reported it at the time.

12 Jan 2006

http://www.musically.com/cgi-bin/displayPDF.cgi?pdf=060112

YouTube: In issue 133 (12 Jan 2006) we hinted at the rapidly-growing renown of video sharing site YouTube. Then in last week’s e-mail Bulletin, MusicAlly reported that YouTube has announced a deal with Matador Records – indicating that the indie label world is ready to start promoting bands via the user-generated content on which YouTube thrives. Yet, as we’ve discovered, YouTube is also a hotbed of unauthorised material uploaded without the rightsholders’ consent.

9 Feb 2006

http://www.musically.com/cgi-bin/displayPDF.cgi?pdf=060209

At the end of January, the Walt Disney Company announced that it plans to pay USD $7.4 billion in stock to acquire Pixar – the maker of computer-animated films such as “Toy Story” and “Monsters, Inc”. The Disney / Pixar alliance received little coverage in the music press, indicating that at most the music industry sees it as just another movie deal. But given the players involved – particularly one Steve Jobs, the CEO of both Pixar and Apple Computer – MusicAlly is certain that the Pixar purchase is worthy of close scrutiny.

Copy protection came up for discussion last week in the hallowed halls of British government as the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group (APIG – see issue 128, 17 November 2005) held an oral evidence session as part of its inquiry into digital rights management (DRM).

20 Feb 2006

http://www.musically.com/cgi-bin/displayPDF.cgi?pdf=060420/MusicAlly_060420.pdf

A trial for purchasing music tracks via DAB (digital audio broadcasting) radio on mobile phones is finally set to go ahead this June, after we initially profiled the venture last July (issue 119, 14 July 2005).

4 May 2006

http://www.musically.com/cgi-bin/displayPDF.cgi?pdf=060504/MusicAlly_060504.pdf

MusicAlly has been speculating for some time now about the state of health of the US digital distribution solutions outfit Loudeye. But at last the company has found its own digital solution in the guise of the entertainment information services provider Muze Inc. Contrary to some reports, Muze hasn’t exactly bought Loudeye. It has instead acquired certain assets from Loudeye for USD $11m in cash.

18 May 2006

http://www.musically.com/cgi-bin/displayPDF.cgi?pdf=060518/MusicAlly_060518.pdf

UK mobile operator 3 announced that its 3.5 million customers had paid for one million full tracks or videos over its network in April alone. We checked with 3 and they do indeed mean paid for – as opposed to promotional – and they don’t mean clips or ringtones; however they do include paid for streams in the million figure. Still, it’s a minor semantic quibble over what should still be applauded as a fairly major success. According to 3’s own figures, 705,000 of the million were audio only downloads meaning that full track downloads have now significantly overtaken video.

27 July 2006

http://www.musically.com/cgi-bin/displayPDF.cgi?pdf=060727/MusicAlly_060727.pdf

Sharman Networks, owner of former filesharing pariah Kazaa, has settled its legal dispute with the entertainment industry and plans to relaunch as a legitimate service.

French copyright law is set for an update as the nation considers its implementation of the European copyright directive. As it stands the text rejects any notion of a socalled “licence globale” – a global licensing scheme to legalise filesharing – but remains vague on the equally thorny issue of interoperability. Apple earlier threatened to shut down its French iTunes store if the French government went ahead with plans to force open competing digital rights management (DRM) systems. Instead the text currently points to a newly-created regulatory body which will investigate the use of DRM.

Microsoft has confirmed it is to launch its first own-brand portable digital media device, named Zune. Described by Microsoft as a “family of hardware and software products”, Zune is, like the XBox games console, one of the few Microsoft creations to be sold directly as opposed to via third party brands. (Indeed reports suggest that the Zune project was internally nicknamed “XPod” by some Microsoft staffers.)

10 August 2006

http://www.musically.com/cgi-bin/displayPDF.cgi?pdf=060810/MusicAlly_060810.pdf

Nokia’s announcement that it is to buy US digital music service provider Loudeye / OD2 signals a serious move to take on Apple in the digital music domain.

A group of record companies including Sony BMG, Warner and Universal has launched a US copyright infringement lawsuit against the developers of Limewire, a filesharing application that uses the Gnutella peer to peer network

7 Sept  2006

http://www.musically.com/cgi-bin/displayPDF.cgi?pdf=060907/MusicAlly_060907.pdf

Advertising-supported music subscription service SpiralFrog came from nowhere last week to take the mainstream media by storm

When SpiralFrog announced a deal with Universal Music for recordings in the US and Canada, what was previously an unknown company became one of the leading players in the developing sponsored digital music market. Yesterday the company followed up with the further announcement of a deal with EMI Music Publishing, and rumour has circulated that a UK launch will follow next spring. So who and what exactly is SpiralFrog and can we really believe press reports that the service will become a credible rival to iTunes?

19 October 2006

http://www.musically.com/cgi-bin/displayPDF.cgi?pdf=061019/MusicAlly_061019.pdf

Last week YouTube sold for USD $1.65 billion in Google stock, the value of which rose immediately. Shortly before, the major labels negotiated their own shares in the videosharing site. Now Universal is suing YouTube’s rivals.

Browse past reports from across the decade

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

Tags: 2008, Digital music history, digital music timeline

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 27th, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under Digital music history. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.