Music Ally

Media-syncing firm DoubleTwist is planning a new release of its software next week, and to promote it the company has debuted a remake of Apple’s famous ”1984” TV commercial.

This new version replaces the soulless drones from the original with… soulless drones wearing iPod earphones, while a barely-veiled Steve Jobs functions as Big Brother, intoning that “no other choices shall distract from our glory”. We’re more interested in what the new software will do than the advert, but it’s certainly cheeky.

Digital distributor The Orchard is looking for a new CEO, after current boss Greg Scholl announced his resignation. He’ll quit on 1st November, and is promising to announce a new position in the coming weeks, which he’ll start on 2nd November.

The Orchard’s board is now kicking off a search for Scholl’s replacement, although intriguingly its interim CEO will be Danny Stein, who besides being a director of The Orchard is also boss of music service eMusic. Scholl’s resignation was announced alongside news that The Orchard is to cut 20% of its global workforce.

“Over the past two years, The Orchard has completed two major acquisitions and invested in technology efficiencies to make our global team more productive,” said Stein in a statement. “As a result, and also considering the digital music market grew less quickly than we expected it to grow during 2009, we have eliminated positions and implemented other cost saving measures.”

There’s been plenty of speculation in recent months that digital growth is seeing a worrying slowdown, but The Orchard is one of the first companies to (publicly at least) announce job losses as a result. “Reducing staff is always a difficult decision, but in this case, the responsible one, and it better positions The Orchard for future growth and profitability,” says Scholl.

YouTube and Warner Music Group have confirmed that the label is to end its nine-month boycott of the video site, but with a deal that alters the way it makes money from YouTube.

WMG will now sell advertising around its music videos, rather than relying on Google. The label will set its own prices and keep the majority of the revenue, giving YouTube a slice. To try and drive up the price of ads, WMG will apparently launch custom channels within YouTube that purely focus on its artists.

Or, as WMG describes it, “a feature-rich high-quality premium player and enhanced channels”. This may include links to artist websites, buy links and integrated chat, according to Billboard.

The question is what this means for Vevo, UMG’s planned premium video site that has already signed up Sony Music Entertainment. If WMG is running its own premium player within YouTube, will this be instead of joining Vevo? However, TechCrunch suggests WMG is still in talks to possibly join Vevo too.

As the debate around file-sharing and the UK government’s proposed anti-piracy legislation continues to swirl, business secretary Lord Mandelson has jumped back into the discussion, during a visit to the BRIT School in Croydon.

“Downloading somebody’s work without paying for it – whether it be music, film or computer games – is not a victimless act. It poses a genuine threat to our creative industries and to the livelihoods of talented, hard-working people striving to get a foothold in them. It’s essential that the voice of young artists is also heard,” he said.

“In the end this problem will be solved not simply by new laws but by new approaches to doing business. We believe that temporary account suspension as a last resort, in the most serious cases, is worth considering to allow these new business models to develop.”

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UK streaming music site we7 has launched its latest initiative, we7 Presents, which aims to spotlight unsigned artists. Five will be featured every two months, chosen by bods from NME, Music Week, the Guardian and Ditto Music. Presumably we7 have heard some of the sounds blasting out of the Music Ally office, and wisely decided to shun our cloth-eared expertise.

Anyway, the acts are being promoted via a dedicated playlist (embedded at the bottom of this post), with we7 promising that every play will result in a payment to the bands’ own PayPal accounts. The site – which now apparently has 2.5 million monthly visitors – will also give the artists homepage coverage, banner ads and inclusion in we7’s various social media activities.

“we7 has always supported new music and we believe that signed or unsigned, the best up and coming artists should get the exposure they deserve and should be paid for providing us with great music,” says CEO Steve Purdham.

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Well, you’d hardly expect the boss of the world’s most powerful music industry body to write a column titled ‘five reasons the music biz is doomed’, would you? Maybe after a few beers and a cry…

But yes, RIAA chairman and CEO Mitch Bainwol has penned a column for Hollywood site The Wrap to explain why things are looking up for recorded music. Some points are sensible enough – the recognition that recorded music revenues are about far more than CD sales, and indeed about far more than sales.

But this point clangs like a man-sized anvil: “So far in 2009, growth in digital album sales is again outpacing digital singles (17.5 percent vs. 11.7 percent). Digital music is still a maturing marketplace, and fans are becoming increasingly comfortable buying not just the latest single online, but the entire album. Throw in the recent iTunes LP initiative from Apple and the major record companies and the album’s unparalleled significance is taken to the next level.”

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The talks between Eminem’s music publisher Eight Mile Style and Apple over their pending court battle broke down yesterday, meaning the case will kick off as planned today. “The case did not settle today and we are expecting to start trial first thing tomorrow morning,” said Eight Mile Style lawyer Howard Hertz.

The lawsuit focuses on Apple’s sale of 93 Eminem tracks on iTunes, which were licensed from Aftermath Records, which Eight Mile Style claims didn’t have the right to approve. It seems the publisher isn’t just trying to get a share of the profits Apple and Aftermath made from sales of the tracks, but even a slice of Apple’’s iPod sales that were “attributed to the 93 songs”.

Could be a tough one to prove, that latter point. How many people bought an iPod specifically to play Eminem songs on?

Now this is strange. As someone who signed up for Comes With Music on launch day last year, I’ve been waiting to find out what will happen when my subscription lapses. I just received an email from Nokia telling me… it’s been extended by three months.

“As a big thank you, we have some great news. We’re going to give you more. We are giving you another 90 days of musical freedom at no cost at all: your membership, due to end on 15/10/2009 will be extended until 13/01/2010.”

Which is pretty generous, but does raise the thought that Nokia hasn’t quite locked down the terms for its proposed renewal subscriptions for the service. Earlier this month, Nokia’s EVP of services Niklas Savander told Music Ally that “we have an agreement with labels on the subscription model, for a renewal on a monthly basis”.

Presumably it’ll kick in by mid-January… The full text of the email follows. We’re assuming all the UK customers who signed up at launch are getting this email – if you have or haven’t, post a comment to let us know.

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Pleased with the many five-star ratings given to your artist’s latest video on YouTube? Maybe hold the champagne. YouTube itself has admitted that its ratings system isn’t quite working as planned…

“The overwhelming majority of videos on YouTube have a stellar five-star rating,” admits a post on the company’s blog. Why? Because people don’t bother to rate videos they don’t think are great, seemingly. “The ratings system is primarily being used as a seal of approval, not as an editorial indicator of what the community thinks about a video.”

The blog post goes on to wonder out loud whether to replace its system with a simple thumbs up/thumbs down model, or a Facebook / Last.fm style ”like” system. However, what would be interesting would be to compare YouTube’s stats with Amazon and iTunes, which both use similar five-star systems. Is this a problem with the five-star model itself, or a YouTube-specific issue?

Digital music store Amie Street has won plaudits for its innovative dynamic pricing for song downloads – they start cheap, and rise in price as more people buy them. News that Sony Music has agreed to add its catalogue to the store should be a big deal, then.

However, the catch is that Sony has opted out of the dynamic pricing model – choosing instead to sell its tracks on the store for $0.69, $0.99 and $1.29. Just like other digital music stores, in other words.

Amie Street co-founder Joshua Boltuch says the company hopes that once Sony is on the site, it will choose to experiment with dynamic pricing – even if it’s with individual artists or albums. But it’s notable that this is the second licensing deal for Sony that’s involved altering the model of the site it does business with – remember the controversy around eMusic earlier this year?

It seems Sony is keen to work with innovative download services, but on its terms. Whether that dilutes the things that made them innovative in the first place is another question.