Music Ally

Chinese search giant Baidu has been found guilty of copyright infringement for providing unauthorised links to lyrics in its Baidu MP3 Lyrics search service. The case was brought by Chinese publisher MCSC which found 50 of its songs available on the service. According to local reports, Beijing People’s Court, Haidian district ordered that Baidu remove the links and pay 50,000 Yuan (GBP £4,750 or USD $7,300) plus 10,000 Yuan (£950) for litigation expenses.

While Baidu is expected to appeal, the case is nevertheless a notable step by the Chinese courts to assert the validity of copyright in the country. Baidu is China’s biggest search engine with over 60% market share; and also operates the largest online music service in the country, providing links to MP3 files hosted elsewhere on the net. Since the Baidu MP3 Search service links to music files on the web the company claims that it is not infringing copyright as it is not actually hosting the files. This claim was contested by the IFPI which fought a legal battle against Baidu but uiltimately lost in January this year when the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court ruled that linking to content does not constitute infringement.

The ruling against the IFPI appeared to be a huge blow against advocates of stronger intellectual property protection in China; but some observers have suggested that rather than proving that the Chinese courts are not sympathetic to copyright concerns, it instead suggests that the IFPI failed to bring a proper case.

This latest ruling in favour of a local music publisher certainly indicates that music rights owners in China can be heard; and it’s not the first time that Baidu has been slapped down by the courts. In 2005  Shanghai Busheng Music Culture Media Company, an affiliate of EMI, won an infringement case against Baidu’s MP3 Search feature. However, at the time press reports suggested that the MP3 Search feature may be disabled as a result, but Baidu continued regardless. It’s not yet clear whether this latest legal ruling will have any discernable effect on the search engine’s claim that linking to content is fine; or whether it marks a small but significant turning point in the way the Chinese courts are prepared to back rightsholders.

Sorry, not that Apple. Not the one led by Steve Jobs (is it any wonder that the names of all his products start with “I”?) Instead we mean Apple Corps – the music company founded by the Beatles. US innovation and business magazine FastCompany has rated Apple Corps as the second most innovative music company after Spotify, largely because of its involvement with The Beatles: Rock Band but also because of its Las Vegas collaboration with Cirque de Soleil entitled Love.

Sure, it’s true that at the end of last year the Beatles and EMI released 30,000 apple-shaped UB drives containing remastered audio of 14 albums. But it is more than surprising that a band whose material isn’t available even on iTunes, let alone Spotify, might get lauded as digital visionaries.

If you haven’t yet got the hang of what augmented reality might mean for the way we interact with entertainment, check out Amusity. It’s a prototype for a new user interface allowing users to explore songs and music videos, metadata like artist / album / genre plus other related information such as popularity.

Amusity is based around a table onto which images and menu items (resembling stars and galaxies floating around in space) are projected. Information is sent back to the computer not with a mouse but with physical objects such as a disc or a rectangle. By moving the various real-world items around, the digital universe is affected.

In fact it’s not a million miles away from the Reactable – winner of the first Music Ally Midem Labs showcase in 2008, and demonstrated here at Sonar in Barcelona.

Bad news for labels hoping to rake in buckets of cash from music videogames, as Viacom’s president and CEO Philippe Dauman has told financial analysts that he hopes to find ways of paying the music industry less for the use of tracks in Rock Band. According to Dauman, Viacom is “looking to reduce the cost structure associated with Rock Band, being selective in the music titles that we choose for Rock Band based on their cost. The music industry will assist with this category (more…)

The biggest entertainment launch of all time isn’t a Michael Jackson album, it’s not Harry Potter, it’s bloodthirsty videogame Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. This week, according to the games maker Activision, Modern Warfare 2 has garnered USD $550 million in five days, beating all first and five day entertainment box office, book and game records. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick says that “millions of consumers have chosen to play Modern Warfare 2…rather than engage in other forms of media.” Previously Grand Theft Auto IV was the biggest grossing game in its first five days, making USD $500 million; Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince made USD $394 million during its launch week. It should be remembered, of course, that a game like Modern Warfare 2 can cost GBP £44.99 to buy whereas other entertainment products like books, CDs and movie tickets rarely cost more than £15 tops.

New data from video analytics firm TubeMogul shows that Universal Music Group is still the most popular ”creator” on YouTube, racking up more than 8.5 billion total views. Sony Music Entertainment is second with 6.7 billion, followed by Hollywood Records (1.3 billion), EMI (1.2 billion) and WMG (1 billion). All in all, music creators account for 76% of the views of videos that appeared in YouTube’s Top 25 chart, showing the continued importance of music to Google’’s video-sharing site. And how much money did the labels make from these billions of views. Weellll…

We have to confess, the news that Spotify is to launch in China took us completely by surprise. However, it’s official. A Spotify spokesman told us: “we can confirm that we are looking forward to working alongside the TOM Group with the ultimate aim of making Spotify available to music fans across Greater China.”

As Spotify becomes more and more of a household name, stories about the company which are only half-true can spread like wildfire. Yet this time, it seems Spotify has been almost Apple-like in its ability to keep this under wraps; and the company is still being incredibly tight-lipped about its plans. Music Ally has spoken to a well-placed source in China who is similarly surprised about the news.

Spotify has become a huge success in several European markets, where users love suddenly having access to totally free streaming music on demand. But Chinese internet users have been used to this for years; and now with Google’s music service sanctioned by the labels in China it seems that free streams are now fully entrenched in the country. As this article points out - “Tencent, Sina, Baidu and three main telecom operators including China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom all have their own music online streaming portals already.”

In addition Chinese music fans demand Chinese music. Surely prioritising a US launch would have made more sense?  West was certainly the direction most people expected the company would travel, particularly after announcing yesterday the hiring of Faisal Galaria (previously international managing director of travel site Kayak.com and before that a European director at Skype) to set up a global business development team.  “I am passionate about building disruptive companies”, saysFaisal on the company blog. “Spotify is changing the way we all enjoy music and the old paradigms of music ownership. It’s going to be fun.”

It’s hard to question Spotify’s business acumen so far. Founder Daniel Ek claimed at a Music Ally panel at the Great Escape Festival this year that he’d spent just GBP £5,000 on marketing so far. Perhaps, then, with a little more marketing it’s possible to conquer China.

The key, for Spotify, has always been unlocking advertising revenue – particularly in China where the premium subscription model won’t fly. And on that basis the partner TOM is a good choice: the company runs a massively popular online entertainment portal, and also provides an online advertising platform in China.

We’ll keep you posted as more details come to light.

Australian “paid follower” service USocial.net has claimed that it was paid to collect 25,000 Twitter followers on behalf of Michael Jackson before the singer’’s death. The company charges the equivalent of GBP £0.06 (USD $0.09) per follower, and @michaeljackson has issued 3 posthumous tweets. Meanwhile Sony Pictures and Sony Music Entertainment are set to release a Michael Jackson movie in the USA on 30 October, complete with 3D sequences shot (more…)

Piper Jaffrey's mock up of the new Apple tablet

According to Piper Jaffrey senior analyst Gene Munster, an Asian component supplier has received orders from Apple for a touch-screen device (”Wrap”) that is larger than an iPod but smaller than a laptop. He believes the order will be fulfilled later this year. Munster has long prophesised about an imminent (more…)

MTV has announced plans for something called the Rock Band Network, which will launch later this year. It will allow any artist, signed or unsigned, to submit their songs to be made available to download and play within the Rock Band console game. Labels and artists will submit songs, which will then be converted for Rock Band by (more…)