Music Ally

We apologise in advance for what reading this story will do to your internal jukebox. Fans of Ultravox are trying to get the band’s ‘Vienna’ single to number one later this month in the UK via an online campaign.

The aim is to make amends for the fact that the song was kept off the top spot in 1981 by novelty song ‘Shaddap You Face’ by Joe Dolce. Predictably, then, the original recording of the latter tune is being released for the first time digitally to go head-to-head (again) with Ultravox.

It comes out on 16th March, and YES, there is a Facebook page, as well as a dedicated ‘Battle For Britain’ website to promote Dolce’s cause. Although given that his song has sold more than six million physical copies over the years, the plucky underdog stance may wear a bit thin.

Either this will be the next big digitally-fuelled chart battle, or both tracks will debut in the low eighties before sinking without trace. Place your bets now…

A study published by the University of Rennes makes the controversial claim that online piracy has actually risen by 3% since the new three-strikes law came into force there.

Or to be specific: the piracy rate of people who were illegally downloading before the new law is 3% higher now. We’re a bit puzzled about the details as reported by TorrentFreak though – it says pirates have shifted their activity to ’streaming services’ as well as online storage services like Rapidshare.

Pirate streaming services? Maybe they mean unlicensed sites, because if pirates were switching to licensed streaming services, that would surely be a positive thing? Usage of traditional P2P services did drop by 17.1% between September and December last year though.

What was that about only labels investing in music? Charlotte Church has turned to music investment fund Power Amp Music to raise £2 million to record and market her next album, due out in the Autumn.

Power Amp will take a 50% share of the gross revenue from Church’s recordings, publishing, merchandising and live performances for a ’set period’.

Church says the deal “provides me with a financial commitment equivalent to that of a major record company but with a much greater degree of control and ownership over my career”.

Her last album was released through Sony BMG, and although it went platinum, Church has spent the last couple of years focusing on a combination of TV work and motherhood rather than music.

Our first reaction to the news, though, is that £2 million seems like a lot of money – especially as one of the big points in yesterday’s IFPI report was that it takes a $1 million investment to break a big pop album in the US and UK. With that in mind, what’s Charlotte going to blow £2 million on around a single album?

Sparks flew in court yesterday in the dispute between Pink Floyd and their label EMI. The case focuses on how online royalties for the band’s back catalogue have been calculated, as well as the way albums have been sold ‘unbundled’ as individual tracks.

The band’s contract with EMI was last renegotiated in 1998-99, before digital sales took off, at a time when – in QC Robert Howe’s words – “It was unclear whether record companies would be selling direct to the consumer or through retailers”.

It’s the unbundling aspect that has irked the band most, seemingly. “It is a matter of fact that the defendant has been permitting individual tracks to be downloaded online and that therefore they have been allowing albums not to be sold in their original configuration,” said Howe, suggesting that this is against the terms of the band’s contract. A ruling is expected on Thursday.

It sounds like an obvious thing to say, right? Of course labels invest in music and the artists who make it: that’s the definition of a record label.

Except in recent months, there have been claims that this is changing – and particularly that major labels are unwilling to invest as much in as many artists, preferring to keep their powder dry for a bigger push behind a few select acts every year, while focusing more attention on making money from their back catalogues.

At last week’s Music 4.5 conference in London, several speakers mentioned the idea of an ‘investment gulf’ in the music industry, with UK Music boss Feargal Sharkey announcing that his organisation is taking steps to combat it by courting investment from external sources.

The IFPI has published a report today that aims to counter the idea that labels aren’t investing in artists though, claiming that labels of all sizes invest around $5 billion a year in music talent – 30% of their sales revenues. It goes on to point out that there are more than 4,000 artists on major label rosters today, and claims one in four artists on all labels were signed in the last 12 months.

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Rhino’s David Dorn – just appointed as SVP of global sales and digital – says he doesn’t see subscription music services as a threat to WMG’s catalogue division.

“My feeling is that there are a lot of consumers out there who are going to choose various paths. Some are going to spend money or take ownership of things. When they buy and take ownership of it, they’re really satisfied, like the handmade collectibles. They are also going to be people who say ownership is not for me. Our job to figure out how do we monetize these experiences.”

Dorn’s words could be seen as diverging from the opinions of WMG boss Edgar Bronfman, although it’s fair to say that Bronfman is a big supporter of subscriptions – it’s just free streaming that he’s none too keen on.

He also says sales of the initial batch of iTunes LPs was “very successful”, although he points out that a quirk in iTunes means they don’t always show ahead of the standard editions, which may be costing sales.

Research from UK organisation Consumer Focus claims they are. Specifically, it suggests that 40% of UK adults can’t name a single legal online music service, and of those who can, 85% only know iTunes and Amazon. Only 2% of respondents knew Spotify, while 7Digital and Last.fm both scored 1%.

“The music industry is shooting itself in the foot by not promoting legal online music services,” says international director Jill Johnstone. “If file sharing is causing the damage the music industry claims, why aren’t they putting more effort in to promoting the legal alternatives?”

BPI boss Geoff Taylor has pooh-poohed the research though. “It’s just not credible to suggest that people who are downloading illegally haven’t heard of iTunes, Amazon or other legal music services,” he says. “Our much larger, more recent and targeted online survey shows that awareness of legal music services among internet users is almost universal.”

The Consumer Focus study was released on the same day as a BPI-sponsored report from analyst firm Ovum, which focused on why the big UK ISPs should launch bundled digital music services.

Customers of Finnish ISP TeliaSonera will be able to get Spotify through their TVs this summer, as part of an exclusive  marketing deal signed between the two companies.

TeliaSonera will be Spotify’s exclusive retail and marketing partner in Finland for its Spotify Premium service, offering it to its customers on computers, mobile and TVs. The latter will be via Sonera’s new Sonera Home TV IPTV service, which launched today. Spotify will be part of it by summer, the company says.

“TeliaSonera is a key partner for Spotify in Scandinavia and together we’re helping increase the digital music market. Sonera’s strong market position will allow us to reach out to many more Finnish music fans than ever before,” says Spotify CEO Daniel Ek.

“We believe that right now new services that provide innovative features for TV and music will be one of the most in-demand additions,” adds Sonera’s VP of TV services Jussi Salminen.

Spotify has been clear in its view of TV as the third leg of its distribution strategy, alongside PC and mobile. The partnership comes hot on the heels of a BPI-commissioned study claiming that more ISPs should launch digital music services.

A new report from Ovum claims that if the six largest UK ISPs all launched bundled digital music services this year, they could be generating £103 million in direct revenues by 2013. The report was commissioned by Universal Music Group ‘on behalf of the BPI’.

That figure is apparently based on a ‘medium adoption scenario’ and would equate to 41% of the total retail value of the UK digital music market in 2009. Ovum has also published an ‘accelerated adoption scenario’ suggesting that bundled ISP digital music services could be worth £203 million by 2013.

The report also offers more carrots to ISPs who launch these services, claiming that an ISP with 3.5 million customers could generate indirect value of more than £20 million a year, if its bundled music service cut churn by 10%. The key words in that sentence being ‘could’ and ‘if’ – this is all speculative, and entirely dependent on the nature of such services.

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Consultant Gerd Leonhard can be a divisive figure in music industry circles – he’s been ruffling the industry’s feathers for years at MidemNet with his presentations on how media and music will develop in the future.

We know he has a number of fans as well as haters in the industry though. So, for the latter – and anyone interested in keeping up with Leonhard’s views – he’s just released his official iPhone and Android apps, which are both free.

“As promised, and in-line with my new “Mobile First” mantra, I have been busy (re)-creating and formating exclusive content that you can only get via the iPhone or Android apps, such as various new podcasts and audio-only versions of my presentations, audio/mp3 versions of select chapters of my books, previously unpublished pictures etc,” he explains.