Music Ally

It looks like Virgin Media may struggle to launch the unlimited MP3 downloads tier of its upcoming MusicFish service, judging by comments made by labels during a panel session at MidemNet today.

Stephan Bryan from Warner Music Group outlined his label’s objections to unlimited download services, saying they don’t “address the broad consumer base that we need to go after” and that such offers “may be appealing to voracious music consumers”, thus cannibalising sales of recorded music to the keenest music buyers.

Meanwhile, Michael Paull from Sony Music Entertainment said the industry should focus on “solving what the consumer needs, rather than come up with a model they’re not asking for”.

Even Simon Wheeler of Beggars Group – who thinks that more unlimited download offerings will launch in the future – described “a huge amount of concerns around getting to an unlimited model”, particularly for indie labels like Beggars, who rely on their keenest customers to a greater extent.

“They’re pretty turned onto technology: they are going to be some of the first ones to buy into these services,” he said. “So you take all our £500 to £1,000-a-year customers and turn them into £100-a-year customers.” Wheeler suggested that the industry needs a controlled trial of unlimited downloads to get more data on customer behaviour.

Beggars Group has announced a partnership with Outdustry for a push into China, including a dedicated website for Mandarin speakers.

The Beggars catalogue will be made available digitally through wa3.cn for online subscription and mobile distribution, while physical releases will go out through local labels Jingwen and Hi-Note. Beggars artist British Sea Power will be playing Hong Kong, Taiwan and Beijing as part of the expansion this October.

“We’ve witnessed there’s a vibrant music scene within China and awareness of Western music is developing fast, so it’ll be a challenging market for us to work in,” says Beggars Group’s Simon Wheeler. It’s a good time to be looking at China, since the government there has just announced plans to crack down on online music piracy, including search engines providing links to illegal downloads.

Beggars Group has launched an iPhone game based on XL/Merok artist Titus Andronicus, to promote the band’s debut album The Airing of Grievances. The game is free to download, and has just gone live on the App Store.

It’s a nifty musical version of Tetris, with instruments falling from the top of the screen into a tourvan, and you having to slide them into place using the iPhone’s touchscreen. The game features two tracks from the album, and has a global high-score table too.

It’s one of the first examples of a purely promotional iPhone game based around music, although fellow free game Tap Tap Revenge has been offering tracks by different artists (Katy Perry, Kaiser Chiefs etc) for download. Meanwhile, Polydor launched an interactive (but non-game) Snow Patrol iPhone app last year, around the same time that Sony BMG did a similar thing for Pink.

You can get the Titus Andronicus game by clicking here (the link opens up iTunes).

The third and final video from our recent Resonancia Colombia conference in Bogota features Simon Wheeler from Beggars Group, talking about the company’s digital strategy past, present and future. Enjoy!