Music Ally

MP3tunes boss Michael Robertson is stirring again, this time digging into Apple’s likely strategy for its iTunes Store in a guest post for tech blog TechCrunch.

“Leveraging their ubiquitous iTunes software Apple plans to upgrade their users almost overnight to a cloud music service in an ambitious move to beat Amazon and others to a cloud music service,” he writes, saying that the strategy is also designed to “sidestep new licenses from the major labels”.

He predicts that recently-acquired Lala will be crucial to this strategy, NOT because of its 10-cent song streaming rental model, but for its music locker technology. “An upcoming major revision of iTunes will copy each user’s catalog to the net making it available from any browser or net connected ipod/touch/tablet.”

What, you might think, does this mean for existing music locker companies like, well, MP3tunes?

Streaming music service Pandora has secured a new round of funding to continue its growth, with reports suggesting the amount may be as much as $35 million.

Greylock Ventures led the round, and its partner David Size is joining Pandora’s board. The news comes just days after the announcement of new royalty rates for Pandora and other online radio firms, which Pandora founder Tim Westergren hailed as finally providing the company with a viable future.

And yet… MP3.com founder Michael Robertson has ripped into the new rates in a post on his blog, claiming that the per-song fee element means most webcasters will be paying between 40% and 100% of their revenues. “Net radio is going to die a slow death in the United States,” he writes, singling out Pandora as one company that still won’t be able to make the numbers add up.

“Pandora estimates they will do 1 billion hours of streaming in 2009 which requires $17 million in royalties. They estimate they will do $40 million in revenue which equates a payment to the major labels of 42.5% of their total revenues. No business can operate with such an enormous financial obligation.”

MP3tunes founder Michael Robertson says Apple won’t retain its dominant position in the digital music market over the next decade, but also predicts that this period will see the “complete decline and collapse” of recorded music sales full stop.

He made the comments during this morning’s keynote debate at MidemNet in Cannes, although he was appearing via Kyte video-link due to having to be in court this morning fighting the latest lawsuit from EMI.

“It won’t be an Apple-dominated world in the next ten years – other companies will catch up,” he said. “When I started MP3.com, people thought I was crazy, because at the time, RealAudio was the deal with 85% market share. It was hard for anyone to imagine a different world. That’s where we are today with Apple.”

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We’re here for the opening session at MidemNet, a debate between Topspin’s Ian Rogers and former EMI chairman Eric Nicoli. Rogers is stepping in to replace Michael Robertson of MP3tunes, who pulled out this week. He will apparently be joining the debate via Kyte around 15 minutes in, though.

Moderator Ted Cohen kicks off saying that recommendation is a key part of the music industry’s future – “helping curate the experience, and I really believe that without this curation, it’s just not a good experience”.

However, he says there are still problems, including the recent lawsuits against search engines – the Playlist and SeeqPods of the world. “These are sea-change technologies, we have to get past litigation and look at monetisation,” says Cohen, who goes on to say mainstream ISPs need to come to the table, and mobile music needs to shape up.

“We need more innovation, we need more experimentation, and we need to communicate,” says Cohen, setting up the debate. “We need sustainable agreements, it can’t be about large advances any more. We need the labels and the services and the technologies talking to each other.”

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Yesterday’s rumours were true, it seems. MP3tunes founder Michael Robertson won’t be taking part in the scheduled keynote debate this morning at MidemNet against former EMI chairman Eric Nicoli.

The news was confirmed by Topspin CEO Ian Rogers here – he’s been asked to take Robertson’s place in the debate: “Michael Robertson couldn’t make the opening debate at MidemNet tomorrow morning so they’ve asked me to step up…”

The debate had been set up as a punchy way to start the MidemNet conference, so it may not be as adversarial now. It’s unclear whether Robertson’s decision to pull out is due to the latest developments in EMI’s litigation against MP3tunes, or other reasons.

Does anyone launch a new music service in the days leading up to Christmas? Well, MP3tunes boss Michael Robertson does. He’s announced a new mobile music search engine called TuneRoom, which could be just as disruptive to the labels as his previous ventures. As he explains:

“Tuneroom is a music search engine with a twist – it is designed to send songs wirelessly to your mobile phone. You can either browse Tuneroom from your PC and locate files to send to your mobile phone or visit the Tuneroom directly on your mobile phone’s browser and select songs to load to your phone. In both cases songs you select are optimized for phone playback so they will load fast, yet sound good. Then they are sent to your mobile phone wirelessly so you can receive them as you travel around with no need to dock or cable your device.”

TuneRoom is a partner service (kinda) to MP3tunes’ recently-launched Load2Mobile feature, which makes it easier for users to transfer songs from their personal libraries to their mobile handsets. Robertson says more than 150,000 songs can currently be found via TuneRoom. Yes, there are plenty of tracks from major label artists on there…

Michael Robertson’s MP3tunes may be facing ongoing legal issues with the labels, but that hasn’t stopped the company from launching new features for its service. The most recent is something called Load2Mobile, which lets users ’send’ music files from MP3tunes – or any website – to their mobile phone. Check out the video demo above to see how it all works.