Music Ally

Polydor subsidiary Fascination Records released the official Britannia High soundtrack album today in the UK. For those of you who aren’t Brits (and for those of you who are but are mercifully unaware), the show is Blighty’s attempt to ‘do a High School Musical’, complete with songs written by the likes of Gary Barlow, Guy Chambers and Mark Owen.

Anyway, it’s the digital promotion stuff we’re interested in. On each of the four Saturdays leading up to today’s album release, a different digital single from the album was made available as a free download on the official Britannia High website, as well as through iTunes and Bebo.

Polydor parent Universal Music Group is also involved with the show’s website, with an online radio station presented by the two school DJs, and featuring music from various UMG artists. The news follows UMG’s involvement with Bebo on a separate project, online TV show The Secret World of Sam King.

If you’re not a heavy Bebo user, you might not be aware of The Secret World of Sam King. It’s the social network’s latest online TV drama, following in the soapsteps of KateModern. Except this one’s got a strong music tie-in - it’s shot in the Universal Music building, and features regular cameos from UMG artists.

The label tells us that 5.4 million people have now tuned into the show, which is averaging 100,000 viewers a day on Bebo, plus more on YouTube. And now the show is getting a bit more interactive.

How? As part of a storyline about shooting a video for A&M artist Nick Harrison, the show’s lead character Sam has invited viewers to become extras, via a blog post on Bebo. It’s due to be shot next Monday, and will feature in the show the next day. This is the first time online fans have been invited to actually take part in the show, apparently.

As part of a wide-ranging interview with Billboard, UMG chairman/CEO Doug Morris has been talking about the label’s possible divorce from YouTube at the end of this year. It’s been rumoured that UMG will set up its own D2C video site instead, to get higher CPM revenues.

“With YouTube, the quality isn’t great; it gets low [cost per thousand],” he says. “On the other hand, more professional [services] get a higher CPM. So the idea of us getting tied into a lower CPM isn’t a smart thing.” Online video revenues are apparently “far more” than $20 million for UMG already.

Morris also talks about UMG’s equity investments in music web startups, and the PR fallout from the RIAA’s file-sharing lawsuits. On the former: “No one’s going to build a build a business off our backs if I can help it without us being part of it. It’s just not fair… If these companies are successful, we’ll do well. It’s better than having a company like MTV, where we gave them our music for very little money and they built a $30 billion company or whatever it was for nothing.”

UMG has launched a new digital music store called Lost Tunes in the UK, which focuses on rare and exclusive tracks. Digital firm 7digital is running the store for UMG, and it currently offers a choice of 134 albums from artists like the Walker Brothers, Comsat Angels and Nine Below Zero. 500 more albums will apparently be (more…)

As part of Vivendi’s second-quarter financial results announcement, the company has revealed Universal Music Group’s performance. UMG generated revenues of just over 1 billion for the quarter, which is either a 5.3% decline (in real terms) or a 3% rise (if you take currency fluctuations into account). (more…)

The latest brand to give away music as part of a promotion is MasterCard. It’s launching a campaign called `Roots of Rock’, which offers its customers free downloads from the entire Universal Music Group catalogue. (more…)

Universal Music Group has agreed a licensing deal to make thousands of its music videos available through Last.fm, on-demand. UMG and its artists will get an undisclosed fee every time a video is streamed using the service, although as per our report last week, it remains to be seen if Last.fm is pulling in the necessary ad revenues to fund these licensing deals. “We want to offer a video library that rivals our unparalleled music catalogue, as we work towards Last.fm becoming the only place you need to go for all music-related content,” says co-founder Martin Stiksel.

Qtrax has finally signed a licensing deal with a major label, in the form of Universal Music Group. Don’t worry: UMG is actually quoted in the press release this time, so the deal does exist. At the same time, Qtrax has announced a deal with Universal Music Publishing Group. It’s not clear how soon UMG’s catalogue will be (more…)