17.05
Bredonborough.
Last Saturday’s Weekend FT had headlines on Lloyd’s & Warren Buffet. This weekend’s Money section has further news on the same subject.
But in today’s FT the interesting news are comments by Alain Levy of EMI
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/10255
CDs are dead, says EMI’s Levy p2pnet.net
EMI Music boss Alain Levy says CDs are dead and soon, music companies won’t be able to sell them without ’value-added’ material. He was talking to a London Business School audience. Some 60% of consumers put CDs into PCs to transfer the contents to digital music players, he declared, and, "By the beginning of next year, none of our content will come without any additional material," he said, according to MarketWatch
On the EMI site there is this…
EMI has been at the cutting edge of the rapidly growing digital music marketplace since it released the world’s first ever album to be offered as a digital download in 1999. In 2005, the album ‘X&Y’ by EMI band Coldplay was the world’s biggest selling digital album. In the company’s last fiscal year, digital revenues more than doubled to reach £112 million. EMI has signed agreements with hundreds of digital partners to distribute its music across the globe. It continues to facilitate the development of a growing range of new digital business models to enable fans to experience and purchase its artists’ output through a number of different platforms including, most recently, legal peer-to-peer agreements with QTrax, Mashboxx and GNAB, and a deal to offer advertising-supported videos on mobile phones in the US and UK through Rhythm NewMedia.
What I find particularly interesting about this statement is that it appears to contradict what David Singleton & I were told by a formal representative of EMI, when he visited us at DGM in 2003, to discuss re-licensing the KC catalogue. We were told that downloads aren’t important. Which was good for us, because DGM weren’t about to grant download rights at 6c per track when EMI received 66c a track & the audient paid 99c a track. Download rights were, however, a compulsory part of re-licensing to EMI. Strange that - why would an unimportant item be a necessary part of a deal, particularly on such an abysmal rate?
The negotiations collapsed. This didn’t prevent EMI downloading parts of the catalogue anyway, even after the end of their license period (this dispute recently settled following the intervention of an EMI Power Possessor, overruling the peregrinations of the legal department).
To suggest, in the current world of the music business, that downloads aren’t important is as true as suggesting in 1976 that copyright assignment was necessary to collect royalties
Perhaps the music industry continues to move forward on the same spot?
17.42 A day of arriving back & continuing to organize World HQ.
"Small additional increments are transformative."
