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15 January 2012

European Commission wishes to broaden notice & takedown procedures

The European Commission (EC) adopted the Communication on e-commerce and other online services announced in the ‘Digital Agenda’ and ‘Single Market Act’ last Wednesday. According to the Communication, the EC wishes for a horizontal European framework for notice and action procedures, in view of the growing volume of statutory law and case law in the Member States. EC’s vision on the principal obstacles to develop e-commerce regarding illegal content, such as the existing fragmentation of notice & takedown systems and the conflicting jurisprudence in Member States. A staff working paper conducts an analysis of the factors hindering the development of e-commerce. To combat illegal content more effectively, the EC intends to adjust Directive 2000/31/EC regarding enforcement of intellectual property rights. The EC wishes to broaden the takedown by establishing a notice & action framework. For instance, the term ‘action’ is mentioned, which is broader than the current term ‘takedown’ of illegal content. Furthermore, this action includes, among others, ‘blocking’ of websites (footnote 137 of the staff working paper). This means the website is still online, but is not accessible for internet users. By adopting an initiative, such as this one, the EC hopes to establish a coherent framework for the Member States.

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06 January 2012

Digital music service Grooveshark sued by EMI

Grooveshark has been sued by the large record company EMI Group Ltd (Coldplay, Beatles), which accused the popular digital music service of paying no royalties since entering a licensing agreement to stream music nearly three years ago. The filing came less than a month after three other major record companiesVivendi SA’s UniversalMusic Group, Sony Corp and Warner Music Group filed a federal copyright lawsuit accusing Grooveshark of pirating thousands of songs. Grooveshark calls itself “the world’s largest on-demand and music discovery service,” with 30 million monthly active users, more than 15 million songs, and 14 billion streams a year.

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06 January 2012

Indie labels 12% of 2011 U.S. sales.

Overall U.S. music sales rose 6.9% in 2011, as album sales increased for the first time since 2004, according to Soundscan. Indies accounted for just 12.1% of U.S. music sales last year.

% Of U.S. Music Sales In 2011

Universal Music Group – 29.9%
Sony Corp. – 29.3%
Warmer Music Group – 19.1%
Indies 12.1%
EMI Group – 9.6%

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06 January 2012

Bandcamp proves direct-to fan’s potential

A promising insight from Bandcamp is proof that more and more fans are paying for music that they probably set out to get for free. A few months ago, Bandcamp began tracking the starting point of every sale that happens on the site and share these examples of free-to-paid conversions: “A $15 sale came in from the search “maimouna youssef the blooming hulkshare.” “A fan made a $12 purchase after clicking a link on music torrent tracker What.CD. Some more impressive Bandcamp stats: 22% of those sales happened because of Bandcamp, driven by things like tags, the home page, recommendations, and search. 40% of the time, fans pay more than the asking price for name-your-price albums. 53% of all purchases are made by fans located outside the U.S. The conclusion is that mainstream music sales will never return to their formal levels, but growing direct-to-fan sales offer real hope for the emerging musical middle class.

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04 January 2012

UK music downloads up, but album sales down

Digital music downloads rose by almost a quarter (24%) in the UK in 2011 to 26.6m albums, but it couldn’t prevent an overall decline in album sales. Compact Disc album sales racked up 86.2 million, which was down 13 per cent on 2010. Contrary to the albums market, individual song sales rose once again for the fourth consecutive year with 177.9 million copies shifted in 2011 compared with 86.6 million in 2007. The two trends continue to suggests that people prefer to cherry pick their favourite tracks on iTunes rather than splashing out on an entire album. Naturally, illegal downloads have been blamed for the decline, while popular, and free, music streaming services like Spotify have also taken a chunk from album sales.

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19 January 2012

YouTube and labels close to renewing licenses

YouTube is in talks with at least three of the four top record companies about renewing the video service’s music licenses. According to the sources, negotiations with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and EMI Music, appear to be going smoothly–and one of the labels, in fact, may have already wrapped up its deal. YouTube, acquired by Google in 2006, is one of the most popular music services on the Web. The relationship between Google and the record labels has at times been rocky. Nonetheless, the search company was able to overcome some tense negotiations and managed to launch Google Music, an online music store, with the cooperation of most major labels.

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