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Digital Media Top Stories
CMU Review Of The Year 2009: The media and the internet
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 21 December 2009
CMU’s Andy Malt and Chris Cooke look back at a year of digital music innovations and developments, and at the big stories and trends in the media industry.
1. THE PIRATE BAY
Oh The Pirate Bay, how ye entertain us so. After years of amusing those of us who pay extra attention to the world of file-sharing – with their contentious press statements, constant evading of the piracy police and grand plans to buy their own country (well, Sealand) to avoid litigation – the Bay entered the mainstream consciousness this year as the three men behind it, and their financial backer, faced both civil and criminal copyright infringement charges in the Swedish courts. They were initially bullish about their defence, especially when the prosecution dropped half its charges. But their legal arguments were weak, and they promptly lost the case. Mega-damages and prison sentences were ordered.
Not that they paid the damages or served the prison time. Claims of judicial bias and various appeals were launched. Defendant and Bay PR man Peter Sunde resigned. Then, in another court case in the Netherlands, the Bay’s lawyers denied any of the four defendants had ever actually owned the infamous BitTorrent tracker and search service anyway. For a while it looked like the Bay would be bought by a company called GGF, who were going to turn it all legit. It was a bold plan that never quite happened and nearly caused GGF to go broke. The Bay did turn off its BitTorrent tracker in the latter part of the year, though for technical rather than legal reasons. Despite everything, in a year in which illegal file-sharing of all kinds continued to grow, The Pirate Bay still operates and dominates.
2. YOUTUBE V PRS ETC
But what about the legit online content providers? Well, as 2009 started one of the biggest, YouTube, was busy blocking access to content owned by Warner Music, having failed to negotiate a new licensing deal with the major. Then, in March, the Google-owned video platform cut UK access to all “premium music content” after failing to reach a new deal with publishing rights collecting society PRS (or PRS For Music, as it renamed itself this year). A similar squabble followed with PRS’s German counterparts GEMA.
The issue? YouTube thought the labels and collecting societies were overcharging for their content. The music bodies thought they were being underpaid, and demanded a bigger share of the multi-billion dollar profits Google were making. Both sides were right and both sides were wrong. Record companies and music publishers always overvalue their content, and fail to see that charging less money now might result in more streams and downloads later, resulting in more cash overall. However, Google and their like undervalue content, while their business models, based around providing low-cost net services and selling bargain basement advertising, can’t really support it. Still, agreements were made between Google, Warner and PRS, so for now music videos are streaming on YouTube (outside of Germany that is).
3. SPOTIFY
Although music videos disappeared from YouTube, 2009 was still the year of the streaming music service. And one in particular dominated. Spotify only publicly launched in October last year, but by January it had already started a mini revolution in digital music. After years of being told that what we needed was browser-based, Flash-powered music players with all kinds of features, it turned out what we really wanted was a simple standalone program that was quick and easy to use. Who’d have thought?
The other major attraction of Spotify was the size of its catalogue, aided by the fact that they launched with all four majors and indie digital rights body Merlin already on board. Much of this year has been taken up with debates over whether or not the company can actually make enough money to survive and if they’re paying artists properly, but the catalogue continues to grow, the player remains popular and mobile apps for premium account holders have upped subscriptions income. One day the venture capital funding all this will run out. Let’s hope together the record industry and Team Spot can ensure their business is viable before that day.
4. MYSPACE MUSIC
Talking of streaming music, this year also saw the roll out of MySpace Music, the social networking giant’s expanded music platform, another streaming music service. When the new service launched in the US last year it was instantly hit with all kinds of criticism. A major sticking point was that it had gone live without the aforementioned Merlin on board, meaning most indie label content, which was arguably what got MySpace where it is today, was not available on the site. Negotiations continued this year, but still no deal had been done when the service arrived in Australia in October.
However, by the time it all kicked off in the UK this month, Merlin were in the mix, having been given sufficient benefits to justify joining the MySpace Music party. The service still came in for some criticism though. That said, CMU Daily’s Business Editor Chris Cooke noted that it was “not as shit as you might expect”. Though whether that’s enough for MySpace Music to both succeed, and save the flagging social network to which it is attached, time will tell. I’m guessing not.
5. GATELY, MOIR & TWITTER CAMPAIGNS
MySpace may be floundering, but 2009 was definitely the year social networking came of age and it was all down to a service so simple that it’s nearly impossible to explain – Twitter. Now social networking really did make us socially network with friends and like-minded individuals. Twitter linked together Facebook, YouTube and the blogosphere, and empowered the people who used and generated them. The first real proof of this power was seen when a certain boy band star died and a Daily Mail journalist declared “there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death”.
Columnist Jan Moir called Gately’s lifestyle into question and, seemingly, suggested that it was his homosexuality that ultimately caused his death. Outrage spread across Twitter within hours, blog commentaries followed, a Facebook group explained how best to complain, and within days the Press Complaints Commission had received over 25,000 complaints – more than they’d had in the whole of the previous five years. Moir was forced to apologise, though also found column space to portray herself as a victim of the newly empowered Twitterati. Though, ironically, given the PCC can only act if a family member complains, it was actually the one complaint that arrived last week, from Gately’s widower Andrew Coyles, that potentially had real power.
6. SUBO
Social networking doesn’t just generate complaints, however. It can also turn a contestant on a British talent show into an overnight global superstar. It may have been Simon Cowell’s TV adventures that brought her to our attention, but it was the uncoordinated internet that caused this year’s biggest pop phenomenon – the rise and rise of Susan Boyle. Thanks to YouTube, Twitter, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, the fact Boyle could deliver a belting tune, despite lacking the pop star physique, was world news overnight. Cowell, not exactly the most net savvy of men, was still able to hear the ‘kerr-ching’ as the world flocked to the YouTube video of this Scottish spinster’s ‘Les Mis’ warblings.
In the end, she lost the final ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ viewers vote, and started to lose her mind under the tabloid glare. Still, combine that momentum, Simon Cowell and a decently produced covers album and the world is your oyster. Within three weeks of releasing debut album, ‘I Dreamed A Dream’, Boyle had sold over six million copies worldwide, over a million of them in the UK, smashing all kinds of records along the way. Even Cowell surely couldn’t have predicted just how big a goldmine his ‘BGT’ franchise could become thanks to the power of social networking. Though, of course, the social networkers turned against him when it came to his other TV show – and so the ‘stop X-Factor getting to number one’ campaign began – but presumably Cowell’s interest in social media next year won’t be in stopping future ‘anti-X’ projects, but in trying to repeat the SuBo phenomenon for a second time.
7. OBSERVER MUSIC NEVER
But what about the traditional media? It’s all very well talking up the bloody internet and all this social networking whatnot, but what about the good old fashioned music magazine? Well, it’s not good news, people. With only a couple of exceptions, all music magazines lost readers this year, in print at least. One industry favourite – the Observer Music Monthly – was closed down completely, though more because of the crisis in the newspaper industry than anything else, more of which in a minute.
Conor McNicholas may have surrendered the NME editorship this year (so that both rock weeklies – NME and Kerrang! – now have ladies in charge, which is nice), but his strategy of brand extension will have to stay on the agenda of any music magazine wanting to survive the next decade. Web-TV services, radio stations, club nights, tours, books, you name it, diversification is the name of the game. We’ve all known that for a while, of course, though I’m still not sure anyone has cracked how to ensure there’s consistent editorial identity across all the spin offs. Conor got close, but, frankly, we could all do better.
8. DAB DISAGREEMENTS
Radio ratings remain high in the UK, even if the commercial radio sector has been struggling to sell enough advertising to make ends meet. Still, with the aforementioned Spotify competing for both listeners and advertisers, the radio sector (whose internet adventures outside the BBC have been pretty mediocre) should probably have a serious rethink to ensure future survival. With back-to-back streams and music-on-demand all over the net, radio could do worse than refocus on good presenters, quality specialist shows and close knit listener communities.
In 2009, the radio industry focused more on battling to get rid of industry regulation from OfCom, and agonising over what to do about digital audio broadcasting, the flagging digital radio network into which the radio industry has pumped millions. Still theoretically the most efficient way to broadcast in the digital age, the BBC is still backing DAB, even though many commercial digital-only stations have been closed and sales of DAB receivers, while up, are still slow. The commercial sector is still split over what to do about DAB, so much so its trade body, RadioCentre, has lost two of its smaller but significant members, who fear big boy Global Radio’s thoughts on the issue are getting too much attention. These are squabbles set to continue, distracting radio types from the real challenges at hand.
9. EVERYONE HATES THE BBC
God, the bloody BBC, eh? Wasting all our money with their overpaid execs and money-guzzling star turns. Still falling over themselves to apologise over last year’s Sachsgate scandal, and with both Labour and the Conservatives calling for radical cuts, and maybe the shift of some of their licence fee money to other broadcasters, the BBC has had a difficult year.
It’s a tricky one. We all love to diss the Beeb, despite most of us probably thinking they make most of the better British telly programmes, operate the superior radio stations, and provide one of the best websites on the internet. One hopes that, especially if the Tories win next year’s General Election, BBC top brass can get Corporation spending back into the real world, but without letting the politicians and commercial media moguls cut its services into pieces.
10. IT’S END OF THE MEDIA AS WE KNOW IT, DO YOU FEEL FINE?
Of course, one of the reasons the commercial media – the big TV operators and especially the newspaper owners (who increasingly compete with the Beeb in the internet age) – have been so vocal in criticising the BBC this year, is because they’re all fucked. This was the year when the big media firms all began to properly admit they were in a real mess. The internet meant they were probably talking to more people than ever before, but no one had managed to turn that fact into substantial sums of money.
All of which means that the media industry, who have been reporting on the plight of the music business for years now, have suddenly realised they are facing exactly the same issues as their record company counterparts. The public is more eager to access music and media than ever before, and it’s easier and cheaper to provide it. But the internet has conditioned everyone to want all of this for free – either because that’s how content owners have been providing it so far, or because others have been distributing it illegally. This is all well and good, but with a limited amount of advertising money available, and content still costing a sizable sum to make, how can this all add up?
The future is surely subscriptions. Whether that be Spotify’s premium service, or Rupert Murdoch’s planned pay-to-read Times website, or Virgin Media’s add-premium-content-to-your-ISP-bill proposals, somewhere out there there’s a model that will work. If you find it on your travels, do dust it off, it’ll be worth a fortune. Will we find that dream business model in 2010? Possibly, though it’ll take a good few years to hone, I suspect. But, as 2010 approaches, I’m more optimistic than ever that – while the big music and media firms may, in some ways, be fucked for now – the future for all of this looks rather rosey. This, people, is the big period of flux. It’s risky, but it’s fun. And it’s certainly great to write about. Hopefully you like reading about it too. So keep it CMU for another year, and let’s see how it all turns out together, shall we?
