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CMU Review Of The Year 2010: The media and the internet

By | Published on Wednesday 22 December 2010

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. 6MUSIC
In February, The Times claimed that the BBC was planning to shut down one of its digital radio stations, BBC 6music. Many scoffed initially, but it turned out to be true. In fact, the closure was part of a package of cuts, which would include the Asian Network station, teen services Switch and Blast and 25% of the Beeb’s online operations, too.

A huge campaign to save 6 was launched, with protests held outside Broadcasting House. Thousands contributed to a public consultation on the cuts, and the BBC Trust eventually decided to block the proposals to shut down the station. However, many of the other cuts proposed by the BBC strategy review, including of non-core online services, were approved and the Trust said it “would consider a formal proposal for the closure of the Asian Network”.

2. CHRIS MOYLES
On 22 Sep, Chris Moyles turned up to work in a bad mood and had a good old moan to his workmates. Unfortunately, his workmates share the studio from which he broadcasts the Radio 1 Breakfast Show, which meant several million listeners were forced to listen to his 30 minute rant as well. It turned out Moyles hadn’t been paid for two months, due to an administrative error, and the presenter felt it wasn’t being sorted quickly enough. On one level his rant worked, the problem was resolved the next day.

But he was widely criticised for airing his payment issues in this way, especially when many in the UK – and elsewhere in the BBC – were facing much bigger issues than having to wait two months for sizeable payments from a lucrative freelance contract. Radio 1 insists it is still on good terms with Moyles, but others in the Beeb say the outburst will only add to the general feeling the presenter is increasingly out of touch with Radio 1’s target audience of young music fans, and should be replaced when his contract comes up for renewal in 2011.

There has been much speculation that Moyles, realising this, is already in talks with other broadcasters, in particular Capital FM and US satellite network Sirius XM, though all these rumours have been denied by all parties.

3. IS LESS MORE IN RADIO LAND?
While most coverage and commentary of the Digital Economy Act focused on copyright and three-strikes, it was actually an eclectic and wide-reaching bit of legislation that impacted on many areas of the digital, media and creative industries.

Another section of the DEA of interest to the music business was that dealing with radio, and in particular the relaxation of the rules that existed regarding just how local a local radio station should be. Not so local, the DEA concluded. The results are already plain to see as the big radio firms turn their networks of local stations into single quasi-national services, most likely coming out of London.

Global Radio, which had already rebranded many of its local stations as Heart, was able to reduce the amount of local programming broadcast by stations in that network. With its Gold brand, it went for just one national service in all localities and in the new year, it will rebrand a bunch of other local FMs as Capital, basically taking the London station national. And it’s not just Global doing it – The Guardian’s Smooth network became one station in England, while Bauer’s Kiss will do the same in 2011.

4. NEW LOOK NME
In April, Krissi Murison stamped her mark on the NME, having taken over from Conor McNicholas as editor in 2009.

As well as a new cover format, the new look brought with it a host of new features too. The changes were very popular amongst the music industry, but possibly less so with NME’s target demographic. Circulation figures had been falling for a number of years, and in August it was announced they had slumped even further, 17.3% in 2010, selling just 33,000 copies a week.

Elsewhere in the NME empire, and right in the middle of the Save 6music campaign, NME Radio was closed down, it having proven not to be commercially viable for the company behind it, DX Media. It became a presenter-free continuous music stream for a while, until NME publishers IPC persuaded another radio firm, Town & Country, to take it over in September.

5. PAYWALLS AND IPADS
The real challenge for the NME et al, of course, is that while print circulations fall, and online readerships boom, the former still brings in more revenue. So how to monetise online content? With Google et al taking a huge chunk of the internet advertising spend, newspaper and magazine publishers started to seriously consider going the subscription route online in 2010.

Rupert Murdoch is leading the way, of course, with a paywall going up around his Times website in July. Some in the publishing industry predict or wish Murdoch’s grand plan will fail, though many others secretly hope it won’t, simply so they can steal his approach and rescue their own flagging businesses. The Mirror and Telegraph are sure to start charging for some of their online content in 2011, and the magazine sector is sure to follow closely behind. In the music domain, in the US, Rolling Stone is already charging for access to its online archive.

One big innovation (of sorts) which gave some publishers hope this year was the arrival of Apple’s iPad in April. Might consumers unwilling to pay for content on traditional websites be persuaded to pay to read snazzy interactive magazines on the iPad? Murdoch and many of his competitors hope so.

6. VIACOM V YOUTUBE
The big media squabble in the courts this year was between the old media and the new, as a judge ruled on MTV owner Viacom’s long running litigation against YouTube. It was a copyright case. Viacom said that, in its early days, YouTube turned a blind eye to people uploading infringing content to their servers because it knew illegal videos brought in the most traffic.

YouTube said it had always operated a takedown system so that when it was made aware of copyright infringing content it was removed, a system that got the site protection under US copyright law, it noted. But Viacom said that in the early days YouTube paid only lip service to takedown notices and that the firm’s original (now replaced) takedown system put too much responsibility and cost on the rights owner, while YouTube earned between content upload and takedown.

But the judge sided with YouTube, saying he was happy the company had complied with the requirements of US copyright law. Viacom confirmed this month it would appeal. 

7. MYSPACE
Well, there were many who thought MySpace wouldn’t still be here by December 2010, but no, the once king of social networking is still hanging in there. Just.

But there have been plenty of stresses along the way. MySpace started the year in the bad books of many music fans for buying and then shutting down, with no warning, the music service Imeem. Not good for a company which was saying music was now at the core of its business. On the corporate side, CEO Owen Van Natta departed rather suddenly in February, resulting in plenty of executive tensions at the top of the company. Meanwhile Facebook continued to boom while MySpace’s traffic, user base and revenues slumped.

But then COO Mike Jones announced a radical revamp – to both brand and website – was upcoming. Later in the year a new logo arrived, the website got a fresh new look, and a partnership deal with former rivals Facebook was announced. Some were positive about the revamped site – especially the analytics it offers bands – though it’s still very slow and unreliable, and many feel it’s simply too little too late.

With owners News Corp recently admitting that the future of its poorly performing web company was under constant review, MySpace may have survived 2010, but surviving 2011 is not assured.

8. EMUSIC
The year started well for eMusic, with the subscription-based download service announcing in January that it had signed a deal with Warner Music. This meant the previously indie-label-only service now had two major record companies on board, some Sony content already being in its catalogue. Then Universal followed suit, leaving only EMI as eMusic hold outs. 

But there have been issues too. In November, three large indie labels, Beggars Group, Domino and Merge, pulled all of their content from the service. The indies were angry at eMusic’s agreement with Universal to introduce variable pricing (rather than a flat fee per track) in order to get the third major on board, accusing the download store of no longer being “the dedicated home for independent music”.

eMusic will be hoping that, with major label content now in the mix, it can reach new more mainstream consumers in 2011, as its muso-pleasing indie credentials disappear.

9. FILE-SHARING
On one level, the record industry had a good year in its long-term fight against file-sharing, and not just because of the aforementioned Digital Economy Act. Governments around the world – including in France, Spain, New Zealand, Italy and the US – made commitments of one kind or another to introduce new laws to make it easier to target online copyright infringers. Meanwhile in the US one of the longest running file-sharing lawsuits reached its conclusion, with long term enemy LimeWire being declared an infringer. The Lime Group subsequently stopped distributing its P2P software and then announced it was shutting its doors completely. Meanwhile in Sweden the founders and funder of The Pirate Bay lost their appeal against their 2009 copyright crime convictions.

So, a complete success then? Well, no. In the UK, attempts to convict the creator of the Oink file-sharing community for fraud failed. And while The Pirate Bay founders may have continued to lose lawsuits left, right and centre, the site also continued to operate with no major problems. Efforts by some rights holders (albeit mostly outside the music industry) to pursue good old fashion sue-the-fans litigation generated much bad press for said rights owners, and the wider content industries, not least because of the slapdash approach of one of the key law firms involved, ACS:Law. And, of course, file-sharing continued to rise, with the BPI reckoning that 75% of all tracks downloaded in the UK are obtained illegally. So the file-sharing war continues. Until everyone gets bored of it and finds new ways to make money from music, I suspect.

10. WHAT DIGITAL?
So, what was the big digital development of 2010 then? Hmm, good question. New services launched of course, mflow sticks most in my mind. And some old services disappeared, perhaps most notably Lala.com in May. And some revamped, We7 pushing its Pandora-style radio streams above its Spotify-style on-demand player for example. But Apple didn’t launch a streaming service, Google didn’t enter the digital music market and Spotify didn’t arrive Stateside, those being the big developments everyone wanted to see. Meaning The Beatles appearing on iTunes for the first time is probably the biggest development, and that was so boring.

Apple may well launch a streaming service in 2011, Google will almost certainly enter the digital music market, and Spotify will surely arrive in the US. But actually, of more interest as we move into the second decade of the digital music era are these questions: can anyone break Apple’s market dominance? Has the a la carte download business already peaked? Will streaming services ultimately replace a la carte stores? Can streaming services ever really add up once start-up capital runs out? And is blanket licensing via collecting societies needed before the digital domain can truly come of age? Questions we’ll consider, if not answer, here in your CMU Daily sometime between now and 2012. 



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