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Business News Week In Five
The music business week in five – Friday 10 Dec 2010
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 10 December 2010
Well, hey there everybody, and how are you doing this morning? How did it get to be Friday so soon? How did we arrive at the point where this is officially the penultimate Week In Five of 2010 as a result of it being Christmas Eve in a fortnight’s time? Hmm, is it just me, or have the ConDem coalition taken a couple of hours out of each day as part of all these government cutbacks? It wouldn’t surprise me. Anyway, with so little time to spare, I’d better get on with this here Week In Five music business news review thing…
01: Barry Weiss kick started a load of gossiping in the US record industry. The boss of Sony Music’s RCA/Jive division in the US announced he was jumping ship to main rivals Universal Music next spring. Given he was one of the contenders to take over from Sony Music top man Rolf Schmidt-Holtz next year, many wondered if that meant he knew one of his rivals for that job, Rob Stringer and Marty Bandier, were a shoo-in. Some also asked exactly what Weiss will do at Universal and whether he’ll ultimately replace anyone there as part of new Universal CEO Lucian Grainge’s big plan. Some even speculated that the man Grainge is replacing, Doug Morris, rather than staying on as Universal’s Chairman, might be interested in the Sony CEO job. So, plenty of gossip to be had all round. CMU report | New York Times blog
02: LimeWire closed its doors. Or at least announced it would do so at the end of the month. The Lime company had previously complied with a court order to stop distributing its file-sharing software, but had still hoped to keep operating its legal download store and to launch a brand new legal music service. But with the majors preparing to sue for billions, it seemed unlikely they would ever licence any legit LimeWire set up. And last week the Lime company seemingly finally accepted that fact. CMU report | PC Mag report
03: Sky Songs also announced it was closing, just over a year after it opened, due to lack of customer uptake. Arguably Sky relied too much on its existing TV and ISP customers taking up the service, doing very little specific marketing for Sky Songs. Though while the free version of Spotify is available, some might ask why anyone would pay for basically the same service, even with the sweetener of five MP3s bundled in each month. CMU report | Guardian report
04: Irish ISP launched a digital service to complement its three-strikes campaign. Eircom announced the launch of its Music Hub which works rather like Sky’s about to be shut music service, except the streaming bit is free for their existing users. Eircom has opened up the new digital music service while instigating a three-strikes system to target file-sharers on their network, arguing that file-sharing is no longer excusable now they themselves offer free unlimited streaming music. They are the only ISP in Ireland currently operating three-strikes. CMU report | Irish Times report
05: Jammie Thomas’s lawyers pushed for zero damages. A jury recently ordered the famous American file-sharer to pay $1.5 million in damages to the record industry, despite a judge previously slashing an earlier jury-set seven figure damages sum to a more modest $54,000. Thomas’s lawyers argue that the record industry has failed to demonstrate what negative impact their client’s specific downloading of 24 songs had, over and above the $24 in sales they lost. Therefore, the legal men say, somewhat optimistically perhaps, damages should be set at zero. CMU report | Arts Technica
And that’s your lot. Remember to download the new Cage Against The Machine version of ‘4’33″‘ on Sunday (or pre-order it on iTunes now). And see you here for the final Week In Five of 2010 next Friday.
Chris Cooke
Business Editor, CMU
