Business News Week In Five

The music business week in five – Friday 23 Jul 2010

By | Published on Friday 23 July 2010

Well, it’s been a weird week this one, full of strange things and strange people. Still, I head to Edinburgh for the world’s biggest gathering of the weird at the end of the month, so at least I’ll be well acclimatised. Among all the weirdness, these things happened…

01: It transpired Ministry Of Sound were suing file-sharers. Or at least their lawyers have sent out legal letters to file-sharers they suspect of illegally accessing or distributing their content, and a spokesman said that any letter receiver who didn’t respond would be taken to court. This led to a short conversation on Twitter as to whether we should refer to such litigation as ‘sue-the-fans’ lawsuits, with some arguing naughty file-sharers shouldn’t be considered “fans”, because real fans wouldn’t steal.

But I don’t really agree with that argument. After all, ‘fandom’ is surely about your passion for something, not your willingness (or ability) to spend money on that thing. And anyway, file-sharers probably are spending money on the artists they ‘fan’, just not on their sound recordings. But I accept many file-sharers may be misguided ungrateful bastards. So let’s not fall out over this, people. How about moving forward we refer to this kind of litigation as sue-the-misguided-ungrateful-bastard-fans? It’s still short sighted to pursue that kind of lawsuit, mind. CMU reportGuardian report

02: PRS extended the consultation on their live royalties review. The songs collecting society are currently talking to all sorts of people about the way they charge when their members’ songs are performed at gigs and festivals. The deadline for submitting an opinion was originally 7 Sep, but I think someone pointed out most live music types are rather busy between now and then, this being the festival season and all. So PRS bosses announced they’d extend the consultation until 31 Oct. Glorious. CMU report

03: It was announced NME Radio would return. Well, technically speaking it never went anywhere, but the radio station spin off of the music mag has been playing back-to-back music since last month, when the company who used to run it – DX Media – dropped out of the venture and laid off all their presenters. NME publishers IPC announced this week it had done a new deal with radio firm Town & Country, so that NME Radio with presenters can return to Sky, the web and, eventually, DAB, in September. CMU report | Media Week report

04: Spotify said they’d still launch in the US this year, despite all that speculation that the American major labels won’t licence their freemium version. In an interview with the Telegraph, top man Daniel Ek said talks were ongoing regarding a US launch, and implied that getting a share of the American market was essential for the bigger Spotify plan to work long term. Meanwhile back in Europe Team, Spot announced they now have half a million premium subscribers. CMU report | Telegraph report

05. Amanda Palmer sold fifteen grand’s worth of stuff in three minutes, and possibly demonstrated that – for established niche artists – the DIY approach really can work. Now self-releasing, Palmer made a new EP of Radiohead covers available via her Bandcamp page, with various different versions available, from a simple digital EP to vinyl versions to bundles including all kinds of Palmer nonsense. According to the DIY platform, the singer has already sold $15,000 worth of stuff and they expect to sell out of all physical product over the weekend. Go Amanda. CMU report | Bandcamp blog

And that is it. Here’s to a weekend of normality, one hopes. Well, it could happen.

Chris Cooke
Business Editor, CMU Daily



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