Rock Music Report. The place for Rock and roll news.

Posts Tagged ‘ Digital Music ’

Apple Reaches Deal to Acquire Music Streaming Service Lala

by Daniel Kreps | December 7, 2009 | In Rock News, The Industry | No Comments

Apple, whose iTunes is already responsible for 70 percent of all digital music sales, has added to their stronghold on the digital front by inking a deal to acquire music streaming service Lala.com, the New York Times reports. Lala has become a favorite of music sites in the past year for its ability to embed a “cloud-based” stream of a song, then giving the user an option of either purchasing an unlimited stream for 10 cents or downloading it for between 79 cents and 89 cents. Lala also allows its users to copy and synch their music collection and access it via their Website and their “cloud-based” design.

The acquisition opens up a few possibilities for Apple. The service may have brought in Lala to explore the possibility of streaming songs on Websites via Lala’s embeddable “cloud” format as opposed to just linking users to the standalone iTunes music store. It also would allow iTunes users to access their entire music catalog between iPods, iPhones and other media without have to constantly shuttle music back and forth between mediums. Or the move simply could be Apple hitting the pause button on an enterprise they viewed as a potential competitor. Apple’s deal can also be seen as a response to MySpace Music’s recent acquisition of both Imeem and iLike.

According to TechCrunch, the deal may jeopardize Lala’s previous relationship with record labels, and Apple may nullify all the 10 cent unlimited streams users had previously purchased. As Rolling Stone previously reported, Lala reached a partnership with Google just over a month ago, so it’s unclear how the deal with Apple will affect that. The Lala Website doesn’t provide any additional information regarding Apple’s acquisition, as the site’s blog hasn’t been updated since early November and no press releases have been posted since October 2008.

Can Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine Rescue Sound? How Interscope Is Rethinking the Record Business

by Jayson Rodriguez | November 23, 2009 | In Rock News, The Industry | No Comments

Photo: Kambouris/WireImage

If it seems like Dr. Dre has spent more time promoting his signature Beats By Dre headphones than finishing up his long-awaited Detox, he has a good reason for it: according to the legendary West Coast producer and his label boss, Interscope, Geffen and A&M chairman Jimmy Iovine, they’re hard at work on a noble crusade — saving the music industry from digital sound.

“There’s two things happening at once, it’s very important that we fix digital sound,” Iovine tells Rolling Stone of the state of the record biz. “Digital sound is damaging music, it’s damaging the artists. It’s so degrading. We’re the first industry to ever downgrade the quality of our product. It’s crazy. You go from a master [recording] to a CD quality, which is somewhat downgrading in the first place. Then you go to a computer where these gigantic companies spend 50 cents on the sound [for each unit]. Then you rip it onto an MP3. It’s like taking the Beatles remasters and playing them through a portable television.”

The Death of High Fidelity: read more about the sound wars.

Sitting in a small make-shift greenroom inside a New York City retail space last week, Dre and Iovine chatted about the launch of Club Beats, an in-store technology hub created in partnership between Beats By Dre, Monster and Best Buy. Ever since the early 2000s, physical album sales have been on the decline. And digital sales haven’t exactly made the pie whole again for labels when it comes to the revenue that was once generated from selling CDs. So in the “360″ era, where music moguls are looking to partner with artists on a variety of things, from publishing to touring to merchandise, you can see why Iovine is eager to push Dr. Dre-endorsed headphones and laptops.

If technology companies aren’t going to invest much into developing better speakers for the computers they sell, who better to get into that market then music-industry execs? Iovine cites Robert Stigwood’s RSO Records as an example of a record label that operated more like a “music company,” where investments and operations ranged beyond releasing music and included everything from management deals to backing Broadway plays.

“It’s called a record company, but what it really is [though] is a music company,” Iovine explains. “And it should do whatever the people at that music company feels is the direction that they should go in. Where they feel emotion, where they feel passion. A music company should do whatever the person feels, that’s why the more entrepreneurial people that get into music and start pushing the boundaries of it, is what a music company should feel like.

“The health [of the overall industry] will automatically come,” he adds, as a result.

So far Beats By Dre seems like a stunning success story. (Although company sales numbers are not available.) In addition to the signature headphones (cross marketed in a number of music videos by Interscope artists), a laptop partnership with HP has been birthed and the Beats By Dre banner also has released a line of earbuds endorsed by Lady Gaga.

Next up, Black Eyed Peas’ Will.i.am will develop a DJ-based item through Beats By Dre, according to Iovine. Diddy and David Guetta are expected to get on board, too, with projects that will undoubtedly be showcased prominently at Club Beats.

To understand how important these ventures are now in an era where Jay-Z, Madonna, and Shakira are signing multimillion-dollar deals with a touring company and forgoing the record company route, just listen to the joke Iovine cracked during the preceding press conference, to little laughter.

“For those who are fans of Dr. Dre, these headphones weren’t coming out until they sounded perfect,” he tells the crowd. “Or else we would have had Detox five years ago.”

Dre, a notorious perfectionist, at this point in his career now has something new to be transfixed on in the studio besides mixing
records. “I just want people to hear the music the way it’s suppose to sound, the way we meant for them to hear it, ” he said of the audio equipment. “You sit in the studio all this time and make the music, tweak it, try to get it perfect. They should be able to hear it that way.”

Website Selling Beatles Catalog Shut Down After Court Ruling

by Daniel Kreps | November 20, 2009 | In Rock News | No Comments

Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty
A federal court has issued a preliminary injunction against the digital music vendor Bluebeat after the site offered up high-quality MP3s of the Beatles’ catalog without permission. According to the Los Angeles Times, the judge overseeing the case, which came after EMI Music and Apple Corps. issued a copyright infringement lawsuit against Bluebeat, said there was no distinct difference between the Beatles’ recordings and the “psychoacoustic simulations” that Bluebeat claims they added to the music that would have allowed them by a legal loophole to sell the Beatles catalog digitally.

Explore the Beatles’ full catalog in our album guide.

As Rolling Stone previously reported, Bluebeat was recently selling the newly remastered Beatles catalog for a mere 25 cents per track on its now-defunct Website, even though the owners of the Fab Four’s music have yet to agree to any digital deal. Bluebeat was also selling the entire Beatles in Mono box set digitally for only $53.25, well below the market value the Beatles would command on either an iTunes or Amazon MP3 store.

Look back at classic photos of the Beatles.

Hank Risan, the defendant and owner of BlueBeat, tells the The Los Angeles Times he had a “secret agreement” with EMI to post the Beatles’ music. “In secret agreement, we worked together to create protected works that would ensure they would get paid royalties. That’s what we did. We were authorized by EMI and the labels and the RIAA to create such works, which we’ve been using for many years. We did this with their permission.”

Risan went on to argue confusingly that even though BlueBeat never asked for approval to post the Beatles songs, they had received permission. “Did we just do this on our own? No. We did it through a very, very controlled process working with all of the labels and the Recording Industry of America in order to create a system that would ensure payment of royalties to copyrights,” Risan said.

Video Sites Announce New Music Features: Hulu Adds Artist Pages, Vevo Sets Launch

by Daniel Kreps | November 18, 2009 | In Rock News, The Industry | No Comments

Norah Jones, whose new album The Fall was released yesterday, is about to become a Web-music guinea pig. EMI has teamed with video-streaming site Hulu — itself a partnership between NBC, ABC and Fox — to establish artist pages for the major label’s roster. Jones is the first to get her very own Hulu page, which will house all of the Grammy winner’s music videos and a selection of live performances, as well as interviews about recording The Fall. As Rolling Stone previously reported, in December 2008 major labels were weighing partnering with Hulu to increase streaming royalties.

According to the New York Times, EMI hopes to add more of their artists over time, as well as continuously update Jones’ Hulu page to keep it a destination for fans. Andy Forssell, a senior vice president at Hulu, anticipates that the streaming video site will eventually agree to deals with the remaining major labels.

Interestingly enough, Hulu’s dip into the music world comes the same day that new video Website Vevo — a joint venture between YouTube, Universal and Sony — announced its launch date, December 8th. Using the YouTube model, Vevo will offer up music videos plus other artist-related content, Billboard.biz reports.

The Beatles’ Remastered Albums Come to Special-Edition USB Drive

by Daniel Kreps | November 4, 2009 | In Rock News | No Comments

Photo: Apple Corps

Though you can play Beatles songs on Rock Band and enjoy the band’s epic catalog on remastered CDs, you still can’t legally buy the music of John, Paul, George and Ringo on the iTunes store or other digital shops — yet. In a move that may represent Apple Corps. softening its traditionally inflexible view of selling the Fab Four’s music digitally, the company and EMI Music will release a limited-edition USB drive featuring the entire Beatles in Stereo remastered set as 320 Kbps MP3s on December 8th. All 14 albums and 13 “mini-documentaries” will be included on the 16GB USB drive, which will be shaped like the iconic Apple logo with “The Beatles” written on it. Only 30,000 of these USBs will be produced; onsale information is available at the Beatles Website.

Explore the Beatles’ full catalog in our album guide.

In addition, EMI is going after a digital-music Website called BlueBeat.com for offering up the Beatles catalog as a digital download without permission. According to Variety, a copyright-infringement lawsuit was filed yesterday by EMI, which controls the digital rights of the Beatles music through an agreement with Apple Corps.

Look back at classic photos of the Beatles.

Not only is BlueBeat offering the Beatles catalog without permission, they’re also doing it at below market prices: Each track costs only 25 cents, so an 11-track album like Magical Mystery Tour can be purchased digitally for $2.75, well below the $9.99 or so that iTunes would charge. Additionally, the entire digital Beatles in Mono catalog box set is currently being sold at BlueBeat for $53.25.

As of press time, BlueBeat is still permitting the Beatles’ catalog to be streamed and downloaded despite the threat of the lawsuit, and its parent company, Media Rights Technologies, didn’t respond to inquires from Variety. According to the news section at the BlueBeat site, the Website has been streaming the Beatles catalog since September 16th, just one week after the remasters were released.

Check out all of Rolling Stone’s essential Beatles coverage.