Article Title: Coldplay Album Sales

Excerpt: The success of “Viva la Vida” affirms Coldplay’s stature as a superstar act and underlines the importance of nontraditional marketing. In late April the band made its song “Violet Hill” available as a free download for a week, and the show at Madison Square Garden, which drew a capacity crowd, followed free concerts in London and Barcelona last week. The band was also featured in a prominent television commercial for iTunes.

Excerpt: “You have to try and be more creative these days to get people’s attention,” said Dave Holmes, Coldplay’s manager. “You can’t rely as much on the traditional methods.”

Excerpt: About a third of the sales for “Vida la Vida” were for digital downloads. Lil Wayne’s album, on the other hand, sold about 10 percent digitally, which made it a blockbuster at brick-and-mortar stores, said Ish Cuebas, the vice president for music at Trans World Entertainment, which operates more than 800 stores, including FYE and Coconuts. “That drove a lot of traffic into retail,” he said.

Article Title: Is Live Nation's Music Strategy Too Risky?

Excerpt: Live Nation (LYV), the world's largest concert promoter, is facing a serious shakeup. The company is "negotiating the exit" of Michael Cohl, the company's chairman, according to the Wall Street Journal. Cohl's been pushing the company's "360 deals" with superstar musicians, paying Madonna, U-2 and Jay Z well over $100 million to get a share of every aspect of their businesses.

Excerpt: Needless to say, the music industry is in a shambles. Even the biggest music superstars aren't sure things. Madonna's latest album release was a huge disappointment in terms of sales, confirming some concerns that Live Nation has spent too much on these deals, too optimistic about what superstars are really worth

Excerpt: There's a huge conflict here between the need to reinvent the business model behind the music business and LYV's need to perform for investors. Based on the movement of the stock, it seems like Wall Street isn't so optimistic on LYV's strategy.

Article Title: The lessons of Lil Wayne's No. 1

Excerpt: As music business headlines go, the one that arrived this week was a golden oldie, a half-forgotten tune from happier days: A new album soared to the top of the charts, selling more than 1 million copies in a single week. It was the first time in 39 months that any album performed that feat, and across the industry the numbers were met with shock and delight.

Excerpt: For two years the rapper has stayed in the ears of young music fans in every way possible other than releasing an album on CD and, almost like a blogger, he has maintained something close to a daily relationship with his audience.

Excerpt: The music industry is still puzzling out the Digital Age, and the most challenging question might be pricing. The British band Radiohead let fans choose the price they wanted to pay for its most recent album; Wayne's approach is to send so much free music and other content through the pipeline that he becomes an essential figure for fans.

Excerpt: "Relentless isn't a strong enough word for his output," Smith said. "There is nowhere that this guy has not been. He has literally given away hundreds of songs, and I think what's happening in hip-hop is that fans feel like here is someone who has given them so much music for free that they want to support him now. And it's not just about quantity, it's about quality."

Excerpt: "We're looking at some merchandising possibilities right now," Rhone said, "as well as an animated series of Webisodes, more touring and endorsements."

Article Title: An Alternative Approach to Marketing Rock Bands

Excerpt: As CD sales continue to decline, Mr. Janick’s instinct for grass-roots promotion has made Fueled by Ramen one of the few labels that consistently scores hits with alternative rock.

Excerpt: The label and its partners “know how to do things on the cheap,” said Bob McLynn, a partner at Crush Management, which represents Panic at the Disco, Fall Out Boy, Gym Class Heroes and several other Fueled by Ramen bands. “The music business doesn’t know how to do that.”

Excerpt: Just as important, Mr. Wentz set the pattern for Fueled by Ramen’s marketing strategy: blog often, tour hard and keep expenses down. When Mr. Janick signs bands, he tells them how hard they will work, not how rich they will become

Excerpt: “The main thing for me is making sure kids can go to one place and get everything from the artist,” Mr. Janick said. “It’s a branding thing.”

Article Title: 360 Degrees of Separation

Excerpt: You may have heard of artists signing new contracts with labels called "360 deals", called such because the label encircles 360 degrees of the artists' career in these contracts, from the usual album production, promotion, manufacturing and marketing, to booking and show promo to merchandise sales, to publishing, to downloads, sale of tracks for film/tv, to the artist's website and fan club; in a 360-deal, the label gets a part of every penny the artist makes. And at least for a period of time, the label likely gets all of it.

Excerpt: Bands usually agree that in exchange for the label writing checks for everything, the label gets 100% of the sales proceeds until the label recovers what was spent, then the label starts paying royalties to the artist. It sounds fair enough, if the artist knew what was going to be spent. The problem is, most labels play accounting shellgames; when it comes close to time for the artist to be in the black on a certain release and would start receiving royalties, the label simply incurs more in-house promo costs, maybe does some advertising, whatever it takes to show that they've spent more money on that title, and it now has to be recovered. A label could assign a team of unpaid interns to do a press/promo campaign for that title, and while incurring virtually no expense, show that they'd spent thousands on the effort, charging it to the artist against the royalties.

Excerpt: So unless artists can substantially change the label/artist payment structure and the normal concept of 100% recoupment for labels, putting all your revenues under one entity, one that's notorious for never allowing artists to get out of debt with crafty accounting and activities as described above, may be a suicidal move. If you already have doubts about record labels, know that your fans probably share those doubts, and if you allow the label to be the conduit between you and your fans, that may be suicidal as well. If you enter into a situation with a label that allows them 100% recoupment on album production, promotion, and manufacturing, tour booking, promo, merchandise, and expenses, you're inviting trouble unless you can separate those revenues and keep the label from cross-collateralizing all revenues against all expenses they incur on your behalf. If t-shirts are profitable but the posters aren't, make sure you're getting paid for the t-shirts, don't sign a contract that allows the label to apply profits from one source of revenue to negative balances another source may still carry.

Excerpt: No matter how much of your career your contract covers, if you don't maintain direct, genuine, sincere contact with the fans, the fans will see right through it. And if an artist can't count on the show and merchandise revenues to get by while the label recovers its money for the album production and promotion, there's nothing left for the artist to live on night after night on tour. And if you put everything in the hands of one entity, you'd better have a lot of faith in that entity to do what's promised.

Article Title: Digital tax could save the music industry from itself

Excerpt: The Songwriters Association of Canada is proposing a $5-a-month licensing fee on every wireless and Internet account in the country, in exchange for unlimited access to all recorded music.

Excerpt: The deal would put $1 billion annually in the pockets of artists, publishers and record labels, according to the songwriters group. The money would be distributed to artists based on how frequently their music is swapped on-line; the more downloads, the more money the people responsible for the music would accrue. Big Champagne, a Los Angeles-based Internet monitoring service, says it can track file-swapping accurately enough to ensure that artists big and small would be compensated.

Article Title: Ticketmaster & iTunes

Excerpt: Ticketmaster, the world's leading ticketing company, and the iTunes Store, the world's most popular online music store, have expanded their music tickets offerings by integrating digital album sales directly alongside concert tickets in a single transaction on Ticketmaster.com. More than 700 musical acts with performances currently on sale via Ticketmaster, including Kanye West, Keith Urban, Modest Mouse and Bon Jovi, are among the first to have their songs and tickets jointly available to the tens of millions of fans who search for music and concerts online.

Article Title: Oregon says music industry spies on students

Excerpt: "Sadly, the university's efforts thus far have been met by accusations that the university is obstructing the process and even conspiring with law breakers," Assistant Attorney General Katherine Von Ter Stegge said in the filing. "Those accusations are not warranted," she said. "The record in this case suggests that the larger issue may not be whether students are sharing copyrighted music, but whether (the industry's) investigative and litigation strategies are appropriate."

Excerpt: A spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America called the university's efforts to block the subpoenas "misguided" and urged higher education officials to help prevent students from pirating music. "It is our view that universities carry the great responsibility of educating students about many important issues, including technology, ethics, copyright law and civic responsibility," said Jonathan Lamy.

Excerpt: On behalf of the major record companies, the RIAA sent more than 400 letters to 16 universities nationwide earlier this month notifying them of potential lawsuits as part of its campaign against online music theft. More than 20,000 lawsuits have been filed against individuals suspected of pirating since the industry launched its crackdown in 2003, according to various estimates.

Article Title: Don Henley: 'Let the chips fall where they may'

Excerpt: CNN: I was surprised when it was announced you had gone with a Wal-Mart deal exclusively. Why did you do that? HENLEY: Our deal with the major label expired several years ago, and we just decided we wanted to try something new. ... Everybody's been calling for a new paradigm in the record industry. Some people have gone to the Internet and haven't had a lot of success with that. Some people have decided to go with the indie labels, who are mostly distributed by the major labels. Some people have signed with major coffee companies with varying degrees of success. So Wal-Mart came to us, and they made us a really good offer. And they told us about their green initiative, and how they're trying to make their company more ecologically responsible. And we were impressed by their programs in that regard, and what they're trying to do. And a lot of our fans are customers of Wal-Mart, so we thought it was a good fit.

Article Title: Gene Simmons: college kids killed music biz

Excerpt: The record industry doesn't have a f---ing clue how to make money. It's only their fault for letting foxes get into the henhouse and then wondering why there's no eggs or chickens. Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid's face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning. Those kids are putting 100,000 to a million people out of work. How can you pick on them? They've got freckles. That's a crook. He may as well be wearing a bandit's mask.

Excerpt: BUT SOME ARTISTS LIKE RADIOHEAD AND TRENT REZNOR ARE TRYING TO FIND A NEW BUSINESS MODEL. That doesn't count. You can't pick on one person as an exception. And that's not a business model that works. I open a store and say "Come on in and pay whatever you want." Are you on f---ing crack? Do you really believe that's a business model that works?

Excerpt: SO WHAT IF MUSIC JUST BECOMES FREE AND ARTISTS MAKE THEIR LIVING OFF OF TOURING AND MERCHANDISE? Well therein lies the most stupid mistake anybody can make. The most important part is the music. Without that, why would you care? Even the idea that you're considering giving the music away for free makes it easier to give it away for free. The only reason why gold is expensive is because we all agree that it is. There's no real use for it, except we all agree and abide by the idea that gold costs a certain amount per ounce. As soon as you give people the choice to deviate from it, you have chaos and anarchy. And that's what going on.

Article Title: Volume UP, MySpace Down

Excerpt: it’s hard to make an argument for something succeeding if it doesn’t“speak” to some group of people. For my money that is where a musician or anyone in music, must start. Being truthful in some fashion or speaking some truth to others. Whether you’re out to change the world, baring your soul, reflecting your culture or telling a tale, there has to be some truth, even if it’s a lie.

Excerpt: My experience has been that you, as an artist, can and should have as much of an idea as to how to promote & market your records as anyone else, assuming that you don’t just get in other people’s way. Ask yourself the question, “What’s important about what we just made?”

Excerpt: Write a few great songs & figure out what your MySpace page will look like later.

Article Title: TONI'S TAKE - BLOG PAGES . '07

Excerpt: Before I get into my TAKE for today, let me say a million thanks to all of you who took the time to write and tell me about your experiences purchasing our new DVDs. I would say 98% of you said you bought them online... quite a few ordered from Amazon.com..... and that you were very happy with their service.

Excerpt: Since I wrote my last TAKE, I received a very enlightening email from Brant Berry, who is the president of our releasing company, RetroActive Entertainment. He explained to me the difficulties of trying to get the product into the “brick and mortar” stores. It is not only that RetroActive is a very small company, but stores such as Walmart, Best Buy, Target, etc., are cutting way back on the number of CDs and DVDs they stock because of pirating, downloading and file sharing. AND... they charge a hefty fee for “shelf space” for the ones they DO stock..... a little out of RetroActive’s budget abilities. However, just about everyone buys online these days, including me! I hardly EVER shop in stores anymore. This is just the way things are shaping up in the music business in this new era

Article Title: EMI removes Radiohead 'Rainbow' ad

Excerpt: Tension between Radiohead and EMI was highlighted again today when the band's former label removed a misleading ad for the group's back catalogue from the internet. Until the end of last week, anyone typing in Radiohead into Google would be met with a paid-for ad at the top of the search results reading: "Radiohead - New Album 'Rainbow' now available as boxset". Despite appearances, the ad led not to the special "discbox" edition of In Rainbows but to a website where EMI subsidiary Parlophone is selling a box-set of the seven albums Radiohead recorded while they were still signed to the label.

Excerpt: This afternoon, Radiohead responded to Parlophone's removal of the ad. "We accept that it was a genuine error and that it has been rectified," the band's spokesman wrote in an email to Guardian Unlimited Music.

Article Title: Where Eagles Rise

Excerpt: This materialized when I saw the breaking news on the Eagles: They take #1 on the Billboard charts when a last minute policy change allows them to be counted. The obvious big story is the Eagles victory in coming in at number one after a 28 year hiatus from recording (sans the material on the live Hell Freezes Over album).

Excerpt: Wal*Mart has actually developed into a powerhouse in the music distribution business. That should not be surprising, considering they're a virtual powerhouse in all other aspects of the retail world. Wal*Mart is the number one retailer in the world, but recently they have also become the number one music distributor in the world.

Excerpt: Wal*Mart isn't stupid – They know they have the largest customer base in the world and they use that power to get what they want. If you don't play the game the way Wal*Mart wants to, they just don't do business with you. The story is, doing business with the retail giant gets you access to a 20% of the market; while not doing business immediately costs you 20% of your sales. This gives Wally World the power to determine who gets to be a success simply based on who they do business with.

Excerpt: Wal*Mart is the silent elephant in the room that the music industry has to work around, but quietly doesn't discuss. And work around it, they do. For instance, all CD's shipped to Wal*Mart must be cleared as family safe. If the record has an advisory sticker, a clean version is made for the store. Ten percent of a major labels sales are in "clean" versions of specific releases, and thus of little interest to the labels, but they do it anyway to keep the giant happy. That's a power player.

Excerpt: Until this week – This week the industry was "suddenly" made aware that Wal*Mart would share Soundscan data, and quickly made arrangements to work together to include Wal*Mart's sales data

Article Title: Ripples in the Music Industry, Part 2

Excerpt: "The bottom line is, Radiohead is unique. Radiohead was built by a major label. They have credibility and an audience, etc.," said Bob Lefsetz, a recording industry expert and author of "The Lefsetz Letter" e-newsletter. "New acts cannot replicate this because they do not have all the marketing and investment that a major [act] has had," he continued. "What we're seeing is on one end, the big acts when their contracts expire -- the Eagles, Madonna -- they're going it alone. But the small acts have to give the music away in order to get their message out, and if they sign with a label, usually they can get them on radio and exposed." The popularity of social networking sites such as MySpace and others help new artists makes an artist's or band's music available to the masses, but it does not "break" them, Lefsetz told the E-Commerce Times. "The fans themselves have to break you. Someone tells me about an act, I know I can hear it on MySpace, but I'm not going to surf endlessly on MySpace looking for a new act," he stated.

Excerpt: Since the "Crank That" hit on YouTube, it has logged more than 17 million views. Souljaboytellem.com, the rapper's debut album released by Interscope Records, entered the Billboard charts at No. 4. "Crank That" stayed at No. 1 on the Hot 100 for seven consecutive weeks. His MySpace profile reportedly has had more than 14 million visitors. However, even though the teenage MC -- whose given name is DeAndre Way -- already had an established audience when he "came into the game," as his manager said, he needed to a recording contract to take his career to the next level.

Excerpt: The names Sony Music Group, EMI and BMG will continue to exists in terms of their brand, but what they do will be fundamentally different, Goodman predicted. "They will become professional service types of companies. They will have to morph their business and become more like UT and talent agencies, rather than record labels. And clearly talent agencies do not have the same leverage," he added. "If you look at a record label five to 10 years from now, you will not recognize it as the same business."

Article Title: Students caught in illegal music web

Excerpt: “They have targeted us, yes early settlement letters have been sent to Pepperdine and those students have 40 days to respond,” said Dr. Kim Cary, associate director of Information Security.

Excerpt: Jessica received her pre-litigation letter from Pepperdine with only seven days left to respond. “The pre-litigation letter came with an attached letter from a member on Pepperdine’s general council that advised me to get an attorney and said to call him if I had any questions,” she said. “Once I got a hold of him, he said that Pepperdine didn’t send the letter earlier because it was their first case and they didn’t know what to do about it.”

Excerpt: The attorney given to the accused student charged $350 per hour for service, which she could not afford. So she randomly searched online and called an attorney in Chicago, who after hearing the story agreed to help for a flat rate of $500. Jessica and her attorney decided not to pay the pre-litigation settlement of $3,000, which included illegal distribution of 141 audio files. “I definitely think Pepperdine should have helped me more, I was so lost and confused at the beginning and the only thing they gave me was an attorney’s number,” Jessica said.

Excerpt: “I asked him for the date that I was supposedly illegally downloading music and he said it was in March. Then I told him that I didn’t illegally download,” Jessica said. “He told me that it is probable and that it could have been anyone in the hall because the IP address is temporary and dynamic.”

Article Title: Indie rock struggling to make money in digital era

Excerpt: For indie acts, popularity no longer guarantees profit, much less the promised land — not when entire records are available for the taking via torrents or one-click hosters. And for the millions of teenagers who grew up After Napster (and the demographic most likely to fawn over Conor Oberst), those files come largely guilt-free.

Excerpt: Is $7 an album enough to keep an indie label in the black? Not according to Rian Murphy, sales manager at Drag City Records. Murphy's label decided to pull its catalog from digital subscription service eMusic because it had to sell three times the amount of songs to make the slim profit iTunes already provided. The service provides plans that can whittle the price of a song down to 27 cents — appetizing to consumers but nauseating for artists.

Excerpt: "If you figure in single-track downloads at 10 tracks equals one album, the economy of the music industry is only off about 8 percent of where it was in the late 20th-century peak. So it's not that dire, but it's become diffused over so many bands and so many releases."

Article Title: Trent Reznor: Take my music, please

Excerpt: "Personally, I would like people to support artists," Reznor said. "After all, we as artists dedicate our lives to producing the best music we can. It's been a painful process for me personally (to see the changes in the music industry). But should I be angry at the audience that wants to hear music so much, an audience that is so passionate about hearing it they go online to get it two weeks before the music debuts? No, I want them to be that way."

Excerpt: "Radiohead has a built-in audience and they have the luxury of being able to experiment with a new distribution model," Reznor said. "I think there were some serious flaws with how they executed but it was a good idea." Reznor addressed some of the questions about whether artists are prepared to become merchants. Who is going to oversee sales, promotion, marketing, site supervision, and the countless other chores that record labels historically handled? But Reznor isn't afraid to get his hands dirty. He said that he was part of the negotiations with Musicane,the company handling the online distribution of Williams' upcoming album. Musicane is overseeing fulfillment, payment processing, and customer service. The beauty of Musicane, according to Reznor, is that it provides the backbone for distribution without requiring musicians to invest "hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Excerpt: "The greatest thing about the Internet is that everybody is their own distributor," Reznor said. "Being your own distributor is power and the thing that labels once held over artists. The power of getting your message out to an audience is very empowering as an artist. These are exciting times and things are happening that I couldn't imagine just a few years ago." As for the future, well, Reznor fully acknowledges that he--like everybody else in music--is unsure of how things will turn out. But he says he's sure of one thing: the old way of doing business is dead.

Article Title: Ripples in the Music Industry, Part 1: Breaking Away

Excerpt: "It is yet another example of [the recording industry] missing the point," Mike Goodman, a Yankee Group analyst, told the E-Commerce Times. "They are so myopic on piracy, and now their list of culprits [for declining CD sales] has shifted to pirates and Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) , that they continue to miss the real problem. And they are the real problem."

Excerpt: Recording labels as they are today will not exist in five to ten years, Goodman predicted. "They don't have a purpose. In a digital world where recording artists can create their own music -- and I would argue that they could probably do it more efficiently -- and where artists don't need a record label to distribute their music, the record label doesn't serve a purpose in that world."

Excerpt: "The net benefit of this tragic drama is for consumers. Artists are not rational business people, therefore they will not be constrained by the same habits and patterns that have limited the labels," he explained. "So you see Radiohead experimenting with what I would call the public television model, where people can choose to pay whatever they want. "Great experiment, but it won't drive dramatic revenues for the music," McQuivey continued. "But do they care? Perhaps the music is better used as a loss leader to drive people to buy concert tickets, t-shirts, art and other memorabilia."

Article Title: Destiny Files Watermarking Patent

Excerpt: Destiny Media is pleased to announce the filing of a US patent application entitled Methods For Watermarking Media Data. The filing date is October 18, 2007 and priority is claimed to October 18, 2006 when the original provisional USPTO application was filed. In addition, the company has filed a PCT application to protect the 2006 priority date outside of North America.

Excerpt: There is strong consumer demand to purchase unprotected media files that enable customers to make personal copies of media they've purchased online. A digital watermark is a high value solution for the content owner that holds the customer accountable if they also create unauthorized copies. Forensic watermarking is expected to be a common feature of online digital media sales in the future and Destiny's patent pending technology provides numerous advantages over other solutions.

Excerpt: Competing solutions offer a trade off between sound quality and the robustness of the mark. Either the mark can be heard by audiophiles, or it is so light that it can be easily filtered. Major record labels have done tests with their best sound engineers in professional sound studios and the MPE mark was shown to be inaudible, even though it is nearly impossible to remove.

Article Title: Take it easy -- it's only the Eagles

Excerpt: There is one thing that makes it interesting, though, and that's the method of its release. While Radiohead stunned the music industry a few weeks ago with their revolutionary new pay-what-you-want online release of In Rainbows, the Eagles are stuck in the past. No, it's even worse -- they're going backward by limiting accessibility to their new record. Long Road out of Eden is only available at Wal-Mart. That's right, just Wal-Mart. You can get it online, too, but only at MusicToday.com. You can't get it at your local music store, or even your local corporate music chain. It's almost like they don't want you to hear it. On the other hand, limiting the availability of a new Eagles album just makes it easier to ignore, which I think I will.

Article Title: how killing the cd single killed the recording industry

Excerpt: My belief is that the industry’s collective decision to scrap the cd single was a pivotal moment that sent sales into a massive downward spiral. I have posted here before that I have read enough research papers and essays that disprove the music industry’s mantra that internet music piracy has caused the decline, to be able to reiterate that I think access to free music online serves to help promote music sales not the reverse - ending the CD single reduced the music consumer’s affordable access to their favorite songs by their favorite artists, more than likely the songs they heard on the radio.

Excerpt: These 45s were an easy and affordable way to get the music into the fans hands and were of course the most popular song in the artists’ repertoire. Now they have disappeared music fans have flocked online to get the tracks they want either legally or otherwise

Article Title: Leaving Record Labels Behind

Excerpt: But none of this is entirely new. Madonna's move—teaming up with a powerful industry player that's not a record label—was presaged by last year's partnership between the Eagles and Wal-Mart (WMT ) for the band's upcoming Long Road Out Of Eden. That deal gives Wal-Mart, and the Eagles' Web site, exclusive North American and Mexican retail rights. Canadian songwriter Issa, formerly known as Jane Siberry, has long offered pay-what-you-want MP3s on her Web site.

Excerpt: Of course, the grunt work of manufacturing and distribution remains onerous. CD sales are down, but big-deal artists still need to press several hundred thousand. That's a massive capital undertaking for a management firm, and one that could backfire badly if said CD tanks. (Despite all the hype, Radiohead's management made clear that In Rainbows also will be released on an established label next year.)

Article Title: Presentation for Some Music Industry Friends

Excerpt: Thanks to EMI requirements (hi Ted! hi Melissa!) it was DRM%u2019d WMA and we sold about 12 copies in the first month, probably all to journalists. Years later I helped Yahoo! build Yahoo! Music Unlimited, a Windows Media Janus DRM-based subscription service. Record labels for their part participated in no end of control experiments: SDMI, Liquid Audio, Pressplay, Coral, etc, and they continue to this day.

Excerpt: Yahoo! Music is the #1 Music site on the Web, with tens of millions of monthly visitors. Between 10 and 20 million people watch music videos on Yahoo! Music every month. Between 5 and 10 million people listen to radio on Yahoo! Music every month.

Excerpt: I’m here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I’m not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I’ll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won’t let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience.

Excerpt: In the end you get what you pay for. I won’t spend another dime paying engineers to build false control, making listening to music harder for music-lovers. I will put all of my energy into making it easier and making the experience better. I suggest you do the same.

Article Title: EMI warning on internet music

Excerpt: Guy Hands, whose private equity house Terra Firma purchased EMI two months ago, has urged staff to embrace the digital age in the wake of rock band Radiohead selling its latest album online and letting fans decide what price they want to pay for the music

Excerpt: He wrote that the music industry “has for too long been dependent on how many CDs can be sold” and “rather than embracing digitalisation and the opportunities it brings for promotion of product and distribution through multiple channels, the industry has stuck its head in the sand”.

Article Title: The day the music industry died

Excerpt: What looks like commercial suicide is, in today’s reality, sound business sense. Records, CDs or downloads now have all become downgraded to the status of promotional tools – useful to sell concert tickets and fan paraphernalia. While there is still good money to be made in music, and particularly on the concert circuit, the record business – blame it on piracy, too many CD giveaways or the advent of the recordable CD – is a busted flush.

Excerpt: The impact on the bottom line of the record labels has been catastrophic. When EMI’s subsidiary Virgin put out the Spice Girls’ debut album in 1996 the company cleared roughly £5 in profit on each copy sold. That margin has since shrivelled to around £2 – and only then for albums that are significant hits. Industry insiders estimate that only one of the new British acts that has “broken” in 2007 – the pop diva Mika – will actually make his record company any money.

Excerpt: The mood of panic is palpable, and there are no obvious solutions in sight. In America the recently appointed co-chairman of the Columbia label Rick Rubin, formerly a record producer by trade, has spoken of his ambition to turn the company around by refocusing it along the lines of a cable TV business – making Columbia’s entire catalogue downloadable to customers who pay a monthly subscription

Excerpt: One – fading – hope of the major labels is that they can somehow grab a share of the profits their artists make elsewhere. When Robbie Williams resigned to EMI in 2002 for a reported £80m this new deal guaranteed the label a piece of the action from Williams’s highly lucrative concert tours. But many young artists since have become wary of such composite arrangements. Some have decided to bypass the major record companies altogethe