Want to get Michael Jackson’s new single? You will be able to get it on iTunes this month, contrary to earlier reports. But there’s a catch: You’re going to have to buy some of the late singer’s other songs, too.
After Michael Jackson died, fans flooded iTunes to snap up his music. And contrary to an earlier report, “This Is It,” the singer’s final work, will also be sold by Apple this month.
Musicians accuse other musicians of stealing their work all the time and I have no idea if this case has more or less merit than any other one. But I couldn’t resist relaying this story: Guns N’ Roses, which made a point of stringing up people who pirated the band’s last album, is now being accused of pirating songs on its last album.
The good news: Two of music’s biggest acts helped slow the industry’s sales slump last quarter. The bad news: It’s still slumping. And the Fab Four and MJ are probably out of tricks.
Napster says it has an awesome new iPhone app that will let you stream music directly to your phone–just like the one Apple approved for Spotify, the superhyped service you can’t even get in the U.S. yet. But Napster says you won’t be able to use its app anytime soon, and it blames the big bad music labels.
Ready to toss dirt on the old, unloved CD? You’re going to have to wait a while. Compact discs are increasingly hard to find (at least in physical stores), but someone out there keeps buying them: The ancient format still makes up the majority of music sales in the U.S. And since album-length CDs are a whole lot more lucrative for the industry than iTunes singles, expect to see the industry cling to them as long it can get away with it.
Time to get the rumor mill kicked into high gear: Multiple music industry sources say Apple executives have told them the company is planning one of its famed keynote events for the week of Sept. 7. But in true Apple fashion, the company has been noncommittal about the exact date of the event and what it will be showing off.
When a big music label sues a scrappy Web music start-up, most people tend to sympathize reflexively with the little guy. But not everyone. Here’s the case against Grooveshark–not from EMI, which has hauled them into court, but from an indie that by all rights ought to be working with Grooveshark: “The service is just ripping off the band.”
A licensing dispute means Warner Music Group can’t promote a new album by one of its biggest acts on the world’s biggest video site. But you can still find Green Day videos on the site, if you know where to look. What gives?
In the old days, back at the beginning of this decade, news that a band’s new album had leaked on the Internet before it went on sale was a big deal. And it occasioned lots of wailing and hair-pulling in the music business. But that was when people bought CDs. Now it’s a way to raise money for charity.
Hot off the presses from EMI and Apple Corps, the Beatles’ holding company: a press release that goes on for 461 words about plans for yet another repackaging of the Fab Four’s albums–on CDs. And then these two sentences: “Discussions regarding the digital distribution of the catalogue will continue. There is no further information available at this time.” Because why rush into anything?
Chris Anderson’s influential Web theorem says that endless choice equals unlimited demand. But a new study argues that most people want the same stuff–and no one wants that unpopular stuff, period.
No one wants to buy, or listen to, the supposedly long-awaited Guns N’ Roses album. Before anyone gets tempted to put two and two together here and blame the Internet for poor music sales, be warned: The music that is most popular among file sharers is the music that is most popular among buyers.
Give the music industry credit–a decade after the original Napster, it’s now standard practice to let fans listen to an entire disc worth of new music, for free, before it ever gets to stores. The latest example: Britney Spears’s new album, “Circus,” which you can listen to at iMeem.com. Or at the bottom of this post, via a groovy embeddable player.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
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