iPods with cameras? Maybe. iTunes with new features? For sure. iTunes with Beatles? Nope.
I’m sure that Apple will indeed sell the Fab Four’s music via its digital music store one day. But it’s not happening at Apple’s keynote presentation tomorrow.
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.
Amazon’s Q2 was just what Wall Street was expecting–which in Wall Street’s perverse logic means that Wall Street will be disappointed. Amazon delivered net sales of $4.65 billion and earnings of 32 cents per share; consensus called for $4.67 billion and 32 cents. Jeff Bezos might have been able to allay investors’ worries, but he was a no-show for the conference call.
Amazon has explained why it has been deleting some novels from its customers’ Kindles: It shouldn’t have been selling them in the first place.
Amazon says the copies of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984″ that it removed, without warning, from some Kindles this week are “illegal”, because the publisher didn’t have the rights to sell them. Won’t happen again, the e-commerce giant says. Sort of.
Buy an e-book for Amazon’s Kindle recently? You might want to check to see if it’s still on your device. Kindle users are complaining that the e-commerce giant has removed titles from their machines this week and given them refunds in their place.
What happened? The details are fuzzy, but apparently, a publisher that supplied Amazon with two George Orwell titles has decided that it doesn’t want to sell them via Amazon anymore. So away they went. Have at it, DRM-haters.
The Walkman is 30 years old today, but Sony isn’t throwing the iconic gadget much of a birthday party. More of a somber memorial, really. Blame Apple.
Poor John Squires. The Time Inc. SVP seems like an affable fellow. So what has he done to deserve this impossible task–figuring out a digital strategy for Time Warner’s publishing unit? Or, to put it in Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore’s words, figuring out “how to put the genie back in the bottle”?
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.
Last year, Warner Music Group boasted about its investments in two digital music start-ups. Today the label says those dollars were wasted. Bummer for imeem, which is trying to raise more money.
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?
Common sense tells you that the CD is a vanishing artifact. Slightly more surprising: Music consumers–or at least, people who are willing to pay for music–are disappearing, too. So says the NPD Group, which estimates that 13 million Americans stopped buying music last year.
The people who run the Virgin Megastore chain have already announced plans to close their Times Square outpost, which is the highest-volume music store in the U.S. So news that they’re shuttering even more of their stores isn’t shocking. Just telling.
The industry’s report card is just like every report card it has had since the advent of Napster: Digital sales are up, but not enough to counter the plunge in CD sales. We’ll hear the same thing in 12 months. In the meantime, though, there is lots of good music to listen to. Go find some of it and have a happy new year.
Americans spent billions on CDs last year. But big-box retailers are increasingly uninterested in selling the discs in their stores. Newest data point: Borders Group, which has cut its music inventory by 30 percent in the last year.
Remember the CD? Few people do, which is why sales are declining faster than ever. But someone is still buying billions of dollars worth of discs each year. Who are they?
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 »
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