music industry

Voices

Wither the Giants? The Arrogance of Aging Incumbents.

David Pakman, Partner, Venrock in Voices on January 25 at 10:40 am PT

Technology forces that bring greater efficiency and transparency to markets simply don’t care about privilege, access, and rolodexes.

An Open Letter to the Big Music Labels: Pipe Up, Please!

Peter Kafka in Media on March 30, 2011 at 3:45 pm PT

Music industry executives are doing plenty of grumbling about Amazon’s new cloud service. But none of them will explain, on the record, what Amazon has done wrong here. Maybe a formal request will help.

MSpot Launches Cloud-Based Music Ahead of Google, Apple

Peter Kafka in Media on June 28, 2010 at 6:00 am PT

What if you could move your music collection to the cloud so that you could listen to it anywhere, on whatever device you wanted, whenever you wanted? You may be able to get that via Google and Apple one day, and both companies have talked about the idea with the music industry. But in the meantime, mobile entertainment start-up mSpot says it can offer the same thing.

Book Publishers Beware! At iTunes, Expensive Music Equals Slower Sales.

Peter Kafka in Media on February 9, 2010 at 6:56 am PT

Book publishers itching to raise the prices on their e-books should pay attention to the music labels, which raised the prices on their downloads last spring. Consumers, it turns out, like paying less for stuff.

Surprise of the Day: People Still Buying (Some) Music

Peter Kafka in Media on February 4, 2010 at 4:48 am PT

The music industry’s decline has been so prolonged that this now qualifies as a man-bites-dog story: Sony says its music sales actually went up, just a bit, in the last quarter. Thank Michael Jackson and Susan Boyle.

The Music Industry’s Cautionary iTunes Tale Resonates with Publishers–And Apple

Peter Kafka in Media on January 27, 2010 at 6:41 am PT

Look who has learned one of the most important lessons of the music industry’s love-hate relationship with iTunes: Apple. It shows in Steve Jobs’s approach to book publishers, which is designed to assuage their fear that e-books will cannibalize their old business.

Not Dead Yet! The CD Still Rules Music (But iTunes Is Closing the Gap).

Peter Kafka in Media on August 18, 2009 at 6:41 am PT

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.

U2: The Unforgettable Embarrassment

John Paczkowski in News on February 20, 2009 at 7:35 am PT

U2 manager Paul McGuinness must be beside himself. Despite the band’s best efforts to prevent its new album, “No Line on the Horizon,” from appearing prematurely on the Internet, copies are being distributed there a week prior to its scheduled release. It’s not the fault of the ISPs, never mind that they are, according to McGuinness, “destroying the recorded music industry” by failing to tackle piracy.