heute:pop:blog.  

There are many voices (including mine) that claim Apple does not see the iTunes music store as one of their core products but just as a support tool for another product: the owners of the iPod needed a simple and convenient way to purchase new music to add to their device. Ironically, the store that is just seen as a side business for its owner has become the largest music retailer in the world.

The market dominance of Apple makes many people argue it worries about every new competitor entering the market. Google Music has been hailed as the latest service that will be able to compete with iTunes and even though details have not been announced the music industry is already preparing for a big fight between the two technology giants.

In truth, the launch of a new music service, such as Google Music, probably has little influence on Apple’s real business, which is selling hardware devices.

More recently we have seen a priority shift within Apple’s ‘portable’ product range with the iPhone and iPad become hugely successful. What does that mean for Apples music business?

Quite clearly apps are economically more successful than recorded music and potentially also easier to ‘acquire’ for Apple without the need to negotiate with struggling and demanding major labels. With apps being to the iPhone/iPad what music is to the iPod, I assume Apple is not very concerned with any new music services launching even if they were to take market share within the music space from Apple. We also have to keep in mind that Steve Job and his team have always been less protective in the music space than we give them credit for: there are many music apps for iOS that could be seen as a competitor to Apple.

Of course there have been rumors for a while that Apple wants to launch a ‘cloud based’ music service. I see this less as an action based of the fear of losing market share against someone like Google but just as an upgrade to their existing service – with most Apple devices already being able to connect to the internet is just makes sense not to store music on the local hard drives but in the cloud.

Whatever Google will do around music, it will probably be successful but Apple is not concerned. There will be a Google Music app.

Photo: Mengfei Sh

I attended the Transmission conference in 2008 (and wrote about it on here) and was impressed with the unusual and inspiring format of the event. Little did I know that I would move to the West Coast of Canada two years later…

It is with pleasure that I can announce signing up the team behind the Transmission conference as a new client. I will help them in the role of Director of Community Development.

Everyone who has ever been to Transmission (or on of the TransmitCHINA satellite events) knows it’s not the usual music industry trade show but a think-tank style conference that focuses on finding solutions and inspiring ideas. It does not compete with the other numerous networking and deal-making formats. We will now make sure that we can continue the conversations that we kick off during to conference dates past the last day of the event and have a dialog throughout the year. That’s what I will mainly work on.

For our next big event in February we will broaden the focus from the music industry to additional creative digital industries and build a hub for people that want to develop ideas around the economy of digital media and entertainment.

I invite you to follow TransmitNOW on Twitter or Facebook to be part of the conversation.

This is a re-post of a contribution I recently wrote for the Bandzoogle blog. Bandzoogle is a great platform to build sophisticated websites for bands. While writing the below I realized how confusing streaming services music be for DIY musicians and how hard it can be to get their music onto those services.

Music streaming services are a great way for fans to access, consume and discover music on the Internet. They also offer bands and labels great ways to get discovered, build a fan-base, and, for some, there is even some money to be made. Unfortunately there are many misunderstandings about the different services on the Internet and this post will (hopefully) clear up some of the questions that Bandzoogle members, and other DIY musicians and indie labels might have.

So, what exactly are “streaming services”?

The “ownership” of music has become less relevant over the last years. Many people (myself included) don’t feel they need to own any CDs, vinyl records and mp3s if most music is available on the Internet to listen to. Ownership results in maintenance and responsibilities: we have to clean records and make sure they don’t get damaged. We have to back up our mp3 collection and make sure we keep the format up to date (who knows if mp3 as a format will still be relevant in five years ?).

A great alternative to the above is using a music streaming service to access music. The files are stored “in the cloud” and we only access them through the Internet as opposed to owning them. Typically, you will not pay every time you listen to a track but you will pay a subscription fee, or there will be advertising that you will be exposed to in order to listen to the music for free.

What is important to understand (and this is where it gets tricky) is that there are basically two types of services: “radio” and “on-demand” streaming. (more…)

One of my first tasks when I moved to Canada was to get an overview of digital music services in this country. I also wanted to figure out which of the big international services have launched in Canada and how well they are performing. Disappointingly I realized that other than a few players such as 7digital, Slacker and of course iTunes there aren’t many local digital music companies for a country that strongly supports its music industry: grants are a common way for indie labels to stay afloat and radio stations have to play a certain amount of Canadian artists.

Just like there is no lack of music fans in Canada there is no shortage of talented programmers and entrepreneurs – other digital businesses (e.g. games, advertising, movies) seem to be quite healthy. Companies like Pandora, Spotify, MOG and Rhapsody however have never launched their service in Canada and others like Last.fm only have a limited service in the second largest country in the world. Also, looking at the new players that have seen some hype recently (such as mFlow, Thumbplay and rdio) have not announced any plans for a Canadian launch.

After speaking to a range of people about the lack of access to legal digital music in Canada there seem to be different explanations:

1. Licensing difficulties (1) – it is complex and expensive to license content from record labels for Canada

I find that hard to believe. When licensing reordings from labels or aggregators you will often strike multi-territory deals so there is not a lot of additional work needed when including Canada as a territory as part of a launch (for example) in the US. However, depending on the label, you might not be able to license content for all of North America under one deal but you have to go through two offices. There might be one department dealing with the US and one with the Rest of World.

Nevertheless, when launching an international music service it shouldn’t be too hard to include Canada as a territory from a label licensing point of view.

2. Licensing difficulties (2) – getting publishing rights is a nightmare

Yes it is. But it is everywhere. At least in Canada there is only one collection society dealing with the rights of the music composers whereby in the US you have to go to a bunch. In Europe you will (normally) still have to deal with a different organization in each country which is slowly changing so pan-European licensing should be easily possible at some point.

3. Canadian copyright law is in limbo

Whereby this is true it shouldn’t stop anyone from launching a music service in Canada. Without wanting to go in too much detail this is the deal: many people say that the Canadian copyright  law is outdated and needs modernisation. This was suppose to happen for years but whenever there is a new government the proposed changes are being put ‘on hold’ (read: ‘thrown away’).

The international music community is actually quite upset about the lack of movement in Canadian copyright law calling it a “major source of the world’s [music] piracy problem” (IFPI). Ouch.

Again, this should not stop anyone to launch a digital music company in Canada since the changes in copyright law are unlikely to affect consumer facing music delivery services.

4. Canada is too small to make an investment like starting a music service worth-while

This is probably the excuse I hear most often: It seems that companies feel their investment will not be returned because the music market in Canada is too small. And starting a music service is a rather big investment with the largest cost being music licensing.

I think this is a fair argument but doesn’t explain why services are being launched in the smaller countries in Europe (just one example here). So starting up a service in an English speaking country that has a similar music taste to its big neighbour shouldn’t be so hard then, right? After all, Canada is the seventh biggest music market in the world (2005).

‘Big neighbour’ are two very important words here. It’s a psychological issue that the US (population: 309m) is so big and suddenly makes Canada (population 34m)seem so small. Living here now for a few months I can see that Canada has a complex about being the ‘small neighbour’ and everything has to be compared with the US. And of course everyone has to agree that when it comes to starting any business, given the choice, one would have to go to the US as the market is simply larger.

But this is not what it’s about: Canada needs digital music companies that have already proven success in other big territories to launch locally or alternatively a new breed of Canadian companies that can move music fans away from unlicensed music usage.

Photo: EliB

I just got into London and it’s great to be back! OpenMusicMedia London is happening tomorrow night, hope to see you there.

I noticed that Karim from Techvibes was kind enough to record my short introduction for the OpenMusicMedia event in Toronto two weeks ago and this is the video. (By the way, the bricks you can see in the background are part of the oldest wall in Toronto.)

I’m not sure if The Economist asked Joi the questions about privacy in reaction to the current Facebook criticism but I very much agree with him when he says that you should “own the conversation around yourself”. Interesting interview:

I’m now making an effort to use my iPad as much as possible. There certainly is a lack of good apps (my brother said this morning that the only good app for the iPad is Safari – and he is a Flash programmer) but I love reading on it. May it be an e-book, pdf files or just a blog post.

However, I’m being constantly reminded that content producers keep making a crucial mistake: they try to use content that worked on one ‘data carrier’ and just copy it on another. This is what the music industry has been trying with albums, hoping they would just sell digitally like they did on the CD. It didn’t work and many music buyers decide just to buy the best track from the album as oppose to the whole package.

Another example and more specific to the iPad: You can subscribe to some ‘traditional’ magazines on the iPad and what you get is essentially a pdf of the print version (Zinio is an example and Music Week does the same). It doesn’t work. The way magazines are designed is specific to the ‘data carrier’ which is paper. The layout and typography doesn’t necessarily work on a screen even though the size of the iPad is similar to a magazine. It also feels very static, knowing that the iPhone can display (some) videos and all you get is text and images. There is also a lot of scrolling involved but I just want to turn the page when I’m done.

This is not to say that magazines will not work on tablet computers, in fact I think they will be one of the main types of content for this new category of devices. But publishers will have to re-think what a magazine can do. One company who seems to be on the forefront again: Wired magazine have showcased their iPad version before it even came out. Let’s hope there will be a lot to follow.