I don’t know what the hell is in the water out there in Hollywood, but that place and it’s inhabitants get weirder and weirder every day.
Earlier this week the media was all up in arm after Mariah Carey made a public apperance sporting a big ole’ diamond on her left hand ring finger. The ring was later confirmed to be an engagement ring given to her by her flavor of the moment, Nick Cannon.
This morning everyone was talking about the striking resemblance Mariah’s ring held to Nick Cannon’s ex-fiancee Selita Ebanks.
NOW: Just breaking news that the ring no longer signifies engagement as the pair got MARRIED ON WEDNESDAY in a “small and impulsive” ceremony.
Nick is 10 years Mariah’s junior and about a billion dollars below her income level…I hope I smell an iron clad pre-nup.
Digital formats now account for 23 percent of US-based recording revenues, according to figures published by the RIAA. The percentage was packaged into a larger breakdown of shipments and revenues in 2007, an report now available at riaa.com.
The digital percentage represents a serious bump from year-ago figures of 16.1 percent - and 9 percent in 2005. Part of that gain comes from increased sales of assets like iTunes downloads, though a meltdown in CD sales is naturally ramping digital percentage gains. For the period, CD shipments dropped 17.5 percent to 511.1 million units, or $7.45 billion in revenues. In terms of revenues, the CD-based drop represents a 20.5 percent slide.
On the digital and mobile side, the breakdown also revealed some softening trends. Mobile formats - including master ringtones, full-track mobile downloads, and ringback tones - moved to 361 million units, a 14.6 percent gain. That is far more subdued than year-ago gains of 85.3 percent. Paid downloads moved to 809.9 million, a 38.1 percent gain, softer than a year-ago jump of 59.8 percent.
Nokia Comes With Music devices will now come with a year of access to Sony BMG Music Entertainment catalog in an agreement announced today. “This initiative represents a critical new way of gaining access to music,” said SBMG President Global Digital Business & U.S. Sales Thomas Hesse. Consumers can download tracks to both their mobile device and computer through the Nokia Music Store for a year. At that time, they can keep their downloaded tracks and, should they purchase a new compatible device or computer, they can transfer their downloaded material by substituting their new device or computer for the original devices. Consumers can continue to get new music after the Nokia Comes With Music subscription is over by purchasing additional tracks from the Nokia Music Store, or moving on to a Nokia “unlimited access” subscription service. The initiative is expected to launch in the second half of the year. Meanwhile, Nokia is denying published reports that they are paying Universal Music Group $35 for every device sold, as reported by some press last week.
Most music comes from friends or from peer-to-peer file-sharing, according to NPD Group research
April 18, 2008 12:30 PM
In 2007, there was an increase in the volume of music acquired for nothing and a sharp decline in the amount paid for, according to NPD’s annual survey of Internet users. Although more people paid for digital downloads — that market grew from 7% to 10% — it wasn’t enough to cover the fall in CD sales — down from 41% to 32%.
Music industry lawsuits also failed to stop peer-to-peer file sharing, which grew from 14% to 19% by volume. This equalled the amount of music that NPD classes as “Burned from others” or “Ripped from others” (19% each).
The New York Times’s Bits blog quotes Russ Crupnick, who runs NPD’s music service:
“The number of people who do peer to peer in 2007 versus 2006 has been stable,” he said. “The number of files taken per users has increased significantly.” This is because of the shift of many users from Limewire to BitTorrent, which makes it easier to download whole albums.
One thing hasn’t changed: people still do most of their listening to music via the radio, followed by playing CDs.
But digital music is coming on strong. Listening to music on a computer has the third largest number of people, followed by listening on a portable device like an iPod. And people using portable players listen to it rather frequently. That is mixed news for the music industry because digital files on players are the easiest way to use borrowed and stolen music.
The Bits article also refers to NPD research on Amazon’s DRM-free music service versus Apple’s iTunes:
As for Amazon, NPD found a different audience profile than iTunes users. Amazon doesn’t yet have the huge teenage audience of iTunes. Nor does it have a large female audience. But Amazon customers are more likely than those on iTunes to buy albums rather than single tracks.
Apple iTunes digital music sales are still 10 times that of AmazonMP3 on a unit basis, but differences in their consumer demographic profiles are telling. According to NPD’s initial consumer surveys, 64% of the AmazonMP3 unit sales were traced to males compared to 44% for iTunes. AmazonMP3 showed unexpected strength among young adults (consumers aged 18 to 25), but only 3% of their customers were teens (age 13 to 17). In contrast the iTunes Music store sold nearly a fifth (18%) of its music to teens. It should also be noted that iTunes has a strong franchise in gift cards used by teens, and Amazon has a relatively small base of teen CD buyers.
On our recent flight on Virgin America to SFO we noticed that music blog/label RCRD LBL has a music channel on their In Flight Entertainment system. VA also has video podcasts from Boing Boing, Digg and TED which are updated monthly. Charles Ogilvie who created and runs the system told PSFK that the new airline hopes to have more daily blog content to sit alongside traditional media when they launch their Read section of the IFE. Virgin America via pfsk.com
To expand the idea of the “Ghosts” project, we’re inviting anyone and everyone to create visuals to accompany the album’s music. In a few months, we’ll be gathering the entries we feel are particularly exceptional and highlighting them. There are no rules to this - be as creative as you like. Create a music video, or a short film, or something completely abstract. Use only one track from the album, or use multiple tracks. Only one caveat: Incorporating copyrighted materials (clips from movies, music by other artists, etc) into your video might limit our ability to feature it in the future.To submit your video, join the Ghosts group athttp://www.youtube.com/group/ninghosts and add your video to the group. Good luck, and enjoy
Hello-
First of all, a sincere THANK YOU for the response to Ghosts. We are all amazed at the reaction for what we assumed would be a quiet curiosity in the NIN catalog. My faith in all of you has been restored - let’s all go have coffee somewhere (my treat)!
Today we announce the expansion of the Ghosts project into the visual world. This record began as an experiment with us using sound as a means to describe visuals. Early in the project we thought it would be interesting to see what the community could create / collaborate on as a reaction to the music we were making. We wanted to keep the canvas as blank as possible for you, hence the lack of descriptive song titles and the primarily textural artwork and packaging.
So here’s the plan: we’ve teamed up with YouTube to host a “film festival” around Ghosts. The concept is for you to take whatever tracks you feel inspired by from Ghosts and create what you feel should accompany them visually. You will be able to see all of the submissions, and a team of us (including me) will be sorting through them and setting aside ones we feel are exceptional. Eventually (within a couple of months?) we will present a virtual “film festival” with me and some special guests presenting selections of your work.
This isn’t a contest and you don’t win elaborate prizes - it’s meant to be an experiment in collaboration and a chance for us to interact beyond the typical one-way artist-to-fan relationship. We’ve discussed some interesting ways this could go, including multiple installments of the online “film festivals,” to broadcast TV specials, to a one-time live performance of the entire Ghosts record with your visuals involved. It really depends on how this progresses and develops.
We are all very much looking forward to what you come up with, and hope you enjoy the experience. Visit our YouTube channel for information on how to participate.
TR
