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New Media News Every Morning

VEVO Seals Deal with EMI, Goes Live Tomorrow Night

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With partners such as Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and now also EMI Music, it seems like new premium music video and entertainment service Vevo, is off to a good start. Vevo is launching tomorrow and is aiming to capture music fans with professionally created video content.

A new generation of music fans and perhaps those who belong to the MTV generation will be available to enjoy a large selection of premium music content from a wide array of chart-topping artists. Vevo aims to follow the success of YouTube but for premium music content.

Take note, VEVO President and CEO, Rio Caraeff says their premium online music service is much more than just high-quality videos but also an original programming that hopes to strengthen the connection between artists and fans through a dynamic and engaging experience.

Vevo service debuts on this site – http://vevo.com. The site is currently closed and if you try to check it out, you will be redirected to the Vevo blog. In the meantime enjoy the promo gig by 50 Cent smashing up some old TVs. Surely a radical and violent way of promoting its upcoming service. Does this predict how VEVO is going to be once it officially launches? Hope not.

Nokia and Symbian Phones Get Spotify Music Service

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Screen shot 2009-11-23 at 11.17.58 PMTop music streaming service in the U.K. – Spotify has just expanded its coverage so to speak.  Just announced is its availability on Symbian-powered mobile phones from the likes of Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.  Symbian phone users will now be able to get unlimited music streaming on their mobile phones. Of course, as it has always been, there is a catch to this service – fixed data plan and premium Spotify account. [Read more…]

MP3Tunes Founder declares online music streaming death

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In a guest post for Techcrunch the founder of MP3.com and MP3Tunes, Michael Robertson, declares the actual online music streaming climate death.

The music selling and radio business is increasingly being commoditized. Profits are being squeezed to the point of unsustainability. This spells pending doom for imeem, Pandora, Myspace Music, Slacker and the newest entrant Spotify unless there is an industry-upheaving royalty rate change.

After analyzing both the massively hyped Spotify and the under Best Buy rebooted Napster he mentions that most similar sites, such as Pandora and MySpace Music, so far have failed in making a paid subscription model a viable solution. Music streaming services world wide are living a hard time and UK-based, but CBS owned Last.fm also switched to a compulsory subscription for users outside of the US, UK and Germany because so far they have failed to monetize ads sufficiently in other pats of world.

These may seem dire times, but unless streaming platforms can become more global, it seems that they will struggle to sell ANY real advertising at all and if, the question is will it be sufficient to pay royalties and the rather high wages developers benefit in startups.

Read the complete TC entry here.

Last.fm founders to leave the CBS ship soon

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In a statement released today on the Last.fm blog 3 of the founders of the London (UK) based music discovery and recommendation service are leaving the CBSi Music company. According to the blog entry this is the latest (last?) step in handing over the reins to CBSi Media, who acquired Last.fm in Spring 2007 for $280million.

From the announcement:

After two years running Last.fm within CBS we feel the time is right to begin the process of handing over the reins. This is the latest stage in a long journey for us founders, which began in a living room in East London in 2002, and took us to the headquarters of one of the biggest media companies in the world.

Felix Miller also announced that the service more than doubled in number of unique monthly users over the last 12 months (Compete stats for last.fm top-url show an increase above 50% over the last 12 months).

Read the complete announcement here

Napster unveils latest digital music service

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Napster has unveiled its latest music offering combining the freedom of MP3s with the discovery benefits of a high-quality streaming music service – all for one low price. For $5 per month, Napster users get five unrestricted MP3 downloads, and unlimited access to Napster’s on-demand music streaming service.

    Napster users can now:

  • Get five MP3s each month to download, with their choice of songs from the Napster MP3 library that covers all types of music from all the major labels and includes the largest catalog of independent artists available.
  • Purchase additional MP3s at any time from 69 cents to $1.29.
  • Listen to any track, as often as they like, in CD quality from Napster’s catalog of more than seven million songs.
  • Choose from more than 60 commercial-free radio stations and more than 1,400 expertly programmed playlists.
  • Discover new music and artists through personalized recommendation tools.
  • Enjoy the top hits from more than 50 years of Billboard charts. Want to know what was popular when you graduated high school? Now you can.
  • Play MP3s on any MP3 player, including iPod®, iPhone® and music-enabled MP3 mobile phones.