Deezer and Digital Music’s Squeezed Middle

It’s been a busy week for Deezer: first came the announcement of an browser-based streaming partnership with niche music publication Artrocker, then came Deezer’s launch in Canada, New Zealand and Australia – the next chapter in Deezer’s world domination plan.  Now to complete a hat-trick of announcements the French streaming service has announced a partnership [...]

The Digital Music Year That Was: 2011 in Review and 2012 Predictions

Following the disappointment of 2010, 2011 was always going to need to pack more punch.  In some ways it did, and other ways it continued to underwhelm. On balance though the stage is set for an exciting 2012. There were certainly lots of twists and turns in 2011, including: disquiet among the artist community regarding digital pay-outs, [...]

Just How Important Do You Think iTunes Actually Is?….

I’ll let the chart do most of the talking. The key takeaway  is that two of the oldest models in the digital marketplace (radio and retail) dominate in terms of users.  Persistence certainly pays off for Pandora and Apple. The iTunes Store is of course more important than Pandora for music industry revenue as its [...]

Waiting For Facebook

As the market collectively holds its breath in anticipation of Facebook’s much (over?) hyped music service launch this coming Thursday, it is instructive to take stock of where we are at the moment to better understand the eager expectation. Digital music is stuck in a rut At the start of the year I made a [...]

Why Digital’s Next Steps Can’t Be Baby Steps

What follows are highlights from my speech at the Westminster Forum on the UK Music Industry 2011 and Beyond I want to spend the next few minutes building the case that digital music is in a period of transition, a stage that presents us with a unique and ever narrowing window of opportunity to drive [...]

Spotify’s US Launch: First Take

Spotify finally today announced their excessively anticipated US launch. Protracted negotiations with the US labels turned this into one of digital music’s longest running sagas.  And although the $100 million of extra funding for label guarantees and advances seems to have successfully assuaged concerns, the labels weren’t just digging in their heels for the sake [...]

Making Freemium Pay: An Artist’s Perspective

With the much anticipated US launch of Spotify and the successful IPO of Pandora there’s a very palpable sense of momentum in streaming music.  And that’s great news, the future of music revenues will depend upon a successful transition from distribution based models (downloads, CDs etc) to consumption-era models (on-demand streaming etc.).  Yet, there’s a [...]

Spotify and Virgin Media Take The Third Way

UK cable broadband and TV provider Virgin Media and Spotify today announced the partnership deal they’ve been working on for some time.  The deal will ensure that Spotify is delivered across the web, mobile and TV to Virgin customers. On the surface this might not seem like such a big deal, but don’t be fooled, [...]

Can The Music Industry Afford Pandora to be the Shape of the Future?

The music industry has been following Pandora’s IPO with baited breath and has largely been encouraged by the degree to which the financial markets value one of the few true gems of the digital music space. But it doesn’t all smell of roses. Indeed Pandora’s Tim Westergren has made no secret of his concern over [...]

Music Subscriptions: Dead or Alive?

[Please note that this post first appeared on the Forrester Consumer Product Strategy blog.  Over the coming month or so I will be migrating all of my activity there.  I will soon be posting new information here for you to amend your feeds and subscriptions. Thanks] [Posted by Mark Mulligan] Follow me on Real Networks [...]