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 [...]

We Need To Talk About Streaming (again)

Last night I participated in a Music Tank seminar on streaming music.  It was a vibrant and valuable debate with a healthy diversity of opinion.  Below are brief highlights of my opening keynote, including some exclusive data from record labels and from Spotify. Streaming isn’t the paradigm shift, increased convenience of music access is Streaming [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

MOG to Launch in the UK: First Take

[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 US music [...]

Spotify’s Marathon

The news that Spotify’s mobile app is now available for the Android platform, coupled with an anticipated Autumn US launch, are both part of the music service’s inexorable rise and media interest.  Spotify undoubtedly has momentum and potential in abundance.  But, even without considering the issue of cash burn, it is also important to keep [...]

The Three Things Spotify Needs to Do

Spotify is certainly the darling of the moment.  In the close to a decade that I’ve been covering the digital music space for Jupiter, and now Forrester, I have seen oh so many services come and go.  I’ve seen far fewer grab the limelight and hold it in the way Spotify is currently doing so.  [...]

Making Online Music Pay – Round Up

Firstly let me apologize for not having posted for a while on here, and thanks to the messages and emails from those prompting me to get posting again.  I’ve been snowed under with project work but normal service will now resume! Today I ran a series of panels (well, a succession of thinly disguised vendor [...]

Comes With Music Finally Gets Its Route To Market

Orange today announced they will be ‘exclusively’ providing Comes With Music on the Nokia 5800 in the UK.  Finally Nokia’s Come With Music gets the route to market it needs. I’ve long been a strong advocate of CWM and that belief remains intact despite reportedly poor sales to date.  Nokia always needed strong channel partner [...]