— A New York Times article claims both Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group “relaxed” the terms of their licensing deals with Imeem to accommodate the music service’s inability thus far to find a business model that does something other than bleed cash. (WMG wrote off $4 million in Imeem receivables last quarter, effectively giving a balance sheet bonus to the struggling company.) Napster, claims the article, was able to lower its monthly subscription cost from $12.95 to $5 because of new deals with labels. (New York Times)
— In its Q1 2009 earnings call, Borders said music comps were down 28% and DVD comps dropped 22%. The company’s multimedia inventory was down one-third versus Q1 2008 – total inventory was down almost $255 million – as the focus shifts to growth categories such as cooking, children’s, bargain books and stationary products. Comp store sales at Borders Superstores were down 13.5% in Q1. The drop in music sales was to be expected. Borders has been sale pricing inventory and scaling back space given to CDs. (Seeking Alpha earnings call transcript)
— According to Pandora’s Tim Westergren, subscribers use its mobile service 90 minutes per day. Does that mean Pandora streams 90 minutes of music every day per mobile user? Or the average mobile user session – meaning those who happen to use the service – is 90 minutes? The latter is the better interpretation. (BusinessWeek.com)
— Investment firm Terra Firma has put up an additional $44.8 million to bail out EMI in a sign that the major is still struggling. (Wall Street Journal)
— CNET interviews U2 manager Paul McGuinness about his views on piracy, ISP engagement, and the legislative agenda towards both. (CNET)
— High-definition music retailers MusicGiants and HD Music, both owned by HDGiants, have filed for bankruptcy. (Chapter 11)
— MySpace‘s new CEO Owen Van Natta and NewsCorp‘s head of digital Jon Miller appeared at the All Things D conference, discussing the state of the social network overall and the progress of the MySpace Music venture in particular. Regarding music, Van Natta responded to label partners’ concerns about slow growth with solidarity. “Would the record labels like that to happen faster? … Yes, and so would we, as partners in that venture.” Miller, meanwhile, alluded to a growing move towards microtransactions to augment revenue across the site, not just music: “We’re about to see the rise of various forms of micropayments and things of that nature.” (PaidContent)
— Google is stopping users of it’s Korean blogging service Textcube from uploading songs to their profiles, according to a report in the Korea Times. Songs that have already been uploaded are still accessible, but only to the owners of those blogs while logged in. All other music posted on the site is limited to short clips, with links to buy in full from digital retailer Soribada. The measure was put in place as a sort of stop-gab move while Google develops a system that can differentiate between authorized and unauthorized use of copyrighted content and. Google bought Textcube from Tatter and Company last year. (Korea Times).
— Best Buy is expanding its interest in digital media through the creation of an investment fund with partner Velocity Interactive Group. The fund is designed to invest in “strategic digital media investments” according to the press release, focusing on areas of music, video, videogames and personal media. Best Buy last year bought the Napster digital music service for $121 million. The deal also marks a new effort for Velocity Interactive Group-which has changed its name to Fuse Capital-to expand into strategic equity management services for companies looking for help digital media initiatives. (PaidContent)
— Grooveshark unveiled a new site yesterday, Tinysong, that allows a user to quickly share music links with others. You enter a song title into a search field and select a track from a list of results (if the song is found, which is not always the case). By clicking on a track on the list, a shortened URL is copied to the user’s clipboard. The URL is a unique page at Grooveshark for that selected song. The song starts streaming as soon as you visit the page. Works like a charm. Grooveshark’s CEO says the company has “secured a major deal and more are coming but I’m not allowed to say who yet.” (Tinysong, via the LA Times)
