Search Results for: Record Store Day

Computer audio equipment maker Creative Technology Ltd and online music service Soundbuzz.Com launched an alliance on Tuesday aimed at capturing Asia’s infant fee-based online music market. The two companies are setting up online music stores in Singapore, Hong Kong and India – regions where knock-off CDs burned by sophisticated piracy syndicates or downloaded off the Internet for free are hammering sales of recorded music. Soundbuzz.Com and Creative launched the first of their online stores in Singapore on Tuesday, offering 250,000 songs at $1.16 each in a format designed for quick downloading into Creative’s digital music players. “We’ve all been through… Read more »

Music fans in Britain, France and Germany downloaded more than 800,000 tracks from Apple Computer Inc’s iTunes online music store in its first week of operations in Europe, the company said on Wednesday. The strong start makes the much-heralded download service already a top player in Europe’s brutally competitive music download market. “In the UK alone, iTunes sold more than 450,000 songs in the last week – 16 times as many as OD2, its closest competitor,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement issued on Wednesday. Apple launched iTunes in France, Germany and the UK on June 15 to… Read more »

JUST days after the European launch of Apple Computers’ online music store, a chorus of customers are voicing their complaints. The lack of songs from artists on independent record labels – which account for a quarter of the UK market – has left iTunes looking like a poorly-stocked American import store, lacking local talent such as Travis and Franz Ferdinand. “Most Scottish acts are on independent labels,” says Alison Wenham, chairman and chief executive of the Association of Independent Music (AIM), which represents the majority of the UK’s indie labels. “Celtic acts typically start off very strong in their home… Read more »

Apple Computer Inc. launched its highly anticipated iTunes Music Store in Europe on Tuesday, expanding the popular digital music service to users in Britain, France and Germany. Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said iTunes would be available without subscription. The charge for downloading a single track would be 79 pence ($1.43) in the United Kingdom and 99 euro cents ($1.20) in Germany and France. Jobs boasted that more than 85 million songs have been downloaded from iTunes in the United States. Along with the United States, France, Germany and the United Kingdom account for 60 percent of global music sales.… Read more »

Representatives of the Beatles are in discussions with various online music services about licensing their songs for distribution on the Internet, people familiar with the discussions said on Tuesday. The Beatles have been one of the biggest holdouts in releasing their catalog for sale online, and the lack of such mega-hits as “Let it Be” and “Yesterday” has been cited as a major weakness for fledgling, Web-based music stores. Negotiators for the Beatles have talked with several companies, with a particular emphasis on Microsoft Corp’s MSN, which is expected to open an Internet music store late this summer, people familiar… Read more »

When speaking this month to a representative from Soundscan, the company that provides much of the data for the Billboard Top 200 Chart, I learned things that would contradict reported statements by the RIAA. Mainly that US labels have had a significant reduction in sales over the past three years. Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, responded personally, put his rebuttals on the record and in the process exposed intriguing insight into the way the RIAA calculates “losses.” Soundscan is a service owned by Nielsen, the company that computes TV ratings. Soundscan uses the barcodes on CDs to register sales… Read more »

A year after Apple Computer Inc. launched its iTunes Music Service, the online music industry is selling songs by the millions – and that may not bode well for the major record labels. Online services account for just a fraction of overall music sales, but they’re growing rapidly. And the new choices they give consumers threaten to remix the recording industry’s traditional revenue streams, pumping up the volume of singles and subscriptions and turning down album sales. Customers at three of the leading online services – iTunes, Musicmatch Inc.’s Musicmatch Downloads and RealNetworks Inc.’s Rhapsody – buy about 10 times… Read more »

If anybody can get Internet music downloads right, it should be Sony Corp. The company has years of experience selling records, consumer electronics and personal computers – and it’s had plenty of time to study earlier digital-music ventures. So how could the Connect music store, unveiled on Tuesday, have turned out so badly? It gets a few things right, but by forgetting that customers want to feel like they actually own their music, it repeats – or exceeds – the mistakes of other music stores. Let’s start with compliments: Sony does more than any other service to bring down the… Read more »

Apple Computer Inc. on Friday flatly denied a report that the computer maker was planning to raise prices for songs bought on its popular iTunes online music store. “These rumors aren’t true,” said Apple spokeswoman Natalie Sequeira. “We have multiyear agreements with the labels and our prices remain 99 cents a track.” Apple’s statement came after the New York Post reported on Friday, citing one unnamed source, that music fans may have to start paying more for some songs on Apple’s music store following contract renegotiations with the record labels ahead of the one-year anniversary of the store. Since the… Read more »

Sony (SNE) aims to take on industry leader Apple (AAPL) starting Tuesday with an online music service whose songs will play only on Sony products. Internet analysts are scratching their heads, especially because the digital download service – called Connect – is geared toward supporting Sony’s MiniDisc, a 13-year-old format that has never hit big. But some retailers say sales of MiniDisc players perked up in the two years since Sony added the ability to record digital music onto them. And Sony will introduce an offshoot of the MiniDisc in June, offering more storage at a lower price than competitors.… Read more »