Digital Downloads

businessweek

After learning to live with less profitable digital sales in the post-CD era, the music industry is getting hit again. Downloads of songs to iPods, computers, and other devices have stalled, researcher Nielsen SoundScan reports, growing just 0.3 percent this year. Even worse for music companies, an earlier digital moneymaker, ringtones, peaked in 2007 at [...]

ft

The average price of a CD has fallen below £8 ($12) for the first time, highlighting the challenges faced by record companies that have already seen revenues undermined by cheaper digital downloads and online piracy. In the past decade the average price of a CD has fallen by 28 per cent, or about £3, from [...]

better tv

The music industry is shifting in the digital age. Some stars are embracing the change but have different views on how technology has helped, and hurt, the business. Among the many individuals and organizations that operate within the industry are the musicians who compose and perform the music; the companies and professionals who create [...]

news.cnet

Getting paid for digital downloads from iTunes, Amazon, or other stores is pretty straightforward. The artist or label submits songs for download, perhaps through a distributor like TuneCore or The Orchard. Each time a user buys a download, the store takes its cut, the middlemen take their cut, and the artist gets the remainder.
If you [...]

genyrockstars

2009 was supposed to be the year that everything changed. Digital downloads were supposed to rule and fan supported bands were to break out of the indie scene and take the world by storm. Instead do you know who ran 2009:
* The Black Eyed Peas
* Jay-Z
[...]

fakesteve

So you’ve no doubt seen this story or one like it explaining that Universal Music Group won’t renew its iTunes deal. And you’ve seen people saying that the majors are trying to “recalibrate” their relationships with us. Actually what’s happening is they’re crapping in their pants. They woke up one day and realized that we’ve [...]

news.cnet

Faced with heat from iTunes and other digital downloads, the nearly-three-decade-old music CD is slowly melting away.
iTunes-purchased songs now account for 25 percent of the overall music market–both physical and digital–in the U.S., says an NPD Group report released Tuesday. However, CDs are still the most popular format for music lovers, winning a 65 percent [...]

Dawn C. Chmielewski
latimes

The world’s largest music store, Apple’s iTunes, plans to boost the price of many hit singles and selected classic tracks to $1.29 on April 7, breaking the psychological barrier of 99 cents in what could be the first big test of how much consumers are willing to pay to download individual songs.
Although the [...]

Nate Anderson
arstechnica

Selling CDs at $12 a pop is quickly becoming an untenable business model. Digital downloads, while significant and growing rapidly, don’t make up for the CD’s decline. Things have gotten so bad in the music industry that people have begun to wonder whether selling recorded music will even be a viable business model a [...]

xtrmdl.com

Any way you look at it, music is big business. It’s also a very diverse industry, ranging from live performances, digital downloads and album sales to merchandising and licensing. The money can be huge, and for artists who are responsible for the industry’s core product—the music itself—a good year can mean huge profits.
8. Rascal [...]

schofieldandcompany

It is astonishingly easy to get ripped off in the music industry. Music business scams abound, and people trying to break into the industry make ripe targets. Getting caught up in a music industry scam might not put the kibosh on your career forever, but it could set you back a serious amount of cash, [...]

Michael Janofsky
thewrap

Eminem is causing trouble again. But this brouhaha may affect a lot more than a few freestylin’ rappers.
TheWrap has learned that a two-year-old lawsuit by the rapper is set to go to trial Tuesday and could impact a vast number of musical artists and the most popular form of music consumption — the digital download over [...]

There is some careless talk about digital downloads signaling the death of the album. So before it becomes obsolete, we’d better figure out what makes the LP a thing of wonder.
History
Where did the album come from? Many assume that technology has determined the length of the release. And it is true that recording length has [...]

U.S. Internet users downloaded more music from online retailers and peer-to-peer sites in the third quarter, as CD sales among the same consumers continued to fall, market numbers released Thursday showed.Paid digital downloads saw growth in the number of buyers and tracks sold in the quarter, according to the NPD Group. Fully, 15% of [...]

Digital Rights Management: These three little words send chills down every music lover’s spine–because one of the biggest complaints about music purchased from online behemoths like iTunes and Rhapsody is that those stores (largely) encumber tracks with digital rights management (DRM) software that restricts how and where you play the music you purchase.
So what’s a [...]

America’s Favorite Pizza never sounded so good. Today, you can download your favorite songs for free from eMusic
after placing your online order at pizzahut.com. After selecting Pizza Mia(TM) pizza, Tuscani Pastas, WingStreet(R) wings or any other Pizza Hut
favorites, customers will receive 75 free eMusic.com(R) MP3 downloads, which can be played on any MP3 player including [...]

Walmart has re-launched its new and improved MP3 Music Downloads store, with MP3 tracks starting at just 74 cents, to give customers greater value and an even bigger selection in digital music. Walmart has exclusively sold MP3s through its online store since February 2008 and now offers more than 3 million MP3 tracks with [...]

The site is relaunching Tuesday as a hybrid, offering the digital download functionality of iTunes and the free music streaming of MySpace Music without the ads.
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It seems the NMPA has decided it is time for royalties to go up, and seeing as CD sales are on the decline, the record companies have pawned off the request to the digital download market. The current royalty rate is $.09 a song and they are requesting an increase to $.15, a hike [...]