Jazz Odyssey

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Warner Music Group Cuts Ringtune Deal with Skype — Skype has over 70 million registered users who already have access to some custom ringers and busy signals, but that library will grow quickly as Warner will license ringtunes to […]

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Music business analyst and blogger Bob Lefsetz takes a strong swipe at MySpace in his recent blog posting, complaining about MySpace stability, usability and questions whether the #1 social networking site is really breaking bands. Mr. Lefsetz raises many good points, as the popularity of the site has grown faster than their ability to […]

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Here’s a great article from today’s New York Times discussing the entertainment business paradigm shifts catalyzed by time-shifting, convergent devices and the era of self-publishing. The article lays out three primary fears of the established media businesses:
¶Business-model anxiety. Will paid download services like Apple’s iTunes, not to mention TiVo’s and their ad-defying fast-forward buttons, […]

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Business Week reports that AOL is creating a social networking platform based on the populer AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) service. AIMspace (which is the codename for the project and not expected to be the official name of the platform) is set to launch in March 2006 and will “blend all manner of AOL content […]

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An article in today’s New York Times discusses the different types of recommendation systems. Recommendation systems are programs which attempt to recommend products a consumer may be interested in using combinations of explicit data (such as user solicited ratings) and implicit data (such as a record of the consumers previous purchases). The […]

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Reuters (via CNET) reports that Universal Music Group announced plans to digitize 10,000 out-of-print European recordings.
This is exciting news–the vast library of unreleased recordings rotting in label vaults has been the subject of prior posts here, and represents a largely untapped source of revenue for both label and artist. But the big winner […]

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Today’s New York Times has an article about download trends tied to two bands that lead the “snap music” movement–D4L and Dem Franchize Boyz. The article points out the explosive growth in dowloads of D4L’s single (which has now sold over twice as much as their CD) and addresses the economic issues of profit […]

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An article in today’s New York Times forshadows speeches at today’s CES from Google and Yahoo, both of whom are expected to announce software, services and initiatives ranging from search and delivery of television and other video programming, to moving established and improved services off the computer screen and onto tv screens and mobile devices. […]

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The podcasting craze of 2005 continues into 2006 due largely to the enormous amount of iPods sold during the holiday season, sparking a flurry of subscription activity to podcasts. My thought this morning as I was reading the installation instructions on my new Sirius was that an authorized Howard Stern podcast from his new […]

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