Universal Music Group (UMG) has struck a deal with Conduit Labs, a startup that creates musical social games, to provide users with access to UMG’s library of licensed music from the record label’s artists such as Lady Gaga, Rihanna and others. The partnership will extend to all 1 million users of Conduit Labs’ games, including Music Pets, Super Dance and Loudcrowd, to access the tracks.
All of Conduit Labs’ games are free-to-play but allow users can purchase virtual items, such as songs, to further personalize their experience. For example, Loudcrowd, which we reported on here, allows users to create their own virtual world with avatars and access music playlists while playing a series of music-themed games with friends. Conduit uses a virtual goods model to sell music within games and songs on the social network range will range from costing nothing to several dollars. Through the agreement, Conduit will share revenue from all sales of UMG’s music with the record label. Users will also be able to purchase separate digital downloads of UMG music and other products. UMG will be offering licensed music from Lady Gaga, Little Wayne, Rihanna, The Killers, Beck, Kanye West, Black Eyed Peas, Weezer, Justin Bieber and several other well-known artists. → Read More
Chances are you’ve never heard of Netbiscuits – I sure hadn’t. But the company operates one of the world’s largest B2B web software platforms enabling thousands of publishers to create, manage and generate revenue from mobile websites.
Netbiscuits serves the mobile Internet programs for brands like Yahoo, MTV, and eBay, and well known digital agencies such as Razorfish, Isobar, and ad networks like Google-owned AdMob. To give you an idea of its size: globally, Netbiscuits claims to deliver more than 1.5 billion mobile page impressions on a monthly basis.
This morning, the decade-old company announced that it has partnered with Universal Music Group to help the music company expand its line-up of direct-to-consumer mobile content and services. → Read More
The music industry’s attempts to create its own digital distribution business is like a bad horror movie. It just keeps coming back no matter how badly bludgeoned it gets. Back in 2001 in response to Napster, the music labels launched two competing music download sites, PressPlay and MusicNet (the latter became a white-label music service called MediaNet. Meanwhile, Pressplay was bought by Roxio, and formed the basis for the current version of Napster). Both were utter failures. Then in 2007, in response to iTunes, Doug Morris at Universal Music had the brilliant idea of bundling music subscriptions into the price of digital music players. The effort was called TotalMusic, and the idea was to get all the record labels on board, until the Department of Justice launched an antitrust investigation that killed the idea. Or so everyone thought. Multiple sources in the Web music industry (including two CEOs and another executive) have told us that the music labels are mulling over another attempt at creating their own digital distribution business, or at least one they can control. Details are sketchy, but the buzz is increasing around a project to create a free, advertising-supported streaming service that would be licensed or white-labeled to other Websites. Each stream would link directly to a paid digital download. Some believe that a revived TotalMusic and this project are one and the same. TotalMusic, Like, Totally Doesn’t Want To Die Indeed, TotalMusic lives on, although in a different form. A search on LinkedIn for “TotalMusic” returns four people who list it as their current employer (Ted Ferguson, Troy Denkinger, Robert Broome, and Derek Reeve). All four live in Chicago and all four previously worked at MusicNow, another music service that changed hands between Circuit City, AOL, and ultimately the new Napster (not a good omen). A couple job listings, like this one posted on July 15 for a senior software engineer, describes TotalMusic as being based in Herndon, VA (near AOL old headquarters): TotalMusic, LLC is a new digital music platform offering the integration of music discovery, streaming and downloads into a wide variety of online and mobile environments. We have solid financial backing and a staff with decades of combined experience in online music. Compensation is competitive, and the work environment is highly distributed with most members of the team telecommuting, however, our Headquarters is located in Northern Virginia, and have a group in → Read More
The UK’s Sky and Universal are the latest companies to try, and ultimately fail, to knock Apple’s iTunes off its high horse. The two have teamed up to launch a new service, due later this year, that will be one of those all-you-can-eat subscription schemes. Think Napster and Rhapsody. Thankfully, songs that are downloadable will be DRM-free. Universal is the biggest record company of them all, and has bands like U2, the Mars Volta and the Wu-Tang Clan under contract. It’s 2008 and the record labels are still trying to figure out digital distribution. What an impotent industry. → Read More
[photopress:u2u2u2u2.jpg,full,center] Remember the music industry? College kids killed it a few years ago and the top acts are now starting to notice. U2, covered brilliantly by New York area band 2U, is reportedly thinking about severing its relationship with Universal Music Group. Either 2004′s “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb” (which wasn’t too bad at all) or last year’s re-master of “The Joshua Tree” (good. quite good.) completed the band’s contract with the record label, and now it’s looking to hook up with some concert promoter to handle the release of its future albums. They could always go the Radiohead route, but judging by comments made by the band’s manager, they don’t seem too hip to technology. Why would they be? U2 May Be Next to Leave Record Biz [Fox News] → Read More
Nokia, the Finnish cellphone maker, and Universal Music Group, which serves no purpose in 2007, have cut a deal that will allow users of certain Nokia phones to download the entire music catalog of Universal. The program, which is set to launch for consumers sometime in the second half of 2008, will have users trading in vouchers (that comes with eligible cellphones) for the ability to download Universal music for a whole year. Supposedly, the songs don’t “expire” once the year is up. Neat move for both parties I guess. Apparently the files will have DRM on them, which isn’t surprising in the least. If I can’t use the songs on my portable device, whatever that may be (it’s an iPod but if something better comes along I’d willingly switch), then what’s the point? It’s gonna be great when Tomorrow People ask, what’s a record label? Free Universal Music Downloads on New Nokia Phones [New York Times] → Read More
Universal Music has confirmed that they will not renew their current contract with Apple and will only supply music “at will.” This means that Apple will not have the entire Universal catalog but only selected albums, at Universal’s discretion. Although this sounds potentially “bad,” it’s actually not. It’s a way to fire a shot across Apple’s bow when it comes to label control over new music and a way to show that they still rule the roost in terms of content. Not huge news — this is a month to month thing and can change at any time — but it is news. Wednesday, 04 July 2007 Universal confirms iTunes contract change [MacWorld UK] → Read More
On the day of the Google/YouTube acquisition, YouTube announced a licensing deal with Universal Music. Apparently, Grouper and Bolt.com didn’t get the memo. Universal Music has come out swinging in their first online video-related lawsuit against two of the lesser-known online video sharing websites, Bolt.com and Sony’s recent acquisition, Grouper. The lawsuit takes aim at the websites’ ability for users to swap pirated versions of its’ musicians videos and seeks as much as $150,000 for each incident of copyright infringement. Bolt.com operates much like YouTube, allowing users to only view Flash versions of the videos in their web browser without any ability to copy the video to their physical computer. Shutdown Bolt.com or remove any materials from the website, and they are no longer accessible by anyone. Alternatively, Grouper users can download the videos to their computer, iPod, or PSP. Thus, similar to how the old Napster operated with music, if a user downloaded a physical copy of a Grouper video to their computer, then the user will be able to view it indefinitely, even if Grouper were to shut down or remove the videos from Grouper.com. Surprisingly, other websites weren’t mentioned in this lawsuit. Metacafe is larger than both Grouper and Bolt.com (according to Alexa data) and a search for Universal Music artist Mariah Carey resulted in several music videos of her, along with a pre-roll video advertisement for CareerBuilder. Another that wasn’t named in the lawsuit is Guba, which has blatant copyright infringement occurring on their website as a result of their indexing pirated videos from Usenet. Despite teaming with the MPAA and supposedly cracking down on piracy with software called “Johnny,” users can easily view tons of music videos on Guba’s website or download them to their computer, iPod, or PSP. A search on Guba for Universal Music artist Mary J. Blige, returned several of her music videos. According to comScore, Bolt.com had 8.1 million unique visitors in August and Grouper had 1.8 million — whereas YouTube had 72.1 million. → Read More
