French media conglomerate Vivendi this morning reported financial results, posting a decline in full-year profit but beating estimates because the net loss was much narrower than expected. You can read more analysis of the media and entertainment giant’s performance elsewhere, but there was a particular passage in the press release regarding Vivendi’s music subsidiary, Universal Music Group, that caught my eye.
UMG, the world’s largest music company with artists like U2, Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Black Eyed Peas, Rihanna, Eminem, Lil Wayne under contract, as expected finds its revenue from physical product sales (CDs) in a seemingly unstoppable decline. Last year, the company’s revenues were €4,363 million, a 6.2% decrease compared to 2008.
Still, Universal Music Group’s digital sales grew 8.4% in 2009, which the company attributed to strong growth in online sales yet “tempered by softening demand for mobile products in the United States and Japan”. → 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
Universal Music Group is partnering with new ad-sponsored digital music download service FreeAllMusic.com to let anyone download music from the record label’s artists, which include Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Taylor Swift and Jay Sean.
Via Free All Music’s platform, thousands of tracks will be offered at a rate of 20 free downloads per month, five per week, starting every Tuesday. The recently launched FreeAllMusic.com, which appears to be in private beta, lets users access downloadable, high-quality, iPod-compatible MP3s of advertiser-paid, free, legal, and unrestricted song. The catch: users watch a video commercial per download on the site, Users’ music selections and sponsoring brands are then promoted externally through an opt-in, digital advertising network. → Read More
VEVO, the YouTube-powered “Hulu for music videos” which to date was a joint venture between Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, is gaining a new founding shareholder.
VEVO has just announced a ‘strategic’ investment was made by Abu Dhabi Media Company (ADMC), a giant of a media company with headquarters in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, reports MediaMemo. The specifics of the deal remain under cover, but the rumor mill suggests the company is being valued at around $300 million. → Read More
Universal Music Group has a long history of bringing lawsuits upon music and video sharing services (MySpace, Veoh and its investors, Grouper / Bolt.com, etc.), so it’s kind of surprising to see them link to a clip of one of their biggest artists, rapper and producer Eminem, which has not been authorized by its copyright holders (i.e. Universal Music themselves).
The link can be found on this January 7 news item on the UMG website about the ‘leaking’ of Eminem’s newest track, and leads to this YouTube clip posted by a regular YouTube user. In case you were wondering, Universal Music Group has an official channel on the video sharing site which does not feature a clip for this particular track yet.
Update: the news item has been updated as a result of this coverage. Good thing we have a screenshot. → Read More
Things are not going well for Universal Music Group’s in its lawsuit against video-sharing site Veoh. First, the Los Angeles judge, A. Howard Matz, ruled last month that the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act do apply to the case, contrary to UMG’s request for summary judgment.
On Monday, Veoh scored another point in the preliminary legal sparring that always precedes the main event. The same judge threw out the part of the complaint that named Veoh’s investors as defendants in the suit. UMG had tried to argue that Shelter Capital, Spark Capital, and Michael Eisner’s Tornante Company were guilty of “vicarious copyright infringement” and “inducement of copyright infringement” (yes, those are actual crimes) because they effectively control the company and sit on its board. → Read More
For those Web companies that comply by it, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is turning out to be their best friend. Last week, Universal Music Group (UMG) was denied a summary judgment by a Los Angeles court in its copyright infringement case against Veoh. (Court order embedded below). UMG wanted a summary judgment against Veoh, arguing that it could not hide behind the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA, which state that Web services are not liable for the copyright infringement of its users if it takes certain steps to prevent it.
This is the second time a summary judgment has been denied to a company trying to sue Veoh for copyright infringement. (The last time it was a porn company). These orders are setting important legal precedents not just for Veoh, but for YouTube and others also facing DMCA lawsuits. → Read More
Much like Radiohead, Trent Reznor and his industrial metal sounds are leaving Universal for greener pastures. That’s right; Nine Inch Nails is no longer under the thumb of some jackass record label. Very exciting. Hello everyone. I’ve waited a LONG time to be able to make the following announcement: as of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label. I have been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate. Look for some announcements in the near future regarding 2008. Exciting times, indeed. NIN → Read More
The other day, people started getting freaky because Universal Music Group stated it was not renewing its iTunes contract with Apple. Everyone, myself included, took it as a sign that UMG would be pulling out of iTunes altogether and that millions of available songs would be lost forever. Luckily, that’s not the case. After realizing the public flipped out about the statement, Universal decided to downplay the situation a bit, saying that it will continue to offer music on iTunes, just not on the old terms it previously agreed to with Apple. The new deal allows UMG to charge more for exclusive pre-releases of albums, meaning Apple is going to have to fork out more cash for those iTunes Exclusives. Hopefully we won’t see a price increase in iTunes tracks anytime soon. Universal downgrades kneecapping to kick in nuts [The Register] → Read More
After its CEO said in September that YouTube and MySpace owe Universal Music Group “tens of millions of dollars,” the media giant has followed through with its threat and filed suit against MySpace for copyright infringement, according to the Wall St. Journal (subscription required). The most interesting part of the suit is that Universal is alleging that MySpace participated in the copyright violations by transcoding copyrighted video so that it can be replayed and sent to other users. The Journal notes that today is also the day that MySpace is introducing a new tool that will allow copyright holders to flag unauthorized content on the site. That tool (our coverage) uses technology from Gracenote. MySpace said in a press release that the suit is “unnecessary and meritless.” That transcoding argument sounds like a serious one to me. Weeks after threatening YouTube and MySpace both this fall, Universal signed a licensing agreement with YouTube the day before the Google acquisition was announced. It also sued Sony’s Grouper and Bolt for copyright infringement. Is a fresh round of heavyweight copyright wars breaking out? Is there any possibility of an out of court settlement between the two companies? This week’s Craigslist court decision immediately comes to mind. The online directory was ruled on Wednesday to not be responsible for discriminatory housing postings on its site. The court found that Craigslist is a conduit and not a publisher. That ruling was complicated and fell under the Federal Communications Deceny Act. Universal’s lawsuits, against Grouper, Bolt and now MySpace appear headed for a direct test of the DMCA Safe Harbor provision, which is believed to protect parties to copyright infringement so long as they remove copyrighted content upon request. The argument about transcoding video may be the killer in this case. → Read More
Microsoft has announced that it has struck a deal to deliver to its Zune store music from the Universal Music Group. The deal will give Universal a cut of every Zune player sold. This arrangement is a departure from the Apple standard that only pays studios per song sold, with the studios getting no cut of the electronics. Universal is expected to receive roughly $1 per $250 player sold. It has stated that its artists will receive half of the profit it yields from each device. Universal will also receive a percentage per track sold. Well played Microsoft. Money makes the world go round, and everyone has a price. It appears that MS is so eager to beat Apple at the digital audio game, that it’s even willing to forgo large chunks of profit to do so. Microsoft Strikes Deal for Music [NY Times] → Read More
