Songkicks's live music discovery app has been downloaded more than 100,000 times since its launch a fortnight ago.

The free app, currently only available for iOS devices, scans a user's iTunes collection to alert them when favourite acts are playing in their area through push notifications.

It also makes recommendations and allows ticket purchasing by linking to over 150 different vendors.

Speaking to Music Week last week, Songkick co-founder and CEO Ian Hogarth said the live industry still has to do a lot more to grasp the opportunities offered by digital.

“Digital should be about getting people through the doors and then personalising the experience for them and offering a proper loyalty scheme,” he said.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Honda, Starbucks, Paramount Pictures and Procter & Gamble are among the brands signed up to use Shazam as a key advertising component globally.

They will be inserting 'Shazamable' elements into their ad campaigns. Viewers can then use the Shazam mobile app when they see the participating ads to find out more about the products, engage with promotions or make purchases.

Among the upcoming TV ad campaigns are both Honda and Starbucks who will be creating treasure hunts, with the latter building their commercial around a Lady GaGa video.

Meanwhile, Paramount Pictures is offering a free live version of Linkin Park track When They Come For Me as part of its TV and radio campaign for the Transformers 3 movie.

Shazam claims results form earlier ad campaigns increased traffic to dedicated microsites by as much as 20%, while 27% of those who tagged the ad either downloaded the song featured or watched additional content.

Shazam EVP of ad sales Evan Krauss said, “Shazam for TV is the industry standard for how companies can use mobile technology to drive deeper engagement with their television ad campaigns.

"We're now seeing companies in nearly every industry sector taking advantage of Shazam's 'second screen' experience to provide consumers with additional product information or give them an easy and fast point-of-interest retail experience at the click of a button.”

In December, the company launched its Shazam Listening Screen Takeover initiative for its iPhone and iPad apps. Universal Music Group bought out all of Shazam's banner inventory for the duration of a campaign covering 28 acts that started on January 15.

The Listening Screen allows advertisers to control the Shazam home screen when a song is being tagged with the in-app ads on the free version of the app will take over three-quarters of the screen (where the Shazam logo normally sits).

In January this year, Shazam partnered with US cable channel Syfy to offer “the first, series-long 'TV Tagging' initiative” for the US run of the Being Human show. On-screen promotions pushed the Shazam mobile app and its logo was embedded into the broadcast programme. When opened, the Shazam app recognised the logo and delivered tag results to a user's handset

Yesterday Shazam announced it had acquired US company Tunezee's synchronised lyrics technology which will power the Shazam LyricPlay feature, allowing users to view lyrics synchronised to the tracks they are listening to in real time.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Mobile music recognition company Shazam has made its first corporate acquisition by buying US company Tunezee's synchronised lyrics technology and simultaneously launched its new Shazam LyricPlay feature.

LyricPlay is now live in the paid Shazam Encore mobile app for iOS devices and it allows users to view lyrics synchronised to the tracks they are listening to in real time.

Shazam now offers a database of lyrics to 25,000 songs, based on the most tagged tracks on the service. This library will be added to on an ongoing basis.

Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher said, “We believe Shazam LyricPlay is a world's first and significantly enhances the magical experience Shazamers love.”

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Apple’s latest – and long anticipated – cloud version of iTunes will launch today (Monday) with the full backing of the major record labels and the majority of indies.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs will announce details of iCloud at his company’s Worldwide Developers Conference, although Music Week understands that there may be a delay in iCloud actually going live.

The company was still negotiating with some labels and publishers at the end of last week, although deals were said to be very close to being signed off.

The fully licensed iCloud differs from earlier cloud services from Amazon and Google, which went live earlier this year without the backing of major rights holders.

“Apple runs a global business,” said Charles Caldas, CEO of Merlin, which negotiates digital deals on behalf of the indie sector. “The risk Amazon and Google took was based on the fact that product was only available in one jurisdiction – and I am sure they took a lot of legal advice before making that jump.

“On a global basis, they need the support and participation of the rights holders to make the products as great as possible.”

The music industry has been awash with speculation as to what features iCloud will include since news of the launch broke. Some commentators have speculated that it will include a commerce element, preview streaming via iTunes and the eventual launch of an iTunes subscription service.

iCloud could clear way for subs service

Apple, a company known for keeping a tight lid on all of its product developments, broke with tradition last week when it revealed that CEO Steve Jobs was to unbox iCloud at its Worldwide Developers Conference.

The fact that Apple had acquired the iCloud name ¬ owned by Swedish cloud storage firm Xcerion until April this year ¬ was only made public last week.

As with all Apple announcements, the news sent the music industry into a frenzy.

Critically, iCloud will be licensed ¬ deals with several labels have been in place for a number of weeks and Apple was closing in on key publisher deals at the end of last week.

Music Week understands that deals with independent labels are being brokered directly rather than on a collective basis and that the deals are extensions or revisions of existing licensing deals for iTunes, rather than new agreements drafted from scratch.

This will make the proposition very different from the recent cloud music launches from Amazon and Google, both of whom argued there was no need for licensing deals for users to upload and stream their existing music collections. Rights owners are currently contesting this behind the scenes.

The fact Apple has deals in place means that iCloud will be much more than a storage and locker service. There will almost certainly be a commerce element ¬ although it is unclear if that will be based on per-track streaming (something its 2009 acquisition of Lala could, in theory, cover), subscription, downloading ¬ or a hybrid of them all.

Analysts are also predicting that iCloud could allow for extended preview streaming via iTunes. The site has already offered 90-second preview clips in the US (higher than the standard 30-seconds elsewhere), so offering longer form, or even full, streams would not be a huge leap technology-wise.

This will depend, however, on the licences it secures and payment models it puts in place with labels and publishers.

Former Forrester analyst Mark Mulligan would like to see iCloud include “a platform for subsidised services [where] users will pay for premium devices with cloud subscription included music streams not from your collection [and] iTunes buyers will get streaming credits [and finally] unlimited on-demand content subscription [for] books, music, apps, games, music ¬ the lot”.

Meanwhile, We7 CEO Steve Purdham predicted that “scan & match” ¬ whereby Apple detects what you already have in your iTunes collection and unlocks streaming access to it, so the user streams from the Apple server rather than uploading duplicate tracks ¬ will be central to the offering.

“The classic iTunes ecosystems will make this an outstanding service,” Purdham said. “The question is about how it will be charged. I suspect an annual service charge which may be part of MobileMe. The big thing for me is that this is a stepping stone to iTunes subscription.” He continued, “The infrastructure is already there; once they get their purchasers to use the service it is an easy step of expanding from access to all your music to access to all our music, which will be great news for the bands and fans.” Merlin CEO Charles Caldas cautioned against seeing Apple as the only company that can push new mainstream services.

“We are starting to feel there is an evolution happening here [in the digital music market] that is leading towards a market that is more about access than consumption,” he said. “How that plays out for mainstream consumers will depend on how it is executed and what value it brings to those consumers.” Unlike its two biggest US rivals, Google and Amazon, Apple¹s approach is less about being first to market and more about being first to market with a fully functional and fully licensed service that will have support from copyright holders.

However, no matter what Apple unveils this week ¬ and the presence of Steve Jobs suggests it will be a significant announcement ¬ it will not be set in stone and any service will doubtlessly evolve over the years.

Apple has constantly updated and refreshed its product lines ¬ from laptops and iPods to iTunes and iPads ¬ and so what iCloud is in June 2011 will really only be a whisper of what it is in June 2012, when the speculation around iCloud 2.0 will, inevitably, raise its head.

Software as key

As a piece of software, iTunes has been criticised for becoming a sprawling, patchwork affair as new functionality has been added over the past decade.

Initially it was designed for ripping and managing music from CDs, then came iPod management and the iTunes Store. Alongside that came Genius recommendations, iPhone management, iPad management and Ping, its white elephant of a social network.

Software designers have blamed its increasing sluggishness on the fact that it is being asked to do far more than it was initially conceived to do and a total reboot is essential to get it working at top speed again.

Tellingly, Spotify attempted to address this with its recent iPod integration, a bold move to make it, rather than iTunes, the default music player for many consumers.

Because iTunes has become a very cumbersome piece of music management software, the hope is that its migration into the cloud will erase a lot of the software problem the average iTunes user experiences.

Apple will also be looking to put the numerous missteps of its MobileMe offering (linking email, calendars, contacts and cloud storage) behind it.

Leaked details of Apple meetings suggested a furious Steve Jobs demanding to know why MobileMe was a disaster at launch. It is not a huge leap to believe that iCloud will have been rigorously tested to avoid similar launch problems.

Part of the reason that Ping stumbled out of the gates last year was the withdrawal, at the last minute, of Facebook Connect integration.

Speculation abounds that iCloud will pick up where Ping dropped the ball.

Facebook, like Apple, has placed an enormous emphasis on design and UI (user interface), so any meshing of the two would have serious quality standards to meet. And after MobileMe and Ping, Apple really cannot afford to release another half-baked product into the market.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Apple could pull the covers off the long-rumoured cloud version of iTunes at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco next week.

The company has confirmed that CEO Steve Jobs will deliver the keynote on Monday (June 6) where he will “unveil next generation software”.

This will include Lion (the latest Mac operating system), iOS 5 for the iPhone and iPad and iCloud - described in a press release as “Apple's upcoming cloud services offering”.

There was no mention of music in relation to iCloud, but it has long been expected that Apple will look to expand beyond its heavily criticised MobileMe offering and link it through to iTunes for music and video content.

Apple bought music streaming company Lala in December 2009 and in April this year acquired the iCloud domain name from Swedish cloud storage firm Xcerion for an estimated $4.5m (£2.73m).

Rumours have emerged in the past few weeks that it has - unlike Google and Amazon with their recent music-based cloud offerings - secured licensing deals with at least three of the major labels.

Jobs will deliver his keynote at 10am (PST) on June 6.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Facebook is said to be planning a hook up with Spotify, which will allow users to stream songs from the Spotify catalogue within the social network.

Forbes reports that the service, which will only work in countries where Spotify is live, will allow Facebook users to listen to songs simultaneously with their friends.

The report said the new service could be live in as little as two weeks, citing “sources close to the deal”.

It claims Facebook users will see a Spotify icon on the left side of their newsfeed, along with the current icons for photos and events.

Neither side has confirmed the deal, although Facebook recently re-launched its Music On Facebook platform, showing the importance of music to the social networking giant.

Facebook is said to have further plans for music in the coming months.

There is already some interaction between Spotify and social networking sites such as Facebook: Spotify users can, for example, share links to tracks via Twitter and Facebook.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Google Music has gone live in beta form and without any label or publisher deals -which Google insists the service does not require.

Unveiled at the I/O developer conference in San Francisco yesterday (May 11), Music Beta will initially be available to Google developers. Thereafter, it will move to invite-only beta, although Google did not provide a timeline for when this would be expected to happen.

The main features of the service are as follows:

    >  it will remain free while in its beta period, although no storage price points are given
    > users can upload and store up to 20,000 tracks in their personal space
    > access is available through any connected device and any changes made on one device (e.g. mobile or tablet) will automatically sync with other devices (e.g. PC) wirelessly
    > the Music Manager tool (for Mac and PC) will allow folder and playlist creation/management
    > the Instant Mix tool will create playlists and recommendations for users
    > offline play is possible with users able to cache to devices (either the most recently played tracks which are automatically cached or specifically selected tracks/albums/playlists)
    > a dedicated app for mobile and tablet devices running the Android operating system is available
    > it is US-only for now

A YouTube video outlining the main features of the service can be viewed here :

CNet reports during the press conference to launch the service, Android director of digital content Jamie Rosenberg insisted that despite no label or publisher deals, the service was “completely legal”.

He added, "We very much respect copyright. And we designed this service so that you can use your own personal music collection out of respect for those who create the music."

The company added it would respond to rightsholders who believed unauthorised content was being stored on the service.

On top of Music Beta, Google announced an online move rental service, allowing streaming access to titles.

Finally, the company revealed that over 100m Android devices have been activated to date and an average of 400,000 are now being activated each day.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Facebook is bidding to make music more central to its offering, after years of relying on third-party developers to shoulder the weight.

The company last week announced the relaunch of its Music On Facebook platform, significantly expanding the offering which first arrived in 2008.

The new Music On Facebook site offers dedicated free page builds for musicians, venues and fans.

Artists can send tour updates, upload music and photos and manage direct marketing. The site also offers musicians advice on how best to use the platform to communicate with existing fans and reach new ones.

The social networking giant, which has some 600m users globally, said the new Music on Facebook Page was “for music fans of all kinds”.

“Whether you’re a musician yourself, have a job in the music industry, or simply love good tunes, this is the page to stay up-to-date with what is happening in music on Facebook,” it said.

The company initially launched Music On Facebook in 2008 but it failed to catch fire.

However, the last two years have seen the social media landscape shift significantly with Myspace, once the byword for music-based social networking, shedding users.

News Corp. is now preparing for a speedy sale of the site that it paid $580m (£350.3m) for in 2005.

In the interim, a number of other services – most notably RootMusic and damntheradio – have carved a niche for themselves by offering Facebook page builds and content management for acts.

But the relationship has not always been an easy one. RootMusic recently caused controversy when its co-founder J Sider seemed to attack Facebook at the Rethink Music conference in Boston, saying, “When’s the last time you tried to do something with Facebook, and they listened to you?”

He quickly backtracked in a posting on the Hypebot site, saying, “What I was saying is that Facebook is a great platform to build on and as you've said we have had a lot of success with it.

“We have a great relationship with them and appreciate it very much. But if you are an individual artist or manager it’s tough to simply call up FB and ask if they could make a change on the platform for you.”

Given the scale of Facebook, any move it makes in the music sphere is likely to be intensely scrutinized by the music industry.

However, one label digital marketing head was unimpressed by the relaunch of Music On Facebook, believing the move to be too little, too late, when a variety of quality bolt-on services such as RootMusic and SoundCloud already exist.

“Right now it simply looks like a starter page for people looking to set up a fan page,” he said. “Of course that might change over time, but right now it only has 180,000 fans, so it’s got no reach whatsoever.”

“But right now I’d argue their best bet would just be to buy RootMusic and make that a default app, at the Pro level, for all artist pages,” he added.

Facebook was, of course, supposed to integrate with Ping, Apple’s music-centric social network within the iTunes player, but withdrew just before its launch in September last year.

Since then Ping has struggled to gain traction while Facebook was successfully integrated into Spotify’s player client.

Last month, MXP4 took music-based social gaming into Facebook with the launch of its Bopler titles. After several years of being pushed to the margins of Facebook, this year could finally see music could move centre stage on the world’s biggest social network.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Spotify has fired a broadside in its battle with iTunes to dominate the digital music market by offering a new system that can manage music on Apple devices.

Through a new ‘devices’ tool in the Spotify client sidebar, users can now manage the music on their iPod, iPhone or Android phone via the player (rather than via iTunes), syncing all their downloads.

The updated software will scan a user’s digital music collection into the Spotify player.

iPhones and Android phones sync wirelessly and the company said it had decided to focus on the most popular music devices, rather than integrating every MP3 player.

This in itself was significant enough. But the company, which has for the last year and a half offered downloads via its partner 7digital, also announced aggressive moves to build its download sales.

Spotify has now built its own download store and struck direct deals with labels and aggregators to sell music, with a particular emphasis on bundles; discounts are offered for multiple track playlist-based purchases, with a single-click buying option.

Users can buy 10 tracks from £7.99, 15 tracks for £9.99, 40 tracks for £25 and 100 tracks for £50.

The move could be a setback for 7digital (and 50% stakeholder HMV), but CEO Ben Drury was upbeat. “It’s not a blow – we've known about this for a very long time and Spotify’s implementation of our APIs and matching wasn't great,” he said.

Drury added Spotify’s recent moves to limit free access meant “it was obvious for them to do downloads themselves”.

For Spotify, the move to sell downloads means added storage and delivery costs although this is outweighed by cutting out the middleman.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said “Our users don't want to have to switch between music players, but they do want to take their playlists with them wherever they go, on a wider range of devices, more simply and at a price they can afford.”

But the implications are far wider-ranging. While Spotify does not mention iTunes at any point in its announcement, it is hard not to see this as an attack on the biggest name in digital music.

If Spotify can become a user’s main music player, why use iTunes to buy a download?

Ovum principal analyst Mark Little called the move “a direct attack on Apple’s precious iPod hinterland, and one which stands considerable chance of success”.

“Music labels will not be unhappy that iTunes is at last getting more direct competition, but Apple is yet to launch their own cloud-based music service and could still take a 30% cut of some of Spotify’s music revenues if they were to apply their new subscription policy,” he said.

“This move into Apple’s backyard is sure to improve the chances of success for Spotify in North America and no doubt its valuation as well. Nerves will be jangling in Cupertino.”

Indeed, with the news last week that Amazon had effectively started a price war in the US undercutting iTunes and Facebook re-launching its Music On Facebook platform, it was a tough seven days for Apple.

Of course, Spotify has yet to even launch in the US, a where iTunes has a 70% market share.

It is worth noting, too, that for Apple users, iTunes does a lot more than just organising music.

But with this Spotify update and a US launch said to be imminent, filling in one of the last significant holes in the company’s service, the ball is now firmly in Apple’s court.

Apple did not comment. However, some commentators think this could speed up the launch of its own much rumoured cloud music / streaming service, with some reports claiming it already has deals in place with a number of the majors.

“On paper this is no serious threat to the iTunes Music Store or player now,” said Forrester Research vice president and research director Mark Mulligan. “But, when Apple launches cloud functionality (most likely a mix of locker and on demand streaming) this will look much more directly competitive.

“But all that said let’s keep a sense of perspective here: Apple have sold over a quarter of a billion iPods. Spotify have 10 million customers of which only two thirds are active and only 10% pay them anything. If Apple feel any serious competitive threat they’ll throw their full innovation weight behind building something bigger and better.”

The news comes at an interesting time for the fledgling music streaming market: RIAA figures released last week revealed subscription-based income slid from $213.1m (£127.7m) to $200.9m (£120.4m) in the US last year, although the number of streaming subscribers was up from 1.2m to 1.5m.

Meanwhile, figures for the first four months of 2011, have shown sales of single track downloads in the US – far from stalling, as was previously supposed – were actually up 8.3% for the year-to-date.

In this context, Spotify’s move to boost download sales seems like a canny move. It could, of course, dilute its message as a streaming service but Ek is on record as saying that access and ownership can co-exist.

The emphasis on selling bundles is another interesting move. Spotify is not the first player to try this – eMusic’s business model is largely based on bundling – but it is a significant step.

The final change announced by Spotify last week was the launch of updated Android and iPhone apps that allow all users – including those on the free tier – to purchase MP3 playlists and wirelessly add them to their devices. Previously the Spotify smartphone app could only be activated by Premium users to synch playlists over Wi-Fi.

In making these three key changes – as well as recent alterations to the free service – Spotify has set out its stall, as it looks to convert a business that is impressive in its reach – but significantly less so in terms of revenue – into a profitable enterprise. And while the move will – inevitably – be painted as Apple versus Spotify, Drury, whose company has just launched a new Android app (see page 6) said the whole digital market could actually benefit.

“The more people that realise there are alternatives to iTunes is good for the whole market ,” he said.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »