Notes on Music Alley
paidContent has some notes on the recent Music Alley gathering in London that had a few panels that talked about digital media and music.
eMusic's David Pakman compared iTunes and eMusic. Apple gets very few downloads from each iPod owner (1 billion songs divided by 50 million iPods over three years). eMusic, he said, pays out an average of $5.62 per subscriber per month, or "2,858% more than Apple" according to his math.
It was Ted Cohen, though, and not Pakman who predicted a great rise for subscription services. Cohen thinks it will dominate the market while Pakman thinks subscriptions will be a niche player.
There was some talk of MySpace, of course. MySpace VP for European marketing and content Jamie Kantrowitz played down the controversies surrounding the site's use of music and the fact that it doesn't compensate labels or artists for audio streams. MySpace hasn't run into serious trouble, he says, because artists choose to upload their music (Beggars Group's Martin Mills agreed) and said, "MySpace is only 2.5 years old and down the line there may be other revenue models."
Music Groups