• Dying, but still a good investment: Deluxe Global Media Services Blackburn Ltd, which just invested $6 million in a CD maker, has been taken over by Atlanta-based Glenayre Technologies, Inc. Deluxe is the largest CD replicator in the UK. Its clients include Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. (Lancashire Telegraph)

• Statistics on Canadian performance arts groups: pre-tax income has almost doubled in three years, revenue was up 4.2% over last year, and grants from the government and private sector dropped a point from three years ago. (Playbill)

• Universal Music Mobile selected Targetize to provide search and discovery solutions for its AnySong service in the Netherlands. AnySong provides mobile subscribers access to over 250,000 songs, clips and ringtones. It will also have content from Sony BMG and Warner Music Group. (Press Release)

• Digital distributor The Orchard has reached one million licensed tracks its catalog. The one that put them over the mark? Barenaked Ladies' "Sound of Your Voice." (Yahoo! Finance)

• Universal Music Publishing Group signed composer Carol Bayer Sager to an exclusive, worldwide administration agreement. Bayer wrote the lyrics for such hits as "That's What Friends Are For" (which she co-wrote with then-husband Burt Bacherach), "Don't Cry Out Loud" and "They Prayer." (Jazz News)

• The FCC will finalized, by the end of this year, a three-year old study on localism and public hearings on how to help the commission further deregulate the broadcast industry. (Billboard Radio Monitor)

Posted by Glenn at 11:23 AM | Link
|Digital Distribution||Publishing||Radio||The CD|

Coolfer caught wind of a cute way to stop songs from being traded on P2P networks: Cut up each song into nine different tracks.

Publicists are sending out out advance copies of Heavens' Patent Pending, which Epitaph will release on September 12th, that have 11 songs and 99 tracks. Each song consists of 9 seperate, sequential tracks. Imagine the annoyance of grabbing all those tracks on Gnutella, or listening to the CD on shuffle.

Of course, some enterprising person could easily use an audio editor to combine all the tracks. Labels seem resigned to the fact that piracy will endure, but they aren't going to make it easy. As ESPN's Dan Patrick would say, "You can't hope to stop it, you can only hope to contain it."

Posted by Glenn at 2:57 PM | Link
|P2P||The CD|

Epic Records isn't shying away from a pre-release strategy for Jessica Simpson's upcoming album, A Public Affair. The album will be released August 29th, but the first single was released digitally a few weeks ago. The digital album will get an eight-week window before the CD is released. Additional promotions prior to the CD's release include ringtones, downloads for fanclub members who pre-order the album.

(Not only that, but Epic is getting even more creative with the first single, "A Public Affair." Fans can download a personalize version of the song with his/her name by choosing from a list of 500 names. Less common names will be delivered in one to three weeks.)

Good to see at least one label would rather work multiple revenue streams than worry about cannibalizing CD sales. In March of this year Jeff Leeds of the NY Times wrote an article about how some labels were holding back pre-releases in order to maximize first week album sales. Labels, as usual, were worried about single sales cannibalizing album sales.

Continue reading "To Pre-Release Or Not To Pre-Release?" »

Posted by Glenn at 4:57 PM | Link
|The CD|