Topic: Media Sector

Coffee with Peter Fader

Early this afternoon, Peter Fader, a marketing professor at Wharton, stopped by Fast Company's offices to visit. We sat down for coffee and conversation, exploring Fader's work in predictive and explanatory models for electronic ...READ»

WALL E, Steve Jobs, Pixar and Optimism

WALL E.  Have you seen it?  What did you think?  I loved it. I want to discuss WALL E, the latest release from Pixar, not because of the quality of the movie, but because of the Pixar story, and what it has to say about self ...READ»

What Will CBS Do With last.fm Part Deux

I've been thinking a lot about CBS' acquisition of last.fm since I first posted about it last week. Maybe it's because I'm totally obsessed with the music discovery and listening service, or it's that I'm really unsure as to whether ...READ»

The Music Industry: No Longer a One Trick Pony

There was a time when all a record label had to worry about was making hits. Good hits paved the road to successful albums, and then the label got paid--really paid. As holder of the majority of the publishing rights of music ...READ»

Update: imeem's Final Label Match

I posted a few weeks back at length about imeem's success in securing the rights to stream from three of the four major labels' catalogs. (You can read the post here.) Earlier Monday, imeem announced that it had made a deal with the ...READ»

Warner, 7digital Spread the Music

In a sign that the major labels are finally beginning to embrace digital music worldwide, U.K.-based digital music provider 7digital announced a pan-European licensing agreement with Warner Music to sell their MP3s, nearly completing ...READ»

Three E-Readers That Could Change Publishing Forever, and One That Won't

Okay, we know the e-book revolution is just fomenting beyond the horizon, soon to sweep the publishing world. But which electronic devices will be at the vanguard, and which ones won't? Asustek's Dual-Screen E-Book, the Cheapest ...READ»

SpiralFrog: Is it Over Before it Begins?

SpiralFrog, set to launch in Q1 2007, was supposed to be a new model of digital music distribution. The plan is an advertiser supported model, where users get to download music for free -- as long as they watch advertising. It ...READ»

Al Gomes and Bignoise

Artists Hall of Fame :Brian Scott Co-founder of the internationally acclaimed Blue Man Group Appearance: Lead vocals and guitar on The Arm's "Bucket" CD: 'Digital Mystery Tour: Side One,' Track 1Bill Champlin Lead singer of ...READ»

Call for New Leadership in the Music Industry

I was just listening to a podcast entitled The Future of Music hosted by David Slusher from IT Conversations. He was interviewing the authors of the book of the same name, Gerd Leonhard and David Kusek. David indicated that he has ...READ»

Survey Shows MP3 Pirates Also Buy the Most MP3s, So Why All the Fuss?

A survey conducted in Norway found that music consumers who regularly download illegally pirated music tracks are also the largest purchasers of legitimate digital music files, by a factor of 10 over non-pirates. So, you have to ...READ»

Viacom Could Embrace YouTube and Create New Ad Revenue

Viacom is treating YouTube like a copyright infringer, but there's an easy win-win scenario: advertising barter and a per-subscriber fee. All Viacom needs to do is to think of YouTube as just another ad-supported distribution ...READ»

Attack of the Sequel King!

He's a movie-studio boss, but in his lean operation, the boss delivers food, hauls lights around, and drives the truck.READ»

Sign of the Dot-Com Apocalypse II

Perhaps the greatest business blunder of the Internet Age is the AOL Time Warner merger. Today's New York Post reports, as we first noted yesterday, that AOL may be dropped from the media company's official corporate name. This is ...READ»

The Birth of the Goog-Tube

The rumors are true! Google has acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. According to a Google press release "YouTube will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community." The transaction has ...READ»

Can Sony's Lia Vollack Save the Music Industry?

Lia Vollack, Sony's soundtrack guru, is the shrewdest music executive in Hollywood. In the past five years, in the face of a little glitch called the Failure of the Music Industry -- the 40% drop in CD sales since 2000 -- Vollack's power has grown immensely. Why? Because soundtracks -- often purchased as a keepsake of a movie -- reliably sell CDs. Can the record labels keep her happy long enough to hold onto their last cash cow?READ»

• Music Goes Green
• Six Soundtracks that Topped the Charts
• Music's Invisible Money Machine

RIAA To Stop Suing Individuals For Music Piracy

'Tis the season traditionally associated with goodwill, but I'm not sure I could've predicted this piece of good news: the Recording Industry Association of America is going to stop suing individuals for music piracy. There are ...READ»

Last.fm Gets Power from The Orchard

Maybe it's The Orchard Gets Power from Last.fm... The Orchard, a digital distribution vehicle for music, has formed a lot of partnerships lately with record labels and mobile carriers and content providers. But none of these ...READ»

I Download Illegally -- and Harmlessly

Good news for music downloaders: A recent study shows that Internet music piracy not only does NOT hurt legitimate CD sales, it may even boost sales of some types of music. That's good news for file swappers of all stripes. In a ...READ»

Attack of the Baby Pixars

Digital animation isn't the cozy little world it used to be. Now lots of people are trying it--and trying to shoot the big studios' lights out.READ»

Fixing the Music Model: Virgin Media, Universal to Launch Subscription Service in U.K.

In another ambitious scheme to repair the music industry and discourage illegal downloading, Virgin Media inked a deal with Universal Music to offer an unlimited-download subscription service to customers in the U.K. by year's end. ...READ»

Maverick Mogul

As he builds his own digital version of the vertically integrated movie studio, Broadcast.com founder Mark Cuban is questioning everything about the business--and naturally ticking a lot of people off.READ»

Why the Music Industry Needs A Makeover

A recent article in Crain's New York Business (subscription required), titled "Music Labels' New Leaders," explores the music industry's shift to hiring the hippest hitmakers to man the helm of many top -level positions in the ...READ»

Napster Returns as Best Buy's Streaming Music Muscle [Updated]

Napster, the original file-sharing site that set the digital music world into a tailspin, is making yet another phoenix-like return to life from the ashes of its former self. This time it's as a music streaming site, and it's got Best ...READ»

RIAA Still Suing Individuals, While E.U. Lightens Three Strikes Rule

Piracy and copyright issues are still troubling the world, and recent news about the RIAA, and the European Union's copyright laws highlight this fact. The RIAA is reportedly still suing people when it said it wouldn't, and in ...READ»