Distorted-Loop.com

US album sales in October declined 19.4 per cent year on year, according to the latest SoundScan numbers as reported by Coolfer.

That’s steeper decline than 2008 has been as a year, but quite possibly attributable to a relatively weak summer release schedule (just watch the action hot up from mid-October on), the US elections and - principally - the economic downturn which will have a huge impact on music sales.

Why will recession have such an impact on music sales? Because years of litigation against customers has driven a schism between US music consumers and US labels, sadly to the detriment of all concerned, including the artists.

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OK, so news in from the really rather obvious department, consultancy firm Detica has put out a passionate appeal for the entertainment industry to collaborate against piracy with help from the ISPs.

Detica insists that stronger collaboration between Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and the entertainment industry is the only way to make it easier for consumers to download music and films legally whilst providing ‘fair trade’ for artists.

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will join music industry group, Musictank’s panel next week in which panelists will discuss the creation of compelling alternatives to file-sharing.

Vodafone UK Head of Music – Mobile Internet and Content Services, Tom McLennan, will join the panel along with an unannounced Carphone Warehouse person.

McLennan is responsible for Vodafone UK’s music products and the launch of MusicStation, and has the reputation of having an eye for new commercial models with a particular interest in what subscription-based services might offer operators and labels.

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Radiohead’s publisher Warner Chappell today revealed that the band’s first ever iTunes album release sold 30,000 units in the US in week one - and explained a whole heap more concerning the band’s ‘In Rainbows’ release strategy.

These statistics put paid to any criticism that the band’s release was in any sense a failure - some highlights include:

- After being made available free for three months the album was Number 1 in the UK and in the US
- The physical CD has sold 1.75 million to date and is still top 200 UK & US
- They sold 100,000 boxsets via W.A.S.T.E.
- Nearing 17 million plays on last.fm
- 1.2 million fans will see the tour

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AC/DC’s hotly-hyped album, ‘Black Ice’, may not ship until October 20 but that hasn’t stopped the rock ‘n’ roll legend’s collection leaking online, where it has been downloaded over 400,000 times through the Torrent networks.

These kind of figures are inevitable as the band won’t yet release their music online…this hasn’t stopped it emerging there, however, it leaked onto the networks six days ago. The only rock ‘n’ roll tragedy is that AC/DC won’t get paid for those thousands of downloads…

Do they care? Probably not. During the last 5 years when most recording artists have experienced a drop in CD sales, AC/DC have been flourishing, last year selling 1.3 million CDs in the US alone, TorrentFreak helpfully informs.

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We7 CEO and co-founder Steve Purdham is over the moon at achieving a BT Digital Music Award, but warns that the industry remains under threat - even at this stage in its evolution.

“The digital world is about to go through another upheaval with 1 billion streams on MySpace Music, We7 Launching in November and Apple threatening to pull the plug,” he said, speaking to Distorted Loop just in advance of the revelation of the royalty deal for publishing in the US announced last night.

Despite the hubbub of activity, Purdham thinks there’s still significant challenges to the development of the digital music industry.

“All of this activity shows two things, first the demand for digital music is outstanding and if allowed to flourish will build a very healthy business for artists, labels and fans alike,” he said, warning, “but at the same time the fundamental economics of the industry are still trying to kill off the opportunity rather that allowing it to grow.” Read the rest of this entry »

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TheFilter.com has signed a deal with ads-supported music service We7 in which both firms will work together on new music filtering and recommendation tools for We7 users.

We7, which recently signed EMI for its ad-supported streaming music service, now has a catalogue of over three million tracks. But the site claims that it is now a challenge for its users to discover new music based on tastes due to the huge choice available. 
 
TheFilter.com’s integration into the We7 service will combat this problem by giving users access to its smart filtering tools. The tools use an advanced mathematical algorithm to filter out music that a user will not like and filter in content that reflects their taste. Read the rest of this entry »

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The European Parliament has once again voted to prevent EU member states from imposing a “three strikes” rule against unauthorised file sharers.

In April MEPs supported measures added within a bill “to avoid adopting measures conflicting with civil liberties and human rights and with the principles of proportionality, effectiveness and dissuasiveness, such as the interruption of Internet access”.

Called to vote once again, the majority of MEPs voted against the lunatic measure, which would see file-sharers caught illegally sharing media three times struck off the internet for good. The vote came in at 573-74 in favour. Read the rest of this entry »

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A pre-release alpha version of a Mac version of uTorrent, the popular BitTorrent client for Windows, has been leaked to the public, TorrentFreak has noted.

The software comes from conentious Swedish torrent site The Pirate Bay, and has been expected since 2006 when BitTorrent purchased uTorrent and promised to develop a Mac version.

However, BitTorrent is warning that the alpha software isn’t really ready for release right now (it’s buggy and doesn’t entirely work), but its existence does at least prove a Mac version of the software is in development.

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FATdrop today introduced the third version of its digital promo service, which lets record labels and promotion companies manage their pre-release music. 

The company has called its third-gen sevice Bamboo, and has managed to achieve many significant upgrades to the solution, making it easier than ever for labels to create, track and analyse what happens to the content they distribute - and secure digital promotion works, the company said.

The system lets labels securely distribute pre-release music, offering the ability to track and monitor who’s downloading promos, with downloads touched-up by Jova watermarking technology which gives each downloaded track a unique code, so it can be identified if it later turns up on a file- sharing site. Read the rest of this entry »

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