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10 March 2010

11 March 2010

01 December 2009

Perhaps this is just a numbers game, but Australian record sales actually managed to improve in 2009.  According to figures shared by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), wholesale recording revenues gained 4.8 percent last year.  That represents the first improvement since 2003, and offers a glimmer of hope for another troubled market.

But was 2008 a bottom?  Both a-la-carte and digital album sales remain high-growth, and digital as a category gained 46 percent to $79.2 million Australian ($68.4 million US) last year.   More hopeful projections - for Australia and other countries - call for digital to eventually reverse broader declines.  Of course, the majors would like nothing better, though a healthy bit of caution is being applied.

And, like other countries, the Australian recording business is stumping for ISP-level monitoring and enforcement.  "We remain hopeful that the ISPs will work with us to address this pressing problem and help the growth of the legitimate market, something that will, of course, also be to their benefit," said ARIA chairman and president Ed St. John.

The Grammy Awards staged a nice recovery this year, reaching audience levels not felt since 2004.  That represents a serious bump from last year, and more importantly, another step away from a bottom-scraping 2006.

The recent telecast scored an audience of 26.6 million, up 35 percent from 2009.  In 2006, that total was 15.1 million, an audience eclipsed by American Idol.

A number of factors probably contributed to the recent upswing, including a collection of younger winners.  But the Recording Academy also triggered a number of online initiatives to coincide with the showcase.  That includes everything from an iPhone app to a Twitter account to a YouTube channel, a serious shift that makes year-to-year comparisons more difficult.

Indeed, many of these categories hardly existed in previous years.  The online stats for 2010, according to the Recording Academy:

*125,760 Facebook fans.

*48,776 Twitter followers, and a top-trending topic for more than four days.

*1.5 million combined views on YouTube for 'We're All Fans' videos.

*2.1 million combined views on grammy.com for various "We're All Fans" videos.

What is 'way better than a laptop,' and 'way better than a smartphone'?  The answer, according to Steve Jobs and Apple, is the iPad, a sleek, touch-sensitive tablet that is 'a dream to type on'.  Jobs unveiled the iPad midday Wednesday in San Francisco in his customary jeans and black turtleneck, and the crowd lapped it up.  "It's the best browsing experience you've ever had, it's unbelievably great," Jobs continued.

Just like the iPhone, users can flip the iPad up, down, or sideways, and buyers will be sure to impress their friends.  Indeed, this thing looks like a giant iPhone in some ways, and buttons are sparse. Underneath, the iPad employs the iPhone OS, and that means that apps translate.

Beyond email, photos, ebooks, Google maps, YouTube, an address book, a calendar, and apps, Jobs also displayed music-related functionality.  That essentially boils down to iTunes, and the audio and video content that comes with it.

The presence of the complete iTunes application opens more possibilities for iTunes LP, a more comprehensive, album-like format.  Whether that stirs a broader album renaissance remains unclear, though the first chapters are just being written on the next-gen bundle.

What else?  The iPad also has built-in WiFi, a 3G mobile option, and ten hours of battery life.  And the price?  At 'just' $499 to start, Apple could shift a lot of units, and Wall Street is expecting sales of between 4 and 5 million in the first year alone.  Other models are more expensive, depending on storage and 3G capabilities.  The highest-storage, 3G-capable model is $829.

Spotify has 250,000 premium subscribers, potentially the start of a meaningful monetization.  But Vodafone is now boasting 450,000 subscribers at Midem, a number that is growing fast.  The tally covers a few different offerings across a number of European countries, including one that delivers a 10-pack of MP3s for €5 per month.  Another offers unlimited access to the broader Vodafone collection, though access is understandably more limited.

Actually, the Vodafone catalog has 'just' 2 million songs, though the company projects an expansion to 6 million this year.  In 2009, the mobile giant finalized DRM-free licenses with all four majors, a move that paved the way for the current subscriber gains.

The growth arc looks positive.  In December of last year, Vodafone added an additional 100,000 subs, and smartphone growth could boost things further.  "We expect to see continued growth in our music service subscriptions driven by the increase in smartphone use, with their worry-free data tariffs and great value add-ons such as music bundles," explained Lee Epting, Director of Content at Vodafone Internet Services.

Midem suffered another substantial attendance drop this year, the result of both macroeconomic and industry-specific pressures.  The nasty combo slashed crowds by nearly 13 percent from 2008, and roughly 23 percent from 2007 alone.  Floors were still full-bodied over the weekend, and some sessions were over-crowded.  But the streets of Cannes were a bit more navigable, hotel lobbies less packed, and the entire affair less lavish.

And, plenty of companies trimmed their troops, the biggest example coming from Universal Music Group.  An executive or two from the publishing group surfaced, though the recording unit was absent. Others just sent less people, cooled the expense accounts of those who attended, or simply shortened the length of the trip.

Understandably, a major focus of Midem has been monetization.  That introduced a number of 'conference cliches' and platitudes, including tired jabs against major labels, consumers, legislators, and entrepreneurs.  But more constructively, Midem integrated executives from other industries, many of whom are grappling with similar challenges.  Some are making it, others are not, though the idea was to get the music industry to stop breathing its own fumes.

Great idea, though the takeaways were mixed.  Kodak CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett offered plenty of turnaround gusto and cowboy irreverence, though the reality is that Kodak is seriously struggling in a post-film world.  Getty Images CEO Jonathan Klein outlined success strategies in the easily-pirated images environment, and digital guru Gerd Leonhard offered lucrative examples from virtual worlds and book publishing.

Other examples flowed.  YouTube executive Patrick Walker announced that more than one billion videos - per week - are now being monetized by the video giant.  On the music side, Daniel Ek of Spotify announced a paid subscriber total of 250,000, though American label executives remain unconvinced.  Elsewhere, Shazam pointed to 300,000 paid downloads per day, according to a Music Ally report.

But the broader question is whether a serious and substantial recording and music industry can exist in the 2000s.  One perspective is that attempts to monetize the recording - at least in the wild B2C context - are mostly impossible.  The reason is that music and media assets are now abundant and infinitely replicated, a complete shift from the relatively high scarcity of the 90s.  Indeed, over the past ten years, most attempts to create scarcity in the digital context have faltered.

That is a difficult interpretation for anyone whose fate is tied to the recording.  But this business is bigger than the recording, and attendees talked of more controlled channels like B2B licensing, merchandising, touring, publishing, and gaming.  Dialing back decades, Midem was built as a music licensing exchange, and the trade floor remains a musical UN today.  But even that component is facing disruption, thanks to a global licensing marketplace that is increasingly moving online.

In the meantime, this is an industry still searching for solutions, breakthroughs and viable business models.  Right now, Midem is the forum for that discussion, a traditionally huge, over-the-top event.  But this is an industry that may need to shrink before it can grow again, and Midem may need to shift accordingly.