BMI combines census and sample airplay data totaling more than 4,000,000 hours, providing the most detailed and wide-ranging picture of radio airplay available in the entertainment industry today. BMI’s analysis of TV music is drawn from a survey of more than 15,000,000 broadcast hours per year.

Det är klart att det är omöjligt att kontrollera all musik som spelas. Och det finns ett antal som använder andras musik utan att betala för den.
Parallellt finns det en verklighet där över 20 miljoner speltimmar rapporteras in - och detta enbart hos en av de två största insamlingsorganisationerna i USA.
Denna organisation, BMI, fick närmare 9 miljarder kronor i royalties för år 2007.
Pengar som ska betalas till förlag och låtskrivare.
Så visst finns det en frodande marknad för musik.

Det lagliga alternativet blir gratis

DN: 2008-07-21

—

Om man inte heter Britney Spears eller The Eagles har det helt enkelt blivit svårt om inte omöjligt att tjäna pengar på att sälja musik. I stället fungerar musiken mycket som ett reklamblad för artistens konserter och merchendise.

…

- Någon envis jävel kommer säkert att ladda upp en fil med all musik på Pirate Bay. Därför är det bra om strömningstjänsterna slår igenom innan dess. Folk kommer inte att betala för musiken, men kanske för vägledning. Det behövs kunniga människor som kan navigera bland all musik och som kan fylla samma funktion som personalen i skivbutikerna

…

Peter Gabriel har startat en musiknättjänst som är en konkurrent till last.fm och fungerar som ett filter för att hitta vad som är användbart eller intressant.

- Vi gynnas av impulsfaktorn hos konsumenterna. Till exempel om du är ute och kör och blir sugen på att lyssna på en skiva i bilen, säger Pernilla Engman.

di.se - Pengarna finns på scenen

Pengarna finns på scenen

Apple makes little money from the sale of songs. It is estimated that record companies pocket about $.65 per song sold on iTunes and Apple keeps $.34 to cover the costs of running the service, infrastructure, encoding, dealing with credit card companies, et cetera. Apple’s profit comes from the sale of iPods and related products. It is no secret that a large percentage of music files on iPods have not been purchased on iTunes. Most come from users’ CD collections, other online stores (such as allofmp3.com), p2p file sharing networks, and other forms of piracy (like sharing between friends). A thriving p2p community acts as an engine for iPod sales.

ITunes’s 99 cents per song is ultimately a compromise between Apple and the owners of content, in this case the record companies. We believe that from the point of view of Apple, 99 cents is too expensive. Because profit comes mainly from the sale of hardware, Apple is likely to prefer lower download prices. From the point of view of intellectual property owners, 99 cents is probably too low. Record companies have attempted to renegotiate with Apple to set higher prices for new, more popular content. Our analysis suggests that this may be a bad idea because it is precisely for popular content that p2p is a better substitute for iTunes. Rare content, on the other hand, is where p2p does not seem to work well as there are fewer peers offering it. With this initiative, record companies seem to be applying traditional “brick-and-mortar thinking” in their competition against p2p. But this is surely the wrong mindset to deal with p2p.

Delivering the Digital Goods: iTunes vs. Peer-to-Peer — HBS Working Knowledge

The process of obtaining content, an important part of the experience, also differs. ITunes provides a unified interface that seamlessly integrates the location, purchase, and consumption of content. Users of p2p networks, on the other hand, must navigate a complex environment and endure varying levels of congestion that hinder the quality of the process. ITunes certainly has the upper hand in this area.

Elberse sees great potential in studying these phenomena in other industries, such as music and books. Given the more private nature of music consumption, she expects the shift toward the tail may well be more pronounced in that industry.

“There’s a value in my having seen the same movie as you because they are often the topic of conversation,” she explains. “It’s frustrating if we’re trying to have a chat about movies and neither of us has seen the same film. But that may be less of a problem in music.”

“By turning a great song into a jingle, advertisers have achieved the ultimate: a meaningless product has now been injected with your meaningful memory of a song,” he said. “The songs and the artists who have created them have power and cultural value, that’s why advertisers pay out millions for them. Once you have taken the cash, you, your song and your audience are forever married to the product.”

Nic Harcourt, KCRW’s influential music director and host of “Morning Becomes Eclectic,” has a sideline doing musical supervision for TV commercials through the firm Elias Arts. He said that when he chooses songs – most of which are licensed for a flat fee from $75,000 to $150,000 – he tends to focus more on what a song can do for an ad than the negative impact its placement could have on the performer.

“A lot of these bands are like, ‘If I’m getting exposure on television, that’s great,’ ” DeLaughter said. ” ‘It’s better than what I’m getting on the radio.’ ” (The monetary stakes are markedly lower on TV shows than TV commercials, however. Unlike the six-figure licensing fee a plum commercial can fetch, song placement on a show that regularly features music, such as “Grey’s Anatomy,” typically nets $5,000 to $20,000 for an emerging artist.)

http://www.hearmusic.com/

Starbucks

One of the strongest rivals to Apple Inc.’s iTunes Store got stronger Thursday when Warner Music Group said it would sell digital songs without anti-piracy protection through Amazon.com Inc.

Apple Inc. has surpassed Wal-Mart to become America’s No. 1 music store, the first time that a seller of digital downloads has ever beaten the big CD retailers.

Apple sold more albums in January and February than any other U.S. retailer, market research firm NPD Group said Thursday, underscoring how the music industry is on the front edge of a digital media shift that is upending businesses as diverse as bookstores and video game makers.

U.S. consumers still buy more CDs than digital downloads, but the gulf is narrowing rapidly. Only five years after launching its iTunes digital store, Apple has dominated the fast-growing download market so completely that it jumped ahead of individual CD sellers such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target.

Record company executives point to Japan, where mobile phone users spent $128 million on music-related downloads during the last six months, according to the federation. Representatives of the four major music companies have all said they expect mobile downloads of songs and videos to increase in the U.S. and Europe.“Music is becoming more and more important worldwide,” said Larry Haverty, who oversees a media portfolio at Gabelli Asset Management Inc. “Sales of physical formats are still falling, but within the next two to three years I think you’ll see downloads push the market to new heights.”

Could digital music sales be the recording industry’s salvation? Not yet, not by a longshot. But legal downloads are way up, according to domestic and international numbers released Monday.

When “The Emancipation of Mimi” was released in April, Carey was a huge underdog in the race against “The Massacre,” which had come out the previous month. She had lost so much luster that EMI paid $30 million to buy out her $80-million contract in 2002. She was then signed by Island Def Jam, which released “Mimi.”

Many expect the album’s first-week total to be north of 725,000, which probably would make it next week’s No. 1. If so, that would be the first time since 2005 that albums with sales of more than 700,000 topped the chart in consecutive weeks. To understand how welcome those numbers would be, consider that last year, in one week in January, the “Dreamgirls” soundtrack managed to claim the No. 1 spot on the charts by selling a mere 60,000 copies.

The band Coldplay on Tuesday released its fourth album, “Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends.” It was the most pre-ordered album in the history of iTunes, and that powered its first-day sales to 423,000 copies.

More than that, Wayne’s leering dance-floor hit “Lollipop” (the lead single off the new album) already has been downloaded as a cellphone ring tone more than 2 million times, making it the bestseller of 2008, according to Nielsen RingScan

The music industry is still puzzling out the Digital Age, and the most challenging question might be pricing. The British band Radiohead let fans choose the price they wanted to pay for its most recent album; Wayne’s approach is to send so much free music and other content through the pipeline that he becomes an essential figure for fans.

The North Carolina rocker’s collection sold 65,000 copies, enough to save the record industry from yet another new sales low during a particularly slow January. That was just 134 more copies than the “Dreamgirls” soundtrack, the slimmest margin ever between the No. 1 and No. 2 bestselling albums, according to Billboard.Daughtry’s album has sold almost 1.3 million copies since its release in November, making him the latest “AI” commercial success story.

Mr Bandier points to the phenomenal recent sales of the debut album from 50 Cent, a rapper at rival Universal Music, as evidence that people are still willing to pay for music.”He sold 1.7m albums in just two weeks and to the demographic that is doing the most downloads.

He believes a recent initiative by PC maker Gateway, which has released a computer with 5,000 songs pre-installed on the hard disk which users can pay to download, is a model for the future. “It will be like having a retail store in every home.”

That’s why Heroes, which has become a hit for General Electric’s (nyse: GE - news - people ) NBC, goes for a relative song–just $126,000 for a 30-second spot. When NBC trotted the show out to advertisers last spring, it had a hard sell: A superhero show with no costumes and a little-known cast.

Tags: Heroes,

AAPL

The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents all four major labels, also weighed in on Jobs’ remarks. Rather than respond to the demand that the major labels drop usage restrictions, RIAA Chairman and Chief Executive Mitch Bainwol argued instead that Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) ought to license its iPod technology so that iTunes downloads could be compatible with other digital music players.

“We think that’s a great solution,'’ Bainwol said in a statement.

But despite this public stance, executives at major labels have been privately mulling whether to drop DRM restrictions on downloads, particularly through non-Apple vendors.

Such a move would have an obvious benefit for non-Apple music vendors, because it would allow them to sell music that consumers could play on Apple’s iPods, which they currently can not do. And because Apple’s online music competitors are primarily focused on selling music via subscription service instead of downloads, it wouldn’t diminish the appeal of their core business–which would continue to use DRM itself.

The new rates force webcasters to pay for each song streamed to each user, and increase over the next few years as follows:

2006: $0.0008 to stream one song to one listener
2007: $.0011
2008: $.0014
2009: $.0018
2010: $.0019

Those fees will add up quickly for larger webcasters; the Radio and Internet Newsletter (RAIN) calculates that, assuming that the average station plays 16 songs per hour, sites would have to pay “about 1.28 cents” per listener per hour using the 2006 rate, and would owe this retroactively, in addition to licensing fees going forward.

“Even adding in ancillary revenues from occasional video gateway ads, banner ads on the website, and so forth, total revenues per listener-hour would only be in the 1.0 to 1.2 cents per listener-hour range.  That math suggests that the royalty rate decision — for the performance alone, not even including composers’ royalties! — is in the in the ballpark of 100% or more of total revenues.”

Perlson goes on to claim that payola can’t harm internet radio because consumers have so much more choice online. He says they’ll stop listening to any station that forces the wrong sort of stuff down their throats, and switch to one that forces the right sort of stuff down their throats. He also believes that because the payola songs can be targeted with precision, most listeners wouldn’t mind hearing them on their stations, similar to the way contextually relevant Google Ad Words work on web pages.

However, Perlson contradicts himself in the very next paragraph. “It could also be useful to push crossover hits across sympathetic genres,” he writes, “allowing artists the possibility of actually breaking out onto a larger stage.” Which is it? Either the payola songs would fit in perfectly with a certain station, or they would not. He can’t have it both ways.

There are 10,000 commercial radio stations in the United States; record companies rely on approximately 1,000 of the largest to create hits and sell records. Each of those 1,000 stations adds roughly three new songs to its playlist each week. The indies get paid for every one: $1,000 on average for an “add” at a Top 40 or rock station, but as high as $6,000 or $8,000 under certain circumstances.That’s a minimum $3 million worth of indie invoices sent out each week.

Why does radio suck? Because most stations play only the songs the record companies pay them to

In the half-century since the original payola scandals, the music industry, the broader commercial culture, and consumer expectations have evolved to the point where the payola laws seem outmoded and backward-looking.

Sony Music — now known as Sony/BMG — has to pony up a $10 million settlement with New York’s Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

“Payola” is a contraction of the words “pay” and”Victrola” (LP record player), and entered the English language via the record business. The first court case involving payola was in 1960. On May 9, Alan Freed was indicted for accepting $2,500 which he claimed was a token of gratitude and did not affect airplay

Tags: payola, commercial bribery, soundscan, charts

Production and promotion costs are rising (executives say a high-profile album now may fail to yield a profit if it cannot crack 1 million in sales, a lofty total) even as the parent corporations of the big music conglomerates cut costs in the face of an uncertain economy. Sales of music declined 3% in 2001, which sounds like a modest dip, but it marked the first decrease since SoundScan introduced a credible sales tracking system to the industry in 1991. And, in an intriguing statistic, unit sales of prerecorded albums (762.8 million albums) trailed considerably the sales of recordable CDs (1 billion units).

‘They’re All Freaked Out’

A closer look at the music album sales of 2001 shows that the vital sales of blockbuster releases were well off too. In 2000, seven albums sold more than 5 million copies (and Eminem’s smash “The Marshall Mathers LP” nearly lapped that impressive total with 9 million), but in 2001 no album managed to crack that threshold.

During a single week in May, Canadian pop rocker Avril Lavigne’s new song “Don’t Tell Me” aired no fewer than 109 times on Nashville radio station WQZQ-FM.

The heaviest rotation came between midnight and 6 a.m., an on-air no man’s land visited largely by insomniacs, truckers and graveyard shift workers.

One Sunday morning, the 3-minute, 24-second song aired 18 times, sometimes as little as 11 minutes apart.Those plays, or “spins,” helped “Don’t Tell Me” vault into the elite top 10 on Billboard magazine’s national pop radio chart, which radio program directors across the country use to spot hot new tunes.

-  2005

ALICIA KEYS completes a hat trick with her new “Unplugged,” her third straight album to debut at No. 1 on the national sales chart.It sold 196,000 copies in its first week in stores, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Dixie Chicks, registered more than a 700% increase in sales of their CD “Taking the Long Way,” which totaled 103,000 copies sold.

The Chicks CD, the album-of-the-year Grammy winner, jumped to No. 8 , up from No. 72 the previous week.

The trio won five Grammys, including record and song of the year.

The Chicks’ album was one of nine last week to post six-digit sales.

That’s a stark contrast to last month, when sales of 60,000 was enough to claim the No. 1 spot on the sleepy chart.

The No. 1 album this week belonged again to Norah Jones, who did not appear on the Grammys but did make a series of high-profile television appearances, including “60 Minutes.”

Her album “Not Too Late” sold 211,000 copies in its third week of release, suggesting that it was a popular Valentine’s Day gift.