Remember that ‘twist’ in the upcoming Google Music store that we wrote about earlier this week? The company’s Android boss Andy Rubin didn’t give any details when he made the comment, but Business Insider claims to have the full skinny on Google’s plans, courtesy of a music biz mole. Its report claims Google Music will let people who buy songs share them with friends “on a limited basis”. How? By sending them to those friends, who will be able to listen to them for either a limited number of times or a limited time period for free. The sending may involve links to stream the tunes from the purchaser’s Google Music cloud locker. “Our source also tells us that Google – like Spotify and many other services – is paying the major labels huge up-front advances to get these kinds of rights. The majors are big enough to demand these advances, while most smaller indie labels are not, and are therefore getting left out of the chain,” suggests the report. We suspect Merlin may have something to say about that, as well as publishers and collecting societies.

So what she's really saying is that the CD is dead -- or at least it will be soon. Should we let it go quietly into the night?

This question is a tough one to answer -- in a very real sense, CDs are the last holdout of the physical embodiment of music, the last big-time format we can still turn over in our hands and drool over.

Of course, some will argue that CDs aren't nearly as "physical" or as "real" as vinyl, and they might be right. Despite its resurgence, though, vinyl is still a minuscule player in the music market. The CD is the only widespread physical format between us and an all-digital landscape (except for USB drives, which seem about as authentically physical as iPods). Are we ready to let them go and finally submerge ourselves completely in a world of digital music?

What makes this easier is that the CD was never a good format to begin with. They're certainly not worth holding onto as the world changes around them, for a few reasons:

They skip. (If you don't believe us, put an old one in your car and drive around a city with as many potholes as this one.)

They're small -- big enough for some form of album art, but without enough real estate for anything masterful (like the Sgt. Peppers cover, which is impossible to scrutinize on a CD jacket) or subtle (like the White Album cover, which just feels stupid and bland when it's tiny).

They stop working over time (like records, but without the endearing hiss and crackles).

You have to save their contents on your computer as digital files anyways, since computers are essentially the only CD players anyone owns anymore -- at least outside of their car.

It's true: There's something incredibly important about music that with a physical dimension. It helps us remember that someone made the music with love and care. The transition of music to the digital era has been painful, with file-sharing turning artists against the fans who adore them and sales shrinking at alarming rates.

Yet the CD is an unfortunate format, not one we'd choose to be the last line of defense against an all-digital world. Ford may be the first to abandon it publicly, but it's only a matter of time before the rest of us turn our backs and do the same.

Cricket's Muve Music Service Passes 100,000 Users

 By Antony Bruno (@AntonyNBruno), Denver

In just six months, the Muve mobile music service from pre-paid wireless operator Cricket has done what year-old music services like MOG and Rdio have yet to do: reach 100,000 users. The company released the data today.

That's quite a feat, especially considering that the service has only been active in Cricket's full nationwide footprint for just over two months. The service went live in January in a handful of markets, rolling out slowly to cover all markets by early May. As Billboard previously noted, Muve's 100,000 subscribers are more than what both MOG and Rdio combined have generated, according to sources familiar with their progress.

"Not a lot of new services have launched that have reached that number of subscribers so quickly," says David Ring, Universal Music Group eLabs executive TV of business development and business affairs. "That's phenomenal."

What's more, Cricket also released usage data for the service that is raising eyebrows. On average, Muve customers download more than 400 songs per month, and in total have downloaded more than 100 million songs since the service launched. They also listen to music on their phones 2-3 hours a day, on average. In the month of June alone, the Muve service streamed more than 100 million songs. And internal surveys report a 90% customer satisfaction rate.

"A lot of services launch well, but if you don't see that much engagement, you know there's something wrong," Ring says. "They really have a highly engaged and highly focused audience, and they're very, very invested in this."

These are shocking figures, particularly when you consider that Muve operates completely differently than any other mobile music service available today. For starters, it's the first mobile operator to hard bundle a music service into its data plan. The Muve plan is all-inclusive: bundling unlimited voice, texting, Web browsing and music downloads on a specific phone designed just for the service, all for a flat fee of $55 a month. (See Billboard's initial coverage for more details.)

Secondly, this isn't a streaming service. All songs are downloaded in full to the phone, where they stay. There's no ability to transfer the songs to other device, which was a point of contention with some critics. Third, it only featured music from the major labels. Cricket is just now getting around to ingesting content from its various deals with independent labels and digital aggregators, with a goal of six million tracks available by the end of the year. And, it's available only on one phone: the Samsung Suede. There's no smartphone app or iPhone integration.

So what's the secret? Simple, it's an easy-to-use service that's priced properly. That's it. Muve was built from the ground up as a mobile music service, embedded directly into the operating system of the phone. Songs download in a matter of seconds. Users can share tracks, use Shazam to ID and buy songs. It all just works and it's cheap. The strength of these features, at that price, far outweigh the relatively minor negative of not being able to access the music on other devices.

The question going forward of course is whether Cricket can maintain both these growth rates and engagement stats. More than half of Muve's customers are new to Cricket, which suggests there is an interest in these kinds of bundled deals. But the mobile music space is heating up; Apple's iCloud set to go live this fall and Spotify expected to launch a U.S.-based version of its popular service next week.

Muve GM Jeff Toig remains confident. "This has the potential to be a big growth story for Cricket and a growth story for the digital music business," he says. "We're trying to run the biggest digital music service in the country."

Why Major Labels Continue To Be Apple’s Slave!

 by Jakomi Mathews

It’s a well know fact that the major labels missed a massive opportunity when originally negotiating with Apple for the first iTunes music licenses back in 2002/2003. That opportunity was to ensure that an album could be sold in it’s entirety and not sold song-by-song if the artist so chose. The fact the labels capitulated to Apple’s demands was what has most significantly led to a decline in album sales revenue for both artists and labels alike over the last 9 years.

Furthermore, the fact the label’s neglected to negotiate a royalty for every iPod sold by apple – much akin to the royalty labels were paid on blank CD’s is a seriously miss-calculation which has had a negative effect on label coffers as well. Laughable as it is UMG via Doug Morris did manage to negotiate a measly $1 per sale for the flop that was the Microsoft Zune MP3 player. The key issue labels forgot to leverage was the fact that without music there would be no iTunes and subsequently for Apple no music playing hardware device sales. What has in effect happened is that music has become the loss leader to drive Apple hardware product sales (iPod, iPhone etc). And the recorded music business is losing hand over fist in this scenario.

Moving on to the present day Apple has already been proved to use morally repugnant anti-competitive business practices when dealing with labels – prime example being when iTunes directly threatened to pull labels iTunes promotions if they continued to allow Amazon’s deal’s of the day promotions. TMV is in possession of an email forwarded from one major label digital head, which is clear evidence of Apple’s illegal anti-competitive behaviour in respect of this particular event.

As the majority of the major labels have knowingly colluded in allowing Apple to launch it’s own streaming and cloud-based service before Amazon and Google little own Spotify – it is clear these labels are addicted to the iTunes monopoly of their industry. This monopoly alone where Apple has a minimum of 65% market share in legal download sales is surprising in the fact that competition authorities on both sides of the Atlantic have not acted to break up this monopoly.

Both Amazon and Google were pretty much left with no choice but to launch their music locker services without licenses from the major labels. It obviously became crystal clear that these same labels were giving Apple Inc more favourable business terms than those offered to Amazon and Google.
TMV asks what does such law breaking reliance on Apple actually do for the long-term benefit of the recorded music industry? Its worse than the days of payola. If anything it just continually makes the recorded music business weaker and even more reliant on one retailer for more than 70% of its digital income whilst its physical retail product income continues to decline. Obviously, that is not good for the industry as a whole, artists or labels alike. Monopolies serve no industries long-term interests other than the actual monopolist itself.

The global digital music retail market is divided up as follows Apple/iTunes 70% (average global market share), Amazon 10%, and eMusic/Spotify about 5% with the remaining 15% left to over 500 different retailers fighting for peanuts! Whilst the major labels continue to prop up Apple/iTunes all they are in effect achieving is to become even more reliant on a monopoly. TMV believe some of the label digital heads have enough intelligence to understand that. So surely it is in these same labels interest’s to give services like Amazon and Google a level playing field to compete within?

In reality, no service competing with iTunes has been given viable terms to build a sustainable digital music retail business. No other business is provided with a 70/30 split in the labels favour – it’s more commonly 90/10. This in itself is quite frankly a market condition that needs to be urgently rectified. $0.99 is a fair price the music consumer is prepared to pay per downloaded track. However no business can survive on $0.09 per track before costs and marketing. Apple has previously stated it loses money on $0.27 per track that it makes. But as well know that is a small price to play to ensure its mountainous profits from hardware sales.

It is sad to see the recorded music business continually making itself weaker due to inept decision-making at the top. If the labels were to do some real research they would realise that consumers don’t just want platform such as iTunes in fact many consumers actually detest iTunes.

Apple dominates among US teens but digital music pricing is still a barrier

By Eamonn Forde

A study into the digital music habits of US teens reveals they prefer Apple products and services but feel downloads and subscription services are overpriced.

The Piper Jaffray study surveyed 4,500 teenagers and discovered that 80% of them own an MP3 player, but this was down from 90% ownership in the autumn.

Apple's iPod was comfortably the device of choice (with an 86% share of all devices owned by teens), while Microsoft's Zune had a mere 3% share. This comes amid suggestions that the Zune player could be decommissioned this year.

The drop in MP3 player ownership is explained by growing ownership of music-enabled mobiles and smartphones. Some 17% of those surveyed had an iPhone while 37% planned to get one in the next six months. Overall, 53% listened to music on their mobile.

Music pricing remains, predictably, a barrier for many teens. While 65% of those surveyed admitted to getting music from P2P networks, only 22% of the total survey base felt that $0.99 (£0.60) was a fair price for a download.

When looking at subscriptions, the responses were slightly more encouraging. When asked if $15 (£9.18) a month for an online music subscription service was acceptable, 37% said yes.

Overall, 70% said they primarily buy music online compared to 21% buying music from a bricks and mortar retailer. Apple's iTunes was where 95% of teens bought digital music while Rhapsody and Napster accounted for a mere 1% each.

Want To Realese Digital Only? Think Again

2010 New Release Sales

• 500,000+  - 17.7% digital
• 100,000 to 500,000 - 20.4% digital
• 50,000 to 100,000 - 23.8% digital
• 10,000 to 50,000 - 27.2% digital
• 1,000 to 10,000 - 33.7% digital
• 100 to 1,000 - 48% digital

Topspin To Open Direct To Fan Platform To All

6 Reasons Why Major Labels Are Still Screwed

2011 could prove to be a spectacular year.

Spotify may launch stateside. Google Music might start cloud-based music storage off with a bang.

Apple may convert into a subscription service.

Slacker will offer on-demand music streams and may capture substantial market share. Sony is bringing their own service called "Music Unlimited" to market.

Make no mistake, this could be the biggest year that the music industry has seen in quite some time.

Amidst all this excitement though, there are still reasons for concern.

Even if everything above goes as planned and impacts the major labels positivly, they still have a winding road ahead of them. Their product strategy is lacking, piracy has proven hard to force underground, and they are their own worst enemy.

Here's why the major labels are still screwed:

1) The Format Replacement Cycle Is Over. Throughout the history of record industry, the introduction of new formats has driven profitability and dug them out of decline. There appears to be zero new formats that are capable of achieving CD era revenues. Digital music has failed to generate a new format replacement cycle and nothing in sight looks like it will perform much better.

2) Music Piracy Can't Be Forced Underground. The harder labels have tried to force music underground, the more mainstream the activity has become. 

The second that they shutdown one file-sharing client, another turns around, bends the rules, and fits between the cracks of copyright law. MP3 Rocket now downloads directly from YouTube – no p2p technology involved. Speaking of cracks, others are embedding storage devices into walls and creating networks that don't even connect the Internet. Music piracy will only evolve – not die.

3) Complete Lack of Creative Leadership. Major labels are full of leaders who preserve the status quo by sticking with feasible but relatively unoriginal solutions. New research says that creative people are looked down upon and shunned from positions of leadership. This means that those who desire to move the record industry in profitable new directions are likely to be turned down for promotions in favor of those with more practical solutions. Thus, the old way of doing thing remains and after one digital decade has ended, not much is different.

4) The Music Consumption System Is Broken. Here's what fans want. Here's what the major labels provide. Now, if the space between those sentences were equal to the distance between the Earth and the Sun, we might be close to characterizing how far divorced from reality the music consumption system is.

There is a vast chasm between what the Digital Natives want and what the major labels sell. If nothing is done, the gap will only widen. Entire generations aren't being catered to properly and until the consumption system is adjusted to reflect known fan behavior, major label decline will only continue. Piracy will worsen.

Future music products are needed and now. Otherwise, fans will go elsewhere.

5) Major Labels Are Their Own Worst Enemy. Call it "The Hulu Problem." The company is controlled by the major TV networks and has been enormously successful. So much so, that they are now the worse enemy of the people that endorsed it. People love Hulu. What's cannibalizing regular TV viewership? Hulu.

What's the solution? Kill Hulu. If your biggest success is also your greatest enemy, it's sort of a big problem. Major labels are in a similar situation. If Spotify, Slacker, Apple, and Music Unlimited turn out to be enormously successful and digital downloads and CDs decline more, all hell will break loose. If killing off the future of your business is the only way to preserve the future of your business, that might be the main reason why the major labels are still screwed nowadays.

An Ocean of Pennies

Pay-Per-Play Music Streaming Service Launches In UK

Sony, Universal Plan "Instant" Singles To Beat Pirates

The End of Retail Space by Brian Clothier

The last time I walked into a retail music store was some five years ago (not counting Amoeba, that's a record store) so I was surprised to find one on a trip to Vancouver, BC.  It looked to be bustling with customers at the height the holiday shopping season.  Physical CD sales have declined rapidly in the U.S. over the past decade.  Knowing this was less so outside America, I guess I should not have been surprised.  There were plenty of pop mass market music offerings as well as the latest mega-movie blockbuster music sound tracks with little to no independent selections.  This wasn’t a combination of music and DVDs, the whole floor was music (DVDs had their own floor downstairs).  Upon browsing I came to a realization that reminded me of a viral photo that has made rounds in recent months.  It’s a picture of a hard rock/heavy metal band playing to a throng of crazed fans.  The photo was taken from back/side stage, a roadie’s view, and shows a wall of fake amplifies set up behind the band.  Amplifiers that represent what the band would be using to ‘go to eleven’, if they were real.  Now, don’t get me wrong, as a musician and life long concert goer I saw nothing new in this picture.  I remember seeing what was probably the same back in the late 80’s, but at least they used actual amps/speakers that simply weren’t plugged in.  This picture shows them as just false fronts, like the set of an old western town movie set.  It was the fake Rockridge from Blazing Saddles. 

Back to HMV.  In pulling a CD of the soundtrack of Tron off the shelf I found that the front CD was the only actual CD.  The five or so behind them were empty CD cases. I looked further and this was the case throughout most of the store, one CD and five empty cases behind it.  The effect does make the shelving look much more stocked… until you remove the CD, then boom.  It’s just a matter of time before they’re all just empty CD cases. 

DVDs downstairs were fully stocked and clearly keeping this store in business.As streaming increases, especially movies via Netflix and the like, the balance of retail music outlets will take their last breath and truly end the era of buying music in a store.

 Half of All Folks Who Stream Don’t Listen to Broadcast Radio

A new report from Coleman Insights provides information on the amount of crossover there is between listening to AM/FM and listening online. About half of the streaming population in the US doesn’t listen to AM/FM radio at all. Of the 17% of the population that is streaming monthly, 48% say they don’t listen to any over the air radio.

It’s worse with younger demographics and with males: 57% of 15- to 24-year-olds and 59% of 25- to 34-year-olds do not listen to any “over the air” radio. 54% of male streamers use no over the air radio while 42% of female streamers report no usage of broadcast signals.

Minorities are likely to have replaced over the air listening with streaming as well - Sixty-seven (67%) of African American streamers  listen to no over the air radio.

The same folks that are spending more time streaming and less time listening over the air say they have a positive attitude toward over the air radio, and they also say they are listening to AM/FM stations online. This leads to the conclusion that “Streamers who no longer listen to “over the air” broadcasts do not hate radio.  They share  the same moderately positive attitude toward the medium as  other streamers.  They simply have gravitated toward a different delivery method.”

Coleman Insights - Successful Audio Streaming Strategies

70% Thumbplay Users Stop File-Sharing Their Music.

This indicates that, for the most avid fans, a void in the market exists. Unlimited, on-demand access to music isn't enough to quench their thirst; they want more.

Additionally, 80% of respondents revealed that they migrated from Pandora to Thumbplay Music. Of that 80%, 30% of respondents suggested that their reason for switching to cloud-based music was to gain access to an unlimited catalog.

The takeaway: As Hypebot has suggested before, the wider that streaming music services proliferate, the fewer users will employ P2P music services. The challenge is to raise awareness for legal those services. However, despite these efforts, a small percentage of users will still file-share their music regardless.

Given that 30% of Thumbplay Music users migrated from Pandora in order to gain access to unlimited, on-demand music streaming, this suggests that Slacker's new business model is promising. In the coming months, the radio service will be offering free radio in the front and paid on-demand music streaming in the back.

Slacker has the potential to convert users of their free radio service into paying subscribers. Overall, if the music ecosystem is given the room to evolve, getting users past music piracy is possible in the 25 – 34-years-old, male demographic.*

Twitter & iTune's Ping Link For Music Discovery

Streaming audio is a category that doesn’t have a lot of brand awareness, accordingto a study released a few weeks ago by Coleman Insights. That’s a good thing, it means that there’s still plenty of room for growth and competition. Even Pandora’s brand awareness is limited – only 28% of streaming audio consumers could name Pandora and only 22% use it regularly.

Consumers who regularly listen to streaming audio could only name – on average – 1.6 streaming audio brands. This, says the report, indicates that the streaming audio category is nowhere near mature. In mature brand categories, consumers can name 6 or 7 brands.

That said, streaming audio consumers were much more likely to name an online only streaming station when asked than a terrestrial streaming station. 77% named an online station while only 33% came up with a terrestrial streaming station when asked to name a streaming station. Similarly, they’re much more likely to report that they listen to the online only station.

Kudos to the Coleman Guys for coming up with this unique marketing study. While several research companies are hung up on asking people if they listen to streaming audio and certain stations, or even less reliably, whether they would like to listen, this is research that offers streaming audio brands some highly valuable insight into their marketplace. The study summary comes with some good advice too:

• Make branding your station/service of paramount importance
• Focus on a singular position or benefit
• Rethink the unique benefits that streaming services offer from the perspective of the listeners
• Broadcasters: don’t ignore the fact that listeners prefer online only services – create your own!

Report: Expect Google Music By Christmas

Apple Plots iTunes Music Subscription Service And How To Stop Spotify

(UPDATED) Apple is in serious talks about a music subscription service and once again the major label heads appear ready to do whatever Cupertino asks them to do. iTunes head Eddy Cue has recently been in touch with label execs to "figure out how the partners can move forward," according to the NY Post.  The new music service would reportedly be priced in the $10 - $15 range depending access and portability.  Subscriptions could be tied to an iTunes in the cloud service, but at least one report suggests that Apple's desire to add subscription music has more to do with stopping a Spotify entry into the U.S.

Major Labels Fall Under Apple's Spell Again:

So when Apple also recently told label heads that they were having serious doubts about whether Spotify could ever deliver serious revenue; the profits Apple was really worried about were their own. According to CNet, Apple reminded the labels that it's hard to to sell something that someone else - like ad supported Spotify - is giving away. An industry insider told CNet's Greg Sandoval that it's "only logical that if Spotify were allowed to launch a free-music service here, at a time when Nielsen recently reported that the growth of digital sales has flattened out, it could eat into the businesses of proven revenue-producers like Apple and Amazon."

There are at least two major problems with Apple's hypothesis that the labels are choosing to ignore. While single tracks sales are flat, Nielson and many others project continued album download growth. As for Spotify hurting music sales - the old "why pay for the cow when you can get the milk for free?" argument - most surveys show that Spotify increases download sales while also fighting piracy.

Apple has always been a very aggressive competitor and with Google, Spotify and others preparing to chip away at it's supremacy in the music space, Jobs & Co. appears anxious to crush or at least stall any competition that in can.

Study: More Youth Listen to Pandora than all other Internet streams combined

There was a lot of great content at the Radio ShowRAB and NAB last week in DC, not the least of which was the sold out RAIN Summit which took place the afternoon before the Radio Show actually started, as an official partner event of the show. You can read RAIN’s coverage of the event here.

One excellent presentation during the Radio Show was Edison Research‘s American Youth Study 2010, which is “a significant survey of the media and technology habits of America’s 12-24 year-olds, and represents a sequel to a study originally conducted by Edison in 2000.” Sponsored by publication Radio-Info, the study looks at the media use behaviors of 12-24 year olds, and updates the behaviors of the demographic originally studied in 2000 – 22-34 year olds.

Some of the findings, bulleted:

• Radio continues to be the medium most often used for music discovery, with 51% of 12-24 year-olds reporting that they “frequently” find out about new music by listening to the radio. Other significant sources include friends (46%), YouTube (31%) and social networking sites (16%).
• 20% of 12-24s have listened to Pandora in the last month, with 13% indicating usage in the past week. By comparison, 6% of 12-24s indicated they have listened to online streams from terrestrial AM/FM stations in the past week.
• More than four in five 12-24s own a mobile phone in 2010 (up from only 29% in 2000). 40% have used their phones to listen to music stored on their phones.

The American Youth Study 2010 by Edison Research

AmieStreet Closure May Show Where Amazon Thinks Music Ownership Is Headed

Report: Expect Google Music By Christmas

Michael Zapruder is an award-winning musician who serves as Music Curator for Pandora, the Oakland-based internet radio service based on the Music Genome Project. As curator, he directs all aspects of music collection, curation, and cataloging for Pandora’s stations. Zapruder has been with Pandora nearly since the inception of the Music Genome Project and was appointed as Pandora’s music curator in 2004.

There are any number of ways to get your music on Pandora. We’re always looking for new music to play for our listeners, so we watch all kinds of blogs, radio stations, show listings, charts and things like that. And while we don’t automatically add everything we see in those places, when an artist reaches a certain level of visibility we like to try our best to make that music available on Pandora.

So that’s the first thing you need to know. If you are connecting with an audience or community in a strong way; if you’re playing good rooms and getting attention, you will have a fine chance of getting into our collection.

We know we can’t find everything, though, so for the many deserving bands that we miss for one reason or another (and for bands that are just starting out), we offer a web-based music submission process that is free and open to everyone.

Here’s how it works:

1.    Register for Pandora (the submission process is connected to listener accounts, so you can use your existing account if you have one).

2.    Go to http://submitmusic.pandora.com and follow the directions for submitting.

3.    If your CD meets the requirements for submission (you have to have a valid UPC code and the record has to be for sale in the Amazon CD store), you’ll be prompted to upload two songs along with any biographical or press information and any links you’d like us to know about.

4.    When we get to your submission, we listen and make a decision about whether your submission is right for us.  (This takes time, so be patient.)

5.    If you’re accepted, we send you an email with a customized mailing label that you’ll use to send us your record. If we pass on your record we let you know on your submission page and we encourage you to keep us posted on your future work.

Lots of people ask us about the Amazon requirements, so here’s the skinny:

We use UPC codes as identifiers to display the right artist information and album art when something plays on Pandora. We want to be able to show as much information about the artists we play as we can, and UPC codes make that possible.

Requiring albums to be available in the Amazon CD store guarantees that we will have usable metadata for every album we accept, which in turn frees us up to spend our time listening to your submissions instead of entering song titles and such. It also means that interested listeners will be able to find and buy your music by clicking the Amazon link in the Pandora tuner.

You can get your music into the Amazon CD store for free using a service called CreateSpace. They press on-demand CDs for Amazon purchases. For people who have CDs for sale already, there is a vendor program that Amazon offers that charges an annual fee as well (and in case you’re wondering, we don’t have any financial stake in the above services).

So, what are we listening for when we get to your submission?

Well, for unknown bands the fundamental question we have to answer is: will fans of this kind of music be excited to discover this on Pandora stations?

We also consider how the submission might add to our existing collection. We may have more of a need for Black Metal, a less visible genre, than for something more common like Indie Rock (that’s not to say that we close the door on any genres, but the state of our collection sometimes comes into play).

We have a few basic internal guidelines for listening to every submission.

For one thing, our reviewers never have to give a reason for accepting music, but they always have to explain their decision if they are rejecting something. This only seems fair to us.

Also, we try to keep our personal musical preferences out of the decision-making process. The fact that a reviewer may not enjoy Darkwave or East Coast Hip hop or anything else really has no place in the decision about whether our listeners would embrace that music.

We are looking for excellence. Tim, Pandora’s founder, often says: “You have to earn your way into Pandora.” We try to make good decisions about whether the music lives up to that high standard.

When it’s all said and done, though, we know that with music and art we can’t ever be 100% sure we’re making the right call. We can never completely transcend our own subjectivity. Our way around that is to keep it simple: we try as hard as we can to give your music a fair hearing. We do our best to be conscientious with your work.

If we do get it wrong (and we do sometimes), we’ll find out about it; and when we see your music being reviewed or appearing on a chart somewhere, or when you’re playing the Fox Theater here in Oakland, we’ll make sure to get it into the collection right away!

Best of luck to everyone who is considering submitting their music or has already done so, and thanks from all the reviewers here for your interest in being a part of Pandora.

Is it curtains for iTunes Music?

Google Music Store Talks Have 'Accelerated'
By Glenn Peoples

Google is in “accelerated” talks regarding the launch of its Google Music Store, according to the New York Post. One aspect of those talks are said to be discussions with Harry Fox Agency, which the Post sees as a sign that discussions with labels have proceeded to the point where Google can begin to plan for mechanical royalties.

In this context, Google would be speaking with Harry Fox because it is likely planning on selling digital downloads that will require it to be a licensee. Harry Fox issues mechanical licenses for music publishers, collects and distributes those mechanical royalties and distributes synchronization fees for licenses granted prior to 2002.

It would make sense for Google to offer some sort of cloud-based service in addition to a download store. Mechanical royalties would not arise from such a service.

As Billboard reported last week , Google has hired attorney Elizabeth Moody to help it secure deals with copyright owners in the music industry. “Where it’s been going recently, it’s subscription models again, but it’s streaming from the cloud,” she told Billboard. “The technology has advanced where we can do that now, and the price points have come down.”

Nielsen: Digital Album Sales Are Up

Digital song sales for the first half of the year were off very slightly (.2%) from the same period last year, indicating that the price increase from 99 cents to $1.29 on iTunes did have some negative impact on the number of tracks sold.

Meanwhile, full album sales were down as well – 11% to 154 million from 172.9 million units in the corresponding period last year. But digital album sales actually rose nearly 13% during the same period, offset by the continued decline of physical cd album sales which were down 18%. Last year album sales dropped 8.5% but digital album sales rose by 16%.

So what does all of this mean? It appears that the negative impact from the 30% price increase on iTunes was minimal. It also looks like record labels and artists may have found a formula for increasing album sales – some combination of pricing, marketing and artistry that is convincing more and more people to purchase albums rather than single songs.

Digital music now accounts for 40% of all music sales in the US, and digital albums make up 27.4% of all album sales.

Music At the Speed of Sound by Jeff Price

Amazon & Walmart Tie For #2 U.S. Music Retailer

When reviewing sales of digital music separately from CDs, NPD found that iTunes’s share of the digital-music download market has remained essentially flat since Q1 2009 - growing just 1% to 70% of the digital music market last quarter. At the same time, AmazonMP3 grew by 4% to reach 12% while Amazon’s share of the CD market grew 2% to 11%.

"Amazon’s growth reflects a stronger position in both the CD and digital formats,” said Russ Crupnick, VP of NPD. “This dual-pronged approach of selling both digital music and CDs helps attract the most valuable and committed music buyer who prefers access to both formats.”

Walmart led U.S. CD purchases in Q1 2010 with a 17% share of the retail market. Best Buy followed Walmart with 14%, Amazon’s 11 percent share positioned them in third place.

Google Launches Web-Based iTunes Competitor...

TechCrunch:

Today at Google I/O, Vic Gundotra introduced Froyo, aka Android 2.2. But he also went a bit beyond Froyo. Coming soon, is a way to download an app through the Android Market over the web — and have it automatically download on your Android devices too. But that’s not all. Gundotra also showed off a new section of the Market — Music. Yes, an iTunes competitor on the web from Google.

Details are sparse at the moment, but here’s how this basically works. You go to the Market on the web, find a song you like, click the download button, and just like with apps, the song starts to download on your Android devices. So it’s iTunes, over the web, with auto-syncing. No word on who the partners are for this, what the prices will be, etc. Undoubtedly, we’ll hear more about that soon.

Wired News:

Google is taking aim at Apple’s dominance of online music, offering Android users the opportunity to buy music on the web and have it automatically sync to their mobile devices — as well as stream all the music on their home computers to their phones.

Google announced the new initiatives at its Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco Thursday.

Google announced it had purchased Simplify Media, one of a number of companies that makes software that lets you stream music from your home computer to mobile devices. Apple recently purchased a company called LaLa that lets you stream your own music from its central servers, once it’s identified the songs on your computer and mirrored them in the cloud. Apple is widely expected to integrate some portion of that service into iTunes, its software for syncing and buying media with mobile devices and traditional computers.