A roundup of recent music business happenings. Find out more about social media predictions for 2012, are music executives actually buying music?, the challenging problem of copyright management, and more...
The new head of digital strategy for EMI comes not from a rival label or up through the ranks of the music business, but from one of the worlds largest online companies and biggest digital innovators - Google. Douglas Merrill was the Chief Information Officer at Google and is now president of EMI's digital group.
The move seems to indicate that EMI is serious about rethinking their approach to digital distribution and Merrill definitely brings a new sensibility to the major label environment.
In an interview with CNET News.com, Merrill admitted that:
there's a set of data that shows that file sharing is actually good for artists. Not bad for artists. Obviously, there is piracy that is quite destructive but again I think the data shows that in some cases file sharing might be okay. What we need to do is understand when is it good, when it is not good...Suing fans doesn't feel like a winning strategy.Merrill may have been refering to a study out of the University of North Carolina from 2004, or a more recent study by the Industry Canada. Both studies claim that casual peer-to-peer file sharing had not had a negative impact on sales of recordings, infact the Canadian study...
MySpace may have had a head start in the social networking world, but the added value of added features in Facebook and other sites that are open to third party developers has left MySpace in danger of becoming the Betamax (kids, ask your parents) of the internet.
But, as of Feb. 5, MySpace is open for business. From redhearing.com:
Widgets are set to invade MySpace. The developer-shy social network is finally opening up to third-party applications. Created in conjunction with Google’s OpenSocial initiative, the site’s developer platform will officially launch February 5, but eager widget-makers can sign up now.