Wayne Rosso is a columnist for The Music Void and one of the most outspoken, controversial and pioneering figures in the world of digital media. In September of 2004 he founded Mashboxx, the first open file sharing application to be authorized by the major recording labels. The founding of Mashboxx initiated a sea change in the attitude of major content owners toward the p2p world,…
I want to officially welcome Elio Leoni-Sceti, Ronn Werre and Sylvia Coleman of EMI to my little site. I was in London a couple of days ago with a friend and we just happened to bump into the three of them and I was introduced. They told me that they were avid readers so I wanted to give them the royal treatment. In all fairness,…
In case you haven’t heard, Michael Jackson died recently, leaving behind a lot of debts, a custody battle over his kids, an estate that must look like a rubic cube and AEG Live holding the bag. I’ve know Brandon K (Randy) Phillips, president of AEG Live, for 30 years, when he was a piss ant manager representing the likes of Meadowlark Lemon. In 1992 The…
Here’s a really good one for you. Last week EMI sales reps started making calls to many if not all of their small accounts, mostly independent mom & pop stores, to tell them that they would no longer sell them product!!! Were these accounts bad payers? Nope. Would they not stock catalog or new artists? Nope. Then why in God’s name, you may ask, would…
Many journalists have written about the lack of a business model for Twitter. It seems to boggle a lot of minds that Twitter has become so big and yet to make a nickel. In fact, many question the real usefulness of Twitter, finding the whole concept of Tweeting rather stupid. Remember when Stephen Colbert said that he “twats”? Now that we have finally found the…
The other day Billboard Magazine published an analysis on the effect of variable pricing using Nielsen SoundScan data on February-May sales of hits and a sample of popular catalog songs. They found that “while variable pricing made sales volume decline, higher prices compensate for that to create more revenue”. They note that results vary and factor in market conditions such as seasonal sales that influence…
God I know it may be getting old, but EMI just never fails to do stupid stuff to keep jerks like me interested. This time, they’ve started their own HR merry-go-round. Maybe musical chairs would be a better metaphor. A friend in London was telling me a crazy story. Everyone knows that EMI has been cutting staff like they were lepers over the last couple…
Much has been made about the new subscription service that Virgin Media is launching this coming December. And the timing of the announcement, the day before the Digital Britain Report was released, was no accident. That report, although mostly focused on broadband penetration, suggested that warning letters and “technical solutions” from the ISP’s be explored to police file sharing. Just prior to these announcements, Wiggin…
According to a new study released yesterday, file sharers in the UK couldn’t care less about getting warning letters from the ISP’s. They would, however, stop illegally downloading if their net connections were cut. Some pretty drastic stuff, no? The study was commissioned by Wiggin, one of the top media and technology law firms in the country. Firm partner Alexander Ross told the BBC “A…
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