BREAKING NEWS (SORT OF..)

-Google launches a free ad-supported music service in China with the blessing of the labels. [WSJ]

TRENDS

-Why buy when you can listen free?

- The agreement between Spotify and 7Digital sparks a debate on the mixed streaming-store business model.  Glenn Peoples at Billboard views Lala as a possible winner because of its more focused user experience. [Billboard]

-But what do teenagers in the US want? According to a new report by NPD, teens acquired 19% less music in 2008 than they did in 2007. CD purchasing declined 26 % and paid digital downloads fell 13% compared with the prior year. In contrast, 52% of teens listened to online radio in 2008 vs  34% in 2007. Downloading or listening to music on social networks also saw a large increase from 26% in 2007 to 46% in 2008. [NPD Press Release].

-TIme for more numbers with Q1 already over. And the reality is again doom and gloom for the music industry with no Platinum album for the entire first quarter of 2009. Not a single new album sold more than a million copies in the U.S. (enough to win the platinum distinction) [MusicIndustryReport]

GOING UP, DOWN OR UNDER

-Fearing the outcome of lawsuits by Warner Music and EMI, music search engine and playlist generator SeeqPod has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection.  [HypeBot] Streamzy which let users build playlists from the songs on SeeqPod and YouTube, is on sale on eBay. [Epicenter].

-After blocking all music to UK users, YouTube is now yanking tunes in Germany, after the expiration of its contract with local royalty collector GEMA [PaidContentUK]. At the same time, Amazon opens its MP3 store in Germany [HypeBot]

-Last.fm is still free. Plans to launch the subscription service worldwide except for the US, UK and Germany have been delayed and Last.fm will focus on accelerating new features as SMS billing [MusicAlly]

-How is MySpace Music doing? Epicenter has an in-depth review. Reading is recommended. [Epicenter]

-What is Facebook Connect for? There are many ways to use it and one of them is to automate file-sharing:that’s what Pirate Bay is up to. Now under each track you can find a Share it on Facebook link! [HypeBot]

-More headaches for Ticketmaster, faced with a new classaction for its secondary ticket market practice. This one comes from the US. [MusicAlly]

GOING MOBILE

-On the AppStore side, some good news for Music Apps: the Pandora IPhone App hit 4 million downloads, AOL Radio 3.6million and other music app stars as Clear Channel iHeartRadio, Shazam, Tap Tap Revenge are not far (though numbers are not confirmed) [DigitalMusicNews]. In the meantime, Lala is rushing to get its app live, but still has some kinks to work out according to TechCrunch [TechCrunch]

-At CTIA RIM launches its new BlackBerry World App and one of its focus will be Music [MocoNews]

-And what is Nokia up to? It’s preparing its app store and it promises it will be a “smart” and “social” one. [VentureBeat interview]

GOING SOCIAL

-The clever team behind MusicMetrics launches MuZoid. a Twitter music exploration application. Send a tweet with the name of a band or artist to twitter.com/muzoid and in seconds you receive a link to a web page with gigs, a discography with price comparisons between vendors, and a recommendation of similar artists that you might enjoy.MuZoid uses MusicMetric’s text-mining technology to provide gig and album information for each artist. The company regularly sifts through data from a database of over 6 million artists. If MuZoid doesn’t know an artist, she makes a note of it and gets busy learning. Once enough information’s available, she’ll tweet back to the original querant with an update.[TechCrunch UK]

-Moonalice will post live tracks from their new CD release show on Twitter. Immediately following the end of each song, Moonalice’s sound team will upload it and “Tweet” its availability! [HypeBot]

-SellaBand, one of the online services that enables music fans to invest in up-and-coming artists, will sell its artists on CreateSpace, an Amazon company via a dedicated SellaBand store [Press Release]. Chuck D, named its US Ambassador, speaks about the project and the importance of being good internet marketers to win in the new digital era of music [MusicAlly]

-TopSpin CEO on the importance of engaging fans as a marketing tool [TopSpin]

Since its launch in October 2008. Spotify has been getting lots of plaudits from users and bloggers.

From TorrentFreak to  TechCrunch, the service seems to have impressed people who have tried it with its speed, usability, and depth of songs. Spotify seems to be the new European Mecca for music.  Yes European only, since it isn’t officially available in the U.S. yet (though a Digg commenter did provide a way for people to try it out Stateside, at least temporarily). Right now it can be accessed in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.

What is Spotify? It  is a downloadable application that lets users stream music instantly from its library. Once downloaded, the service allows users to search its music catalog by artist, genre, or title, and stream the tracks on-demand any number of times.

As with all new social media sites, Spotify offers its users the ability to create and share playlists (a la the now-defunct Muxtape). In December 2008, it also added the ability to scrobble the songs you listen to through Spotify on Last.fm.

The Spotify catalog is huge – notwithstanding some recent troubles – and built with the blessing of EMI Music, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and some smaller record labels, including most recently CD Baby.

That, of course, begs the question: how does it plan to make money?

Let’s put it in a temporary timeline

-Spotify started off by offering two ways to use its service, a free service sponsored by ads, and a paid subscription service.

-How is this playing out? In an interview to Robert Andrews from PaidContent UK, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek points  at the difficulties of the advertising market and the not ready yet CRM platform as the reasons for a lukewarm start  “We launched probably at the worst possible time in 70 years for advertising”.

-In less than 6 months, Spotify has certainly attracted an interesting crowd of  followers. It has hit the million-user mark, but that’s across its ad-supported free option, £0.99-a-day service and £9.99 unlimited offering. However, according to Mark Mulligan, analyst at Forrester Research, Spotify has found that far fewer users then expected are handing over the cash for a monthly subscription.

Plans for the future?

-Mobile apps to stream and download songs – still in the works. But this is certainly a place to be today, for branding and marketing reasons.

-A celestial juke-box (a la Lala and PlayAnywhere). This is going to be huge and who wins this market, has the chance to be the next ITunes!

-Click to buy links. And that’s happened today thanks to a partnership with 7digital.

Initially only single songs and albums will be available to purchase but eventually users will be able to buy entire playlists from the store. The buying option will go live first in the UK and Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Sweden, Norway and Finland will follow in a few weeks time. No prices have been given for the price of each 320kbps MP3.

To quote Mark Mulligan again it appears that “The deal (with 7Digital) is happening now rather than at launch because Spotify is going through the process of re-learning its business”.

We’re all here to learn and re-learn!

James Heckman, former chief strategy officer at Fox Interactive, MySpace’s parent company, is quoted today by the Financial Times in a report on the status of the online music industry, saying .“A lot of these guys are going to be wiped out, but everything that is happening right now doesn’t matter in the long run.

“This is a transformation period and I think there will be some winners.”