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]

Late at night on March 19th after less than 3 years in operations, Spiral Frog silently pulled the plug on its site.

Just like a rockstar, hyped and controversial during its life, the frog didn’t miss to spark a heated debate with its suicide.
That its death happens not long after the demise of Ruckus-the streaming service built for college student and acquired by another now- zombie, Total Music- only contributes to the darker tone of the debate.

So what killed SpiralFrog? Was it an isolated case of bad capital structure, huge upfront fees, lack of usability, poor advertising revenues? Could another startup take over its mission?

Let’s see where other similar services rank in today.
Imeem
+4 is better than 2: has secured deals with all the four major labels - that’s already two steps ahead of the frog that Sony and Warner never liked…
+Hall of Fame: named one of the top 10 music services for 2008 by Wired.com. Kudos!
+A Mobile Pioneer: has already gained itself a reputation as a pioneer in the mobile music landscape by becoming the first and best music app on the Android
That was only…hum one month ago!
This week Imeem is all over the news but the tone is “slightly different”: Michael Arrington at TechCrunch estimates their debt at a “manageable” $30mln which, with this economy, is definitely not something you worry about…..UG
But wait, it’s not dying, it’s just renegotiating its deal with the labels. According to MediaMemo it has already been able to secure better fees per stream. The question is if this is enough to save it from going under. Ironically Imeem is partially owned by the major labels.
Ok, we’ll wait…

Last.fm

Eventually it has decided to switch from free to subscription and start charging users outside the US, UK and Germany  3euros/month.  This model is not new to Last.fm: it had been announced over a year ago, the idea being that users would be able to stream  a song only 3 times before having to pay for premium features. That model never materialized – which supposedly angered the Warner management, disappointed at the poor economic returns of the CBS poster child.
Last.fm, acquired by CBS, has deals with over 280,000 labels and artists, some of which it pays directly (except Warner Music Group…).

Playlist

2008 didn’t end well for Project Playlist. The premises were all great: former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta was appointed CEO and the company got another round of funding. But then came the label ban to Playlist widgets from MySpace and Facebook, two main drivers of traffic for Playlist.

Will 2009 be a better year for Playlist? This week EMI announced they dropped the lawsuit and signed a deal with Playlist – the terms are undisclosed though…

With Sony already on board, that’s two more to go…Unfortunately though MySpace and Facebook have not yet reinstated the Playlist widgets…

I guess it doesn’t surprise anyone if Michael Arrington ends the week with a dire vision of the future for music startups. A future with no future…