Via: paidContent After months of offering advance releases, exclusives and competition prizes as inducements to premium subscribers, Spotify is now doing the opposite. Sort of. The music service is making a song and dance about an “exclusive” new Jimi Hendrix video – it’s first ever video foray – that’s only available to its free users. [...]

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Via: paidContent The groundwork has already been laid and now it’s official: RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK) is spinning off music service Rhapsody in the hopes of giving both companies a better chance at success. Real will reduce its interest in the Rhapsody America joint venture to below 50 percent to match Viacom’s, giving up control of [...]

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Via: paidContent Tunesat, a startup which tracks what music is being played on major TV stations in the U.S. and Europe on behalf of copyright holders, has raised $975,000 in a funding round, we have confirmed. An SEC filing lists NBC Sports digital media SVP Perkins Miller, Music Publishing Corp. of America CEO John Hecker [...]

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Via: paidContent From the record labels’ perspective, on-demand free music services such as We7 and Spotify have yet to deliver the goods. They haven’t made a dent in illegal downloading and they haven’t converted enough new consumers to pay for digital music. (Spotify’s 250,000 paying subs is an encouraging start, but is just 3.6% of [...]

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Via: White Noise White Noise is excited to announce that we will be re-releasing Amanda Jo Williams‘ 2006 release, Yes I Will Mr. Man this spring. When Yes I Will Mr. Man was first released, Coke Machine Glow gushed “This is unequivocally the best country album I’ve heard in years. I get just as much [...]

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Via: paidContent In what critics are calling “musicblogocide 2010,” Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has deleted at least six popular music blogs that it claims violated copyright law. These sites, hosted by Google’s Blogger and Blogspot services, received notices only after their sites – and years of archives – were wiped from the internet. “We’d like to [...]

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Via: paidContent Global digital music revenue has grown 20,900 percent since the music business started keeping count in 2003 – but it still needs government protection to grow further, says the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the industry’s main trade umbrella. 2009 digital sales hit $4.2 billion, or 27 percent of industry revenue [...]

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Buy Coachella 2010 Tickets Here Friday, April 16th: Jay-Z, LCD Soundsystem, Them Crooked Vultures, Vampire Weekend, Deadmau5, Public Image Limited, The Specials, Grizzly Bear, Passion Pit, Echo and the Bunnymen, Benny Benassi, Fever Ray, Grace Jones, She & Him, Erol Alkan, The Avett Brothers, Calle 13, The Whitest Boy Alive, The Cribs, La Roux, Yeasayer, [...]

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NEW RELEASES FOR THE WEEK OF JAN. 19TH, 2010 Cold War Kids Behave Yourself Editors In This Light & on This Evening Eels End Times Jedi Mind Tricks Army of the Pharaohs: Ritual of Battle Keb Darge Lost & Found Motion City Soundtrack My Dinosaur Life Six Feet Under Graveyard Classics 3 Soundtrack Crazy Heart [...]

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Via: paidContent Ad-supported music downloader Guvera has raised a $20 million second round, bringing its total funding over the past two years to $30 million, Techcrunch reported. All of its funding has come from AMMA Private Investment, an Australian consortium of private angel investors.The private, registration-only music site recently signed a big licensing deal with [...]

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