Friday, October 12, 2007
$6.66 Billion? 666 Must Be Larry Ellison’s Lucky Number …
Doug’s a very special guy. He’s the last of the great music executives who came up through A&R. He’s old school. I like him a lot.”
–Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris
The per-device royalties Universal Music Group receives for every Zune player sold were apparently substantial enough to buy CEO Doug Morris a bigger set of balls, because he’s out drumming up support for an industry-owned subscription service with which he hopes to loosen Apple’s grip on the digital music market.
The endeavor is called “Total Music,” and Morris has already approached Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group about participating. His proposition: a subscription-based music service for the hardware industry, one whose cost could be baked into the hardware that supports it. Under the Total Music model, hardware makers subsidize the cost of music, which consumers are then given for “free” when they buy a new digital media player. That’s more money up front for hardware makers, but it’s a wise investment because, as Morris reckons, they’ll make that money back and then some by selling many more devices.
Interesting business model. “If the object is to wrest control of the market from Steve Jobs,” said Gartner analyst Mike McGuire, “this is a credible way to try it.”
Sadly for Morris, it’s also one inevitably complicated by recent turmoil in the music industry. With Radiohead releasing its latest album as a pay-what-you-will digital download, Nine Inch Nails declaring itself a free agent, and Madonna about to dump Warner Music Group for a concert promoter, we’re clearly seeing a sea change in music discovery, distribution and consumption, one perhaps lost on an industry so hardened by years of CD price fixing. So while the music industry struggles so to wrest control of the digital music market from Apple, some of today’s biggest popular artists are crafting an entirely new business model.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
And this remembered: the Upper East Side, with its stone townhouses and husk dwellings, matched to the apotheosis: Gossip Girl as voice alone now to the Houses of Talk and passing periods as the Internet announces that it is now about to be the great catting time of the day and the wonted welcome will not be expected or exaggerated or even given to Serena …
The only Hotmail you got is when Ballmer gets sweaty …
“London Expensive,” “Los Angeles Nice to Visit but You Wouldn’t Really Want to Live There”
13 million digits in a 16.73 megabyte file
A vintage look at new games
On 10/22 at approx 2:34 a.m. CET, a tachyon field failure in the main resonating ring of the LHC causes a “temporal blowback.” Shortly thereafter, the resulting destruction of the strong nuclear force causes the world to vaporize in seconds …
Add more cowbell and Christopher Walken to the song of your choice.
Stop Making the Sixth Sense
Best Little Whorehouse in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Air Force One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
Bad Taste Santa
…in 80 milliseconds.
We sat next to each other in math. We didn’t get on, remember? Want to be my friend?