Music Diary

If there is one thing about Google that I think most would agree on, it is that people love their products their approach of giving stuff away for free. That creates a bit of an issue, since survey after survey finds that the same folks who like Google don’t view them as a trusted vendor that they want to use to buy their products. This certainly causes issues with Google Music, which launched with a whimper and lacking label support, an whose locker system has been universally derided for awful performance. But even if they have no clue about how…

This week we got news of rapper Chuck D suing Universal Music Group (UMG). As part of the court documents analyzed by Digital Music News, his lawyers revealed the payout process … and if you can figure out what all of the stuff in the image at the top MEANS – let me know! The bottom line is that on a $1 recording sold on iTunes (or Amazon MP3 for that matter), Apple gets 30%, the artist gets 8% and the label gets 62%. Looking deeper, the document is based on 1,000 unit sales – which would be $1,000 ……

I have written about the continuing decline of music sales, as well as the increasingly desperate measures labels are using to puff up their chosen ‘top stars’ by means that might land them in jail in other industries. It has also always been clear that the industry hates digital music – and especially digital singles! This at the same time as consumers have increasingly shown a desire for digital music – and the ability to only buy the songs they want. The impact of this cognitive dissonance is clear: consumers are being pushed in a direction they don’t want to…

Apparently Beyonce’s team who creates the stuff she puts her name on has a pastime – stealing every idea and ‘repurposing’ it into a Beyoncé video. This happened before … and now it has happened again with her latest video. According to Digital Music News: The Beyonce camp isn’t admitting guilt. Instead, they’re admitting ‘inspiration’ from the famous work. “Clearly, the ballet ‘Rosas danst Rosas’ was one of many references for my video ‘Countdown’,” Beyonce offered with a straight face. “It was one of the inspirations used to bring the feel and look of the song to life.” Here is…