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CMU’s One Liners: Beatport streams, iTunes editors, Blinkbox losses and other true stories
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 24 February 2015
Other notable announcements and developments today…
• X-Factor finalist Andrea Faustini has signed to Sony label RCA. He came third in last year’s series of the talent contest. Statistics show that if you come third in an even year when a group reaches the final five in ‘X-Factor’ you are guaranteed a three-album career. Of course they’re made up statistics, but I’m sure he’ll be fine.
• Beatport’s previously reported streaming service launched in beta yesterday, and to think, it was all going so well. Interestingly, it looks like the download store bit will now be called Beatport Pro, because only the pros (ie DJs) would want to buy tracks now you have the streaming element, called, simply, Beatport.
• MusicAlly noted yesterday that Apple is currently recruiting a London-based Editorial Producer for iTunes, seeking a “seasoned writer” with good freelance contacts to write, to edit and to oversee “editorially driven merchandising promotions”. And while that last bit sounds awful, it’s seen as an indication iTunes will ramp up the human curation and editorial when it revamps and integrates with Beats Music later this year.
• Tesco’s entertainment-on-demand venture Blinkbox lost over £40 million in the year to 28 Feb 2014 according to accounts at Companies House, £12.5 million lost on the music service and £29.5 million on movies. The supermarket has now sold the former to Guvera and the latter to TalkTalk, of course.
• Hey everybody, why not watch the video for brand new Prodigy track ‘Wild Frontier’ off of their new album ‘The Day Is My Enemy’, out 30 Mar, right about here?
• Alt-J have plonked a video online for ‘Pusher’, a track off of their second album ‘This Is All Yours’. And if you think that’ll stop them touring the US next month, you’re very wrong indeed.
• What’s that? A new single from The Darkness taken from their forthcoming new album ‘Last Of Our Kind’ and called ‘Barbarian’? Yes. But Justin Hawkins says it has “a chorus that makes grown men shit directly into their pants”. Which doesn’t sound like something you’d want to do.
