Business News Week In Five

CMU Digest – 12 Apr 2013

By | Published on Friday 12 April 2013

Official Charts Company

The five biggest stories in the music business this week…

01: The Official Charts Company confirmed over a billion single track downloads have been sold in the UK since it started documenting such things in 2004. Which is quite a lot. “The explosion in download sales over the past nine years means we are genuinely now living in the digital music age – with Adele as our queen!” said OCC boss Martin Talbot, the latter clause because Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ is the most downloaded of all the tracks in the download-o-sphere. And talking of Adele… CMU reportOCC infographic

02: Adele topped the list of young musical millionaires, published this week ahead of the launch of the latest Sunday Times Rich List. The broadsheet reckons Adele is now worth in the region of £30 million. She tops a young musical rich list dominated by female artists, with Cherly Cole, Leona Lewis, Katie Melua and Florence Welch also appearing. The poor 1D boys had to make do with spots at the bottom of the Top 20 list, being worth a mere £5 million each. Though in the over-all British rock rich list it’s the old men that dominate, Paul McCartney at the top with the £680 million fortune he shares with wife Nancy Shevell. CMU reportGuardian report

03: Universal announced a deal with Roc Nation. The deal sees Jay-Z working again with his former label and employer, with Universal handling major releases from artists signed to or managed by the rapper’s JV business with Live Nation. The new alliance will include the distribution of Jay-Z’s own new record, and also means Universal will continue to handle the annual album release from Roc Nation-managed Rihanna. CMU report | Wall Street Journal report

04: The Pirate Bay moved to Greenland, briefly. Well, it officially switched its main domain name from being the Swedish-based thepiratebay.se to one using the Greenland top level domain, so thepiratebay.gl. The move came amidst fears the authorities in Sweden were plotting to seize the controversial file-sharing site’s Swedish domain. But within a day of announcing the move, the company that oversees the .gl TLD had blocked the new URL on the grounds TPB would use it for illegal operations. So the Bay is back with its .se address for the time being. CMU report | Torrent freak report

05: The IFPI published its annual stats report. Most of what was contained in the global record industry trade body’s big book of stats we already knew: the global recorded music market grew very slightly last year for the first time since the 1990s, digital is booming and streaming services are increasingly important, though CDs still generate more cash overall. Emerging markets like Brazil, India and Mexico are also contributing to the perceived record industry recovery, the report confirmed. The actual size of that recovery was amended ever so slightly downwards between the publication of the IFPI’s Digital Music Report in February and the main stats document this week, from 0.3% to 0.2%, which doesn’t sound like much, but probably represents in the region of $1.5 million. CMU report | Billboard report

On CMU this week we chatted to musician and producer John Parish about his latest release ‘Screenplay’, The Black Angels compiled us a great playlist, and Vasilis Panagiotopoulos reported from Tallinn Music Week. Approved were Club 8, Bass Drum Of Death, Ty and Bonobo.



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