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Business News Week In Five
The music business week in five – Friday 23 Apr 2010
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 23 April 2010
Is it just me, or does that crazy ash cloud and those wonderfully empty skies now all seem like a lifetime ago? I guess that isn’t the case if you’re still stranded on the wrong side of an ocean as airlines try to squeeze five days worth of passengers onto this weekend’s flights. The empty skies above Northern Europe had an impact on the music biz, of course, with some artists unable to make tour commitments, several missing their Coachella slots, various execs, journalists and DJs stranded, and a BPI trade mission to LA cancelled. Still, for the majority of the industry it was business as usual. Allowing time for all of the following…
01: Terra Firma sought £360 million to save EMI. With the music firm’s deadline for paying its bankers Citigroup £120 million in loan fees looming, it was revealed the music firm’s owners, equity group Terra Firma, who are trying to raise the money from their investors, are actually asking backers for three times the required amount. The other £240 million would be used to plug a hole in the pension fund and to pay next year’s loan fees. Terra Firma hope a new business plan recommending more downsizing and the sale of some divisions will persuade investors to cough up the cash. CMU report | FT report
02: A draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was published. This is the global agreement between nine countries and the European Union regarding the tightening of intellectual property laws. The draft was published at the EU’s request to end online speculation of what might be in the treaty, which is being negotiated in private. The draft confirmed past EU insistence that the Agreement will not force signatories to introduce a three-strikes anti-piracy system. Instead it seems to encourage signed up countries to adopt some of the provisions in America’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act. CMU report | EFF analysis
03: Irish courts OK-ed three-strikes, while an Italian judge let the ISPs off. In Ireland, a judge overruled concerns that an agreement between the Irish record industry and ISP Eircom to introduce a voluntary three-strikes system to tackle illegal file-sharing would violate data protection and privacy laws. But in Italy a judge knocked back a lawsuit by a film industry body that claimed Telecom Italia had a duty to monitor and stop piracy. Had film group FAPAV won, it would have arguably forced a three-strikes style system on the Italian ISP without any change in the country’s copyright laws. CMU reports | Out-Law report on Irish ruling
04: Two new Apple music services were rumoured. As Europeans awaited the arrival of the iPad on this side of the Atlantic, and tech blog Gizmodo published pictures of the next iPhone (having mysteriously found a prototype in a bar), there were rumours Apple is developing a mobile-ticketing platform and an in-car streaming music service. The former would see tickets sold via the iTunes store and downloaded to the iPhone complete with coupons and multi-media extras. The latter would take the Lala.com streaming service Apple acquired last year and make it available via net-connected dashboards. CMU reports | Patently Apple on ticketing system
05: Rolling Stone put up a paywall. From now on, while basic news and the like will be free, anyone wanting to read content from the latest or archive editions of the seminal music magazine will have to pay a subscription. One of the first consumer magazines to go the subscription route, other publishers will be watching the venture with interest. Meanwhile, word has it James Murdoch has been lobbying other UK newspapers to follow the lead of The Times in putting up a paywall. I only mention this because, while meeting with Mail execs to discuss such things, Jim gatecrashed the offices of The Independent (in the same building) to berate their Editor Simon Kelner about the paper’s relaunch posters which mocked his father. It’s a funny story. CMU report | Funny Murdoch story
And that’s your lot. Well, other than everything that is to follow. And this afternoon’s CMU Weekly, which will round up the week in artist news. See ya.
Chris Cooke
Business Editor, CMU
