Despite a gigantic lead in the online MP3 market, Apple appears to be playing dirty against Amazon MP3, using its clout with the record labels to try to snuff out Amazon’s popular “Daily Deal” promotion.
In 2008, when Amazon MP3 first launched, the Daily Deal was paid for by Amazon, out of their own pockets, as a way to get traffic to the service. In 2009 however, says a label exec, “that promotion morphed into something where the labels make arrangements to provide an exclusive selling window with Amazon for a big release expected to do a lot of business on street date.”
In exchange for the Daily Deal promotion, Amazon gets a one-day exclusive window for sales before street date, as long as digital marketing support through the artist’s Web sites, or MySpace pages.
The same executive said about that situation (via Billboard): “When that happened, iTunes said, ‘Enough of that s**t.’ “
Since then, Apple has been “urging” labels to rethink the Daily Deal, while at the same time withdrawing marketing support for acts that were featured as Daily Deals.
Says another exec: “[Apple] are . . . diverting their energy from ‘let’s make this machine better’ to ‘let’s protect what we got,’”.
Apple, Amazon, Warner, EMI and Sony have not responded to the story yet.
Result for: billboard
SoundExchange, the establishment that has been tasked with collecting royalties for copyright holders and artists from music streaming services on the Internet, satellite radio and maybe traditional radio soon too, has told artists to label their music properly if they wish to receive their royalties.
SoundExchange Executive Director John Simson wrote in Billboard that the company actually has trouble finding out who owns the copyright to some songs it tracks and claims royalties for. He said the organization had about $40 million in royalties that it collected in 2008, which it could not distribute to artists and copyright owners because it couldn’t find them.
Why not? Because the copyright owners didn’t attach enough information to the song. Simson pleaded that at the very least, every song should include metadata identifying the artist, song name, album name, label or copyright owner.
SoundExchange also is holding $39 million for artists and copyright holders that simply have not registered with SoundExchange yet.
Result for: billboard
Panasonic has revealed an 85-inch full HD 1080p plasma display today at the Infocomm show in Florida that is based on the company’s NeoPDP technology.
The display is meant for use as an electronic billboard or for business presentations as it lacks TV tuners. The static contrast ratio is 40,000:1 and the dynamic contrast ratio is a large 2,000,000:1.
The panel is 3.9 inches thick and weighs 287 pounds.
Inputs and outputs include DVI, Ethernet, and dual-link HD-SDI.
Although unconfirmed, rumor has it Panasonic is developing a 150-inch plasma display as well, one that will include TV tuners.
There was no word on price but expect it to top $50,000 USD.
