Posts by Mark Mulligan from April 28, 2008

Mark Mulligan | April 28, 2008, 02:49 PM
Comes With Insider Rumours

Another Comes With Music ‘insider’ story in today’s Register, attempting to throw further doubt on Nokia’s business model for the offering. This is the second ‘insider’ CWM story in as many weeks, which begs the question ‘why?’. Is it just because CWM is newsworthy, or are some vested interests getting information in the public domain to help negotiations perhaps?

Mark Mulligan | April 28, 2008, 09:35 AM
SonyBMG Join Up With WE-7

Hot on the heels of their deal with Nokia, SonyBMG have inked a deal with UK based ad-supported download service WE-7.

I’m sure the guys at We-7 are very relieved to be able to plaster Leona Lewis and Mark Ronson all over their site as a quick peek at the top 10 artists on the service to date suggests a rather unfortunate combination of limited catalogue and a skewed early adopter base:

#3 Uriah Heep (what the ??!!!)
#4 The Kinks
#6 The Searchers
#7 Emerson Lake and Palmer
#9 The Troggs

And (admittedly much) further down the list there are even the long-lost 80's glam metal guys W.A.S.P., which brings back memories of my misspent heavy metal youth.

But I’m being unfair, this is a relatively new service just getting off the ground, and is different from the more well known ad-supported duo in that its focus on the advertisers is so strong, it almost feels like it is an advertiser’s service first and a music service second. Which is no bad thing, as the ad-supported offerings are only going to make it if they get their ad story right.

Jupiter’s got a European report coming out soon looking at the opportunity in Europe, on a country by country basis, for ad-supported and subsidized offerings, compared to the premium download opportunity. Watch this space for more details.