Posted by Ingrid Riley on May 11th, 2009
Maybe they’re being inspired by the success of Craigslist.org, the most successful online classifieds site online at this time. Craigslist.org, is pretty much the largest classifieds ad site in the world, the 7th most visited site in the USA, that generates more than 600 million free classified listings a year, makes between US$80-100m USD a year for charging modest fees for real estate and job listings in certain cities. Maybe it’s because there are still no dominant,household brand of a classifieds site as yet in Jamaica and entrepreneurs believe one is needed and is attempting to fill that gap. Whatever the reason there has been another recent flurry of free classified sites launched in the last 60 days.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Posted by Ingrid Riley on March 11th, 2009
Apple: The traditional labels — and everyone else — keep trying, but no one has dented iTunes’ supremacy. In 2008, Apple surpassed Wal-Mart as the world’s largest music retailer.
Warner Music Group: Digital sales were up 39%, thanks in part to a ramped-up MP3 effort in 2008. WMG also partnered with Nokia on an all-access music channel that lives on your phone.
Imeem: After buying up Anywhere.fm and Snocap, Imeem found itself one of the top social networks of 2008, according to Nielsen.
Pandora: The music-discovery machine of the 21st century has taken the serendipity out of finding new music that fits your tastes. Just one step ahead of competitor Last.fm.
Last.fm: Later to the party than Pandora, but a growing force that includes info on concerts and artists, plus video.
South by Southwest: The Austin-based music-and-media festival attracts more than 1,800 acts and 150,000 attendees. Despite a grassroots approach, a standout showing can make an artist.
MTV Music Group: A slew of new digital initiatives are one part of president Van Toffler’s remaking. Another: the $175 million purchase of Rock Band game maker Harmonix.
Radiohead: The band that spawned direct-to-fans releases made two songs available for remix — and let users vote for the winner on its site. Amateurs and professionals alike joined in.
Live Nation: The concert promoter continued to sign A-list artists to distribution deals and further increased its live-events footprint.
Pitchfork Media: The popular and wildly influential music blog recently added video and inked a deal with Fader Media for integrated advertising and sponsorship across all platforms.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Posted by Ingrid Riley on February 16th, 2009
What Web sites do parents, schools, and small businesses censor the most on their networks? Porn? Time wasters? Shopping? Social networks? All of the above!
These are currently the ten most-blocked Web sites on home, school, and small business networks, via OpenDNS’s domain filtering tool.
1. MySpace.com
2. Facebook.com
3. YouTube.com
4. Playboy.com
5. Ebay.com
6. Meebo.com
7. Friendster.com
8. Orkut.com
9. AdultFriendFinder.com
10. Espn.com
More
Popularity: 2% [?]
Posted by simone harris on February 12th, 2009
Apple recently navigated the turbulent and murky waters of the music industry to arrive at an agreement, which should give the big players a sort of “checkmate” in their chess game against piracy and the free movement of music. But what does DRM-free mean?
Popularity: 7% [?]
Posted by simone harris on February 9th, 2009
On Feb 5th, I entered the Globe Lobby of the Los Angeles Times Building in downtown Los Angeles as the only Caribbean representative at the 2nd annual EconMusic Conference, organized by UK based ContentNext Media. This year’s conference focused on the key strategic issues surrounding the economics of the digital music industry.
By the end of the first panel discussion which featured Courtney Holt (President, Myspace Music), David Ring (EVP, eLabs, Universal Music Group), Cory Ondrejka (SVP, Digital Strategy, EMI Music), Michael Spiegelman (Head of Yahoo! Music) and Chris Stephenson (GM, Global Marketing, Entertainment Business, Microsoft) I had to wonder whether Jamaica and by extension the Caribbean region was ready for the technologically driven strategies that industry players are implementing in order to remain competitive in the global music industry.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Posted by Ingrid Riley on December 15th, 2008
I have a friend who’s steeped deep in the music industry here in Jamaica. As a studio engineer she’s worked with everybody really from Shaggy, Sean Paul, Toots to others emerging. We’ve had many conversations as had certain players in the industry as to why Reggae music is not selling, what infrastructure is needed to set up the industry for future success. I happened on this blog post by a colleague of mine GERD LEONHARD over at mediafuturist.com, so I had to share.
1. Truly collaborate to arrive at sweeping and effective solutions: the music industry has been notorious for in-fighting, wide-spread distrust, clubbiness and ludicrously fragmented business procedures and licensing rules. We need an industry-wide innovation initiative that looks at new business models from a global joint perspective of labels and publishers, artists and managers, agents and promoters, startups and societies. We need to rethink our traditional business rules and put the cards on the table – or that very table will start to burn down while we’re sitting at it.
2. Watch and listen to the kids i.e. the digital natives, and then offer business models that will serve them in the way they want to be served, not as we would prefer them to be served. This is seriously ingrained problem in the music industry: all too often, we are assuming the ‘consumer’ aka user to be different than they really are, and / or we are thinking of them to act like we do. This is a deadly mistake, as it will be those very same 15 year old kids that do Facebook, Twitter, Loopt, Spotify, Songza or Youtube that are our future customers. This ignorance has cost us billions already so let’s stop acting like we can control them or tell them what to do. MORE
Popularity: 1% [?]
Posted by Ingrid Riley on December 1st, 2008
There’s a new version of Songbeat, a simple but powerful desktop application for discovering music online, and I like it. When it was first released earlier this year, the client only enabled you to search for music online using Seeqpod, but the updated version lets you search more engines at once and also lets you easily play, export and download songs. More
Popularity: 1% [?]
Posted by Ingrid Riley on August 21st, 2008
Pukshop.com which will go live from the United Kingdom in a couple of weeks deliberately ahead of Notting Hill and Rotterdam Carnivals 2008, will be a new way to buy music of Caribbean, Latin America and Africa origin online via Digital and Cable media, IPTV and Mobile Handsets.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Posted by Ingrid Riley on June 2nd, 2008
Realvibez.com, a leading online provider of media for consumers of Caribbean music culture, has signed on as the official web partner of Reggae Sumfest 2008, the largest multi-day Reggae festival in the Caribbean, now in its 16th year.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Posted by Ingrid Riley on April 2nd, 2008
Diana King aka King Singa is a Jamaican Reggae Soul Music icon. The voice, the sex appeal, the hits are all unforgettable, even within the context of how the Internet has transformed the music industry,
Popularity: 5% [?]
Posted by Ingrid Riley on March 1st, 2008
I read Seth Godin, marketing guru at least 3 times a week. He recently wrote this post on the global music business. Since I live in the Caribbean and Reggae and Soca music is invented here, I think our music industry could stand to take a whiff of this.
MUSIC Lessons
Things you can learn from the music business (as it falls apart)
The first rule is so important, it’s rule 0:
0. The new thing is never as good as the old thing, at least right now.
Soon, the new thing will be better than the old thing will be. But if you wait until then, it’s going to be too late. Feel free to wax nostalgic about the old thing, but don’t fool yourself into believing it’s going to be here forever. It won’t.
1. Past performance is no guarantee of future success
Every single industry changes and, eventually, fades. Just because you made money doing something a certain way yesterday, there’s no reason to believe you’ll succeed at it tomorrow.
The music business had a spectacular run alongside the baby boomers. Starting with the Beatles and Dylan, they just kept minting money. The co-incidence of expanding purchasing power of teens along with the birth of rock, the invention of the transistor and changing social mores meant a long, long growth curve.
As a result, the music business built huge systems. They created top-heavy organizations, dedicated superstores, a loss-leader touring industry, extraordinarily high profit margins, MTV and more. It was a well-greased system, but the key question: why did it deserve to last forever? It didn’t. Yours doesn’t either. More
Popularity: 1% [?]
