Some eMusic News
Sunday, April 01, 2007
http://www.pollstar.com/news/viewnews.pl?NewsID=7805
There is a very good interview with the CEO of eMusic at the link above. The most interesting part of it was question about major labels. The idea that eMusic could resurrect back catalogs for the majors is great and I would go download crazy. There are a ton of cds that I would love to have but don't want to pay full price for. Back in the day I used to collect tapes and trying to replace those albums digitally has been a chore. Maybe one day the majors will summit and do the right thing, until then we are stuck in digital limbo....
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EMusic only sells music on independent labels. Have you talked to the major labels recently?
We have been talking to all four majors for more than two years. And their offer has been pretty simple and consistent. We’ve said to them, “We’re really a Long Tail music retailer. We focus on people who are 25 to 60 years old that like music beyond the commercial mainstream. We’re a strong retailer among all genres except mainstream pop and rap.”
So, we said our notion is that there is a portion of your catalogs that are probably in those genres that are underperforming. Why don’t you give us all the songs in your catalogs that have sold one or fewer times on iTunes. And maybe even the stuff that isn’t available physically anymore. A deleted title. Wouldn’t that be a good place to start? License that to us in MP3 and let’s see how well we can sell it. And any sales we do would be incremental because you’re not selling it anywhere else. That pitch has been pretty consistent for some time. You can sort of call it the “back catalog and up-and-coming artists who haven’t yet broken.” And we have not been successful in convincing any of the majors to abandon the DRM requirement. But we keep trying. So even if their songs are not selling, they’re not willing to go that route.
Posted by mardenhill 4/01/2007 09:29:00 AM
Labels: Music
