Business News Week In Five

The music business week in five – 18 May 2012

By | Published on Friday 18 May 2012

Chris Cooke

Hello one and all, and I trust you’ve all recovered from last week’s Great Escape festivities? We nearly have – but what a brilliant three days.

Of course, you might now be in the middle of all those Liverpool Sound City shenanigans, in which case, give yourself a day off on Monday. But make sure you are back on your feet by Wednesday, because we have a brand new CMU Training course launching on all things social media. Click here for more info. And then sit back for your Week In Five digest…

01: The Pirate Bay was subjected to a DDoS attack, which made some in the UK wonder if efforts by record label trade body the BPI to block access to the rogue file-sharing site had been much more effective than expected. The big UK ISPs are in the process of being forced to block access to the Bay, of course, though tech savvy file-sharers know how to get round the blocks. But on Tuesday that didn’t work, because the whole Bay was down after being attacked by unknown hacktivists (not Anonymous, despite TPB criticising that group last week for staging a DDoS attack against Virgin Media as it put an anti-Bay block in place). Elsewhere, two of the original founders of the Bay were this week trying to avoid the jail sentences Swedish courts handed down for their involvement in enabling mass copyright infringement: Peter Sunde asked the Swedish authorities for clemency, while Fredrik Neij threatened to take his case to the European Courts Of Human Rights. DDoS attack report | Appeals report

02: MP3tunes.com filed for bankruptcy. One of the original music-focused digital locker services, MP3tunes continues to fight EMI in the courts, despite an initial ruling last year mainly (though not totally) siding with the tech start-up. EMI’s appeal of that ruling is due to kick off very soon. The major said MP3tunes was filing for bankruptcy simply to avoid liability for the copyright infringement it enables, but that it won’t work because founder Michael Robertson is also named as a defendant in the record company’s lawsuit. Robertson accused EMI of using its big pockets to force him out of business, even when a judge had agreed with a lot of his company’s interpretation of copyright law with regards digital lockers. CMU report | Ars Technica report

03: The streaming music chart launched in the UK, with the Official Charts Company taking data from a plethora of streaming platforms (though only audio, not video). The first streaming top ten wasn’t radically different from the main singles chart (based on download sales via services like iTunes), though some artists did perform better in the new chart than in the main retail countdown. It remains to be seen if the streaming data is ever incorporated into the main UK singles chart, as has already happened in the US. CMU report | BBC report

04: The BPI and PM bigged up British music’s successes, noting that UK artist albums accounted for 12.6% of global music sales in 2011, up from 11.8% the previous year. David Cameron said: “As a country we can be proud of the tremendous success of our music industry, which is a world leader”. The stats were released at the start of Music Is GREAT Week, a slightly pointless government-led initiative that aims to – erm – no, still haven’t worked out what it aims to achieve. CMU report | Telegraph report

05: Amazing Radio disappeared from DAB. The independent music championing station is still available on the net, but not via digital radios, after its owners failed to negotiate a new deal with Digital One, the operators of the national DAB network. Although being careful not to openly slag off the DAB network owners (“we hope to resolve the dispute and get back on the air”), Amazing Radio’s founder Paul Campbell did publish a list of reasons as to why he thought it was important a service like his was available on the digital network. Meanwhile, fans of the station set up an online petition calling on Digital One to reinstate Amazing’s DAB broadcasts. CMU report | Paul Campbell’s letter

And that’s it – but do look out for the CMU Weekly podcast, back online this weekend.

Chris Cooke
Business Editor, CMU



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