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Business News Week In Five
The music business week in five – 6 Jul 2012
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 6 July 2012
So, hello there, and welcome to Friday. And for those of you not still trembling in awe at the marvellous, erm, greenish torches shone into the mist from the top of London’s Shard tower block last night, let’s focus our eyes this damp morning onto the last seven days in music.
And then, perhaps, conclude that we can always know more, and book ourselves into one of the three wonderful CMU Training courses we have coming up this month. They are awe-inspiring, and we don’t even use lasers.
01: ACTA was blocked by the European Parliament. MEPs voted 478 to 39 against the global intellectual property agreement. Although slightly controversial from the start, popular opposition to the IP treaty grew after the SOPA/PIPA protests in the US earlier this year, amidst generally incorrect claims that ACTA and SOPA included similar anti-piracy provisions. It’s not clear what the European Parliament vote means for ACTA worldwide and in Europe. The European Commission and various European governments that support the treaty will likely wait until the European Courts Of Justice rules on whether the agreement violates fundamental EU rights before decide their next move. CMU report | Guardian pro-ACTA polemic
02: A Sony-led consortium took control of EMI Music Publishing, after getting US regulator approval late last week, European Commission approval having come in April. Meanwhile Universal prepared its response to the EC’s statement of objections to its bid to buy the EMI record company. Universal boss Lucian Grainge also reassured staff that the sudden departure of CEO Jean-Bernard Levy from parent company Vivendi, over “strategic differences”, had nothing to do with the major’s EMI bid. CMU report | New York Times report
03: The ATP company went into liquidation, as the wider UK festivals sector faces a particularly challenging summer. Actually, the company behind the popular All Tomorrow’s Parties festivals closed down last month, but news of the development only broke this week. ATP founder Barry Hogan has already established a new company, and it is thought all of the ATP-branded events and tours currently planned will still go ahead. A fuller announcement is expected anytime soon. CMU report | NME report
04: The BPI called for more anti-piracy action from Google and government, at its Annual General Meeting in London town. Chairman Tony Wadsworth, CEO Geoff Taylor and guest speaker Harriet Harman all said that Google should be doing more to ensure unlicensed music sites do not appear in their search results, while the government was urged to get moving with implementing the three-strikes palaver put in place by the Digital Economy Act, made law by Harman’s Labour Party in 2010. CMU report | Wadsworth Speech | Taylor Speech | Harman speech
05: Beats bought MOG. Because, well, why not? There had been rumours that the HTC-owned, Dr Dre/Jimmy Iovine founded Beats would acquire the MOG streaming music platform for sometime, but the deal was confirmed this week. It’s thought the partnership will include special MOG services for HTC phone users. Many remarked on the fact Beats only paid £14 million for MOG, which seems like a very good deal, even if the HTC subsidiary did only get the streaming music bit of the company (the ad network bit of the firm was not included in the deal), especially given rival Spotify’s multi-billion dollar valuation. CMU report | TechCrunch report
Chris Cooke
Business Editor, CMU
