Music News Bulletin - 21/11/08

French Biz Falters, Digital Remains Strong
"The wholesale value of the French recorded music market in the first nine months of 2008 decreased to €382 million ($484 million), down 13.9% from the corresponding period last year, according to new figures issued by labels trade body SNEP. It follows a 20.5% year-on-year shortfall registered for the first nine months in 2007.
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The reduction in the rate of decline is mainly due to a stronger growth in digital sales, up 52.6% to €52.8 million ($66.9 million). Digital represented 14% of the French market during the period." [Billboard]

The impact of iTunes on the music industry came under the spotlight at the latest MusicTank session earlier this week.
"Sincere Management’s Peter Jenner, the keynote speaker at the Coalition of The Billing event, said that digital retailer has “had the disastrous effect on the record industry of debundling the album”. He told delegates at the third session in the Lets Sell Recorded Music think tank series that iTunes had the effect of converting “a £10 product, the album, into a £1.60 product, the two singles that are worth buying"

Beggars Group director of digital Simon Wheeler argued, “iTunes set a level that took power out of rights holders. Whether it's right or not, it has set the price for a la carte downloads."" [MusicWeek]

Amazon.com launch artist pages
"With MySpace looking to now sell MP3s off artist profile pages, and Live Nation-owned Musictoday, who run official onlines stores for hundreds of artists in the US, announcing last week that they would start selling MP3s from their artists' pages, Amazon US have announced a move in the opposite direction. Already selling CDs and MP3s via their e-tail website, they are launching a new website of artist profiles which will include both editorial and commercial content for each featured singer or band.

Commercially, the new service will basically aggregate all the CDs, MP3s and DVDs Amazon already stocks for any one artist, so that fans can browse all available content on an editorially-driven page, rather than having to work their way through album or artist searches. Amazon US VP of Music & Movies, Peter Faricy, told reporters: "These [artist pages] allow our customers to easily find and discover the music they love in any format along with a variety of artist content, like exclusive music videos and behind-the-scenes footage, all in a single place"." [CMUDaily]

Sources: Apple, music labels talk DRM-free songs
"A year after iTunes began offering music without copy protection software from EMI, Apple is in discussions with the other three top recording companies about acquiring DRM-free songs, according to two music industry sources.The talks are still preliminary and no deals have been finalized, but one source said one of the major labels is close to a final agreement. Rumors have been swirling on the Internet for a week that Sony would soon be offering music without the controversial digital rights management software. My sources could not confirm this.
Spokespeople for Apple and the major labels declined to comment." [CNet]