Hulu gets access to music videos from EMI, amping up online competition

EMI Music became the first major music company to agree to distribute its music videos and concert footage on Hulu, the popular online video site.

Starting with today's announcement, EMI will make content available from its various music labels, including Virgin, Capitol and Blue Note. It launches with exclusive footage of Norah Jones performing music from her new album, "The Fall," in a concert at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City.

Music videos already have shown strong appeal for rival online video site YouTube, which is working with Universal Music Group to develop a service called Vevo, which would highlight such content on YouTube and elsewhere online.

"We think Hulu is an excellent, high-quality environment and a great place to connect with fans," Ronn Werre,  chief operating officer of EMI Music North America, said in a statement.

Hulu has attracted millions of online viewers with the lure of Hollywood-produced television shows and films, which are available for free. Over the summer, it began experimenting with music, striking a concert deal with the Dave Matthews Band.

-- Dawn C. Chmielewski

Photo: The cover of Norah Jones' latest release, "The Fall." Credit: EMI Blue Note / Associated Press

British regulators put roadblock on Ticketmaster-LiveNation merger

Sorry old chum.

Ticketmaster and Live Nation may have to divest assets in the United Kingdom in order to go ahead with their proposed merger, British regulators said today.

The country's Competition Commission, which investigates mergers for the British government, issued a provisional ruling that the merger of ticketing giant Ticketmaster and concert production company Live Nation could "severely inhibit" German ticketing company CTS Eventim AG.

CTS signed a deal before the proposed merger was announced in February to sell tickets to music events for Live Nation in the U.K. The Competition Commission ruled that if the merger goes ahead, Live Nation "would have the incentive to impede CTS's entry into the UK ticketing market, in particular by minimizing the supply of its tickets to CTS, and thereby frustrate CTS from becoming an additional effective competitor to Ticketmaster."

The public agency said it will consider a range of possible steps the two companies could take to address its concerns before issuing its final report by Nov. 24. Among the possible remedies, the Competition Commission said, is a divestiture of either Ticketmaster or Live Nation's British businesses or specific steps to make sure CTS Eventim or another outside company can sell tickets to Live Nation events.

The provisional ruling comes as the U.S. Department of Justice is still investigating the proposed merger. Critics have complained that if the two companies combined, they would have outsize power to set prices for concerts and other live events.

In a joint statement, Ticketmaster and Live Nation didn't address any specific steps they might take to deal with today's ruling. "Both our companies are committed to this merger and look forward to addressing any and all issues that the commission deems necessary," they said.

They also continued to position their proposed merger as a necessary step to aid the troubled music industry: "Where the recording industry was once the economic engine for the music business, it is live entertainment that is now the future of the music industry.... [W]orking together we will be able to help achieve needed change that will strengthen the flagging music industry."

--Ben Fritz

Photo: Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino and Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff testify on Capitol Hill about their proposed merger. Credit: Kevin Wolf/Associated Press.

MySpace likes ILike

News Corp.'s struggling social networking site MySpace today announced it has a deal to acquire ILike, an application that helps users of social networks share music recommendations and playlists.

The combination would bring together MySpace, a site emerging and established artists have long used to promote their music, with an application that allows people to introduce their friends to new music.

“The iLike acquisition advances our relentless pursuit of innovation and the need to create new distributed social experiences in music and beyond,” MySpace Chief Executive Owen Van Natta said in a statement. “We are deeply committed to bringing world class talent into all areas of the company and this acquisition demonstrates our focus on this objective.”

The acquisition comes as ILike has been poised to introduce its own music store, in cooperation with all four major music companies. Brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi founded ILike in 2006. In two years, it has attracted 55 million users -- including users on rival social networking site Facebook. It is unclear what the acquisition would mean for Facebook.

“Combining MySpace’s existing platform, reach and resources with ILike’s syndication network and social discovery tools creates the potential for truly exciting innovation," said ILike President Hadi Partovi.

Van Natta said the acquisition would have no immediate impact on ILike users.

-- Dawn C. Chmielewski

Photo: MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta. Credit: Jacob Mosur / Los Angeles Times.

For Michael Jackson estate, the money is already rolling in

 

Michael Jackson’s estate is poised to double the performer’s net worth by the end of this year with earnings of $200 million, according to a longtime associate and co-administrator of the performer’s affairs.

In an interview today, entertainment attorney John Branca said that deals hammered out in the seven weeks since Jackson’s death -- including a film project, merchandising deals and other agreements -- had brought $100 million to the estate. Two of those deals are still awaiting court approval.

The revenue will go into a trust that benefits Jackson’s mother, two sons and daughter and charities that help children.

Branca began representing Jackson in 1980, but the pair parted in 2006. Jackson rehired Branca on June 17, eight days before the entertainer’s death, during a meeting in which they discussed an array of projects, including Broadway show, a movie, a coffee table book and a major charity event that they hoped would attract Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama's participation.

Branca also said a new Jackson song would be included on a soundtrack from the Sony Pictures film of Jackson's rehearsals, to be released in October. He said Jackson left about 60 new recordings -- enough to support multiple albums in coming years. Branca also said the estate had no plans to sell its 50% stake in the lucrative catalog of songs by the Beatles and others that it owns with Sony Corp; he thought the relationship between the estate and Sony would remain about the same.

-- Harriet Ryan

Photo: Jackson rehearsing at Staples Center on June 23. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

MySpace Music's Courtney Holt hints at new features

MySpace Music has come in for criticism from the labels, whose executives have publicly (and privately) said it has been slow to find ways to make money on its massive community of music fans.

Recently, through, MySpace Music is showing flickers of life.

Since the site’s launch in September 2008, it has grown from 4.2 million users to 12.1 million, ranking it ahead of other popular music sites like MTV Networks Music and the Internet radio site Pandora. It's gaining traction with people ages 12 to 24, who are more than twice as likely to visit the site than the average Internet user.

MySpace Music chief Courtney Holt hinted at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference in Pasadena today that new features are coming.

Holt said the recent executive restructuring at MySpace -- which saw the departure this spring of co-founder Chris DeWolfe -- has brought in a new team that's focusing on better integrating music throughout the social networking site.

MySpace Music is working on giving greater reach to online music taste-makers -- Holt dubbed them "social DJs." The site is trying to find new ways to highlight these arbiters, who influence their friends, so it can reach even more people.

"MySpace is trying to figure out how to give them more power," Holt said.

New artist tools are also in the offing.

Holt didn't announce a timetable for making available such long-promised features as as selling concert tickets or merchandise, but he did talk about the opportunity to promote live performances, where 50% of tickets go unsold. This is especially a problem for middle-tier artists who have moved beyond small clubs but are not filling up arenas.

"The No. 1 reason is lack of awareness," Holt said, "No. 2 is price."

-- Dawn C. Chmielewski

Onetime peer-to-peer bete noir Kazaa relaunches as legitimate music site

The file-sharing service that once ranked at the top of the Recording Industry Assn. of America's hit list -- and by that, we don't mean popular -- relaunches today as a licensed music service.

Kazaa is reincarnated as a subscription service that offers more than 1 million tracks, including popular songs from the major record companies -- Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI -- hat once hauled the site's owners into an Australian court.

"We are delighted to deliver a fresh and exciting music platform to customers via an established icon like Kazaa," said Kevin Bermeister, the chief executive of Altnet Inc., an online distributor of licensed content and partner in Kazaa's reboot.

Kazaa's comeback is anything but assured. It's been nearly four years since the name "Kazaa" was associated with online music. And other file-sharing services that have gone legit, such as iMesh, met with limited success, largely because they lack the key to their earlier cache -- free music downloads. Even Napster, the original file-sharing site whose name is synonymous with digital downloads, has struggled as a new, paid service.

But Kazaa is not alone on the digital comeback trail.

The website Pirate Bay, whose owners were slapped with a prison sentence for allowing users to illegally trade in copyrighted content, is to be sold to Swedish firm Global Gaming, which runs cyber cafes.

Global Gaming Chief Executive Hans Pandeya has an unorthodox plan for reviving the site -- he hopes to coax Pirate Bay users to band together to allow their computers to be used to transmit data for Internet service providers. They would earn money that would make the cost of their music consumption free.

Former Grokster President Wayne Rosso, a vocal critic of the music industry, has been hired as a consultant to help with the relaunch. "Jaws is back; it's not safe to go back in the water," the acerbic Rosso quipped.

-- Dawn C. Chmielewski

Photo credit: Michael Magle / Bloomberg News

Record labels also baffled over how to make money on social networks

With Facebook and MySpace accounting for two of the top 10 Internet spots in the U.S., the music industry is grappling with how to make money on social media.

Mike Jbara, chief operating officer of WEA, Warner Music Group's domestic sales and marketing company, today told those attending the music retailers' annual conference in San Diego that social networks present an opportunity to reintroduce consumers to the habit of buying music.

"It looks like social media is competing with peer-to-peer (file-sharing networks) and we all have an interest in turning that into an appropriate revenue opportunity, given that it's substantial," Jbara said.

So far, that secret formula has proved elusive. Panel after panel addressed the question of how to monetize social networks, but offered little by way of concrete success stories of bands converting Facebook fans to song buyers.

Many digital media experts extolled the power of social networks as powerful marketing platforms. But that's not exactly what the music industry needs -- new and innovative ways to give away its music online, in the hope of one day cashing in.

"It remains to be seen if it's going to be successful in that capacity," said Adam LaRue of IndieClick, who consults with major and independent labels in developing online strategies for artists.

The most advanced experiment to date, the MySpace Music service started in a joint venture with the major music labels, has yet to live up to its hype as a one-stop shop for music fans.

Alicia Yaffe, director of digital media at Rocket Science, which provides music label services, put it this way: "MySpace's new music service is taking a lot of time to get off its feet."

-- Dawn C. Chmielewski

New Universal/YouTube venture gets Britney and 'The Boss'

Universal Music Group has enticed another major label -- Sony Music Entertainment --- to join its planned Vevo music video service.

Sony will contribute professionally created videos from its roster of performers, which includes Bruce Springsteen (aka The Boss), Justin Timberlake, Beyonce and Britney Spears.

Universal is working with YouTube to develop a new music hub, where viewers watch professionally created music videos of, say, Pink performing "Please Don't Leave Me" without having to wade through 80,000 or so cover renditions.

The goal is to imitate the success of Hulu, the red-hot online service that has attracted viewers and advertisers by offering professionally created content -- television shows, movies and short videos. As with Hulu, Vevo would also serve as a syndication platform to redistribute music videos elsewhere on the web.

To succeed, however, Universal still needs to sign on the two other major music labels, Warner Music and EMI, with whom it's reportedly in discussions. Until that happens, half of the pop cannon won't be enough for music fans.

-- Dawn C. Chmielewski

Photo: Bruce Springsteen. Credit: Bill Kostroun / Associated Press

Heralded digital music chief at EMI out after only 11 months

EMI Music said its head of digital music, Douglas Merrill, was leaving the company he joined less than a year ago, and his business unit would be integrated into the label's operations.

The former Google chief information officer's decision to join EMI in April was heralded as a major coup for the music label. In interviews, Merrill talked excitedly about the company's embrace of digital technology and its transformation to a services company that could profit from small bands, as well as giants like the band Coldplay.

Merrill could not be reached Monday for comment.

In announcing Merrill's departure, EMI Music Chief Executive Elio Leoni-Sceti said that digital music sales now account for 20% of the company's revenue and that the business would no longer be run as a stand-alone operation.

Leoni-Sceti announced that the company had promoted Cory Ondrejka to the newly created position of executive vice president of digital marketing. Ondrejka joined EMI in June from Second Live. The company's CEO described him as "a highly talented executive with a passion for music and a unique technology-based skill set."

-- Dawn C. Chmielewski

Photo: Google

Kelly Clarkson new album sales are OK but not great

There may be no second acts in American lives, but there's always another act for an American idol.

“American Idol’s” first champ, Kelly Clarkson, returned to the top of the U.S. pop charts with her new album "All I Ever Wanted" bowing at No. 1, an encouraging start after disappointing sales of her last 2007 effort, “My December.” The new album sold 255,000 copies in its first week in stores in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan data released to Billboard.

While the new album falls short of the first-week figures of “December,” which bowed with 291,000 copies, “All I Ever Wanted” is in line with Clarkson's first-week sales history, suggesting fans weren’t permanently put off by the rough publicity surrounding her previous work and canceled 2007 tour dates.

"All I Ever Wanted” has been positively received by critics, many who noted it represents a return to lighter pop-rock after the harder, more serious “December,” an album Clarkson released after a public dispute with her record label, RCA, over its direction.

"As long as someone like Kelly comes back with great material … the story’s a good story,” said Tom Corson, general manager of Sony BMG's RCA Music Group, the label that's releasing the album. "She’s proud of this record and focused on it, and that’s the news -- not what happened a few years ago.”

The release of “All I Ever Wanted” began with a highly targeted online media campaign three months ago. Beginning in December, RCA started posting artwork, song lyrics and audio clips relating to the new album on Clarkson's official website, treating each snippet as a mini event.

Then a bigger, more TV-focused leg of the marketing campaign kicked in last week. Clarkson returned to perform on “American Idol” and was the music guest on “Saturday Night Live.” This upcoming Friday, she’ll take the couch on “The Oprah Show,” a promotion that should help to prevent a major dip in second-week sales.

“All I Ever Wanted” carried a first-week price of $9.99 at mass retailers such as Best Buy, but will increase to $13.99 for its second week. Unlike many major releases these days, the album was not heavily discounted for online sales. Universal Music Group's Interscope Records, for example, sold “No Line” for $3.99 as a digital download during its first week of release earlier this month at Amazon.com.

“We don’t play that game,” said Corson, declining to elaborate.

Clarkson's fans, at least, were certainly eager for the album's lead single, “My Life Would Suck Without You,” which sold sold more than 1.15 million digital downloads and hit No. 1 when it was released in January. The song, slightly reminiscent of her 2004 breakout smash, "Since U Been Gone,” helped tee up album sales for "All I Ever Wanted."

So far, it looks as if RCA Music Group's marketing strategy is working, and sales of "All I Ever Wanted" will not be marred by the underperforming 2007 album.

“She certainly hit our first-week sales expectations,” said Chris Smith, a senior music buyer at Best Buy. “Her second week doesn’t look to be going the direction most records go from a trending perspective. She’s still maintaining a sales base that is higher than our expectations.”

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Ida Mae Astute / ABC via Getty Images