Newspaper market is bad - Music is worse

Global recorded music sales shrank by 7.2%, from $18.3 billion to $17 billion, through 2009.

What this means is the industry has been sale decline each year since 1999.

Digital sales grew 9.2 percent and now make up over a quarter of all music income…

But the extra $363 million brought in by digital last year still wasn’t even close to offsetting $1.74 billion lost from physical sales.

Source: International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s Recording Industry In Numbers report.

What to do?

Well our tonic to improve the health of the music sector would be the following:

1. Understand buyers better - who they are and what they buy. This basic knowledge is critical (but still largely absent).

2. Build greater sense of community around listening types. Last FM etc has proven people are drawn together by shared musical taste. Build communities around taste and market to them

3. Recognise and actively reward the few who pay for digital music. Continue to chase out the illegals but not at expense of the legals. 

4. Dont be afraid of useage rather than ownership model pushed by players like Spotify and Beyond Oblivion and recognise its better to get small payment from everybody than as currently a large payment from a few.

6. Love the talent. Without it there is no industry!

7. Don't be afraid to go digital retail only. Saves on production, distribution, sales commission and critically stock risk. 

8. Merchandising. Hugely under leveraged by the industry and worth a fortune. Recognise that recorded music powers broad and valuable consumer lifestyle habits. Get in on the act directly.

Apple's stellar universe

85m iPhones and iPod touches sold from zero in 2007

4 billions Apps downloaded

10 billion songs downloaded

33m movies downloaded

250m tv shows downloaded

iPhone users who represent 2.2% of total mobile phone market but chug 64% of all browsing minutes

500,000 iPads sold since launch

185,000 apps on App store

125,000 app developers on contract but effectively working for free

iAd which lets advertisers make inventive messages appear inside apps launches in summer

Share price $3 to $247

Historic Ninety Minutes that could change the Election

Today marks a historic day. Its the first ever live UK TV Election Debate.

I have high hopes that even in the completely de politicised UK the debate will cause a wave of interest and excitement amongst voters. The Independent suggests this morning from a poll it commissioned that 30 million people will tune in and of those 50% say that the debate could influence the way they vote. Wow - thats 15m votes up for grabs.

Inspite of the oh so very typically British need for rules (and in this case 70 rules) to govern the event I am looking forward to a contest that reveals more to the public about each of the candidates than we are able to glean from PR prepared set pieces and carefully orchestrated policy statements.

The Q&A will be dull. All possible chance of excitement killed off by Candidate preparation, schooling and spin. The part that interesting is the debate itself where the 3 of them are let loose on each other. Its a relatively short segment so make sure you're back from making cup of tea or you risk missing it.

Alongside 30m others we will be listening in but not just as voters but as insight managers. We will be monitoring, analysing and reporting on all the chatter on Twitter and Facebook to see how the candidates are performing. We will be recording personal sentiment and comparing it regionally. With the stakes so high its going to be fascinating evening.

Social media channels and clever insight technology is giving us the opportunity - for the first time - to listen to the groundswell and to reveal actual sentiment. Check back with us as we will be posting results from all 3 of the live debtaes on a specially created Market Evolution election blog.

Mobile drives 5th Major Technology Cycle

The modern world is presently experiencing its fifth major technology cycle of the past half a century, according to the latest "State of the Internet" report from Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley's managing director and global technology research head.

In what shouldn't come as a shock to readers of this blog, the two key trends driving this latest shift are mobile and social networking.

Within the next five years "more users will connect to the Internet over mobile devices than desktop PCs," according to Meeker.

Also -- based on adoption rates of iPhone/iPod touch compared to that of AOL and Netscape in the early 1990s -- Meeker says that mobile Internet usage is increasing substantially faster than desktop Internet usage did. Indeed, adoption of the Apple devices is taking place more than 11 times faster that of AOL, and several times as fast as that of Netscape.

Supporting this trend is 3G technology, which Morgan Stanley says recently hit an "inflection point" by being available to more than 20% of the world's cellular users.

Read the whole story at GigaOm.

Disappointing news from Apple

Apple has delayed the international launch of the iPad until the end of May because it has sold more devices (over half a million) than it anticipated.


Here’s the official announcement:


“Although we have delivered more than 500,000 iPads during its first week, demand is far higher than we predicted and will likely continue to exceed our supply over the next several weeks as more people see and touch an iPad™. We have also taken a large number of pre-orders for iPad 3G models for delivery by the end of April.

Faced with this surprisingly strong US demand, we have made the difficult decision to postpone the international launch of iPad by one month, until the end of May. We will announce international pricing and begin taking online pre-orders on Monday, May 10.

We know that many international customers waiting to buy an iPad will be disappointed by this news, but we hope they will be pleased to learn the reason—the iPad is a runaway success in the US thus far.”

The End of Bebo?

It looks as though the once wildly popular Bebo is on the rack.

If memory serves it was the hottest property around and was fought over by the likes of Yahoo only to fall to AOL on an exuberant valuation for $850m two years ago.

Well its no longer seen as 'core' at AOL and as they readily admit they don't have the money for the fight against Facebook.

Here a snip from the AOL memo:

“Bebo, unfortunately, is a business that has been declining and, as a result, would require significant investment in order to compete in the competitive social networking space. AOL is not in a position at this time to further fund and support Bebo in pursuing a turnaround in social networking"

All this is a long way from what was said at the time :-

"This is a tremendous acquisition and one I think is game-changing for AOL," said the company's chairman and chief executive, Randy Falco. "Bebo will be the cornerstone of our strategy."

Apple iPad sales update

Apple sold 300,000 iPads in the U.S. as of midnight Saturday, April 3, the company announced Monday.

That total includes pre-ordered units delivered to customers and sales partners as well as Apple store sales.

iPad sells quicker than iPhone

The latest estimates for iPad sales may surprise even the most optimistic Apple watchers:

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster puts the number at 600,000-700,000 this weekend, including pre-orders.

By comparison, it took Apple more than 70 days to sell 1 million iPhones after the initial launch.