Digital Music News Sector Report

Digital Music News has just published a report of recent activity in the digital music sector.  Here are some highlights:

• August was an incredibly busy month in the online music sector. iTunes raided the Japanese market, and came away with one million downloads in the first four days. That prompted a major counter-attack by Yahoo Japan, part of an escalating online music battle in the country. Meanwhile, rumors of iTunes launches in both New Zealand and Australia continued to bubble.
• The Rolling Stones were busy kicking off a massive tour, while handing out prime cuts of content to AOL Music, Yahoo Music and iTunes.
• Meanwhile, Yahoo was quite aggressive. The company launched a beta audio search engine and officially kicked off its cut-rate music subscription service. Others were readying music store launches, particularly Virgin and HMV in the UK. And more details leaked out on possible plays from both Amazon and the BBC.
• Meanwhile, MSN Music pushed into several Nordic countries, while eMusic surpassed a new subscriber record. And MTV delivered a beefed-up broadband counterpart to its annual Video Music Awards. Elsewhere, Clear Channel Radio was also rattling with some big-name exclusives.
• The subscription space was characterized by stalemate, as publishers and music services could not come to terms on a royalty rate. Meanwhile, labels were also making noise about Apple iTunes pricing ahead of renegotiations early next year.
• In the data circle, new information pointed to rather lackluster digital album sales, with most consumers preferring single downloads.
• In the financial category, Napster and Loudeye posted strong revenues amidst sagging profits. And RealNetworks stayed in the black.
• The dealmaking was also rich, with the following tie-ups coming to the surface: BT/iTunes, iRiver/ Soundbuzz, eMusic/Smithsonian, BigChampagne/AOL Music, Michelob/VerveLife/MyMPO, Gorillaz/Habbo Hotel, BellSouth/Napster , Warner Music/AOL, Audible/XM, Network Live/Nokia, Bell Canada/Universal Music, Ruckus/Syracuse University.

Purchase the enire Digital Music News report @ http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/sector.