Forum Moderators: phranque
EMI Music Publishing, the song rights company, yesterday announced a deal with Skype, the internet telephony business, to sell music on Skype’s new retail website.Under the deal, Skype will be licensed to use song copyrights from EMI’s catalogue to sell music as downloads and ring tones. It is the first time that music copyrights have been licensed worldwide in such a way. Normally licences have to be applied for by the seller on a country-by-country basis, making it more difficult for songwriters to collect payments for their work.
[business.timesonline.co.uk...]
Something tells me this is a lot bigger than just ringtones and music distribution. In fact, I'm seeing Skype becoming more of an application network for distribution of pretty much anything - there's no reason to stop at telephony. The eBay deal is starting to make a lot more sense.
Interesting move by EMI in light of the current ongoing RICO claim:-
[webmasterworld.com...]
Not just in ringtones, but in terms of social networking.
Think of it, you're having a conferance call, and one of the users can say, "Hey, here's this new song I just got..." and share the song over the Skype network. If Skype does this right, it would be very difficult for the other users to capture the song.
It would be good marketing for the song (songs going "viral" over Skype), and a great hook for people to get into Skype.
Can anyone else think of some good tie-ins for Skype and music?
Just the fact that we have to ask this question is enough. I dont think it makes sense and I cant tie it together.
But I do know many people and millions of dollars went into this decision, so some people, people with more knowledge than even us, must know something...
Hubes
The deal may have the broader implication that we all were searching for in the sense that skype is trying to become a viable player with many of the other established networks--like sprint, verizon, etc., They already offer methods of content distribution and have similar partnerships with music labels. Hopefully Skype won't be as expensive and just maybe this can help drive down prices even further--and in the process put pressure on companies like apple who've already shown they're unwilling to shift towards variable-based pricing.
Grelmar i'm not sure what type of conference calls you typically engage in--but I do know that mine don't require the latest jay-z or kanye singles. Maybe its because most conference calls and three-ways are business in nature?
Got any numbers to back that up?
More and more people are using conference calls like they used to use chat rooms on Yahoo, etc. It's all a part of the social networking expansion of the net.
