So, it’s February already. I’m still not sure how that happened. It all means May is getting closer, and this year’s Great Escape is all starting to fall into place, which is rather exciting. We’ve already announced a well sized handful of radio themed sessions on the convention side, including John Kennedy in conversation with Jon Hillcock, timed to coincide with Xfm’s 20 years on the air. There’s much more still to come, but in the meantime this week the first batch of festival announcements landed, and do check out our little playlist featuring ten of the acts set to play. And then go buy your delegates passes for May, it would be great to see you all there. But back to business, let’s review the week in five.

01: The Pirate Bay founders were refused a Supreme Court hearing. Two founders and a key funder of the rogue file-sharing site were hoping to appeal for a second time their convictions for copyright crimes, handed down by the Swedish courts in 2009 and upheld on first appeal in 2010. But this week Sweden’s Supreme Court said it wouldn’t hear the case, meaning the prison sentences and damages ordered in the earlier hearings stand. It remains to be seen if the jail terms are now enforced, and also whether the final ruling in the Swedish Pirate Bay case – the most prominent of all the legal actions against TPB – has any impact on the operations of the file-sharing search service, which continues to operate despite numerous court rulings against it around the world. CMU report | Inquirer report

02: No one was certain what would happen to the legit Mega data. When the US authorities took the MegaUpload file-storage and transfer service offline last month on the grounds it was primarily used for copyright infringement, they also cut off the platform to legitimate customers, who used the Mega service to store or share their own content files. While it’s not clear exactly how many people were affected in this way, concern grew this week that said data might be deleted, now Mega cannot afford to pay the two server firms which hosted its online operations, its bank accounts being frozen. Mega’s lawyer said he’d negotiated a two week reprieve from the server firms, and one of them then stated it had no intent to delete the files at all in the short term. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is now looking into ways to reconnect legit Mega users with their data (and may as yet go legal on the matter), the US authorities having seemingly washed their hands of the problem, and the content industries who lobbied for action to be taken against the Mega companies being very quiet about the issue. CMU reports | Ars Technica reports

03: Paul McGuinness and Edgar Bronfman Jr hit out at Google. U2 manager McGuinness, speaking at MIDEM, was critical of Google for backing Wikipedia’s protest against new anti-piracy rules in the US, and for not doing enough to stop illegal sources of music appearing in search results, noting “it amazes me that Google has not done the right thing”. Outgoing Warner Music chief Edgar Bronfman Jr was speaking at a conference in California, and said Google still couldn’t decide whether or not it wanted to be a content platform, and that affected its dealings with content creators. Though both McGuinness and Bronfman said the industry should continue to try and persuade Google chiefs of the commercial value to their own business of playing ball on copyright issues. McGuinness report | Bronfman report

04: Outgoing Warner chief said the company would oppose the EMI sale. He spoke out about Universal’s plans to buy the EMI record companies at the same Californian conference. Bronfman’s Warner, of course, was outbid for the EMI labels by Universal Music. He confirmed Warner would now oppose Universal’s takeover in both the US and Europe, where competition regulators must approve the sale. The outgoing Chairman, who will still have a seat on the Warner board, mused on Universal’s EMI bid: “I think it’s dangerous, I think it’s problematic and I think it’s got to be stopped. It does strike me as hubris, particularly for Universal to think it’s going to be easy to buy EMI, and frankly to think they can buy EMI at all”. CMU report | Billboard analysis

05: Facebook announced IPO. Not strictly a music business development, but very interesting all the same, the social networking giant is looking to raise $5 billion by selling a portion of the company via one of the New York stock exchanges. Papers filed with America’s SEC confirming the IPO plans revealed Facebook made a billion dollars in profits last year. Elsewhere in social networking, one time Facebook rival Bebo went offline, leading to speculation the once buzzy social media platform had finally gone out of business, but it turned out to be technical problems, or, in the words of a Bebo spokesman, a “technical clusterfuck”. CMU report | Telegraph report

And that’s your lot, until CMU Podcast time – sign up so that lands in your iTunes later, ready for some audio fun.

Chris Cooke
Business Editor, CMU

Sections: CMU Week In Five | Tags: Edgar Bronfman Jr, EMI, Facebook, Google, MegaUpload, Paul McGuinness, The Pirate bay, Warner Music

Right, another busy, busy week in music then. But before we get to that, forgive me for doing two quick plugs.

First up, don’t forget we made our first convention announcementfor this year’s Great Escape this week, which you can catch up on here. We’ve got loads more to tell you about this year’s TGE in the coming weeks, so why not get your tickets now?

Second plug, we have a few places left on our next CMU Training course, which is a real cracker – throwing a spotlight on the whole business of monetising music, with a look at how the industry, artist deals and record companies are changing. Book your tickets here.

But now, this week’s five big music business stories.

01: The aftershocks of the Mega attack were felt. After the US authorities shut down MegaUpload and related sites last week, this week four of the firm’s execs, arrested in New Zealand, applied for bail while they wait to be extradited to America. Larger than life founder Kim Schmitz was denied bail, the judge ruling there was a genuine risk the accused could flee back to his home country of Germany, where extradition would be harder. That despite the US authorities freezing his bank accounts and seizing his passport.

In the US, Mega’s legal reps dropped their lawsuit against Universal Music over the major’s request to Google that they remove the file-transfer’s company’s ‘Mega Song’ from YouTube last year. Perhaps they thought they’d better focus on the criminal proceedings. Online some of Mega’s US competitors cut back their services to avoid being likewise accused of enabling copyright infringement.

The RIAA speculated the Mega shut down could lead to a tangible increase in the usage of legitimate digital music services, though Torrentfreak said Mega competitors that hadn’t cut back their services in response to last week’s arrests were enjoying the biggest flurry of new customers. CMU reports

02: HMV announced new supplier deals. While the terms of the new deals with the big music companies and movie studios are not known, they likely put more risk onto the CD and DVD producing companies – certainly the new deals persuaded the struggling retailer’s banks to lighten up the covenant terms associated with their £180 million debts, assuring short term survival. The big music and movie companies desperately want to see HMV succeed, it being the last big CD and DVD seller on the high street. The suppliers were also allocated 2.5% of HMV’s equity as part of the new arrangements. CMU report | Telegraph report

03: The Live Music Bill was passed by the Commons. This happened last week, but after Friday’s CMU Daily went out. With minutes to spare, the House Of Commons approved Lord Tim Clement-Jones’ private member’s bill to relax the bureaucracy involved in staging small scale gigs. Many in grass roots music community say new rules introduced by the 2003 Licensing Act resulted in many pubs and such like ending their live music nights. It’s hoped the Live Music Bill will remove the blocks to such gigs, meaning more opportunities for grass roots artists to play. The Lords will now quickly consider some final amendments before the Bill becomes law. Hurrah. CMU report | NME report

04: IFPI published its Digital Music Report. A quick summary of the record label trade body’s review of the digital year: digital music is doing very well thank you very much, but only because governments and courts are cracking down on piracy, so much more of that please Mr Minister and Mr Judge. Single downloads, digital albums and subscription services all saw growth in 2011, with digital revenues for the global record industry up about 8%. It seems that the growth of Spotify style services is not having an overall negative impact on iTunes-style platforms as some have feared. Universals’ digital chief Rob Wells, present at the launch of the report, said people who claimed Spotify negatively impact iTunes sales were nutters anyway. Well, those weren’t his exact words, but it’s what he meant. CMU report |IFPI report as PDF

05: Beyond Oblivion filed for bankruptcy. We knew the ambitious plan for a global all-you-can-eat free download service, funded by charging a fee to hardware manufacturers for the software that enabled it all, was defunct, Team Boinc calling it a day over Christmas. But the formal application for bankruptcy protection came this week, revealing the company has over $100 million in debts, with Warner and Sony its biggest creditors. Quite how it ran up such big debts without ever going live isn’t clear. CMU report | Register report

And that is your lot people. Have a lovely Friday.

Chris Cooke
Business Editor, CMU

Sections: CMU Week In Five | Tags: Beyond Oblivion, HMV, IFPI, Live Music Bill, MegaUpload

Well, what a very busy week this has been – all that SOPA action in the US spilling over into the UK as Wikipedia went dark, the campaign against the EMI sale gaining some momentum, The Big Chill being cancelled for 2012, and more developments from Planet Grooveshark. And then, just as we thought we were done for the week, the US announced it’d shut down MegaUpload and arrested its bosses for criminal copyright infringement.

All things considered, I’d better get on with the Week In Five with no delay…

01: A global spotlight fell on US anti-piracy proposals as Wikipedia went on strike. The online encyclopaedia blocked access to its English language edition for 24 hours in protest at two pieces of legislation being considered by US Congress – SOPA and PIPA – both of which would introduce a system by which copyright owners could force ISPs and search engines to block access to copyright infringing websites. Opponents say the acts would result in censorship of the internet, and many US-based tech firms and websites supported Wiki’s protest, leading to some key political sponsors of SOPA and PIPA withdrawing their support. A rethink of the anti-piracy proposals is now likely. CMU report | Billboard report

02: MegaUpload was taken offline by US authorities. The file-transfer and video sharing service has been pissing off the US music and movie industries for some time now, they accusing the site’s owners of committing copyright infringement on a vast scale to create a multi-million dollar business. Last night it was announced the American authorities were beginning criminal action against key execs at the Mega company, and that they had got court approval to shut down Mega operations at the Virginian centre where many of its servers were stored. Four Mega execs, including co-founder Kim Schmitz, were arrested in New Zealand and will now likely be extradited to the US, where they face infringement, racketeering and money laundering charges that could result in 20 year jail sentences. CMU report | BBC report

03: The campaign against Universal’s EMI acquisition gained momentum. The UK Association Of Independent Music urged its members to contact their MPs to stress that they oppose Citigroup’s intent to sell the EMI record companies to Universal Music, and the EMI publishing catalogues to a consortium led by Sony/ATV. The deals will have a damaging effect on the wider music industry, the indie trade body claims. The campaign came as Warner Music – the third major, which will be dwarfed by its main competitors as a result of the EMI deals – hired the services of a US legal firm that specialises in anti-trust lobbying, leading to speculation they too may oppose the Universal and Sony deals as American and European competition regulators consider them. CMU report | Legal Times report

04: There were Big festival finales and cancellations. First, organisers of the Big Day Out touring festival in Australia announced that the New Zealand date of the venture, the 2012 edition of which is happening right now, will be the last in the country. From 2013 the Big Day Out will only take place in Australian cities because disappointing ticket sales have made the New Zealand version unviable. Meanwhile in the UK, Festival Republic announced The Big Chill would not happen this year, blaming the Olympics which will clash with the festival’s August dates. CMU Big Chill report | CMU Big Day Out report

05: Grooveshark hit back, in face of lawsuits from all four major labels. First it launched an HTML5 web app making its streaming platform available to smartphone users, their traditional apps for the iPhone and Android phones having been removed from the Apple and Google app stores after complaints from the big music companies. Then it sent legal papers to Digital Music News to try to identify the anonymous reader who left a comment on the DMN site accusing Grooveshark bosses of copyright infringement, a comment being used in Universal’s lawsuit against the web firm. And finally it dissed German collecting society GEMA, saying it was having to cut off their service in Germany because of the society’s unreasonable royalty demands. GEMA denies having had any negotiations with the Groovesharkers. CMU reports

And that’s your lot, people! Have a good day.

Chris Cooke
Business Editor, CMU

Sections: CMU Week In Five | Tags: Big Day Out, EMI, Grooveshark, MegaUpload, PIPA, SOPA, The Big Chill, Universal Music, Wikipedia

So, here we go, the final Week In Five of 2011, because this time next week we’ll have eaten far too many mince pies to be writing a CMU Daily. Talking of food, somehow today I’ve got to fit a Music Publishers Association Christmas lunch in around four publication deadlines, which should make for an interesting few hours. Do you think Team MPA will mind if I’m editing a podcast while eating all their food? Hmm, oh well, better get on with this then…

01: MegaUpload sued Universal. The file-sharing platform said the major had misused US copyright law to force a promotional video Team Mega had made off YouTube, because it was pissed off various artists signed to its labels could be seen bigging up the file transfer service at the same time the big music majors were accusing the Mega company of fuelling piracy. Universal said it was acting for artists featured in the video without their permission, but MegaUpload said it had signed agreements from all participating talent. The major then said it couldn’t be sued over the takedown notice it had issued over the video, because it had issued the notice according to a contractual agreement with YouTube, and not using the statutory system set out in the DMCA. CMU reports | Wired report

02: Madonna signed to Universal. The label will release the first album coming out via the singer’s partnership with Live Nation. The live music conglom has a multi-layered partnership with Madonna from a multi-million dollar 2007 deal, but Live Nation’s initial plans to have a division to handle things like record releases have long been dropped, so it’s been assumed for a while that the company would look to work in partnership with an existing record company on such things. It’s another big name signing for Universal, Madonna having previously worked with Warner on record releases. CMU report | BBC report

03: iTunes Match went live in the UK. The scan-and-match bit of Apple’s digital locker service, which distinguishes it from its Google and Amazon-owned rivals, had only been previously available in the US. There was some confusion as to whether the arrival of the functionality in the UK and elsewhere yesterday was a mistake, but seemingly not. It means that for 22 quid a year, users can access their MP3 collections via Apple’s servers from any net-connected device without actually having to upload any content. Elsewhere in digital news, iTunes launched in Latin America, Spotify revamped its personalised radio service, and Omnifone launched something new called Rara.com. CMU report | ZDnet report

04: The government announced a review of copyright laws. The wide-ranging review will look into the practicalities of putting recommendations made by the Hargreaves Review of intellectual property law into action. Much of it will focus on expanding fair use principles under UK copyright law. It will also consider introducing a private copy right in the UK. The record labels are OK with that, but want some sort of levy attached to digital music devices as in some other European countries where a private copy right already exists. Hargreaves proposed a private copy right with no such levy. CMU report | FT report

05: Warner complained about Sony dominance on the ‘X-Factor’ final shows. Four of the guest artists on the final two ‘X’ programmes were Sony-signed. Sony Music, of course, is co-producer of ‘X’ via its Syco division. Warner complained to OfCom, saying that ITV had failed to ensure Sony didn’t abuse its position as producer of the UK’s biggest music show. But Sony says that overall this series Universal has had more artists feature on ‘X’, that both EMI and Warner had three artists each, and of four Sony acts on the final shows, three were former ‘X’ contestants, making their appearances editorially justified. CMU report | Guardian report

And that is your lot. But do look out for the final CMU Weekly podcast of the year going online this weekend.

Chris Cooke
Business Editor, CMU

Sections: CMU Week In Five | Tags: Apple, Copyright, iTunes, ITV, Live Nation, Madonna, MegaUpload, OfCom, Sony Music, Universal Music, Warner Music, X-Factor