SNOCAP Announces Alliances with Major Labels

They are not major labels at all. They are indie labels distributed by a distributor owned by Warner but run independently.

Sub Pop uses Warner for distribution who also owns a minority share in the label, but I wouldn’t say that SP operates under the Warner umbrella. And I’m pretty sure that Dangerbird has the same sort of relationship. Neither label is affiliated with the RIAA in any shape or form.

New Line is a different story. They’re essentially a major label in indie clothing.

It is a big - break ; Dont let - the above nay sayers stop you.

I mean - Anytime any song gets out DRM free, its a good thing. (paid of course)

-RB

Worth noting: neither “MP3″ or “DRM” appear in the press release.

See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12777107/site/newsweek.

Why does the financial system not share the troubles of the music industry? That is, what makes it so difficult to copy money in it’s digital form?

Thats a great question! My 2 cents says that there is a series of checks and balances through the banking system which can be alerted to a monitoring system. Since the social network / music industry is so fragmented, there perhaps could be a need for a loosely coupled system that joins the widgets + social networks + e-commerce through some authentication process that in a way could become that check and balance system. Then again, each trail of money leaves from a bank account, which can be broken into, happens daily. At least the receiving end knows how much is in each bank account. There is no way any artist will know how much of their unpaid music is on a PC, even through a p2p system.

Thanks, Ty.

There seem to be a number of differences between the structure of the music industry and that of the financial system. However, the goals of the two organizations (preventing music piracy on one hand and counterfeiting on the other) are remarkably similar.

The “objects of value,” though, are quite different. Take cash for example. It is much harder to duplicate a $100 bill than it is to duplicate an MP3 (unless you are North Korea). But this isn’t really the substantive issue. It’s the $100 in your bank account that is more of interest to me. This $100 balance is kind of like a purchased iTune. With an iTune, you can pretty easily transform this into an DRM-free MP3. Boom, you have created an anonymous store of value that can be cloned ad infinitum. But with a $100 account, there is nothing really “there” except some sort of authentication id, of which all other entry points into the financial system are aware. Once you push this authentication id back into the system, you no longer possess it.

Hmm.

So you are correct. It is

Sorry, got cut off. It is the fragmented nature of the music industry that makes it so difficult to police. Not only do the publishers not talk to one another, the music player doesn’t talk to the publishers, and none of these talk to the gov’t (in the real-time sense of the financial industry).

isn’t this deja vu?
http://www.dmwmedia.com/tags/snocap

how much does snocap sell/make from MySpace really? let’s not gung-ho about something that’s a small share of something really small….

yeah drm….. l o l

http://yahoo.reuters.com/news/.....amp;rpc=44
the real story…

Blake - get your facts straight - a lot of independent labels use the distribution arms owned by the major record labels….. it does not make the these indies in any way part of the the major labels

This is a ridiculous headline.

New Line is owned by New Line Cinema, which is owned by Time-Warner. Which at one time in the past was connected to Warner Records.

Subpop is 49% owned by Warner (ie Warner does *not* have a controlling interest) and Subpop owns 5% of ADA.

Not sure about Dangerbird’s ownership.

Bronfman just re-iterated his support for DRM a few weeks ago. Warner won’t be selling mp3s anytime soon if he has anything to do with it.

You should change the headline on this post.

Another major difference between music copying and money counterfeiting is that financial fraud is clearly a federally punishable offense. Music “theft” is a little more grey.

MAJOR INDIE LABELS. not major labels. wtf.

Nag - thanks, I had forgotten 1videoconference. I added them to the post. DimDim is also open source. http://www.cdaudioconverter.com

The Snocap pr blitz continues to use smoke and mirror announcements to blur many important issues. The “Major labels Alliances” announcement covered here (http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/15/snocap-announces-alliances-with-major-labels/) does not merit a precursor to any major selling the content that they own without drm and without price and distribution restrictions. In fact the announcement surely point to the fact the Snocap has been around for two years and that they still have no deals with any majors to distribute any of their music in a non drm format. In fact I m not sure if they are distributing any music from majors in a drm format. If anyone knows where I can purchase Snocap content from a major label please point me to it.

Why do we need the labels ? Why don’t the artist sell their music on their own and keep all of the revenue from their music along with the rights to distribute and sell it where and at whatever price they want. DRM is not the issue; control of distribution channels and revenue from holding the intellectual property of artist is the issue. For many major labels it seems that their strategy is to own or shut down any and all independent avenues to sells and distribution for the artist. In my opinon the major labels want to make sure that the artist has no choice in who sells and distributes their content; and that the fans have no choice in price and format. The Majors want to be the only game in town.

I think that we should no longer look to labels for the solution to freeing music from its old world model. We should look to the artist and to the fans that purchase the music. The artist should be the group that charts their own destiny as far as price, format, and distribution point. The fans that purchase the music should be allowed to purchase the music in a format that works uniformly on the devices that they use to play the music. If the artist gives their permission fans should also have the ability to resell the artist content for them, and in exchange receive a portion of the revenue. Neither the artist or the fans needs a label or a technology company to force a model or a format on them. I think that if we asked the artist and their fans what they wanted as far as music formats, pricing, distribution and ownership that we would more than likely already know the answer.

Artist should control pricing of their content as well as the format (drm or no drm) and distribution points. There are DRM formats available to content owners, so the issue of drm or not is one that is up to the content owner not one that should be made by any technology that is used to distribute the content. The decision to use drm is one that the content owners must make based on many factors. The key point here is that there are choices available and that the content owner should and can make this decsion.

I think that we should write off any current music that the major labels own as content that will never be in an open format playable on any device. We should also understand that more than likely this content will only be available at distribution points and at prices that the label; not the artist or their fans have anything to do with. We must accept this and move on to the next phase of digital content distribution that will give artist and content owners the freedom to decide their own destiny.

As far as the Myspace love fest. It needs to end. Artist, fans, and consumers of content must know and understand that any revenue generated for myspace (A Newscorp company) is going to continue to fund the operations of fox news (http://www.foxnews.com/oreilly/) as well as the continued dismantling of independent media around the world. If as an artist or a fan or a user of the Internet you support any social issues or an independent and free media then myspace is not the place to become a member. By doing this you give them continued revenue and power.

Counterfeiting might not happen with money.
It’s happening with stocks, though. Call them Failure to Deliver, Phantom Stocks or Naked Shorting.
Interesting programme on this from Bloomberg TV:

http://video.google.com/videop.....5797746038

The whole program is 25 minutes long.
Well worth watching.

Robert Shapiro is totally right, when he says that some companies might not have made it anyways, some might have, but that that is not the point, that it’s about playing fair, which naked shorting is not.

From the programme description:

20,800% of our company traded in a single month. The shares weren’t
available. They … weren’t there. There’s no way they could’ve been
trading.’ - Frank Dobrucki, CEO, Global Links Corp.

‘I see no reason why sellers should be able to fail to deliver shares for
years in brand name companies. It just doesn’t make sense. It raises the
question, “What is going on here?’ - James Angel, Ph.D., Associate
Professor of Finance, McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University

‘Abusive naked short sales … can be used as a tool to drive down a
company’s stock price to the detriment of all its investors.’ - Christopher
Cox, Chairman, Securities and Exchange Commission

Despite calls for changing the headlines, I don’t think Michael is going to change them…i am not surprised.

I used to respect this blog and michael for bringing new and interesting stories to the fold, but apparently some where along the lines he got coaching from Wolf Blitzer and the folks at Fox News to make everything seem grandiose!

What do you think, Michael? Care to listen to your die-hard, loyal fans or ignore them? Or, is this a “pay-per-post” kind of listing huh? you can come clean if it is, we will still like you!

I agree with the comment above (19). headlines (fake ones) like this will keep the readers (fans- I used to be one) of his blog coming back to techncrunch for real news. Mike - have your troops change the headline or justify his statements…..

Funny, no one has commented on Ross’s point, #4 in the list above.

Is this really being distributed as mp3? Is that a fact or a dream?

They’re mp3s.

http://www.myspace.com/theshins

Great comment, William (comment 18)!

I too think that Snocap is a master of smoke and mirrors. And you are right, Snocap is no closer than anyone else (and I believe Amazon with all of its might is trying too) to convincing the majors to go mp3. Eventually this will happen, and I’d suggest it is likely in the next 6 to 18 months, but won’t be because of Snocap. The MySpace Snocap store is not a huge success for many reasons, but that is not really the point of my comment. I like that you ask artists to take responsibility for the format that their music is sold in. That is the way forward. Eventually they will learn that 1) the majors have very little to offer in this new world and 2) MySpace is ripping them off and all of the money generated on the site goes to Rupert Murdoch (yes, Newscorp and Fox), the very same group of people who are trying to brainwash Americans. But putting politics aside (and I don’t know how musicians can do this, as they were part of the cultural revolution in the 60s that encouraged people to challenge the status quo), how about the fact that MySpace is profitting from copyright infringement on a massive scale? You can read my rant about this here: http://www.alldigdown.com/blog.....y/20061231
Back to Snocap. It is a store that is selling a very limited number of wares. Their recent announcements with all of these labels is akin to a supermarket billing itself as having all things saying, “We are now announcing that in addition to dish soap we also have laundry soap.” Big deal! A music store needs to make available, in whatever form or packaging (sticking with that supermarket metaphor) all kinds of music or else it isn’t really a store. Until Snocap grows up they are a non-issue and have done very little to change the world of music.

MySpace gets a small slice of the pie for music sales on their site. They make more in ad revenue for all the dating services whose ads they display. SnoCap has over 3mm tracks in their system, and I’ve seen a lot of stores on MySpace, so it’s more than just different types of soap. You might have a point about the politics of fox, but you don’t have your facts right about this specific topic.

3mm in their catalog. Can you point me to this catalog ? Can I purchase mp3’s from the catalog if in fact it is available ?

Dude, look on myspace. they have stores on a bunch of music pages–right on the bands myspace. they r all mp3. i guess you dont hang out on myspace very much.

PI is definitely from snocap - pi, you didn’t really answer William’s question

3 million tracks from where? why don’t you get a little scientific about quoting the logic behind the # of tracks here, or you are scared because there is none?

Let’s see my analysis here. Let’s just try it, ok - keep an open mind.

So MySpace has 3 million artists - or so it says. Well, there are little kids who had their “artist” page since there are no particular checks and balances in place to decide who is an artist and who is not. So, let’s cut this number down by 50%. If you have any objections to this %, suggest one with some reasoning.

So, that leaves us with 1.5 million real artists. Of this, I would say that snocap only has around 5% of them signed up for the service. And dude, you need to look on myspace too - for starters, why don’t you look at the highest ranked artists of MySpace and see if they have a snocap store; you will find out that they don’t.

That leaves us with 75,000 artists who have signed up. An artist has on average 10 tracks. Remember, it’s an average. Some will have 15 and some will have 5, so the average is 10.

That gets us to 750,000 tracks, way less than the 3 million you came up with. And by the way, if you know ANYTHING about MARKETING, or BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, you will know that the 5% number is VERY AGGRESSIVE!! I personally don’t think snocap has more than 10,000 MySpace artists.

And to top it off, let’s look at the “help” that snocap is giving the artist. Think they are altruistic, look at the cut they take. They take 45 cents from your retail price. In other words, if you are selling for 85 cents (most indie artists do not sell for 99 cents, btw), you only get 40 cents.

Now, can you answer me this. In this day and age, when b/w is cheap (like 80 cents a Gig transferred) and data storage is cheap, why does snocap need 45 cents? I’ll tell you why - to fix the pockets of Fox!

I request you to present facts or decent logic in the future, rather than “dude, check myspace, they got so many”. stop being michael arrington and make unsubstantiated claims.