Nokia is the leading maker of music-enabled mobile handsets and shipped 45 million of them last year vs. 35 million iPods during the same period. They expect to sell about 80 million music-enabled handsets this year. Microsoft, working with Toshiba, will introduce its Zune media player later this year to compete with iPod. It features wireless networking capabilities, allowing the sharing of music and digital images without having to connect to a computer. Microsoft also will launch an online music portal to rival Apple’s iTunes service, but Apple is expected to have new iterations of both iPod and iTunes in the next 12 months.
Naxos and eMusic Launch MPkey Downloadable Classical Collections – Naxos of America, the world’s largest classical record label and distributor, and eMusic, the world’s second largest digital music service, have introduced MPkey exclusively at Borders Stores nationwide. The product seeks to bridge the gap between online digital retail and brick-and-mortar stores, and to appeal to Internet novices who have reservations about downloading any music from the Internet. The initial release of MPkey titles constitutes 12 titles on different themes, such as Very Best of Classical Guitar, The Complete Beethoven Symphonies, and Classical Music for Book Lovers. It’s obvious the target audience here is not sophisticated collectors but the mainstream casual classical listener. Half the packages are three-hour titles going for $14.99, and half are six-hour collections at $19.99.
The MPkey package – along with a colorful booklet on the music, its composers, and how to incorporate it into peoples’ busy lives – guides users to a special page on the eMusic site, giving them step-by-step instructions and a pass code for their package. They are then able to automatically download the tracks as universally-compatible MP3 files. They can then begin enjoying it on their PC, or transferring it to a CD-R, or to their iPod or similar portable device. The project brings together leaders in different parts of the music industry. Naxos selects all the music, produces the liner notes and cover artwork (the packages are similar in size to CD albums) and distributes the packages to retail. eMusic provides the online mechanism thru which listeners obtain their music. eMusic already offers the entire Naxos catalog of 75,000 classical tracks, and it has been one of eMusic’s top-selling labels. Borders is one of the top retail outlets for Naxos CDs, which currently total over 2700 active titles and have an SRP of $8.99 per CD.
Rough Draft Page of Beethoven’s Ninth Sells for $2 Million – A single page from one of Beethoven’s many surviving sketchbooks, this one containing drafts of his Ninth Symphony, sold for 1.3 pounds, or roughly two million dollars, in 2003. It can be assumed that the tycoon who bought the Beethoven sketch is a big Beethoven fan, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that he or she is a big fan of music.
