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More crap news as PRS reports a dip in royalties

“One step up, two steps back,” sang Bruce Springsteen in 1987 while he was still perpetuating the myth that he was a regular blue-collar kinda guy with a spanner in his hand rather than a multi-trillionaire living in a big fucking house. The idiom he adopted, however, could soundtrack the recent travails of the collective music industry. A while ago we reported what could be described as a divot of good news when single sales were up slightly, thanks to downloads. Now we could be at tipping point again.

PRS has reported a further slump in CD sales and say royalties collected last year fell for the first time ever. That could mean one of two things: one, the staff at PRS have been sat around in their office doing Soduku and eating donuts, or, two, digital piracy and a fall in high street sales means total royalties collected are down one per cent to £611.2m from last year. This time next year profits could be lower than Leonard Cohen’s ballsack.

Robert Ashcroft, chief executive of PRS, stated the obvious: “The loss of high street outlets, the slowdown in physical music sales as well as the challenges capturing the full value of music usage online has meant that for the first time we have seen royalties collected dip.”

Combined digital and physical sales in 2010 slid seven per cent to 120m units leaving the likes of HMV on its hind legs begging for Winalot. The slump in CD sales is such that Mercury, home to Arcade Fire, The Killers and U2, has decided to dispense with flogging physical singles altogether except on special occasions. Presumably that means they they’re going to release Razorlight’s ‘Musketeers from Hell’ look at as a picture disc when they finally make their comeback.

Ashcroft called on the music industry to work together to support the emerging digital market in the UK. The other alternative is raid Springsteen’s mansion and make off with his silver.

 

Race To Sell MySpace as users leave in their millions

Suckers though we are for the latest technology, there’s nothing more embarrassing than when it moves on without you. There you are faxing all your friends, inviting them to a fun-packed soirée at your house where you’ll have a marathon of Horris Goes Skiing as you serve up an orgy of cheese breville and all the Sodastream pop a belly can hold down, then a cybernote zaps into your living room via an electronic cloud reading: “WE HATE YOU. WE’VE MOVED ON… TO THE 21st CENTURY. SPUFFMUNCH”. MySpace must feel a little bit like that now.

Rupert Murdoch, a man so staunchly antiquated he gets his servants to wipe his flabby ass with steam-pressed dock leaves, bought MySpace in 2005 for £330m. At the time it looked like the all-conquering mogul was about to corner another form of media, this time social. Around the same time struggling broadcaster ITV purchased Friends Reunited for £120m, and oh how we laughed at this staggeringly short-sighted piece of business. The station offloaded it again in 2009 for a token £25m. As MySpace is submerged further in sticky stuff, that damage limitation exercise looks shrewd.

Arctic Monkeys thrived thanks to the portal, which helped create a buzz around them. However, given that it was the first of its kind, MySpace made errors — it was riddled with spam, it was ugly and it smelt — but its biggest mistake was not being Facebook. MySpace’s slicker competitor eliminated the spam, the Technicolor vomit and probably took its own office Tom out the back and shot him. Suddenly Facebook was like an invite to the Playboy Mansion while you’re sat in your grief-hole wanking to livegranny.com.

But then a stroke of luck. Facebook struggled to obtain a music licence. Maybe it could be saved after all! Unfortunately, Spotify was about to steam in and offer the other thing MySpace did badly, and desperate attempts to build a music editorial service and streaming platform (steaming platform more like) ended in inevitable fail.

Between January and February, MySpace lost more than 10 million unique users worldwide. Furthermore, it’s losing senior executives with alacrity and, as a shell-shocked News Corp. pressed the panic button, Courtney Holt, President of Music, left the building. MySpace is now up for sale. Will the last person out turn off those fuck ugly graphics?

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