Prince's
royal new online download venture
When has Prince ever conformed to the customary way of
doing things? The purple-clad rocker opened his Musicology Download Store
instead of jumping on the bandwagon with most artists who work with
download services such as Napster, Rhapsody and Apple's iTunes. Prince's
lawyer and business partner, L. Londell McMillan, said the store was
intended to increase membership in Prince's NPG Music Club, which has
hundreds of thousands of members. Prince's download store will
sell music for which he owns the master recordings, not albums that are
owned by Warner Brothers. It opens with seven albums of studio and live
material, some of which were previously available only to members of the
NPG Music Club. Full albums will sell for $9.99 and individual songs for
99 cents. Club members will pay 77 cents per song. Most artists receive a
part of the 65 or 70 cents that their labels receive from a 99-cent
download sale at online stores, say analysts. Prince could sell half as many songs through his
store and still make more money than through sales at stores
like iTunes. Bands including Phish, Pearl Jam and Metallica have also
established download stores, although those web sites primarily offer live
music.
Microsoft
jumps into search fray vs. Google
Move
over Google, Microsoft is invading your turf. In a market dominated by
Google and Yahoo Inc., Microsoft is poised to launch its search engine.
Chief executive Steven Ballmer said last week that the company would
introduce its own internet search technology within 12 months. Microsoft
currently uses Inktomi to get its web search results and Overture Services
for its paid-search advertising. MSN rival Yahoo controls both of those
companies. Ballmer admitted that Microsoft should have made its own
investment in the flourishing technology rather than choosing to use
outside companies for web search. The new feature might replace Windows
Media Player in its new bundled software if a ruling passes in Europe that
says Microsoft must remove it from the Windows operating system. Many
think Microsoft will incorporate web search into its next desktop
operating system, code-named Longhorn.
Yahoo:
Major portals will be duking it out
The major internet portals are
in for some friendly competition, according to Yahoo Inc. chief executive
Terry Semel. He said on Friday that internet units such as Yahoo and MSN
must both compete and cooperate if they are to take ad revenues away from
traditional media, including television. The two aforementioned companies
use the same web search and search-based advertising services and hope to
take a bigger piece of large companies’ advertising budgets. Major
companies currently allot only a small part of their budgets to the web,
but they see a way to raise that share considerably. This is partly at the
expense of American television networks, which face a divided audience.
Semel said there is a common goal of taking a greater share of the market
and compared today’s online advertising industry to the early days of
network or cable television.
Don
King gives Kerry a virtual one-two punch
Who’d have thought – liberal-haired Don King is
actually a Republican. The boxing promoter, whose former clients include
Mike Tyson, has lent his voice to a new GOP send-up of Democratic
presidential candidate John Kerry. The short vignette available on the
Republican National Committee’s site depicts a Kerry versus Kerry fight
to the death, a jab at the senator’s penchant for reversing himself on
policy matters. The fight lasts some 30 rounds and has the Kerry character
wearing gloves labeled “flip” and “flop.” So who wins? President
Bush, of course. After King declares the fight over, he holds up Bush’s
hand as victor.
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