Written on February 16, 2008 – 4:25 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
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Last week I posted a story here titled “Record Label quits, uploads music to The Pirate Bay“. I had received a tip that Dependent Records had decided to quit their business and uploaded all their music to The Pirate Bay. The whole story turned out to be a hoax. Something I could have found out myself if I had taken the time to contact Dependent Records to ask for confirmation. But I didn’t. Instead I checked if the music was actually there, read a few comments and figured the story was good enough to run. The next day Dependent Records came out with an official statement that the whole thing was a hoax. By then the story was posted to many popular blogs and we all had to retract, edit and/or amend our stories and apologize to Dependent Records and our readers.
Since the news broke that this was a hoax and not a true story I have been having a heated debate with Stefan Herwig, the victim of this hoax, about the ethics of bloggers and their attitude in this whole situation both here in the comments and at the Dependent Records Forum. Stefan Herwig obviously is not very happy with all these blogs writing stuff about him that isn’t true. I understand that but also think that it will be hard to avoid and blame the person who started this hoax more than the bloggers who fell for it. Not a subject we will reach an agreement on soon.
Enough reason to give Stefan Herwig the chance to tell us what actually happened and who is to blame. The following is the result of an email interview between The Next Web Blog and Stefan Herwig from Dependent Records.
Stefan Herwig
We heard a lot of different stories of what happened. Can you give us YOUR side of the story?
“Well, someone over the weekend took the “liberty” to take parts of our record catalogue and put it online as torrent files through The Pirate Bay. This person added a little text in German and english, but it was only a few lines. Somebody at Torrentfreak stumbled over it, thought that it was true, and brought it as a story, without checking back with us. From there other magazines including yours linked the story or brought it themselves with minor modifications.” (more…)
Written on February 11, 2008 – 7:16 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
German Independent music label ‘Dependent records’ has announced that they are shutting down their business. But they don’t just hold a bargain sale or sell off their rights. They decided to upload ALL their records onto The Pirate Bay a few days ago accompanied with a message:
I closed down my record label Dependent Records for good. But since I want my music to be heard by the people out there, everything I have ever published is now available on The Pirate Bay. This is a LEGAL torrent!
Over the past few years more artists have decided to make their music available for free. But most do it in hopes of ultimately reaching more listeners who are willing to buy their records. This move sounds like a great PR stunt, except that there won’t be anybody left to benefit from it.
One of the reasons Dependent records has decided to give up on selling music is the P2P networks. Its CEO Stefan Herwig once wrote “A popular claim often seen on Internet fora maintains that the P2P culture weakens the majors and bolsters the independent labels. This is, we can assure you, 100% bullshit. Even if there are listeners who download first and buy later, they are clearly in the dwindling minority.”
One can’t help but wonder if other labels are going to follow this example. Until then, now is your chance to get “Bind, torture, kill” and “Cause of Death: Suicide” by “Suicide Commando” for free…
UPDATE: I received several emails (also see comments here) that this news is incorrect. So far, no official comment has been placed on the Dependent Records website but their music CAN be found on The Pirate Bay and their Wikipedia page has been updated with the same story. So it might be a PR stunt after all…
UPDATE II: Dependent Records have posted a formal reply in which they deny this story and blame blogs for not investigating further. Wikipedia has been updated and all blogs are updating their websites. So to recap: Yes, Dependent Records is shutting down. Yes, their whole catalog is available on The Pirate Bay. No, Stefan Herwig did not personally upload his catalog to The Pirate Bay.
I also have a note about his accusation that ‘we’ should have investigated further. In hindsight he is right, of course. In reality we do try to confirm if news is real or not. Unfortunately it would take way to long to prove that all news IS real. We check as many sources as we can and if all looks right we publish. The original article had a lot of comments, none hinting that something could be wrong. Wikipedia reflected the news and we could find the music on The Pirate Bay posted by a ‘Stefan Herwig’. Was that proof that this story was valid? No, but it was enough to run with it. We don’t actually check with Yahoo or Microsoft either to find proof for news. The companies who the news is about often simply reply with ‘No comment’ when we ask for confirmation.
Fortunately we can update our stories and say ‘We Were Wrong’. Mea culpa.
Written on January 31, 2008 – 2:42 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Frank Abagnale Sr.: You know why the Yankees always win, Frank?
Frank Abagnale Jr.: ‘Cause they have Mickey Mantle?
Frank Abagnale Sr.: No, it’s ’cause the other teams can’t stop staring at those damn pinstripes.
Catch me if you Can
Last week we told you that our office pals Tim Heineke and Diederik Martens from Twones would show up at Midem to pitch their start-up. They came back with some great stories, one of which I have to share with you.
The people from music service Qtrax must have seen the movie Catch me if you Can. While watching, they’ve learned that it’s all about appearance. Impress people and they’ll love you, and your service. Frank Abagnale Jr was a doctor, pilot and lawyer, without any education. Only because he blinded people with his charming appearance.
So the guys from Qtrax impressed the people in Cannes with several parties. They even invited LL Cool J, Don Henley and James Blunt to spice up their show with some music. Digital Music News reports that several executives shared details with them of the extravagance. One of their sources estimated that the costs are between 1 tot 1.5 million dollars. The Henley show expenses topped 456,000 euros and James Blunt showed up for an amount of 135,000 euros. “You can’t walk anywhere without seeing Qtrax,” said one executive.
Aside from the star element, Qtrax also bragged about some deals with major labels and a launch. They would supply Qtrax with music, which they would offer to their users for free. But in the end, Qtrax failed to launch and the majors didn’t know anything about the deals. Qtrax president and chief executive Allan Klepfisz remains optimistic though. “The response to the service is clearly unprecedented,” he claimed. “We believe the exact nature of that support will be publicly clarified within a very short time.”
Meanwhile, rumors about a possible stock manipulation are becoming louder. It seems like Qtrax is making the same mistake as Frank Abagnale Jr made, they got a little bit too enthusiastic. In the end, the charms don’t work anymore and you actually have to offer people something. In this case free and legal music downloads.
Written on January 30, 2008 – 4:05 pm
Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France
In the latest drama Warner Bros. Records (WBR) along with other plaintiffs are now claiming that the music search engine SeeqPod is infringing their (and others) copyrights by making music available via the service which allows users to actually listen to music on the site, albeit that music is primarily published and hosted by third parties!
But if SeeqPod is guilty of copyright infringement then so is Microsoft with Internet Explorer in which viewers can gain access to registered material (illegally), Adobe would be liable because they developed Flash that allows users to watch films in full screen on their computers (thank you Adobe!), everyone who embeds music or videos on their blogs, MySpace because they allow people to embed playlists, any company that makes embeddable widgets for video, music and books, Amazon for their new Kindle, even computer manufactures etcetera, etcetera, etcetera!
See, SeeqPod does not host, cache, nor publish any of the content themselves. WBR makes a long winded argument that basically boils down to one essential claim:
(more…)
Written on January 25, 2008 – 12:27 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The world’s music market will gather in Cannes this weekend. The Palais des Festivals is the decor for Midem, a five-day conference (if you include the forum). The program has some interesting web aspects. One of those is organized by London-based MusicAlly, ‘the world’s leading digital music research and strategy company’. They will present six finalists in the first ever Music Ally/MidemNet New Business Showcase. That basically comes down to six great music technology ideas that will change the way we listen to music.
The Next Web Blog actually shares an office with Twones, one of the nominees. Next to playing soccer in the hallway with us, they’re also developing a ‘fresh way to find & discover music via trusted connections’. Diederik Martens en Tim Heineke are looking forward to the ‘fun, exposure and all the new contacts’. “We never had so many appointments as we have this weekend”, says Heineke. Martens: “Plus, we’ll be chilling in a beach bar, of which I actually forgot the name”.
Four of the six nominees are from Europe. Together they’re shaping a new European revolution in music technology. This is how the future in music looks:
The Music Drop from Germany.
An earpiece with only one song on it that can be played only once to ‘emphasize the value of the product and the meaning of giving’. Well it’s an original gift, hope it won’t leave some people frustrated to hear the song again. The inventor of the award-winning idea, student Noa Lerner, is looking for investors now.
Musiclink from Sweden
Musiclink draws a good picture of the popularity of an artist or cd by collecting on-line data from social networks, blogs, file sharing services and web radio. Billboard Chart 2.0 that uses API’s and web scraping services. Does it also counts the number of sold Music Drops?
Twones from Holland
Tim and Diederik are working on a service that’s monitoring the music you play, anywhere. From your iPod to music web services as Last.fm. The data is collected in a music timeline. Friends, foes or fans can subscribe to your time line - follow you Twitter-style - and will receive updates of new music you’re listening. Talking about good recommendations! Another cool thing is that your music timeline is a music library at the same time. So you can play your music wherever you want, as long as you hook up to the Internet.
ReacTable from Spain
Imagine making music by moving weird shapes on top of a science fiction-like table. With ReacTable you can and it creates an original electric sound. Rolling Stone magazine voted it as Hot Instrument of the Year 2007! Bjork loves it! Need more arguments? Have a look at the video:
By the way, the American nominees are pretty cool as well. Read more about Recombinant and Voxonic on Wired.
Written on December 20, 2007 – 4:24 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
As you might have read on Techcrunch UK this week, Amazon is partnering with music community start-up Sellaband. SellABand Creative Director Pim Betist gave the Next Web an inside view of this special deal.
For those of you who haven’t heard about SellABand yet, here’s a short description: any beginning band can upload their music to the website. People who like their tunes and foresee a successful future for them, can become a ‘believer’ by investing 10 dollars. As soon as the band counts 5000 believers - and thus gained 50.000 dollars - SellABand steps up and helps the talented folks to record an album with a studio and expert producer.
Since the launch in August 2006, 6.000 bands uploaded their musical creations to SellABand. Eleven of them reached the magical number of 5000 believers and recorded an album. Quite a successful concept so far, and it’s about to become even more successful now they teamed up with Amazon.
After the first meeting it soon became clear that SellABand and Amazon would be a perfect match
The media giant turns out to be a ‘believer’ of SellABand. Betist told The Next Web how it got to this point: “Proper, the largest independent distributor of the UK, approached us for a possible partnership. We came to an agreement about off-line distribution. Amazon.co.uk is one of their clients and they thought it would be a good idea to introduce SellABand to them. After the first meeting in the Amazon head office in Slough it soon became clear that SellABand and Amazon would be a perfect match.”
Jeff Belle, Amazon.co.uk’s head of entertainment, about the deal: “Amazon.co.uk is enthusiastic about new music and helping our customers find it, which is why a partnership with SellaBand makes perfect sense for us”.
But what is the real profit factor for Amazon?
Impressive results compared with the innovative character of our business model, stimulated Amazon to partner up with us.
Betist: “The music taste of most consumers is becoming more diverse. People are looking for new music, and that’s exactly what we offer. Amazon saw that we helped eleven artists to collect 50.000 dollars in just one year. At the same time they realized that it’s just the beginning. Those impressive results compared with the innovative character of our business model, stimulated Amazon to partner up with us.”
“Amazon will have a big influence on SellABand”, says Betist. “Part of the deal is that Amazon will help artists who reach 35.000 dollars to collect the other 15.000 by sending out a targeted mailing. Imagine you’re an artist whose music sounds like Robbie Williams’ music and just gained the 35.000 dollars on SellABand. Amazon will then email all its customers who once bought a Robbie Williams album that they have the opportunity to invest in you.”
That’s investing made easy and it will probably boost the number of believers. There are even more advantages for SellABand. Betist: “Amazon will also set up an exclusive SellABand store. Moreover, the Amazone Vine members (the top 50 of Amazon reviewers) will receive a copy of every SellABand album so that they can give their opinion. If the reviewers like the album, it rapidly appears in the charts on Amazon. That will increase profits for the artists as well as the believers. We’re really proud that Amazon makes this possible.”
Just like Betist did during the last Hyves party, as depicted on the photo, I think he’ll have a great time celebrating this.
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
