Asia prospects, free downloads stir MIDEM music mart
Executives gathered for the music industry’s largest gathering were hoping Sunday that new legal and free music download services and the blossoming Chinese market mean there is light at the end of the tunnel.
This year’s 42nd MIDEM, the global music industry’s largest annual event, got off to a better than expected start Sunday with claims that new revenue streams needed to replace plummeting CD sales were finally starting to appear.
“There is still a lot of pain but also a lot of hope, value and talent, particularly in music,” Jean-Bernard Levy, CEO Universal Music Group’s parent company, entertainment conglomerate Vivendi SA, told a MidemNet conference on the eve of the MIDEM opening.
Levy’s upbeat statement was music to the ears of the 9,000 movers and shakers of the music and digital technology worlds crowded into this chic Riviera seaside resort for the five-day trade show.
The mood at this year’s MIDEM had been expected to be gloomy, with most recording labels struggling to survive and find new ways to make money. Widespread illegal downloading continues to hit their traditional CD market.
But the tone was distinctly more upbeat than expected as participants heard how many record majors were starting to embrace the fledgling advertising-funded music systems and other new commercial music channels.
The promise of new markets opening up, and China, which is this year’s MIDEM’s Country of Honour, is causing quite a stir.
China’s vice culture minister Meng Xiaosi, who heads up the largest ever official Chinese delegation, is joining French Culture Minister Christine Albanel, to officially open the music festival.
And China will showcase some of its best musical talent at the opening night here.
“In this period of crisis, it is very important for us to bring a country that is a (music) Eldorado to MIDEM,” its director Dominique Leguern told AFP.
The Chinese music market is currently worth some two billion US dollars, China’s Deputy Director General of the Ministry of Culture’s marketing department, Xin Jianzhang, told reporters here Sunday morning.
And the country’s entertainment and media market, including the music industry, is expected to grow from 90 billion US dollars (61 billion euros) to 137 billion by 2010, according to recent research by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Online piracy in China is rampant, however.
The IFPI, the industry body representing the recording industry, said in its annual report that the country was one of the biggest sources of illegal downloads in the world — with a digital piracy rate of over 99 percent.
China’s Zhang insisted Sunday that the figures were exaggerated and pledged that China will step up its flight to reduce the rampant piracy that has plagued the country’s music market.
“We have just started to fight illegal downloading and uploading piracy on the Internet but we are confident that the Chinese government will get victory very soon,” Xin told journalists.
The fight against piracy may also get a shot in the arm from the latest newcomers on Internet who promise to give consumers legal music for free as long as they don’t mind the accompanying advertisements.
Imeem, a fast-growing, ad-funded, online social media network that launched in the United States last year typifies the new, legal services.
Its mostly young registered users, aged from 14 to 30, can stream songs and music videos in real-time from the Internet to listen to and share with their friends.
Imeem has pulled in 20 million users in just 20 months, the San Francisco-based CMO and head of business development Steve Jong told AFP in an interview.
QTRAX, the latest arrival in this field, made a big splash when it launched a free, legal ad-funded download service here at MIDEM Sunday.
“It’s been a long trek to this point for peer-to-peer (P2P) to find its place in a legal world,” noted QTRAX CEO Allan Klepfisz. His firm, like imem, has negotiated agreements with the major record labels.
With some 25 million songs available to its users — compared to five million tracks on offer on iTunes — QTRAX execs say they have a killer application that will also enable artists to be paid.
“We need to have a global footprint,” Lance Ford, founder president and chief marketing officer told AFP.
