It’s hard to know where begin with this incredible rant from Tim Quirk — member of Too Much Joy and current Vice President of Music Programming for Rhapsody America. (Full disclosure: Tim is also on FMC’s advisory board.)

Back in the early 1990s, Too Much Joy signed with Warner Brothers Records and released a few discs on then-WB subsidiary, Giant. While TMJ had (and still has) a rabid cult following, they were hardly one of Warner’s superstar acts. Which means, according to conventional major-label math, that they never “recouped.” In fact, TMJ currently has a negative balance of $395,277.18.

Tim’s post has nothing to do with the fact that his band never made money for the label (although he does provide an illuminating footnote that explains how WB likely broke even on TMJ, despite their lack of recoupment). No, Tim is more annoyed at the fact that the label does not seem to be accounting for digital royalties for records they produced for Warner. Although he’s not naive enough to expect a royalty check anytime soon, he does have the sense that TMJ’s recoupables should be decreasing somewhat due to TMJ’s albums being available on digital services like Rhapsody, for whom he works. Remember, we’re not talking about a band that never had any fans. read more

Proponents of the so-called “celestial jukebox” have had plenty to be excited about over the past couple of years. Online services that allow listeners to stream music “from the cloud,” coupled with broadband connections on desktops and mobile devices, have given music fans a sea of tunes to surf on-demand.

Yet the future of on-demand streaming remains uncertain. MySpace Music, a joint venture between the major labels and the Rupert Murdoch-owned social network, has underperformed, and there are rumors that the service — which originally allowed free streaming — may soon start charging. Meanwhile, Rhapsody, a company that offers subscription streaming on-demand and “tethered downloads” (as well as web radio and conventional MP3s), has had difficulty increasing subscribers. And the legal Napster has had similar troubles with customer retention. Then there’s Spotify, the much-ballyhooed Swedish “freemium” on-demand service that has taken Europe by storm. Though insanely popular across the pond, Spotify’s path to the US market (the biggest in the world) is still unclear. read more

If you’ve been paying any attention to music biz news this week, you’ve no doubt stumbled across an item (or ten) about Google OneBox — the web search company’s bold foray into the world of on-demand music. While many of the reports focus on what this new service means for fans hungry to hear tunes with one-click, they don’t often drill down into what this might mean for artists and songwriters.

OneBox has already launched, so you could just go try it out right now. Or, you could read what our vigorous research revealed about the new venture. OK, it wasn’t really that vigorous — we simply entered a band into the Google search bar to see what happened next.

Being that it’s so close to Halloween, we figured we’d search for Slayer’s classic thrash album, Reign in Blood. Lo and behold, a handful of track titles popped up, with a little “play” icon next to each. We clicked on the title track and were instantly slammed by axe aggression. Neat! read more

If you follow new technologies for the digital distribution and access of music, you’ve undoubtedly come across the name Spotify. In recent months, the Sweden-based service — which offers a deep catalog of high quality streaming audio via a rock-solid and intuitive desktop client — has racked up the press mentions on both sides of the Atlantic. Spotify’s Daniel Ek will be presenting at the Future of Music Policy Summit 2009 (Georgetown University, Washington, DC, Oct. 4-6). Reserve your spot now! read more

Tim Quirk [r] at FMC’s 2007 Policy Summit. Photo by Caroline Deutermann

“The market has spoken: people have said they want their music digitally. It’s a completely mainstream way of accessing music these days — it’s not just hacker college kids.” — Tim Quirk, on modern music distribution.

Have you ever checked out the folks that make up FMC’s advisory board? There are some very diverse and accomplished people in tune with our work, and we’re always thrilled to have them offer their perspectives. In fact, we’ve long wanted to share their views and opinions with you, as our advisory board represents a ton of music-related knowledge and experience. read more