Much-hyped music service Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek took to the stage at music-biz conference Midem and again tried to remind onlookers - it’s a mixed model of free and paid, not just free tunes on tap. That view of Spotify as a too-good-to-be-profitable, free-music Shangri-la has two roots - users…

Talk about ballsy. The German co-inventor of MP3 and a Norwegian company called Bach have teamed to create a new audio format they reckon is “the successor to MP3”. Bach is touting the format, called MusicDNA, as a way to make buying legal downloads more attractive. At the launch event,…

Spotify has over 250,000 paying subscribers, SVP Paul Brown confirmed on stage at Midem, as streaming services fall over themselves to downplay free in favour of premium. Pre-conference chatter had it that U.S. labels, in particular, are done with licensing any new sites that still insist on the former. This…

The social gaming phenomenon may be commonly associated with Facebook - but MySpace seems keen to get its own slice of this growing pie. Asked at the Midem music conference in Cannes whether the site may consider a move in the area, MySpace CEO Owen van Natta, also former COO…

Turns out Kodak’s November partnership with Twitter photosharing service TweetPhoto also gave it equity in the service. Asked about approaches to partnerships, Eastman Kodak CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett told delegates at the Midem music conference in Cannes, France, on Saturday: “I really like the one we did with TweetPhoto - so…

The music industry stands at a critical juncture (no, really this time) - but some people don’t think it’s capable of making leaps bold enough to avoid financial oblivion. Two years ago, Midem-goers fretted over whether dropping DRM would satisfy consumers frustrated at digital limitations on their purchases; last year,…

Most people would stop downloading illegal music if sent a warning letter by their ISP, a second set of research has shown. The survey of 1,300 US, UK and French music fans showed 64 percent would quit if warned, The Leading Question analyst Tim Walker, who conducted the survey, told…