Apple confirmed what the technology world has been expecting for weeks: a September 9 media extravaganza. The company has been holding September events for years to refresh its iPod line and unveil new models ahead of the holiday season.

And while new iPods are also expected to be on tap this year, Apple threw in a little curveball to get the company’s fans and followers talking.

Sept. 9 is also the launch day for “The Beatles: Rock Band” video games, as well as the date that EMI will release the digitally remastered versions of their original song catalog. Given that supposed coincidence, some were speculating that a deal to finally bring the Beatles’ songs to iTunes was brewing. The Beatles may be the most famous rock band ever, but they have not yet made their songs available on Apple’s hugely popular online store.

So what’s the problem? The invitation sent to the media featured the tagline, “It’s only rock and roll, but we like it,” referencing the Rolling Stones hit from the 1970s. The Stones’ catalog is already available on iTunes.

A Beatles deal would seem a bit more likely if the invite tagline had read: “I get by with a little help from my friends.”

Long time independent digital music retailer eMusic has finally got its mittens on some major label music after signing a deal with Sony Music Entertainment — and the company says it is still in talks with other majors like Universal Music, Warner Music and EMI to see if it can get more.

From the third quarter eMusic will have catalog from names like Bruce Springsteen, The Clash, Johnny Cash and Outkast. Catalog music here means songs older than two years.

eMusic, which is an independent retailer owned by JDS Capital Management, competes in a tough market led by Apple’s iTunes and Amazon.com MP3. But it has has held its own and even claimed to be the No.2 digital music retailer on some measures in the recent past.

It has managed to gain market share by being the digital retailer of choice for music on independent labels focusing on the grown-up end of the market.

Some see this deal as the latest sign that the major labels are finally getting round to the idea of becoming more flexible and prepared to work with a wider range of retailers on less onerous terms licensing terms.

eMusic, for instance, sells its service as a subscription offering the ability to download 24 tracks for prices starting at $12 a month or 50 cents a song. This compares with the 99 cents a track that iTunes typically charges customers, though it does not tie customers into a monthly commitment.

But the music labels have recently struck deals with Napster allowing fans to stream all the music they want for $5 and get 5 song downloads for free. NY Times reported last week that the labels reduced their fee demands for music social networking site Imeem, which helped it survive.

About time you say? Well, some feel it may be too late as music sales continue to tumble. The music label model will likely change significantly over the next few years so much so that how much retailers charge customers for buying downloadable songs may become completely irrelevant.

(Photo: Outkast/Reuters)

With little (or no) fanfare, Apple’s iTunes opened its doors to a new pricing scheme, and song-based packages that the recording industry hopes will jazz up music sales.  Good luck.

Apple unveiled a three-tier price scheme – 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29. Since opening in 2003 all songs in the iTunes store have been priced at 99 cents.

So what sells at what price? A little scouring this morning yielded this comparison:

Current hit “Heartless” by Kanye West: now $1.29.
Classic hit “Magic Man” by Heart:        now $0.69.
Marginal hit “Don’t Phunk with my Heart” by Black Eyed Peas
                                                        still $0.99.

Hate the 30 percent pop in chart-topping prices? Perhaps you’ll find comfort in the fact that for every one song raised to $1.29, iTunes will be reducing 10 songs to 69 cents according to a label source. (But finding the bargains ain’t easy: every version of a sure you’d think MUST be ripe for a discount, lets say, ”Macarthur’s Park” — even versions by Della Reese and Andy Williams — are still $0.99. Go figure.)  

Major label owners like Universal Music Group, Sony Music, Warner Music and EMI say they can make money with more flexible prices and possibly help make music retail a profitable enterprise again.

The new iTunes program also introduces packages, such as Epic Records $17 iTunes “pass” for pop band the Fray, that delivers songs, video footage and photos — spaced out over several weeks. The moves come about a day after Yahoo tweaked its music service.

All that’s left is to come up with a solution for this scenario (that really happenned): A teenage music lover asks her father, a Mediafile reporter, why music costs so much, punctuating the query with: “Why can’t I just use Limewire?”

(Photo: iTunes)

EMI Publishing, the song publishing arm of EMI Music, has struck an interesting deal with the estate of Dr Martin Luther King Jr to manage the licensing of his words and speeches in recordings and music.

It’s an unusual deal for EMI Publishing, which is best known for managing iconic songs like ‘New York New York’ and ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ or the songwriting talents of the Arctic Monkeys and Beyonce. This is the first time the company has ever handled speeches and sermons, or in fact any non-song-based intellectual property, according to a spokesman.

Another interesting feature of the deal is that the unit will also handle the online image rights of Dr King. So if, for example, you’re building a website about the 1960s U.S. civil rights movement and you need to use King’s likeness, you might not have to call Getty Images but EMI Publishing.

It used to be that song publishers made most of their money from their sister recording music companies that put out the CDs. But, as we all know, CD sales are plunging south and MP3 sales growth is slowing. However music publishing companies appear to be staying slightly ahead of the curve by diversifying their revenue base. One such example is Sony/ATV Publishing’s Beatles deal with MTV’s video gaming company Harmonix. A Beatles Rock Band game is now planned for a September release.

EMI Publishing chief Roger Faxon is believed to have his eye on other non-music based projects which could really start to change the face of his music business to a more diversified manager of intellectual properties for various types of media.

All is not necessarily well at Chez EMI. Today, EMI Group’s owner, London-based private equity firm Terra Firma, said founder and CEO Guy Hands is giving up day-to-day control to become its chief investment officer. Of course, many might have thought he was already in charge of investment decisions at Terra Firma and his most high profile investment in EMI has come at a great cost to his firm and its investors having to write down half of its 2.6 billion euro investment in the company.

(Photo: Reuters)

They say success has many fathers, and nowhere is that ever more evident than in the music business, where aging executives still argue over who first spotted the rasping rick-rolling talent that is Rick ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ Astley in a smoky London bar.

One talent everyone loves talking about, though not much about her music recently, is Amy Winehouse. In fact, two separate executives who’ve taken the top job at different companies both claimed to have signed the five-time Grammy Award-winning bad girl, according to press releases that landed in our inboxes this morning.

Nick Gatfield is joining EMI Music as president of A&R Labels, North America and UK. According to EMI’s release he joined from Universal Music where he had been president of Universal Island Records Group since 2001:

“As well as signing five times Grammy Award winner Amy Winehouse, who has sold close to nine million copies of her ‘Back to Black’ album, Gatfield has also overseen the recording careers of Keane, Mika, The Fratellis, McFly, Busted, Sugababes, The Feeling and new artists Robyn and Sam Sparro.”

The next email in our inbox was a press release from Universal Music Group announcing the promotion of Darcus Beese and Ted Cockle as co-presidents of Island Records Group. Again the press release:

“Darcus Beese steps up after 15 years with Island, latterly as one of the industry’s most respected Directors of A&R. In 2003 he signed Amy Winehouse, now widely acknowledged as one of the world’s most talented artists. A year earlier, he signed Sugababes and strategised their reinvention, to make them one of Britain’s most successful and enduring girl groups.”

So who signed Winehouse? To be honest it doesn’t matter much to Universal Music Group International’s top boss Lucian Grange. He’s more concerned about Amy ending up ‘otherwise engaged’ one time too many according to reports.

(Photo: Reuters)

Brain drain at Google?

The defection of Douglas Merrill, vice president of engineering at Google, is part of a growing trickle of senior managers to leave a company that topped Fortune magazine’s annual list of best companies to work for in 2007.

All the more surprising is that he’s leaving the college-like pastures of Googleplex for the growth-strapped music business at EMI to become head of EMI’s digital business. EMI announced earlier this year that it planned to cut some 2,000 jobs.

Google lost its vice president of global sales, Sheryl Sandberg, in March to Facebook. Then there’s George Reyes, Google CFO, who retired last year. Wired provides a longer list of defections and their new projects.

New York Times: “We have a deep bench and work hard to grow leaders within the company,” Google said in a statement. “We are attracting immensely talented people around the world, every day.”

Part of the exodus probably has to deal with the natural timeline of all hot IPOs, when stock options that vest in four- or five-year periods suddenly give executives more financial wiggle room, Wired says.

Regardless, this much is certain. It takes more than free lunch to keep top talent these days.

(Reuters)

Keep an eye on:

• Newsday auction gets a potential new suitor — New York Observer owner Jared Kushner. (WSJ)
• Murdoch daughter Elisabeth Murdoch hosts fundraiser for U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama, not Hillary Clinton. (Guardian)
• Video search engine Blinkx launches online tv service. (paidContent)

(Photo: Google)