Len Blavatnik, the Russian-born billionaire investor who bought the Warner Music Group two years ago, has placed big bets on multiple digital music services as the streaming model grows around the world.
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Mr. Blavatnik’s holding company, Access Industries, is one of several parties investing $60 million in Daisy, a planned service by Beats Electronics, the high-end headphone company, Beats announced late Tuesday. The others are Marc Rowan of Apollo Global Management; James Packer, of Australia; and the Texas oil heir Lee M. Bass.
Daisy — still only a code name, and not confirmed as the service’s eventual brand name — will compete with Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio and others by letting users stream millions of songs by subscription. But it is not the only such service backed by Mr. Blavatnik. In October, Access invested $130 million in Deezer, a French company that has said it wants to open in over 100 countries around the world, including the major developed markets like the United States and Western Europe and also throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Beats said that Daisy — based on the technology of Mog, a struggling service that Beats bought last year — would be spun off as a separate company and introduced by the end of the year. But it has given few details about how Daisy would be distinguished from others in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
Reuters, citing anonymous sources, reported early Wednesday that Jimmy Iovine, one of the founders of Beats, had met with top Apple executives over a “potential partnership” involving Beats. A spokeswoman for Beats declined to comment on the report.
Reinventing Radio: Clear Channel Communications continues to add to its series of historic royalty deals with record companies covering Internet and terrestrial radio.
The company, which operates more than 800 radio stations, announced on Wednesday that it had made a deal with Entertainment One, an independent label and distributor, to “share revenue from digital and terrestrial radio.” The deal with Entertainment One, also known as eOne, follows others with influential independent record companies like Big Machine, the label behind Taylor Swift, and Glassnote, whose acts include the bands Mumford Sons and Phoenix.
In those deals, Clear Channel has made the move — unprecedented in American radio — of offering record companies a royalty whenever their music is played, either on the air or on Clear Channel’s Web sites and apps like iHeartRadio. In the United States, radio stations are required to pay royalties only to songwriters and music publishers, not to record companies. These deals can help Clear Channel limit its exposure to rising licensing costs for online music, which have become a headache for Internet radio services like Pandora.
Big Machine has also been a driving force for these licensing deals. In addition to its deal with Clear Channel, it has made similar arrangements with the broadcasters Entercom and Beasley, which together have about 150 stations.
Ben Sisario writes about the music industry. Follow @sisario on Twitter.
Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/warner-music-owner-bets-on-competing-digital-services/?partner=rss&emc=rss