Raghav 'Rags' Gupta

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Martine Rothblatt, founder of the company that became Sirius XM Radio, earlier this week expressed doubts about Sirius in its current incarnation, saying that the “better time for satellite radio was 10 years ago.”  While I’ve long argued that Internet radio would surpass satellite radio with […] Read more »

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There are hearings this week in Congress on whether non-satellite radio stations should pay a performance royalty for the music they play.  They have not had to do so, unlike the radio industries in other parts of the world, for historical reasons. The music industry has […] Read more »

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With all the doom and gloom of the past few months and all signs pointing to hard times ahead, I’ve been thinking back to earlier in the decade, during the dotcom bust. I was at Live365, the Internet radio network, and we had burned through millions […] Read more »

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I was talking to an executive at a major label the other day. We were talking about startups and he noted that they either sue these companies out of business or legitimize them out of business. That is not far from the truth. How many legitimate, […] Read more »

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For decades radio and later, MTV, were the dominant and proven marketing channels for the music industry. The symbiosis was, on its face, an elegant one: Radio and video promoted the product for free/fee, retail outlets sold it, and everyone made gobs of money. Radio, while […] Read more »

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Fred Wilson recently pointed me to David Hyman’s manifesto on how the music labels can save themselves. And although I’m not sure that it will fully replace the foregone revenues from a decline in physical CD sales, it does make a lot of sense. Read more »

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Given my past performance, I’m going to refrain from making any predictions for the year ahead. Instead, below are the top five questions — and their related trends and themes — that I’ll be tracking in 2008 (in no particular order): 1. Can user-generated video be […] Read more »

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[qi:084] Despite all of the issues plaguing the music industry these days, there is plenty of innovation in digital music to be found from a range of startups out there. Many of these startups require content from the labels, yet choose to plow ahead with their […] Read more »

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It’s official. Madonna is leaving Warner Music Group (WMG) in favor of Live Nation in a long-rumored landmark deal said to be worth $120 million. In exchange for the concert promotion company’s participation in a number of revenue streams, including recorded music, merchandise, ticket sales and […] Read more »

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The introduction of the iPhone later today will signal a sea change for the music industry, especially mobile music. It won’t solve the music industry’s woes immediately, but it will herald a new era in which music can elegantly coexist with a phone on the same […] Read more »

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The woes of the recorded music industry have been well documented. Sales of CDs thus far this year are down 20% compared to last year. Revenues from digital distribution continue to grow but not enough to prevent further downsizing. All of which is why the labels […] Read more »

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Social networking around music has emerged as a class of Web service. While terrestrial radio has yet to fully embrace this, music social networking represents a large opportunity for terrestrial radio stations to gain relevance and currency online. Fundamentally there are two functions around music that […] Read more »