Chairman Seth Goldstein announced the news today at SXSW, and tweeted about it:

excited to announce that we now have licenses in place w all four majors- emi, sony, universal and warner! twitter.com/seth/status/17…

— seth goldstein (@seth) March 13, 2012

Goldstein told Billboard, “This feels like an all-time record speed launch – when we launched we really didn’t come at this from the music industry, it was all new to us. Our model is unique – we’re not a radio service, not an on-demand service. We have interesting aspects that really require some out-of-the-box thinking. We felt that from the get-go the labels were absolutely different from what I’d been led to believe. They gave us a lot of time and attention. Compared to their user base, we’re a tiny service in the broad scheme of things.”

As it is for many startups (and fans of music, for that matter), SXSW has clearly been a fun event for Turntable.fm. Here’s some video the company posted with its avatar DJing at the event:

They certainly do have a lot to celebrate now, as they become more of a competitor to more established services like Spotify, Pandora, iTunes, and all the rest. Rdio, by the way, just launched a new version of its site and apps, as well.

Turntable.fm hasn’t even been around a full year yet.

Due to what it claims is a failure to receive any royalty kickbacks, EMI Music Publishing has filed a lawsuit against Grooveshark’s parent company, Escape Media Group. The New York Times explains:

In the suit, filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, EMI seeks unspecified damages. But in a series of recent e-mails and legal correspondence included with the filing as evidence, EMI asks Grooveshark for at least $150,000 in royalties.

Grooveshark says its service is legal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a federal law that protects Internet companies that host third-party material if they comply with take-down notices from copyright holders.

EMI is the fourth corner of the major music label square – the other three being Sony Music, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group – that is suing Grooveshark over licensing and copyrighting issues.

According to a statement provided to The Times, Grooveshark believes that “this is a contract dispute that we expect to resolve.” While that’s an optimistic outlook, this latest legal action against Grooveshark leaves little to look forward to in the future as they’re now involved in litigation battles on four separate fronts. Personally, I don’t like this news and hope Grooveshark can resolve these issues because if they disappear I’m gonna be left without a dealer to get my Philip Glass fix. Having said that, it doesn’t look good for home team.

Big music labels will try to slay the Chinese dragon of song piracy by forcing major Chinese search sites Baidu and Sohu to cut their links to pirated songs.

Good luck with that. When people want music, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out in its report, they will find ways to get it even if the two search sites Americanize themselves to satisfy the labels.

The Beijing First Intermediate People’s Court faces the task of deciding the case. If they opt to penalize Baidu $9 million in damages, and Sohu $7.5 million, they could be sending a message that linking to content they do not host assigns liability to the search engines.

Both Baidu and Sohu deny any responsibility for what other sites host. As search engines, they only provide a list of links.

The lawsuit poses greater implications beyond the song-listening habits in China. Armed with a decision in favor of the plaintiffs, other litigation-minded types around the world might decide the time is right to bring back the "deep-linking" lawsuits of yesteryear.

You have to go all the way back to 1997, as the Web started to takeoff into mainstream usage, to find the Ticketmaster versus Microsoft Sidewalk lawsuit over linking. Ticketmaster did not want Sidewalk linking directly to individual event pages, but to the home page of Ticketmaster instead.

As Salon recounted, Ticketmaster had a deal in place with CitySearch at the time to permit it to "deep link" to ticket pages. Eventually everything reached a settlement.

Everything but the concept of deep linking.

Without hyperlinks, there is no Web. The news industry used to complain about deep links to their stories, around the time Ticketmaster made its rumblings at Sidewalk.

But if there is a law against deep linking, we have yet to see it. Despite that, American sites routinely yield to lawyers who complain about links to content the sites themselves do not host.

The issue needs a decision, for more than just the idea of deep linking. It comes back to fair use, a nebulous concept that resists attempts to define, yet seems to become more restrictive year after year. JD Lasica wrote Darknet to address the continued erosion of fair use by deep-pocketed music, movie, and publishing interests.

Though it has been claimed fair use needs to be loosely defined to work best, as to not push any particular content into a model that doesn’t really suit it, fair use and its advocates need to grow up and figure out a way to function in the 21st Century.

Otherwise, a Chinese court may make that decision for everyone. It may not be the best decision for a Web that grew on its strength of links. If the bullying music industry makes its mark in China with this case, make no mistake, others can and will try to use it to their advantage.

A world of commentary controlled entirely by corporate interests, even more so than today, can’t be what’s best. It’s not all about links. It’s about control.

Myspace Music Logo
(Photo Credit: Myspace)

The new venture will be called MySpace Music and will offer music streaming, MP3 downloads, concert tickets, ringtones and merchandise. It plans to be a major competitor to Apple’s iTunes, which recently surpassed Wal-Mart to become the # 1 music retailer in the U.S. according to the NPD MusicWatch Survey.

On board for the joint music venture are Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, and Universal Music Group. Universal will receive a large cash payment for settling a 2006 copyright infringement case against the social networking site. SAI is reporting it could be as much as $100 million.

"It’s really creating a robust monetization component to MySpace and having a focused music effort that could be the MTV of a new generation," a music industry executive who did not want to be identified before the deal was officially announced told Reuters.

It’s not clear when a formal announcement will be made but sources say it could happen next week with an official launch in the mid to late summer of 2008.

The three labels will all get a minority stake in the venture, which MySpace will control and operate. The site will be ad supported with the labels receiving a share of ad revenue.

MySpace is currently one of the largest promoters of music online, with more than 68.6 million unique visitors in the U.S. in January, according to comScore.
 

Myspace Logo
(Photo Credit: Myspace)

The deal could become official as early as this week the New York Post is reporting and the service would launch later this year. "Everybody’s operating with a sense of urgency to try to close it out," said an insider close to the talks.

Under the terms of the deal Sony BMG and Warner Music Group would trade content rights for a minority stake in MySpace Music and advertising revenues the service aims to generate.

The new MySpace Music is likely to be a combination of pay-per-download and ad-supported video and audio. "The concept of the joint venture is to bring in all forms of [making money from digital music] and much more tightly integrate them," said a person familiar with the deal.

Users will be able to purchase downloads in the MP3 format and view ad supported video along with buying downloadable videos and ringtones.

The two record labels are expected to hold less than a 50 percent stake in the MySpace deal. How much each label receives from MySpace Music will be deiced by market share sources said. Sony BMG is the second largest music label in the world followed by Warner.
 

“We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong.

How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won.”

A stirring and heartfelt sentiment indeed. And totally true, of course. Unfortunately for Edgar and the rest of the music industry, those five or six years spent dithering and suing music fans have left the major record labels in a hole so deep it might be impossible to get out. And Warner’s fight against non-DRM music hasn’t done much to help.

It’s nice to see someone admit their mistakes, even if it is years too late — but then I suppose Edgar Jr. is pretty used to admitting his mistakes by now, after having to take the rap for his disastrous investment in Vivendi, which obliterated a substantial chunk of his family’s fortune (acquired through the Seagram liquor business) back in the first bubble.

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Sticking with the “big” theme, we think you’ll recognize some of Waterfront Media’s investors; Time Warner Ventures was involved, and so was Scale Venture Partners (which has seen several of the companies in its portfolio get acquired by Yahoo and Microsoft).  Other names include Foundation Capital, Rho Ventures, BEV Capital, and Neocarta Ventures.

This team effort should result in some important upgrades to Waterfront Media and Everyday Health.  “Waterfront Media will use the financing to grow the Everyday Health Network . . . increase the size of its advertising business and make acquisitions in its ongoing effort to become the number one health destination on the web,” according to the release.

Which should, of course, benefit the company’s users at some point – they’ll need to be brought along on the ride.  Keep an eye out for fresh content from new sources.

Hat tip to Silicon Alley Insider’s Dan Frommer.

Yahoo Tops Google In August

With students and teachers returning to school in late August education sites saw strong growth for the month. The training and education category grew by 15 percent to over 12 million visitors, making it the top-gaining category for the month. College resource site Fastweb led the category with 2.5 million visitors, followed by The College Board with close to 1.9 million visitors and Nellnet, an education planning and financing company with 1.4 million visitors.

With the start of fall sports and football season, traffic to retail sports/outdoors sites increased 7 percent to more than 29 million visitors. Foot Locker Sites saw a 15 percent gain to 4.6 million visitors to lead the category, trailed by eBay Sports U.S. with 4 million visitors and DicksSportingGoods.com with 2.6 million visitors. NFL Internet Group, which includes NFL team sites, rose 78 percent to over 14 million visitors, making it one of the top gaining properties in August.

Multi-state lotteries Mega Millions and Powerball both had large jackpots in August causing lotto sites to rise 8 percent to more than 31 million visitors for the month. Powerball.com was up 123 percent with 2.3 million visitors and Megamillions.com saw its traffic spike by 100 percent with 1.1 million visitors.

The top properties for the month of August remained unchanged, as Yahoo sites led with 135 million unique monthly visitors, followed by Google sites with 128 million and the Time Warner Network with 124 million unique monthly visitors.

The new projects from Jim Henson Productions, Telepictures Productions and Warner Bros. Animation represent WBTVG’s strategy for Studio 2.0, to feature new projects in the broadband space and act a as stepping stone for new television series.

Studio 2.0 programming will be distributed on a number of broadband and wireless platforms and sites, frequently in partnership with advertisers, as WBTVG pursues a wide ranging networked distribution strategy.

The announcement was made today by Bruce Rosenblum, President, Warner Bros. Television Group, and Craig Hunegs, Executive Vice President, Business Management, Warner Bros. Television Group.

"As I’ve often said, at our heart, Warner Bros. is a content company," said Rosenblum. "For the Television Group’s digital strategy to truly be realized, we are focusing equally on the creation of original programming specifically designed for the digital market and developing advertiser-supported targeted distribution strategies."

"We do not have a one-size-fits-all distribution strategy," said Hunegs. "We will tailor distribution to each project in a way that most effectively reaches its potential audience by working across multiple new media VOD ventures – from new Warner Bros. destinations and branded channels to well-known sites and aggregators like Joost and RealNetworks and oftentimes in partnership with an advertiser."

As you might have guessed (or remembered from our previous coverage), the new suit relates to copyright infringement.  “Veoh follows in the ignominious footsteps of other recent mass infringers such as Napster,” stated Universal in its legal complaint.  “Veoh’s rampant infringement will not stop until Veoh, and those who own, control, and run it, are enjoined and held financially responsible.”

Those aren’t the sorts of words that any site wants to hear from a corporation as powerful as Universal.  Bloomberg’s Edvard Pettersson pointed out that Veoh has some strong supporters, including Time Warner and Michael Eisner (as well as Tom Freston), but still . . .

Veoh’s doing its best not to blink, though.  CEO Steve Mitgang even issued a statement to Wired’s David Kravets that appears to call Universal “ignorant.”  “UMG’s action is not surprising and reflects their limited understanding of Veoh and of the online video space as a whole,” he wrote.

It’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out.  Following a similar suit, Warner Music Group and Imeem somehow managed to resolve their differences and form a partnership, but on the other end of the spectrum, Bolt.com recently dropped dead.