Personally I think offering the ability to sync your music across multiple devices would be a good thing for the industry. If people knew that you can download music again that you purchased, then they would be encouraged to pay for more music instead of stealing it.

[Bloomberg]

While this is good news for Lala’s board of directors, the acquisition may spell bad news for Lala users. Lala users can stream music an unlimited number of times for ten cents per song as of right now. Lala users may lose that ability if Apple starts to make some changes. Apple is highly interested in Lala’s engineering talent and technology for their music streaming in the cloud abilities. Lala has $35 million in funding from Bain Capital Ventures, Ignition Partners, and Warner Music Group.

The financial details are unknown.

When Google Audio launches, I wouldn’t be surprised if YouTube changes their default music purchase promotion to their own service. Currently when watching music videos on YouTube, there is a link to buy the song on iTunes or Amazon.com.

I don’t expect Google to do very well in this service because iTunes has already monopolized the music download market. iTunes is the number one music retailer in the world, even beating Wal-Mart. Google attempted to challenge iTunes by selling videos through Google Video, but it did not have much of a business impact.

Warner Music Group artists include James Blunt, Seal, Fleetwood Mac, Shinedown, and Eric Clapton. The music provided by Warner Music Group will be DRM-free too. This means that the music bought between the Vodafone-Warner Music partnership can be copied to iPods too.

“The response to the DRM-free offering in all the markets where it has launched has been incredibly enthusiastic,” stated Vodafone Internet Services Director Pieter Knookin an interview with Reuters. “Our customers love … the flexibility that DRM-free on mobile gives them.”

Vevo will be based on of New York City and Los Angeles.  The company has been hiring engineers over the last several months.  As of right now, it is unclear whether EMI and Warner will join the venture.  As for Warner Music, CEO Edgar Bronfman has spoken against the idea publicly.

I would not be surprised if other labels jump on the opportunity to work with Vevo in the near future.  Hulu has proven to the world that web video could replace television just like it could do with music television. Vevo can be followed on Twitter.com/Vevo.

During the quarter ended March 31, 2009, the Company determined that its cost-method investments in digital venture capital companies were impaired largely due to the current economic environment and changing business conditions from the time of the initial investment. In accordance with FAS 157, the Company used Level 3 inputs to determine the fair value of these investments, which include management’s estimates of assumptions that market participants would use in pricing these assets. As a result, the Company recorded charges of $29 million, including $16 million to write-off its investment in imeem, inc. (“imeem”) and $11 million to write-down its investment in lala media, inc (“lala”) to its estimated fair value.

Imeem recently raised additional funding and is putting together an iPhone application.  Imeem’s valuation was north of $200 million at one point but has fallen since.  Warner invested $20 million in Lala and $15 million in Imeem.

[via VentureBeat]

This deal is a major boost for YouTube because the video website is getting pressured to find additional revenue streams and is taking a lot of flack for not being able to pay fees for the rights to use their music and music videos.

Vevo will be wholly owned by Universal and it will feature higher quality videos than what is seen on YouTube itself. “The rationale is to help make Vevo a place that brands feel more comfortable,” stated Rio Caraeff, EVP of Universal’s eLabs division.

Universal hopes that Vevo will be comparable to Hulu.  Vevo will syndicate videos through their platform called Vevo Music Network.  Universal is planning to partner with EMI and Sony Music Group who have already renewed their contracts with YouTube.  Partnering with Warner Music Group will be slightly more challenging because they have not been able to make a deal with YouTube in the past.

Whoever uploaded Death Cab’s videos was clearly not authorized.  When Warner Music had it taken down, it left Death Cab’s website as blank.  This was pretty embarrasing for the band and I think that from now on the music label company will investigate the websites of their other band members before sending DMCA takedowns.

This isn’t the first time I have seen labels takedown music videos that negatively impact bands and movie producers.  I’ve seen Bollywood music videos taken down by record labels from the movie production companies that feature the songs in their movies.  And then there was the time when Jon Stewart mocked the parent company of Comedy Central two years ago for removing clips of The Daily Show from YouTube.

Within the last year, imeem acquired SNOCAP and Anywhere.FM.  imeem has over 24 million uniques per month and their widget reaches over 100 million users per month.

Lala.com has 5 million songs in their catalog that users can play for free.  Users can add songs to their collection for 10 cents and buy MP3s for 79 cents.

Related Links:
1. imeem
2. Lala.com
3. Warner Music Group