Showing posts with label aol time warner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aol time warner. Show all posts

Thursday, February 11, 2016

MySpace finally finds a home alongside the NME

Oh, MySpace. Yes, it's still going, just about, and it's just been sold on again - I'm imagining at a car boot sale, in a box along with twenty old LPs and a broken lamp, under the "give me two quid and the lot's yours, pal."

Viant, the current owner of the site, has just been bought by Time Inc. The Guardian reports:

Though MySpace is a shadow of its former self, Viant claims to have data from 1 billion registered users. Time and Viant say they plan to combine that data with its own subscriber information, providing it with a pool of data which it claims “rivals industry leaders Facebook and Google”.
Buying MySpace for its user data is a bit like buying an empty milk bottle to discover what cows smell like. Unless Time is going to be fine-tuning all its content to appeal to Tom.


Monday, April 14, 2014

NME caught in debt-fuelled deal

As part of the splitting up of Time Warner into two smaller media companies, the question of who gets to keep IPC Media (and, thus, the NME) has been settled: Time will generate a massive ballon of debt with which to purchase the UK magazine publisher:

Time Warner officially announced that it's spinning Time Inc. off with $1.4 billion in debt, adding that the financing will be used to purchase Time Inc.'s U.K. operation, IPC Media.

The debt will be raised through an offering of unsecured senior notes and Time Inc. will enter into a secured loan facility, according to a statement.

Whatever remains of the debt facility after buying IPC will be used to pay a cash dividend back to Time Warner.
The suggestion that IPC is worth at the very most $1.4bn will be a bit of a blow to the Blue Fin Building; they were bought for $1.7bn in 2001.

And being bought with a slew of debt isn't a great start for an organisation with a few wobbly titles in its portfolio.


Friday, February 01, 2013

NME publisher announces layoffs

On the heels of a story in the current Private Eye that workers at IPC, publishers of Uncut and NME, are facing a year of frozen wages comes news that 8 per cent of the staff is being let go as part of parent Time Inc's canning of 500 jobs globally.

No word yet on if the job losses will directly hit the music magazines.


Wednesday, February 26, 2003

Major suddenly realises owns web presence, launches service

So MusicNet is now to be offered to AOL members in the US. The key phrase in the report, and why its unlikely to work, is "AOL will charge USD17.95 per month for the right to burn ten songs to a CD, roughly the same price consumers pay for CDs in a music store."

Righto, so there's no manufacturing costs, distribution is a few kilobytes of data down a phoneline rather than lorries, men, forklifts, ships; there's no cost of packaging; warehousing is replaced with a little bit of silicon; there are no store costs involved. And yet the price per track is the same as if it was on a CD? (actually a little higher, since most CDs have about a dozen tracks). And we don't even get a lyric book?

And what's this monthly subscription/ten track deal anyway? That isn't how people consume music, is it? You don't go into Virgin Megastores on the first of each month, write a cheque for a fixed amount and say you'll pop back for, say, seven CDs over the next four weeks? A monthly fee for unlimited access, maybe. Otherwise, charge per unit. And charge a lot less, by the way. In fact, devising a way to allow people to pay ten cents a track might just send AOL back to profitability - a micropayment system that works is, like, the golden grail or holy fleece right now.


Thursday, January 30, 2003

In a hole

You have to enjoy the wriggling sight of AOL Time Warner posting a USD100bn loss. Or, as they might need to get used to it, USD0.1tn.

Ted Turner's resigned to concentrate on "philanthropic" endeavours - well, he's clearly now an expert at running a not for profit operation, isn't he? But what's especially curious is that the real drain - Connie and her AOL division - are losing the organisation cash while Warners Music bit is actually making money. If you can square this with the 'internet costing record labels profits' argument, we'd love to hear from you.


Monday, January 13, 2003

More trouble in paradise

Another Major Label In Trouble; this time Warners with uberhead of AOL Time Warner stepping down after the apes, ivory and peacocks he promised shareholders when AOL merged with Time Warner failed to materialise. Nothing to do with the complete over-statement of what AOL was worth, of course (no wonder their mascot's called Connie). More shake-ups expected soon throughout the group.