Global Radio to launch two unwatched music channels

As more and more TVs get connected to the internet, with the ability to stream YouTube and other videos through the big screen, is there any segment of the TV industry looking more doomed than the music video channel?

We can only assume Global needs a massive tax write-off, then, as it brings Capital and Heart to the TV.

Yes, not one brand, but two largely unloved and virtually identical brands. Pumping out videos 24 hours a day.

Why?

Apparently brands unextended are not brands at all:

[Ashley] Tabor, Global's founder and executive president, said: "Global prides itself on clear, simple brand propositions for its consumers.

"Brand extension is a natural thing for us to do, for example online, mobile and live events, so I'm delighted we're now bringing both Heart and Capital's top-class brand quality to music television."

Living in Milton Keynes, my experience of people's view of Heart's brand quality would mean the TV service should operate for years under the Horizon brand, with lots of local content, before slowly declining and eventually adopting the Heart branding timed with an 'All Bruno Mars, all the time' policy.

It might sound crazy to launch music video channels in 2012, but in a way, it makes sense - nobody watches Heart when it's on the radio, and nobody will watch it on the TV.

Tomorrow, everything changes...

Or, more likely, won't much, but there's just one more sleep before Facebook launch their music service.

At a guess, it'll be a bit tricky to use, and will rely on the sheer traction of a massive user base to build popularity for a less-than-perfect service. Like everything else on Facebook, in other words.

What the pop papers say: We [Heart] Pop

Before it launched, I suggested the pink colorscheme and promise of "boys uncensored" would probably make new pop monthly We[heart]Pop an unlikely purchase for any stray boys; the issue comes with some really cheap make-up, too, as if to ram the point home that this is pop, for girls, unlike football, which is for boys. Unless there's a mini-Nicky-Wire demographic they've identified, too. Ooh, I hope there is.

So the title has a manifesto, of sorts - "don't bore us, get to the chorus", which dates back to Berry Gordy. But even if it's being used as a reference to the Roxette greatest hits from a decade and a half ago, it's still a rare suggestion that pop might be in any way older than five minutes or so. Which is fine, in a pop magazine - a world where the name "Cher" can appear, by itself, on the cover and the readership know to expect Lloyd and not Bono.

Inside, it's a little unsure of its tone; there's a few touches will feel a bit like an attempt to capture some of the "love of pop expressed through smirking" that Smash Hits made its own:

But it's very hard to get that sort of thing right - if you try to pull it off and fail, you don't come across like Smash Hits, you come across like you're Number One. So far, because it's done without confidence, We[heart]Pop is about 75% Snabber
to 25% Black Type.

When it's not trying to be Smash Hits, there's a nasty overtone of Heat to the title:

Really? In a magazine for young teens?

There's a couple of good bits, though - a nice "which Lady GaGa are you" flowchart, and a section called "We've Got Issues" which this time asks if pop videos are too rude.

It's a nice idea, rendered slightly pointless by most pop stars saying "hyuk hyuk, they're not rude enough, nyuk nyuk". And, oddly, Patrick Wolf pops up, a bit like seeing Frankie Saturdays turning up in The Economist.

Patrick, if you're wondering, is just worried that pop videos these days are like commercials.

Maybe he's not so far out of place after all.

So it's not a bad magazine. It doesn't love pop, but it's quite fond of popstars, and it does have the gumption to ask One Direction if, given we've already got JLS and The Wanted, the world really needs them.

That's it's real problem, though: JLS. The Wanted. One Direction. Cher Lloyd. It's not that the pop magazines got smaller, it's just the pop stars have become so flat the idea of a musician like the girl or boy next door sounds edgy. There's a Rihanna interview, which has the potential for a bit more interest, but the chat is conducted in trembling awe of its subject.

With record company money pumped into the title, We[heart]Pop is never going to drag the big names into the real world. Even if it hadn't had funding from Universal, it would need a bit of time to build the audience large enough to have a healthy, honest relationship with the pop it says it loves. And - sorry - I don't think it's going to be around long enough to get to that point.

Do we love We Love Pop?

Here's something that feels counter-intuitive: the launch of a pop magazine. An actual pop magazine.

It's called We Love Pop. Or, rather We [heart symbol] Pop.

There's some odd things about it, though. The editor is Malcolm Mackenzie, who previously was in charge at thenowdefunct thelondonpaper, Murdoch's short-lived London freesheet. It seems a bit of a strange shift from pushing bite-sized fact-gobbets into commuter hands to creating a pop magazine for teenagers, don't you think?

The title is described by Media Week as being:

The first issue of the magazine is out on Wednesday (20 July) with a cover price of £1 and its launch will be supported by a marketing campaign, including point of sale, outdoor media and digital.

The magazine will target a core audience of 13-15 year olds with in-depth interviews with pop stars, behind-the-scenes exclusives, photos and a "high-end cover gift" designed to appeal to a savvy teen audience.

What MediaWeek neglects to mention is that, unlike Smash Hits or Number One, this is clearly pointed at girls. And just because you might say 'surely liking pop isn't gender specific', the magazine cover is slathered in pink and has "boys" as one of the coverlines. It couldn't be more offputting for teenage blokes if it had a photo of a dick caught in a zipper on the front page.

Given that teen magazines have mostly been closing rather than opening, the very idea seems a bit audacious. Who would put money into such a title?

TeenToday lets the cat out of the bag:

Fresh off the back of the runaway success of X Magazine (couldn’t find it anywhere, lasted about 4 editions, editor jumped ship) we’ve heard that Universal Records in partnership with Egmont Publishing are about to launch a brand new pop mag called (wait for it…) We Love Pop.

So despite all the claims of the market wanting the title, the real people who want a pop magazine is... a record label. I suspect this won't last much beyond finding out that the forces that crushed the successful Smash Hits brand are less kind still to a fledgling.

CORRECTION: I misread the MediaWeek article yesterday; Malcolm Mackenzie was music editor of thelondonpaper and not the actual editor. Which makes a bit more sense. Thanks to the commenter who pointed that out, and apologies for the error.

Qtrax: It's arrived! It's really arrived!

The New Statesman once ran a Weekend Competition for "final lines that ruin a play", with the winner being "enter Godot".

I think I know how that feels, as perpetual punchline QTrax has finally launched, and only four years behind schedule.

At the moment, it only works for PC Users, in a handful of countries, and despite having an extensive listing of tracks, it looks like it might only have downloads available from EMI.

If you search the help files, you'll discover this question:

How big is Qtrax's music catalog?

A simple question. QTrax's answer?

Eventually, Qtrax will have millions of songs available for downloading. Qtrax accesses the universe of P2P directly, which has an ever-expanding galaxy of files. If it's available on P2P, you will eventually be able to get it on Qtrax.

"Hello, Jim, how's your wife?"
"Eventually, she will die. In the fullness of time, she's going to turn back to dust and then be atomised."

I'm a bit lost about why Qtrax is so excited about that last bit: "hey, you know those songs you can find on peer to peer networks? Well, in an undefined period of time in the future you'll be able to find them on Qtrax, too. So... you know... if you wait until... whenever... you can download them from us. Oh, you're downloading them now? Oh."

Still: QTrax all launched, even if it's mostly at the moment just a list of links to Amazon.

[via Hypebot]

Qtrax: Another bright new dawn

Every so often, you'll hear a noise coming from over there, and on investigation it turns out it's Qtrax making an announcement. You'll recall they've launched more times than a Cornish lifeboat, without ever having quite properly developing a business.

Having pledged, seriously and honestly, that they'd be under way in January, they're now back, with a new logo which makes them look a little like a 1980s financial services corporation, and a new business model:

“Advertisers are looking for concepts and people that accommodate their needs,” says boss Allan Klepfisz. “Qtrax has a completely new take on generating ad revenues globally. And what we think are really enticing propositions for consumers, that will provide other revenue streams- and impact on piracy.”

Apparently, they're now focusing on the "Asia Pacific region". Good luck with that, little guy.

This Is Fake DIY go all papery

Who would be as mad as to launch a paper publication into this economy? Besides The London Weekly team, of course, who are probably already certified.

This is Fake DIY aren't mad, but they are joining in with a paper frenzy in the shape of a half-newspaper, half-fanzine, half-freesheet affair.

Issue 0 is available in a limited run, read-and-pass-on format on the streets of London; issue 1 proper is due soon.

(Sidenote: Underground, the much-missed Sounds & Record Mirror semi-fanzine sister monthly, also launched with an issue 0 - distributed free with Sounds. I seem to recall this was the home of The Shend On The Run. It had a limited but lively life, before closing and reappearing-sideways as the glossy Offbeat.)

We7 throws down challenge to Spotify

The big tech announcement of the day - oh, alright, if you discount Honey, iBlew Up The iPhone, is that We7 is launching a premium, ad-free service in direct competition to Spotify.

The headline price is lower - £4.99 a month against Spotify's £9.99. But the main impetus to upgrade to a paid account is less the loss of ads, and more the ability to suck music to a mobile. And this is, in We7 parlance, "Premium Plus" (a premium on a premium?) and will cost another fiver. In other words: it's the same price as Spotify.

Spotify revealed the other day they've had 250,000 subscribers jump on so far. I'm not convinced there's many other people who want to spend £120 a year on a radio.

MySpace Music lands in the UK in time to closedown

After all this waiting, and despite the clear indications from HQ that they can't afford the free streaming at the heart of the service much longer, MySpace Music has launched its UK variant.

The slogan sounds oddly familiar:

MySpace Music has launched in Britain with a "Get Real Close" campaign

Get Real Close? Is that closer than you'd get with HMV's Get Closer campaign, or is it not quite as close?

The idea of launching the UK site now is, erm, perfectly clear:

"This is indicative of the direction we want to go," said Courtney Holt, president of MySpace Music.

"We want to be a social content and media platform and we believe heavily in the socialization of content as core to our future strategy," he told Reuters in London.

"It's not about just a passive listening experience. We want you to be active, we want you to go places, we want you to search for music. Music lives in places that require you to work to find it. We know our audience is hungry for discovery."

Righto, so you're suggesting you're the perfect platform to aggregate music that you have to search for elsewhere? That makes sense.

Clearly, the hope is that other companies will do some of the expensive work of streaming, but that does raise the question of what, exactly, MSMUk sees their role as.

"We're a large and live media platform for the social sharing and consumption of music, and we're also bolting on great business opportunities -- ticketing, touring events, merchandise, downloads," Holt said.

But you've just said that you expect your audience to be off, working hard to discover music elsewhere. If I was a music business, wouldn't I want to be going into partnership with the sites where people will be listening to music for minutes at a stretch? Isn't it better to have advertising at the finish post rather than at the start?

MySpace Music UK still on its way, promises MySpace

During the easter track smackdown thingy, I was asked why MySpace Music wasn't one of the services. The short answer would have been that, with MySpace Music UK yet to launch, it didn't seem fair to test them.

But that does raise a question: Where is MySpace's UK version of its much touted save-the-house Music service?

Still very much in the future, apparently:

Courtney Holt, president of MySpace Music, distanced himself from steps which had been taken before his arrival in January but admitted the social network may have jumped the gun and approached partners too early.

"I'm working on trying to make sense of a business that existed as a bunch of features," he said. "So we went silent while we brought in the right people. Perhaps we launched the business before we had the key stakeholders in place internally."

You launched before having internal people in place? Wow. That's quite a surprising approach.

Could you perhaps offer up some more gnomic insight, though, Mr Holt:

"Most of the steps on the label side have been dealt with," he said. "We've taken active steps for international expansion. The product side is global so we've done the work for the core offering wherever we go."

What he means it there's a template that they can use. Which, when you're at least a month behind your original schedule, is a quite a weak point to be clinging to - right up there with "well, she hasn't actually yet taken out a court order" in finding cold comfort.

QTrax launches again

It seems we can't go through a couple of months without news of QTrax 'launching', or relaunching, or preparing to relaunch its launch.

Since the last time it launched when it didn't actually launch, similar-but-actually-working service SpiralFrog has thrown in the towel. Is QTrax worried that SpiralFrog had all those months advantage and still flopped?

But Qtrax maintains its business model is different than SpiralFrog's. The former CEO of SpiralFrog - Robin Kent, who left the company a year before it went under - serves as an advisor for Qtrax.

You see? That's totally a totally different model, because that guy's sat over there instead of standing there. You can smell the win, can't you?

We7 goes free

We7's free, streaming ad-supported service has launched, bringing cost-free-ish music to a UK audience.

Is this an iTunes killer?

Nope. As most tracks display a prominent 'Buy from iTunes' button.

Currently, the British public are using the system to stream that X Factor song the most, which seems like getting a fabulous toy and deciding to play with scat instead.

QTrax has another difficult launch

You'll recall QTrax, the free music service which launched with some fanfare and claims of deals with the majors earlier this year only to have the majors deny it.

Well, they've launched again - for PC using Americans only.

Or maybe not even them, as Ars technica reports:

Signup and installation of the client for "the world's first free and legal P2P music download network" went without a hitch. Qtrax is only available in the US for now, and then only on Windows (a Mac client is on its way) at its re-re-relaunch. After getting the company's client up and running, we were surprised by what appears to be yet another false start. Everything in the store works—artist banners are plugged into the main storefront, searching for artists returns respectable results, and advertising is alive and well—but clicking to preview or download a track simply does nothing. The store reported over 6,000 users online during our testing, but we aren't sure if any of them are having better luck than we are.

Admittedly, this is only being flagged as a Beta launch - which is geek for "we haven't tested this properly" or "we have tested this, but it doesn't work" - but since this is the third time round for QTrax, you'd have thought they'd have realised from their already tattered reputation that they need to take care to build confidence of those who still believe. Perhaps they got the Sainsburys.co.uk team in?

NME Radio starts as it doesn't mean to go on

The long-planned NME radio station has set a launch date of June 2nd. Or, rather, it hasn't, it's set a launch date of June 24th, but will be doing "test transmissions" prior to those dates.

Still, they've got a big name signed up: Ricky Gervais. He's signed up for a two-hour programme. Just the one, mind, although they look set to play it again and again.

Gervais is a slightly odd choice for the show - admittedly, he was a big hit on XFM and then with his podcasts, but even when he was on XFM the music was hardly the key factor in the mix. And is Gervais all that NME? Eddie Izzard - we could understand him being chosen; or the Mighty Boosh. But Ricky look-I'm-having-a-laugh-with-Bono Gervais? Ricky Night-at-the-Museum Gervais? It's not even as if he's at the top of his game any more - indeed, if he was, chances are he'd be too busy to be NME's launch monkey.

And should it be a comedian anyway? If the NME is meant to be IPC's way of owning music, why is it launching with a big splash with a comedy bloke?

Actually, what does it say about the confidence in the team that, effectively, the launch message is 'we don't think any of our regular stuff is strong enough to be of interest, so we've hired in some entertainers to get us going'?

There's a reason that Gervais has been persuaded to take part - it looks like a called-in favour:

Sammy Jacob, NME Radio managing director, has worked with Gervias previously at XFM.

"Hearing Ricky, Steve and Karl in action again will no doubt keep me on my toes," he declared.

"I used to bury myself hearing Ricky and Steve on air in 1997, fearing we would lose our licence each time they went on," he continued. Having Karl on board has only made matters worse. I look forward to some compelling radio."

What better way to launch a brand-new radio show than reviving an eleven year-old programme. We hear Round The Horne is going to be on at lunchtimes.

Tittle-tattle sheet

MediaGuardian has got hold of a dummy copy of Richard 'Wanko' Desmond's new Evening Mail - intended to be given away to commuters at London Stations, assuming any survive the journey on the underground - and leaving aside that it looks like some harrassed designer has been trying to approximate the feel of a loss making Shropshire weekly paper from the 70's, the most curious thing is the fake story on the front - that the west end loves Madonna (or "please like us, celebrity" begs newspaper publisher) and a frankly puzzling fascination with the Cheeky Girls.

So, not only can we cope with snow better than the capital, but us lot in the provinces can take pride that we're smarter than the apparent average Londoner.

They know what they're doing, I guess

But any magazine outside of the Richard Desmond stable that chooses the name Wink deserves everything they get.