1.03 Billion Dollar “Free” Scams in Europe

I’ve just read an article about the EU’s fight against companies that focus on scamming teenagers with ringtone subscriptions that are shown as “Free.” More than half of those companies used Television Characters, and asked for permission from parents. Two companies named in the article were Vodafone and Telecom Italia.

Over 2/3 of the websites that were involved in the Billion dollar scamming were either forced out of business, or forced to change their advertising. Along with this, there was a total fine of about $3 Million. Now parents can rest at ease with a significantly lowered chance of having an unexpected charge on their next bill.

Are you among those people looking for a website with integrity and a great price for Ringtones, Wallpapers, Videos, and Games? Lucky for you there’s a company called MyMojo that provides all of the above and more for free! Here is the url: http://www.mymojo.com.

For the Artists out there, you can use this company’s software to promote your own music while earning money at the same time at no cost to you. Does it sound too good to be true? That’s because it’s supposed to sound that way. Check it out for yourself at http://artist.mymojo.com.
-D’haden @ MyMojo

Holiday music is in the air!

Hundreds of radio stations across the country have already started playing holiday music, and it’s not even time for Thanksgiving yet! For example, Utah’s KOSY FM-106.5 and KSFI FM-100 began airing holiday tunes earlier this month. It was reported by Inside Radio that all-Christmas stations will be charging more for ad rates this year based on their increases from holiday music last year. Traditionally, holiday music has boosted ratings for radio stations, but doesn’t it seem a bit too early to get in the holiday spirit? Well, if you would like to get an early start on Christmas, Sirius XM satellite radio has five holiday music channels which are all commercial-free!

Check out MyMojo if you would like download holiday music, ringtones, wallpapers, and games… all for free!

Apple vs. Nintendo

Just like the president of Nintendo Co. (Satoru Iwata), I myself am a huge Apple fan. I am proud to be the owner of some great gadgets such as the iPhone, iPod and Macbook Pro!

Remember when Nintendo came out with the original Game Boy hand-held gaming device 20-something years ago? Well, this month Nintendo is about to release a new version of its hand-held DS. Nintendo may be very popular among the portable gaming market today, but it looks as if they will be facing some major competition against the rise of the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. However, Mr. Iwata says that there is no rivalry between Nintendo and Apple because he believes that the two companies attract different consumers. Unfortunately, Apple’s head of marketing, Phil Schiller made it seem as if Apple has every intention to take out Nintendo when he said gaming devices such as Nintendo’s DS and Sony’s Playstation Portable don’t even compare to the iPhone and iPod Touch!

DFC Intelligence, a research firm, says Apple products will be dominating the portable game market for the next 5 years. According to DFC, profits from iPhone and iPod Touch games are expected to rise to more than $2.8 billion in 2014, as compared to the $46 million in 2008. Apple users can download videogames at the App Store… some are free and most are under $10. Meanwhile, Nintendo DS games are about $20.

At MyMojo you can download not only free games but also videos, wallpapers, ringtones and music!

Users saving money by downloading Legally??

I’ve just read an article stating that ILLEGAL music downloading costs users more money than LEGAL purchasing. I know some of you are very confused by this statement, and so was I. But as I continued reading, they explained that people spend about 80% more money when they do it the illegal way. They buy CDs and some MP3s, and in the long run it turns out purchasing downloads legally actually saved some users a lot of money!

They also stated that many of the users in this study (about 1000 total) admitted to downloading illegal music, and 75% of them stated that they would buy legal music if only the price was right, and the availability was acceptable.

Now with this being said, all we need is a website that provides good quality music at a low cost. Hmm, that reminds me of a site called MyMojo. MyMojo actually provides Songs, Cell phone Ringtones, Wallpapers, Games, and applications at the best possible price. FREE! That’s right, I said 100% Free content at this website. There’s no sign up fee, and no risk when signing up. After all, they only ask for your email and for you to create a password.

Artists can even earn money on this website by putting their content up for free downloads. The site pays you back for each download you generate! So I suggest you upload today and start promoting your work. You can make it happen with the right support!

Visit http://www.MyMojo.com for more details!
For Artists, visit http://Artist.MyMojo.com to grow your “Wings” and start making money!
-D’haden @ MyMojo

The Fall of the Unlimited Choice in Subscription Music

In this economy, it is not surprising when we hear that the music subscription business is having a hard time. Lately, it seems as if the only way of making money in this world of digital music is to charge by the song. It seems as if people just aren’t going for the unlimited choice in subscription music anymore!

Yahoo! Music had the unlimited music for $12-$15/month, but soon shut down their service in February 2008 after losing too many people just a few months after they agreed to the payment. Yahoo! Music’s subscribers are now with Rhapsody. According to a blog called Music Ally, Nokia had some below expectations with only 107,000 subscribers sign up for its Come With Music service. It was announced by Real Network’s Rhapsody service that they lost more than 6% of their subscribers during the third quarter!

However, Lala, a web music service from California has been doing rather quite well. It was announced this week that Lala will be running the music section of the hugely popular Facebook’s Gift Shop. In addition, it is rumored that Lala will be running the results of Google’s music search- when searching for a band or a song, playable links at the top of the search results will appear. Lala only has a reported 1 million registered users, but with both the potential Facebook and Google deals, Lala could gain the 300 million Facebook members and the many billions of Google searches made everyday. The way that Lala works is that they allow you to play a track one time for free, then you have the choice of whether to purchase it for 10 cents as an unlimited use web song or purchase it for 89 cents as an MP3 download.

At MyMojo, users are able to download music and much more for free!

Ringtones still going strong!

Nowadays, the music industry is growing fast, especially when it comes down to technology and the various ways of downloading digital music. It all began with Napster coming out in the late 90’s, but they shut down shortly thereafter. Then there was the effort to stop digital downloads, with arguments over whether music could be shared or not a certain way. Well, if you think all that was crazy, listen to this challenge that was taken to court! A mobile carrier was being sued for if a music artist’s ringtone happens to go off in public, it’s considered a public performance and is subjected royalties! Luckily, the court was in favor of the mobile carrier. Most of us have a ringtone, if not numerous ones set for our friends or family. Let us continue to take advantage of this rise of technology and digital music revolution… with MyMojo.com, users have the power to download ringtones, music, wallpaper, etc. all for free!
Visit MyMojo for more details!

Music In The Digital Age

If I were simply to count the types of options, not even the options directly, but the types of options available for obtaining music in this day and age, I would run out of fingers and toes in no time.  Streaming, purchasing from e-tailers, and online radio are just a few of the methods openly available for consumers to listen to music that they want to listen to.  But with the economy of technology and standards rising every day it’s becoming more and more challenging for artists to gain revenue by utilizing e-tailer platforms or selling disks in music stores.

Mark Robertson of the UK Modern Culture newsgroup The List makes an excellent point here and is truly proving what we at MyMojo have been saying all along. Artists must utilize a fresher marketing and distribution model, that combines the power and scalability of web based services with creative marketing initiative, to start seeing nice revenues again. This is where MyMojo comes in to save the day. Since we’ve always offered ringtones, music, wallpapers, and games in an ad-supported environment , DRM-free of course, we’ve been able to offer our users a free and easy download experience which allows us to pay royalties to artists and publishers. What’s more is that MyMojo invites a wide variety of artists to host their content and boost revenues while allowing the artist to continue marketing themselves by their own means and with no constraints on other ventures, a luxury seldom seen in today’s e-tailer market place.

Check out today’s article and remember to stop by MyMojo to check out today’s selection.

Developing technology has increased our access to music, books, TV and films, allowing us to get what we want, whenever we want it, and usually for free. With the music industry struggling to combat illegal downloads, there’s a rush to use internet technology to the benefit of artists, labels and music consumers alike. But will services like Spotify actually make a difference? Mark Robertson runs down the options for enjoying music in the digital age and asks, with consumers calling the shots, will the musicians ever survive?

To paraphrase the Creme Egg adverts, when it comes to music, how do you hear yours? Streaming over the internet? Nicking stuff from torrents on the web? A bag full of goodies from Fopp? Crates of obscure vinyl from your local specialist emporium?

Hair-splitting over which has more inherent value: a piece of vinyl in your hands or an MP3 on your mobile phone is a moot point now; the bottom line is we want to hear music when and how we please, without worrying too much about the details. After all, by the time any technology makes it into our lives we know it has a limited shelf life: as one platform – vinyl, CD, Minidisc, MP3 – arrives, another is lined up in the wings, waiting to take its place.

As with all genuine commercial innovations in the web 2.0 world – Love Film, BBC’s iPlayer, even match.com – the future success of artists and labels relies less on their marketing message and more on their methods of delivery. When Spotify arrived with us in 2008 it was immodestly expected to change our lives, much like iPods and other portable music players were supposed to almost ten years ago. Today, the standalone music player is on the way out, with mobile phones becoming the place not only to play, but also to download music. The song remains the same, it’s only the player that changes.

So what are the options afforded to you to find, listen to and keep music? The first port of call is those services that offer the chance to listen online, but not download music. Spotify (www.spotify.com) is the current site du jour offering free unlimited listening to their 3.5 million tracks as long as you don’t mind adverts piped between your tunes. If you can’t hack the ads then there’s a premium subscription for £9.99 a month. Similarly, one-time rebel Napster has gone legit, offering a £5 a month subscription for access to their catalogue.

Last.fm is the king of online radio: a social networking and music site that popularised the ‘if you like this, you’ll love this’ system of listening and recommending. More generally, there are thousands of straight-forward online radio stations offering streams of pretty much every possible kind of music. Start somewhere like www.streamfinder.com or www.radio-directory.com.

As far as buying and downloading music goes, iTunes remains the daddy of the retailers, offering over 10 million tracks for download. The likes of Amazon (amazon.co.uk) and HMV (www.hmv.com/downloads) have less comprehensive catalogues but do offer downloads without digital rights management (DRM), giving users more options for moving their music collections about. iTunes will soon be offering similar DRM-free download options in the UK, albeit with a higher price tag.

Aside from the big guns, there are several excellent specialist sites offering downloads by the track or album like 7digital (www.7digital.com), Bleep (bleep.com), Boomkat (www.boomkat.com), and local site tentracks (www.tentracks.co.uk). eMusic (www.emusic.com), which bills itself as the ‘indie iTunes’, offers a number of tracks for a monthly subscription starting at £9.99 for 24 songs, just 42p a track, and there’s a similar deal to be had at www.mp3.com.

The final option is not one we endorse, but recognise is a huge part of web activity: illegal downloading. Bit torrents are popular file-sharing tools that allow users to download large files by accessing the data on several different computers simultaneously. Thanks to their proliferation across the internet, a few quick torrent searches can turn up pretty much anything from TV series to the entire discography for a band. The reliability and quality of these files is variable, however, since there’s no central administrator checking who’s uploading what to the file-sharing network.

Every few months a new court case comes up regarding illegal downloads: the first high-profile case was against Napster back in 2000 when Metallica took umbrage at their music being shared on the network and took founder Shawn Fanning to court. The latest court wrangling involves Pirate Bay, a Swedish site that tracks bit torrent files for download. It has been dubiously defended as a piece of public art and not just an index of where to go to infringe the copyright of musicians, TV producers and software developers. But this wasn’t an argument that stood up in court and in April this year the founders were handed down one-year prison sentences and a fine of over £2 million. The defendants have appealed and the site continues to operate.

The long-term picture for the music industry is that a huge source of income – the sale of CDs – is dwindling. In its place are new income streams: paid-for downloads and royalties from sites like Spotify. The problem is the two don’t tally up. If an artist gets £1.50 from the sale of a ten-track album on CD, they might get 80p from the same download sale on iTunes, but only 5p for an album play on Spotify. English indie outfit Friendly Fires told NME this month that they reckoned they were making 0.5p royalty per song play on the service. Which means, to recoup the kind of same revenue, they’d need to have the same album played 30 times. Other reports have put the royalty rate nearer 0.04p, which would mean literally thousands of plays to recoup the same sum.

In the short term this won’t affect us consumers, as new music will still be appearing, but in the long term there may be fewer people making new music as there will be less money around for new artists to survive on.

Spotify won’t kill off CDs completely, and there will always be people wanting to have a physical product, as proven by the healthy trade in collectible vinyl. The question remains, however: do more options mean more great music?

In theory, yes: if you know what you’re looking for Spotify is ideal, but try to find to new music on the service and it becomes more problematic. There are other sites that will sate your appetite for new sounds, but the romantic notion of walking into a record shop and hearing music that will change your life, à la High Fidelity, might soon become a nostalgic memory. The chances of recreating these rare, but not extinct, revelations online depend entirely on just how determined, dedicated and thoughtful you are. The options exist, but in the absence of the hands-on, personal element, and given our growing unwillingness to pay for it, we might find ourselves increasingly cast adrift from the music we love.

Yahoo Will Shell out $100M to Promote Its Brand and Products

Since I was a young pup interested in surfing the web, and long before MyMojo, I remember that funny looking ‘Y’.  During the initial modern acceptance of the internet cirque 1996, few companies offered exceptional web services.  Of the few and far between that have kept their head above water since then, Yahoo has stood out as an entity where multiple web based services are rolled into one yummy e-sandwich.  Offering search, email, shopping, news, weather, and other regularly required web surfer services, Yahoo has maintained a foothold in this industry.

However if your like me, you’ve followed news about Yahoo’s struggle with Google and Microsoft for the online advertising space over the past few years.  And now with Yahoo selling off it’s search engine business to Microsoft, due to being unable to match the amount that Google and Microsoft are investing into their search engine functionality, Yahoo is turning in the direction of mobile advertising.

I’m sure there are plenty of critics out there who are thinking Yahoo’s decision is just too little too late but I don’t agree.  Yahoo has maintained an immensely powerful following for the numerous other services it’s been providing for over a decade.  Yahoo will continue to flourish with the services and features it offers but I must admit that I do agree with Fierce Wireless journalist Jason Ankeny’s statement “the deal means Yahoo will lose some of its most talented engineers to Microsoft, with layoffs resulting in as many as 400 additional employee losses. Moreover, the sale undermines years of investment around search solutions”.  As of right now the 1o year agreement for Yahoo’s search engine to be powered by Microsoft promises to deliver more relevant results as well as better pay offs for publishers and advertisers.  Microsoft has committed to a revenue sharing model with Yahoo in order to compensate them for the first five years of the agreement.

While  Yahoo’s search solution days are pretty much over, it will open up the window for maximizing the power of the rest of yahoo’s web service platform.  ‘PC World reports that Yahoo is launching an advertising campaign worth approximately $100 Million. Since the sale, Yahoo has begun efforts to truly build their platform into literally a one-stop-shop for all your web resource needs. Aside from the fantastically inviting user interface of Yahoo’s portal home page, accessibility of facebook, flickr, and yahoo messenger are all fully integrated. In my opinion, it’s far superior to igoogle and msn profiles.

With this campaign in place Yahoo hopes to not only attract new users, but to remind them that Yahoo wants to be the epicenter of their web surfing experience. We at MyMojo think that is just fantastic. Being that we offer our users a unique media sharing and critiquing experience we like to think of ourselves as the epicenter of your mobile media world. We in the ad-supported media industry give respect where respect is due. I think Yahoo’s initiatives are going to be a great success in the mobile advertising and web based portal world as they’ve expressed a number of very convincing factors as to why they forecast success for their affiliates and them together. For more info, definitely check out this article by Juan Carlos Perez from PC World online.

Joey@mymojo

Some Grow Wings!

Anyone can agree that artists generally follow the tides as Music sales travel up and down throughout the years. But the fluctuations are not always on a comfortable level. Recently, physical and digital sales have gone way down. Putting weight on most artists’ shoulders as they are restricted and money becomes less abundant.

Of course for an artist, income is still more than enough to live comfortably, so some of them adjust to the changes. Picture a collection of your favorite artists all falling off the same cliff. This would be an image of the fluctuation taking a great dive. But do you expect all to be happy with this fate?

No! Some artists break the sales barriers and even break their own records in down times by using new strategies of sales and advertisement. In a sense, these artists grow metaphorical wings and refuse to fall with the rest. Let’s take Radiohead for example. The release of In Rainbows became their most successful album. This was released late 2007, long after record sales began declining. With 3 million records sold [between digital downloads, physical CDs, and more] and a post-release tour with 1.2 tickets sold, how could anyone deny their efforts? Not to mention, that fans could choose their price when downloading the music! That’s right. You could get it for free if you wanted, or choose to pay as much as you want to purchase their CD. This was quite an unusual campaign but the band certainly profited from this.

Digital sales play a big part in today’s artists’ revenue. The content doesn’t sound any different when downloaded, it is definitely more convenient, and sometimes even more affordable! Why wouldn’t anyone take advantage of that? Let’s evolve!

Now here’s a question mainly for artists. How much more do you think your content would be downloaded if it was FREE? Definitely a lot more, because even people not interested in the music wouldn’t turn down a free track. Luckily there is a way to offer free content and still make a profit! Yes I did say give away FREE music and earn MONEY. Companies like MyMojo allow artists to do this crazy thing. As well as offer its users free Wallpapers, Ringtones, Tracks, Games, and Videos that can be downloaded by cell phone or to the computer. Remarkable!

Visit http://www.MyMojo.com for more details!
For Artists, visit http://Artist.MyMojo.com to grow your “Wings” and start making money!
-D’haden @ MyMojo

Keep your Friends Close, and your Fans Closer!

I personally feel that it is nearly impossible to maintain a constant level of income (if not increasing) in the music industry without forming some sort of relationship with your fans. If you don’t know who your fans are and you don’t know what they like about you the most, how do you know who to perform for and what to perform for them?

This philosophy can be proven right even if you have no way to market your product. Let people have a sample of what you’ve got to offer, and ask those people to pass it on to their friends. Keeping in contact with these new fans will allow you to spread your talent exponentially, send invitations to future events, and build a solid fan base! You’re almost guaranteed to have these fans at your events if they’ve liked your talent before! And who goes to an event like that alone? Before you know it, fans are pouring in!

Luckily, nowadays you don’t have to go out in public and hand out CDs. You can take advantage of companies such as MyMojo to do your promoting. The great thing about MyMojo is it allows you to offer your content for free to over 4.3 million music lovers and counting! And it gets better. Once you create your free artist account, you will actually be receiving cash for each download you earn! How great is that? No cost to the user, meaning you will have tons of downloads if you promote it properly. Quick cash to you, meaning you can start a career promoting your own music! It’s like owning a restaurant without having to pay for materials to make food, rent, or utilities! Remarkable!

Visit http://www.MyMojo.com for more details!
For Artists, visit http://Artist.MyMojo.com to set up your account and start making money!

-D’haden @ MyMojo