*On the iPhone side, Apple is planning a significant OS upgrade.  The latest OS 3.0 will be unveiled on March 17th in Cupertino.  “Join us at an invitation-only event to learn about the new SDK and get a sneak peek at the iPhone OS 3.0 software,” an emailed invite reads.

*U2 sold 484,000 units of No Line on the Horizon, according to Nielsen Soundscan.  But how did the rest do?  Taylor Swift grabbed second place with just 52,285 on Fearless, and Neko Case scored third with 44,300 on Middle Cyclone.  Lady Gaga ranked fourth with 42,308 units on Fame, and the rest fell below 40,000.

*Kraft Canada recently charted a song.  The company commissioned Toronto artist Andi to write a 30-second ditty to promote its Triscuit brand.  A full-length, three-minute version was then released, part of a broader strategy designed to give the branding effort some legs.

*Mininova getting paid.  According to filings unearthed by Ars Technica, Mininova pulled revenues of 1.04 million euros ($1.34 million) in 2007, a figure confirmed by the company.  That colors the recent Pirate Bay hearings, and could inform an upcoming decision in April.

*ArtistData (artistdata.com), a centralized publishing tool for artists, has now added support for Twitter and Facebook status updates.  Additionally, an RSS-enabled artist news feed is part of the recent rollout.

*AOL Music is now unleashing Noisecreep (noisecreep.com), a microsite dedicated to heavy metal and hard rock music.  Noisecreep represents the latest in a number of genre-specific site launches.

Artists like Billy Bragg argue that cash-rich Google should pay more for video content, but Google argues that YouTube – as a standalone business – should pay just a portion of per-video revenues.  And when it comes to advertising revenue, YouTube is notorious for drawing low CPMs.  Should Google divert revenues from other, more successful business lines, in an act of philanthropy for music content owners?

Big arguments, and big guns on both sides.  But lots of smaller guys are unhappy with the contentious climate, and quietly suffering while their overlords wage war.  YouTube is an incredibly potent promotional tool, and getting yanked means missing out on a highly-viral channel because of a corporate diktat from above.

Take Roadrunner Records, a metal label majority-owned by Warner Music Group.  Roadrunner is home to a range of harder-edged acts, including Lamb of God, Killswitch Engage, and Mastadon.  Just recently, internet entrepreneur Philip Kaplan (best known for starting f-dcompany.com) offered a comedic air-drumming video to Suffocation, whose “Infecting the Crypts” can be found on a Roadrunner release.  That video was unfortunately yanked because of the broader Warner fallout, despite 3.5 million views and a nice awareness punch for the extreme metal band.

But the story is much bigger than that.  Turns out that Roadrunner has been carefully growing one of the top YouTube channels, not just within music but across all categories.  “It was a bit of a professional blow to me when videos began coming down,” Roadrunner director of New Media Jeremy Rosen told Digital Music News.  “I spent the better part of two years carefully building the Roadrunner Records YouTube channel into one of the top ten music channels by subscribers and views on the site; one of the top channels period.”

Now, Rosen is forced to redirect users to roadrunnerrecords.com, and deal with the compromised conversion percentage.  Still, the executive remains “on the fence” on the broader issue, simply because the amount of revenues generated by YouTube were unclear.

But the promotional benefits appeared to trump those concerns.  Rosen attempted to gain some sort of exemption for the Roadrunner channel, without success.  “Thankfully we’ve put a lot of work into our own properties as well, so having a record label site unlike any other I’ve seen to date ameliorates the sting,” Rosen stated.  “Still, all my hours at YouTube have, for the time being, come to naught.”

The next steps are difficult, especially since the duration of the standoff remains unclear.  And, the longer the disagreement, the longer the audience attrition.  According to one executive with expertise in online videos, the Roadrunner subscriber base of more than 133,000 offers serious opportunity, and Rosen should continue to populate the channel with non-music content like artist interviews, comedic bits, or other filler.  Perhaps that is making lemonade out of lemons, but without the music, fans are likely to be disappointed.

Report by publisher Paul Resnikoff.

The executive deck is getting a bit of a shuffle.  Amanda Marks elevates to Executive Vice President & General Manager of Universal Music Distribution, and Laura Saez moves to Senior Vice President of Sales.  Additionally, Mitch Rotter has been appointed Vice President of Marketing, UMD, according to announcements by UMGD President & Chief Executive Officer Jim Urie.  “Our partners want a frictionless environment where they can move easily between physical and digital offerings,” Urie stated.  “This new approach will capitalize on that demand by providing our partners with a competitive edge in the market.”

Digital Music News

The speaker is Richard Gibbs, composer of music and soundtracks for motion pictures (”Queen of the Damned,” “28 Days,” “Say Anything…”) and television (”Battlestar Galactica,” “The Simpsons”).

Gibbs appeared on a lively panel at the California Copyright Conference (CCC) monthly meeting in Los Angeles, and while the main topic was about placing music in film and TV, the event often took a couple of sharp turns into another issue, namely methods for resurrecting what some see as an industry in jeopardy.

The most entertaining idea was Gibbs’ suggestion of a “Day of Sharing – where we ALL share the fruits of each others’ labors. Every musician and every human who supports this cause will, on this day, ’share’ whatever they like. Order your favorite meal from your local bistro, eat it, and walk out. Test drive a car and simply keep driving. Fill your pockets with candy from the 7-11 . . .

“Don’t forget to thank the proprietors for sharing, though, and let them know that you like the Snickers bar and that next time you might just pay for it out of kindness and generosity. And just in case you are beginning to feel a little guilty,” Gibbs adds, “warm the cockles of your heart by thinking of all of those wonderful pieces of music that you helped to create that are residing in the restaurant owner’s iPod and his kids’ iPods, the gas station owner’s laptop – think of all that beautiful sharing YOU have already done.”

While Gibbs’ suggestion is satirical, legal experts agree that he makes a valid point. “Copyright protection was considered so important, the founding fathers wrote it into the Constitution,” notes Cheryl Hodgson, president of the CCC. “The lobbying by special interests in technology over the last 20 years has finally taken its toll. The slow erosion of rights of all authors has finally reached a critical juncture. The shift in consciousness to one of ‘entitlement’ to free music began with illegal downloads but is now seen in other aspects of our society,” Hodgson states.

Criminal Acts in Your Home
Estimates of music piracy vary depending on who’s doing the measuring, but most calculations I’ve seen put the percentage of illegally downloaded music at well above 80%. A recent NPR story stated that 95% of all digitally downloaded music is pirated. Gibbs feels it is closer to 97%. Whatever the figure, piracy means the slow death of music distribution and the drying up of commerce for songwriters and musicians. And the criminals are everywhere from Silicon Valley to inside your house.

“Music and entertainment are not going away,” Gibbs admits, pointing out that “the average kid has twenty times the number of songs on his iPod than that same kid would have had in his CD collection ten years ago. They just aren’t paying for it.”

The blame for this is often laid on the doorstep of the major record labels. True, they have displayed many faults over the years. Greed, for example. As in selling a $16 compact disc containing two good songs, which they did repeatedly except when they were selling an $18 compact disc containing one good song.

The major labels were also quite fond of finding, shaping, controlling, and foisting onto the public ever younger and ever less talented people who pretended to be musicians despite their inability to write, compose, sing or play an instrument.

Legal Crime
As onerous as these practices are, the majors are not the culprits for the crisis in the music industry. It’s the manufacturers of hardware and software who have successfully lobbied Congress to prevent songwriters and composers from getting paid. Well, they don’t call it that, but that’s the result of policies that do not compel Internet service providers (ISPs) to build-in fees for music the same way restaurants, stores, and bars do.

For those of you who are not in the music business, let me explain that last point. When you go into a public establishment that uses music, one of their costs of doing business is paying for the performance of music. Performing rights organizations (PROs) such as BMI, ASCAP and SESAC collect money for the public performances of their members’ music on network television, cable and satellite TV broadcasts, use in nightclubs, stores, restaurants and other public performances. But this does not happen with music and electronic devices. And corporations are just fine with this, a situation that is leading to the destruction of a creator’s copyright.

“Imagine what kind of world we would live in if the basic human right to benefit from one’s own labor were suddenly taken away,” writes Tess Taylor, president of the National Association of Record Industry Professionals (NARIP). “Contemplate for a moment how any of us would react if our individual ingenuity, productivity, perseverance, and investment; our labor, ideas, property and other contributions were, to our exclusion, made instantly and freely available to others.” But that’s exactly what the consumer electronics industry is doing, in conjunction with the telecommunications firms (telcos) which include cellular phone companies and cell phone manufacturers.

Taylor suggests considering “free” music as analogous to a trip to an amusement park: “A popular destination point like Disneyland would not have the right to charge admission. Does that mean you can go to Disneyland for free? Not exactly,” Taylor notes. “To get there, you’ll have take a private road that the telcos and consumer electronics industries control – and at the toll gate you’ll be forced to pay whatever they demand.”

Another example might be to think of songwriters as the bakers of bread and the big corporations as the owners of delivery trucks. Compensation would be made for the delivery but not for anything else. Or, as Taylor puts it, “the baker of the bread is paid nothing but the delivery boy charges what he likes and keeps all the money.”

Wait, I hear you say, it’s just a few songwriters, right? Wrong. Once you give up the idea of copyright protection for creators, you’re going off the edge of an icy road and spiraling downward to something darker. As Taylor points out, under this approach “…novelists, investigative reporters, journalists, documentary and theatrical filmmakers, screenwriters, photographers and cinematographers, recording artists, songwriters, producers, poets and painters, doctors and scientists, cancer researchers, bio-geneticists, climatologists, architects and engineers, designers, and others – those who make among the greatest contributions to society – are expressly deprived of the right to own the results and proceeds of their creative work.” Because anything that can be digitized is subject to being “shared.”

So how do we change this condition that is weakening copyright laws, promoting unfair business practices and taking food out of the mouths of creators and their families?

Calling for a Cure
“Monetizing the Internet is not all that difficult to do from a technical and logistical standpoint,” Gibbs says. “The problem is that we need union leaders with the political backbone and savvy to force legislation through that will protect and enhance all of the entertainment industry – indeed, all intellectual property rights.”

One solution proposed by Gibbs and others would be for all ISPs to charge a mandatory monthly fee for unlimited downloads. From a music publishing standpoint, I don’t care if the ISPs collect the money or if the PROs are allowed to do it, but something needs to be done to end the nearly ubiquitous theft of music.

Consider the root cause of the trouble. Why is the flow of appropriated music allowed to continue unchecked? Gibbs points out that “There are very intelligent people fighting for the other side, pushing for free dissemination of information of all sorts on the Web. Their argument seems to be that the Internet and free downloads are suddenly some kind of God-given right.”

The telcos and electronics companies are multi-billion dollar industries (which dwarf the record and music publishing industries) and have highly paid lobbyists arguing their position in Washington. Many believe they provide the funding for firms that regularly address the public, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to shape opinion in such a way that wealthy companies get more wealth while songwriters and composers get nothing.

Two things are needed: legislation to protect intellectual property; and public understanding of the dilemma. Legislation will only occur if members of Congress suddenly develop guts, or if they are lobbied by people other than the hardware and software industries.

Follow the Dollars
Take a look at who’s making money from the use of other people’s creations. “The ISPs, for starters, are cleaning up while charging monthly fees for access to services that allow people to pirate music at will,” Gibbs notes. “According to one survey I read there are approximately 91.7 million monthly subscribers in the U.S. alone paying monthly fees to their ISPs. And that survey did not even include universities and government institutions. The ISPs are, in turn, leasing their bandwidth from even larger and more profitable companies.” Those firms are very profitable in large part by using music and other valuable content they have not licensed. As one independent artist put is, “This leaves U.S. songwriters and music publishers between a rock-and-roll and a hard-wired place.”

Gibbs notes that “Our fight is not with the public – it is with the corporations that are making money hand over fist by the sweat off our furrowed brows and it is with the government that allows it to happen.” Gibbs states that the music industry “should be leading the fight, by every means necessary, to establish a new view of file-sharing – a misnomer if ever there was one (how about ‘file-stealing’ instead?).”

You Can be Part of the Solution
Thievery. Larceny. Robbery. Corporations shifting money from creators into their own pockets. Lobbying organizations rigging laws against the little guy. This can continue or you can help stop it. Yes, you. You can help bring about positive change with just a few clicks on your computer keyboard. The same computer that may be busy streaming and storing illegally “shared” music. The same computer that may soon be busy streaming and storing illegally “shared” motion pictures.

You can let your Congressperson know that major corporations should not be allowed to take money from those who own copyrighted works. Yes, I know, I know, the name of your Congressperson is right on the tip of your tongue. Here’s where to get the name:
capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/directory/congdir.tt

by Scott G – The G-Man

It’s never been more important for stores and web teams to work together, driving growth and opportunity for the total brand. I spent the first 10 years of my career in retail planning and design and the last 15 in digital marketing and e-commerce. And I am surprised to still overhear oft-outdated assumptions being made about the web — so here goes my attempt to debunk them.

Overheard: Web sales remain too small to matter.
Many retailers downplay the significance of the web because it’s just 2%, 5%, even 15% of sales. Might not seem like much until you consider that it’s a snapshot in time. While retail growth is relatively flat overall, the web is growing five times faster than stores — with a projected growth of 14% by 2012 (per Forrester) driving a disproportionate amount of retail growth.

Still think it’s too insignificant to matter? Ask retailers like Talbots and Staples. These are just two examples where the web represented a smaller piece of total sales but the largest percent of total sales growth. In fact, in was the web that rescued both brands this holiday season.

Overheard: The web is primarily an e-commerce channel.
Maybe you think of the web as e-commerce. Well, that’s only partly true. The web also impacts cross-channel shopping. In our research with Sterling Commerce we found that in some categories, such as home electronics, the web has begun to rival stores for decision making, and, in turn, rivals offline in importance. For home electronics, buyers rated stores and online equally in terms of importance, while 7% of respondents felt online was “absolutely essential” when making an apparel purchase decision.

Overheard: Advertising dollars are being judiciously shifted to the web.
With evidence mounting about the importance of the web as both a growth channel and an influencer, it would be a small leap to assume that more dollars are shifting to the web. Shifting, yes. Judiciously, no. And why not? Let’s look at where we spend our time — shouldn’t the dollars follow? Consumers’ time spent online is outpacing web advertising. Sure, we’re still fond of watching television, but skipping through commercials. Viewing time has shrunk 20% in the last 10 years, while time on the web has grown eight-fold in the same time period (Forrester).

Gap made headlines last summer when it cut advertising costs by 18% and watched profits soar by 40%. Why should we all take note? It made a data-smart spending move, by reducing ad spending where customers weren’t paying attention. Even P&G continues to experiment, dropping traditional media by 19% and increasing digital as much as 10%. It’s a spending shift. Brands need to re-assess media spending to align more with consumers.

The web is no longer for extending campaigns when (and if) there’s leftover budget. Consumers start with the web or end with the web — and increasingly do both. Maybe your company is making traction with the digital channel, or maybe you have a merchant prince at the helm and stores are still the king of the retail kingdom. Do you think the power of the digital channel is known, embraced and leveraged inside your organization? Or do you sometimes find yourself surprised at the way your organization still views the web?

The internet is already working on your new strategic imperatives, whether you realize it or not. But maximizing its potential might call for a business realignment. Brands need to move the digital channel toward their internal center of gravity, where it can radiate out to integrate and improve all consumer touchpoints, including the in-store experience.

Kelly Mooney is president of digital-marketing agency Resource Interactive and author of “The Open Brand.”

The Absolut Vodka commercials that aired in Los Angeles and 14 other cities during Sunday night’s Grammy Awards marked the first time in years that liquor ads ran in prime time on network-owned stations.

Also crowding the airwaves during heavy viewing hours are infomercials once reserved for the middle of the night and ads touting extramarital affairs and the intimate uses of K-Y Jelly.
As the recession takes its toll on firms that rely on advertising, TV stations aren’t the only companies running ads once considered inappropriate.

In recent months, the NBA rescinded a ban on courtside advertising by liquor companies. Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. did the same for ads they run on their websites. Billboard operators have allowed more strip clubs to hawk their establishments on roadside signs.

“Given the economy, there are publishers and media outlets that are doing what they have to to survive,” said Steve Hall, an ad-industry veteran who publishes the website AdRants.

Standards for advertising have been changing for decades, just as they have for the TV shows they accompany. For example, the number of distilled-spirits commercials on cable TV tripled from 2001 to 2007, said David Jernigan, associate professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

But marketing experts say the trend has accelerated since the financial crisis began.

“When you have the evaporation of advertising revenue, you have to look for new and creative ways of getting sellers in the door,” said Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council. “It’s coming in the way of adult-themed products and content.”

Listeners of KROQ-FM (106.7) in Los Angeles might have been surprised to hear ads for Ashley Madison Agency, which promotes extramarital affairs, while drinking their morning coffee this week.

“Sign up today and I will guarantee you an affair to remember,” the company’s president urges, directing listeners to the company’s website.

The Canadian company’s ads have been appearing in more places, including on a Houston NBC affiliate during the Super Bowl. Cable companies that once rejected the firm’s ads are now having second thoughts, said Noel Biderman, president of Ashley Madison Agency.

A year ago, no broadcast TV group would have agreed to run distilled-spirit ads, said Kathy Doyle, senior vice president and director of local broadcast for Universal McCann, a major ad buyer. She pitched them after WNBC-TV in New York ran a late-night ad for Bacardi rum in November 2007. In the last few months, nearly every one has considered it.

“The bottom’s dropped out in the market, and they’re looking for new sources of revenue,” she said.

Some publishers and stations acknowledge that the economy has forced changes in the type of ads they are willing to accept.

“We’re looking at a different world than we were three years ago, relative to the economy,” said Jim Burke, president of sales for Fox Television Stations group, which owns and operates about two dozen local Fox stations. “We’re looking at a number of categories, trying to find ways to increase our revenue.”

Alcohol companies are at the forefront of this trend, said George Hacker, director of the alcohol policies project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. His organization, with support from dozens of coaches and schools, has been trying to persuade the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. to ban alcohol ads from broadcasts of its sporting events. The NCAA denied the request in August.

The Absolut ad that ran around 10 p.m. during the Grammys — on KCBS-TV Channel 2 in Los Angeles — doesn’t show anyone drinking the vodka. Instead it shows a marketplace in which kisses and hugs serve as currency, then fades to an Absolut bottle.

The ad has continued to run this week on KTTV-TV Channel 11 as well as KCAL-TV Channel 9 and KTLA-TV Channel 5, whose parent company, Tribune Co., also owns the Los Angeles Times. It’s also being shown in markets such as San Francisco, New York and Chicago.

Mike Nelson, a spokesman for CBS Television Stations, said individual station managers could decide which ads to run, and that they “determined that the [content] for this particular spot is tasteful and appropriate for the stations’ late-evening audiences.”

Several issues motivated Facebook and Google to change their policies on alcohol ads, the Internet giants said.

Facebook now allows software developers to promote alcohol in programs they create to run on the social-networking website, as long as they prevent anyone under age 21 from accessing them. Google changed its policy in December to let advertisers bid for ad placement alongside search terms targeting hard-alcohol and liqueur drinkers in the U.S. It had relaxed its policies about beer-related ads months earlier.

“It’s based on user experience and the fact that many folks have been asking for it for a long time,” a Google spokeswoman said.

Letting ad standards slip is as dangerous as doing the same for content, said Mark Fitzgerald, editor at large with Editor & Publisher, a newspaper industry trade journal. He said he had noticed more ads that wouldn’t have made the cut, even on the front pages, and that adult-focused companies had become more suggestive with what they depict in their ads.

Ads should “set a tone, have a little bit of class, suggest you’re coming into good real estate,” he said.

But in all media, the real estate is increasingly up for grabs. That creates new opportunities for companies such as R2C Group, an ad agency whose clients include Total Gym (pitched by Chuck Norris) and an Obama commemorative coin among its infomercial clients.

“Car dealers are pulling off the air, retailers are pulling off the air, which opens more time to our clients,” R2C Group Chief Executive Tim O’Leary said. “We had a very good year.”

By Alana Semuels
February 13, 2009

The “FIRST” in MusicFIRST stands for “Fairness In Music Starting Today,” and the group is backed by a list that includes AFTRA, RIAA, SoundExchange, and the Recording Academy.  “Only a few countries do not provide a fair performance right on radio, including Iran, North Korea and China,” the group continued, adding an axis-of-evil element into the discussion.

Terrestrial broadcasters are predictably opposed to the measure, especially against the current economic backdrop.  Broadcasters also point to the promotional benefits that radio play offers, and majors gladly offer their content for gratis rotation.

Others used the measure to push the issue of parity across a number of formats.  “If establishing ‘parity’ is Congress’ goal, then the final legislation should be technologically neutral and should thereby ensure that internet radio is no longer disadvantaged compared to other radio platforms,” said Jon Potter, executive director of the Digital Media Association (DiMA).

Who else?  On the independent side, the reaction was no less emphatic.  “As the manufacturing and service industries have moved offshore, the need to support those in the United States who create intellectual property has never been more important to our economy,” commented A2IM president Rich Bengloff.

But ex-MTV and Interscope executive Courtney Holt accepted, and is now sinking his teeth into a tough challenge.  So, can this site win?  The challenge is undoubtedly difficult, though during a keynote interview at EconMusic in Los Angeles on Thursday, Holt displayed ample amounts of acumen and surprising levels of candor.

For example, why is the MySpace Music interface so cluttered and confusing?  On that question, Holt admitted to layout-related issues.  At a top level, MySpace Music revolves around four components: the user page, artist page, front door, and search.  “Each one of them is somewhat of a cul-de-sac, you [follow] what you’re looking for and then you’re stuck,” Holt shared.  “If I find an artist then I have two options: out or back, and that’s not a good user experience.  But we have all of this great data,” Holt continued.

And data, according to Holt, is a critical part of the strategy moving forward.  That includes the ability to understand who is listening to what, and how those listening experiences are connected to other bands and friends.  That information opens the possibilities, and theoretically allows MySpace Music to tighten connections with fans and bands.  “My goal is not only to provide that data back to the consumer, but also back to the artist.”

And, properly presented, dissected and relayed, the data opens innumerable possibilities.  Fans are more engaged, discovery is piqued, and connections are tightened.  Similarly, artists can theoretically gain a deeper understanding of the demographics of their fan base, and discover related groups.  “At the end of the day, those artists that engage MySpace will get something out of it,” Holt said.

But what about right now?  What is Holt doing during his first one-hundred days?  The executive pointed to quick upgrades on the player, independent label deals, “lots of time with the product guys” and “lots of evangelism” both “inside and outside the building”.

But the future is far more interesting.  Playlisting was the big blow-up of 2008, yet startups like Muxtape floundered amidst label lawsuits.  Holt, eyeing the opportunity and holding major label relationships, pointed to serious playlist upgrades ahead.  “The next thing that we’re launching is public playlists, which is the first time that playlists get their own pages,” Holt stated.  The playlist development map includes 100-song lists, as well as playlists that are search-enabled, feature drag-n-drop functionality, and stir a high level of collaboration.  “We really want to make it much, much easier for users to create and publish playlists, that is going to be the heart-and-soul of our business,” Holt envisioned.

The rest is big, blue-sky thinking, especially in the face of a tenuous business model.  “I’m focused on brand-building,” Holt stated.  “The brand – and brands we are creating – will help drive our business forward, and the effective CPM on an artist on MySpace is not going to be subject to the same rules.  Our revenue spread is going to be much broader than that,” Holt envisioned.

Report by publisher Paul Resnikoff in Los Angeles.

The percentage was determined by the IFPI by studying 16 markets over a three-year period, and detailed further within the group’s Digital Music Report 2009. The group estimates that 40 billion files alone were illegally traded in 2008, a volume that lends support to all-you-can-eat models from providers like TeliaSonera, TDC, Neuf Cegetel, and MySpace Music. The list also includes mobile-focused services like Nokia’s Comes With Music and Sony Ericsson’s PlayNow Plus. Major labels are backing those initiatives, though the IFPI also pointed to continued growth across a-la-carte offerings. According to the report, a-la-carte downloads totaled 1.4 billion globally in 2008, a 24 percent year-over-year gain.

That contrasts with figures released by Apple, which point to year-2008 sales of roughly 2 billion, level with 2007. The Apple figure covers all singles, including those packaged into albums, and represents a dominant majority of paid music transactions. According to the IFPI, digital albums gained 36 percent in 2008. On a broader scale, the IFPI indicated that digital sales jumped 25 percent globally to $3.7 billion last year. In total, digital formats accounted for 20 percent of overall recorded music sales in 2008, up from 15 percent in 2007. Those gains are not enough to stem the massive losses from piracy and physical product erosion, a major problem. Moreover, efforts to contain piracy through aggressive litigation have largely proven ineffective, and most likely counterproductive. That is shifting the emphasis towards ISP-driven arrangements, including enforcement pacts. The RIAA is ditching a five-year legal assault on individual file-swappers, and pointing to enforcement agreements with leading ISPs. Those agreements could include the termination of infringing accounts, though details on the deals remain missing.

At least one ISP, Verizon, has indicated that an enforcement partnership does not exist. The IFPI is now attempting to push the agenda further, though the picture gets more complicated on a global scale. In the United Kingdom, ISPs have agreed to issue warning letters to infringing users. In France, a broad-reaching, three-strikes plan is being pushed by lawmakers. “Governments are beginning to accept that, in the debate over ‘free content’ and engaging ISPs in protecting intellectual property rights, doing nothing is not an option if there is to be a future for commercial digital content,” said John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of IFPI.

That makes sense for YouTube, a site that encourages quick snacking on highly-visual, catchy content.  In turn, the most popular music videos reflect the heaviest demographic, a younger group that frequently clocks hours in one sitting.

So what artists are hanging at the top?  For the week ending January 4th, Britney Spears’ “Womanizer” easily grabbed the top slot with views of 4.01 million, according to data contained within BigChampagne’s BCDash interface.  Lady Gaga earned a distant second with “Poker Face” (3.35 million), followed by another Britney Spears song, “Circus” (3.01 million).  Beyonce Knowles’ “If I Were a Boy” grabbed fourth with 2.74 million views.

Then, something funny happens.  In fifth place is the comedic music video from The Lonely Island, “Jizz In My Pants” (2.35 million), the latest viral “explosion” for the comedic troupe. The spoof song is utterly incomplete without the visual effects, and “Jizz” is really a made-for-YouTube bit.  In an almost Yankovic-style piece, Lonely Island scores a quick – and highly viral – laugh, one that makes less sense on the iTunes Store, MySpace Music, or more conventional radio formats.

Indeed, “Jizz” is currently an underperformer on more audio-focused formats.  According to BigChampagne, the song ranks 1,991st on the P2P-focused, TopSwaps chart, and 110th on the iTunes Store.  Swing over to Yahoo Music, and the video is now ranked third.

The takeaway is unmistakable.  On YouTube, the biggest success stories are easily digestible, visually pleasing, and extremely viral.  Perhaps more in-depth musical experiences are best enjoyed on other platforms.

In that light, the rest of the top 10 is unsurprising.  Rounding out the top is Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” (2.55 million); Miley Cyrus’ “7 Things” (2.1 million); Pink’s “So What” (1.92 million); Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” (1.81 million); and Kanye West’s “Heartless” (1.77 million).

The rest of the ranking includes Pussycat Dolls (“I Hate This Part”), Rihanna (“Rehab”), Akon (“I’m So Paid”), Nickelback (“Gotta Be Somebody”), Jonas Brothers (“Lovebug,” “Burnin’ Up”), Chris Brown (“Forever”), Ne-Yo (“Closer,” “Mad”), Soulja Boy (“Kiss Me Thru the Phone”), Linkin Park (“What I’ve Done”), The Killers (“Human”), and Avril Lavigne (“Girlfriend”).

Incidentally, mostly missing are Warner Music Group videos, pulled during the holidays as part of a broader dispute between the companies.  The chart absence is unsurprising, though users continue to upload videos from Warner artists.  In comments to Digital Music News, a Warner Music Group representative indicated that content is being actively removed on an ongoing basis.  But the wilds of user-generated content are difficult to control, a situation that could be reducing Warner’s negotiating leverage.

Stay tuned for more close-ups across YouTube and a wide variety of other platforms, part of a new, exclusive data partnership with BigChampagne.

Report by publisher Paul Resnikoff.