Cuando en verano de 2007 se comenzó a notar la desaceleración del mercado inmobiliario y la disminución de la oferta de viviendas y de los precios, los pronósticos no eran tan negativos como la actual realidad nos enseña. En 2007, los colegios de arquitectos visaron 603.072 viviendas, un 34,5% menos que en 2006, y las instituciones financieras y servicios de estudios estimaban que sería entre 500.000 y 600.000 viviendas la producción media para los próximos años, en una previsión a corto plazo. Sin embargo, la asociación de promotores calcula que la producción será menor en un 50%, entre 200.000 y 300.000.
Curiosamente, el año 2007 comenzó con unos niveles de producción históricos respecto a los años anteriores, pero, sin embargo, a partir de abril el mercado se fue paralizando de una manera cada vez más rápida hasta final de año, situación que se mantiene en el primer trimestre. Los datos de los colegios de registradores señalan similares datos en las escrituras de compraventa, y en la solicitud de hipotecas.
Los precios prácticamente no han aumentado desde el otoño de 2007, cuando no han disminuido algunos puntos porcentuales. En los estudios estadísticos que realizamos trimestralmente, los resultados son similares tanto en las provincias andaluzas como en Madrid, e incluso son inferiores por primera vez a las previsiones del Ministerio de la Vivienda, que estima un crecimiento anual similar a la inflación, aunque no se acerquen a al 4,4% del actual IPC.
El mercado inmobiliario, que actualmente comienza a tener un stock importante de viviendas sin vender, oferta también aquellos inmuebles que estaban destinados a la inversión de particulares, lo que supone una oferta añadida. La desaceleración del mercado inmobiliario no ha ido acompañada de la explosión de ninguna burbuja inmobiliaria, pero sí ha supuesto disminuciones de la actividad y bajadas de los precios de la vivienda, más profundos de los esperados y lógicamente de los deseados.
En paralelo a la actividad inmobiliaria, el PIB creció en 2007 el 3,8%, y las previsiones económicas de 2008 disminuyen el crecimiento el 2,5%, aunque algunas publicaciones, básicamente de origen británico, pronosticaban crecimientos inferiores o incluso negativos. Como señalamos en el anterior ITS, la estabilidad de los tipos de interés, ahora de nuevo a la baja, están condicionados por la inflación, y la recuperación de la demanda de primera y segunda residencia no será inmediata. El mercado inmobiliario deberá ajustarse a la situación articulando medidas comerciales diferenciadas, siendo conscientes que los niveles de rentabilidad vendrán en mayor medida condicionados por la racionalización del gasto más que en el aumento de los niveles de facturación, como ocurrió en el periodo 1998-2007.
La inestabilidad de los mercados financieros, pese a los apoyos millonarios de las reservas monetarias americanas y europeas, y los riesgos inflacionistas que impiden una bajada de los tipos del BCE, se constituyen como barreras a corto y medio plazo para la reactivación económica. El excesivo y habitual déficit exterior americano que produce un desequilibrio entre la cotización del euro y el dólar, conlleva la subida continua del precio del petróleo por parte de los países productores para compensar precisamente la debilidad de la divisa americana. Ello produce tensiones inflacionistas, a la vez que un endurecimiento de la competencia para Europa. Y todo ello en el peor momento de desaceleración económica.
Los cuadros de variaciones de precios que facilitamos trimestralmente, no revelan demasiados cambios en ninguna de las provincias, en todo caso hacen suponer que las variaciones de precios van a estar mucho más contenidas que la inflación (Granada 1,63, Huelva 0,49, Cádiz 0,59, Córdoba, 079), si no son nominalmente negativas, como lo han sido en Málaga (-0,61, Sevilla - 0,47, Madrid -1,86).
Algunas entidades financieras y servicios de estudios estiman que los mercados financieros se estabilizarán entorno al próximo verano, aunque la situación del mercado inmobiliario no se reactivará como mínimo hasta finales de 2009. Como sabemos por experiencia, no se puede afirmar que los pronósticos económicos sean fiables, sino más bien cambiantes, pero en todo caso, parece que esta “ralentización” va a ser de mayor calado que el inicialmente previsto.
NOTAS METODOLÓGICAS
Los datos obtenidos para la confección del ITS se realizan a través de estudios de mercado real, obteniéndose la información de las diversas promociones con el método de la simulación. Se realizan en los municipios mayores de 5.000 habitantes.
Los datos, incluyen el precio de la vivienda (sin IVA) y el de las plazas de garaje y trastero en su caso, se contrastan y revisan para hacerlos homogéneos, principalmente en lo que respecta a la superficie construida. Se considera de acuerdo a una ordenanza urbanística tipo:
- Los porches en planta baja, cubiertos y abiertos por los tres lados computaran a un 50%. No serán computables como m2c:
a) Las plantas diáfanas
b) Las terrazas o porches descubiertos
c) La superficie construida bajo rasante destinada a aparcamiento y almacenaje
d) Los casetones de acceso a cubierta.
Una vez revisados los datos originales, se ponderan de acuerdo al número de viviendas ofertadas, ya sea a nivel de área de ciudad, municipio, zonas provinciales o el conjunto de la provincia.
Con un grado de confianza del 95%, los errores de muestreo del actual ITS son por provincias: Málaga (1,24), Granada (4,23), Cádiz (2,67), Sevilla (2,78), Huelva (1,76), Córdoba (1,02), y Madrid (1,38).
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Google Finance: Fed Cuts Rate to as Low as Zero, Shifts Policy Focus
Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve cut the main U.S. interest rate to as low as zero for the first time and shifted its focus to the amount and type of debt it buys, seeking to revive credit and end the longest slump in a quarter- century.
The Fed “will employ all available tools to promote the resumption of sustainable economic growth and to preserve price stability,” the Federal Open Market Committee said today in a statement in Washington. “Weak economic conditions are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for some time.”
Stocks soared, while Treasury notes rallied in anticipation the Fed will buy the securities to reduce borrowing costs for consumers and companies. Nine rate cuts in the prior 14 months and $1.4 trillion in emergency lending had failed to reverse the economic downturn. The Fed said today it will target a federal funds rate of between zero and 0.25 percent, a reduction from the 1 percent level that the Fed failed to hit.
Announcements of new lending programs or asset purchases will now be principal signals of policy, a senior Fed official said in a conference call with reporters. The central bank is considering whether to provide more information about the composition and targeted size of its balance sheet, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Stimulate Economy
“The focus of the committee’s policy going forward will be to support the functioning of financial markets and stimulate the economy through open market operations and other measures that sustain the size of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet at a high level,” the FOMC said.
The dollar tumbled against the euro and yen. Stocks climbed, pushing the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 359.61 points, or 4.2 percent, to 8924.14.
“The Fed is sending a message that it will print money to an unlimited extent until it starts to see the economy expanding,” William Poole, former president of the St. Louis Fed and now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Poole is also a contributor to Bloomberg News.
The statement noted that the Fed has already announced it will purchase the debt issued or backed by government-chartered housing finance companies, and said the Fed is ready to expand the program. The central bank said it continues to weigh the potential benefits of buying longer-term Treasury securities.
Deepening Slump
The deepening economic slump pushed unemployment to 6.7 percent last month, the highest level since 1993, while builders broke ground on the fewest new homes since record-keeping began in 1947. Deflation is also emerging as a risk: consumer prices fell the most on record in November, the Labor Department said today.
Today’s vote was unanimous. In a related move, the Fed lowered the rate on direct loans to banks and securities dealers to 0.5 percent. It set the payment on the reserves that commercial banks hold at the Fed at 0.25 percent, down from 1 percent.
Fed policy makers twice pared the federal funds rate, or overnight lending rate, to 1 percent since adopting it as the main tool of monetary policy in the late 1980s. The 1 percent target held from June 2003 to June 2004, and again from the end of October to today.
The Bank of Japan has been the only major central bank in modern times to mix a policy of steep rate reductions with quantitative easing, or the strategy of injecting more reserves into the banking system than needed to keep the target rate at zero.
Spur Growth
Japan’s central bank kept its main rate at zero from 2001 to 2006 while flooding the banking system with extra cash to encourage lending, spur growth and overcome deflation. The abundant funds failed to prompt lending by commercial banks, which expanded their reserves at the central bank almost nine times by early 2004.
The senior central bank official said the Fed’s policy differs from Japan’s approach by focusing on purchases of short- term debt and other assets in constrained markets rather than on adding cash to the banking system.
The FOMC said that inflation pressures “have diminished appreciably.” The senior Fed official said deflation is not a major concern to the central bank.
Bernanke, acting with New York Fed President Timothy Geithner, has set up emergency loan programs aimed at averting a collapse of the nation’s credit markets. Geithner, President- elect Barack Obama’s pick for Treasury secretary, didn’t attend today’s meeting.
Swapping Dollars
The Fed has enlarged bank reserves, supported issuance of commercial paper and provided liquidity to government bond dealers. It is also swapping dollars with the European Central Bank and its other counterparts to supply banks in other countries.
The central bank is trying to lower mortgage rates by purchasing up to $100 billion of debt issued by housing-finance providers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and $500 billion of mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by the companies.
The moves have swelled the Fed’s balance sheet to $2.26 trillion from $868 billion in July 2007. That’s in addition to the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, which the U.S. Treasury has used since October to channel about $335 billion of capital injections into banks and other financial companies.
Still, the economy has crumbled, with employers cutting 533,000 jobs from payrolls in November for a total loss this year of 1.9 million, which more than erases the 2007 gain of 1.1 million.
Scarce Credit
Credit remains scarce in many markets and major financial institutions worldwide continue to report losses and writedowns totaling $994 billion.
The Fed may increase its asset purchases and lend against lower-quality debt should Treasury provide funding, the senior central bank official said.
Macroeconomic Advisers LLC, a St. Louis-based consultant, says the economy is probably shrinking at a 6.5 percent annual pace this quarter, which would be the biggest drop since 1980.
The firm forecasts a 4.2 percent annual contraction rate in the first quarter, returning to no growth in the second quarter and a 2.3 percent expansion rate in the second half of 2009.
Early this month, as a panel of leading U.S. economists declared the recession began in December 2007, Bernanke signaled he was ready to dig deeper into the central bank’s toolkit. He said he may use less conventional policies, such as buying Treasury securities, because his room to lower the main U.S. rate was “obviously limited.”
Flood of Funds
The federal funds target rate has weakened as a monetary policy tool because the Fed’s flood of funds has caused the average daily rate to trade below the policy goal every day since Oct. 10.
The gap between the target and the effective rate, or average daily market rate, has averaged about a half point since Sept. 12. The gap averaged just above zero from the start of this year through Sept. 2.
The Fed’s counterparts around the world have staged their own interest-rate cuts. The ECB has lowered its main rate to 2.5 percent this month from 4.25 percent in July, while the Bank of England reduced its rate to 2 percent this month from 5.75 percent in July.
ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet said yesterday there’s a limit to how far the bank can cut interest rates and signaled policy makers may pause in January. “Do we have a feeling there is a limit to the decrease in rates? At this stage certainly yes,” Trichet told journalists in Frankfurt.
While the Fed can’t push interest rates below zero, “the second arrow in the Federal Reserve’s quiver -- the provision of liquidity -- remains effective,” Bernanke said in a Dec. 1 speech.
To contact the reporter on this story: Scott Lanman in Washington at slanman@bloomberg.net; Craig Torres in Washington at ctorres3@bloomberg.net;
Last Updated: December 16, 2008 17:33 EST
The Fed “will employ all available tools to promote the resumption of sustainable economic growth and to preserve price stability,” the Federal Open Market Committee said today in a statement in Washington. “Weak economic conditions are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for some time.”
Stocks soared, while Treasury notes rallied in anticipation the Fed will buy the securities to reduce borrowing costs for consumers and companies. Nine rate cuts in the prior 14 months and $1.4 trillion in emergency lending had failed to reverse the economic downturn. The Fed said today it will target a federal funds rate of between zero and 0.25 percent, a reduction from the 1 percent level that the Fed failed to hit.
Announcements of new lending programs or asset purchases will now be principal signals of policy, a senior Fed official said in a conference call with reporters. The central bank is considering whether to provide more information about the composition and targeted size of its balance sheet, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Stimulate Economy
“The focus of the committee’s policy going forward will be to support the functioning of financial markets and stimulate the economy through open market operations and other measures that sustain the size of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet at a high level,” the FOMC said.
The dollar tumbled against the euro and yen. Stocks climbed, pushing the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 359.61 points, or 4.2 percent, to 8924.14.
“The Fed is sending a message that it will print money to an unlimited extent until it starts to see the economy expanding,” William Poole, former president of the St. Louis Fed and now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Poole is also a contributor to Bloomberg News.
The statement noted that the Fed has already announced it will purchase the debt issued or backed by government-chartered housing finance companies, and said the Fed is ready to expand the program. The central bank said it continues to weigh the potential benefits of buying longer-term Treasury securities.
Deepening Slump
The deepening economic slump pushed unemployment to 6.7 percent last month, the highest level since 1993, while builders broke ground on the fewest new homes since record-keeping began in 1947. Deflation is also emerging as a risk: consumer prices fell the most on record in November, the Labor Department said today.
Today’s vote was unanimous. In a related move, the Fed lowered the rate on direct loans to banks and securities dealers to 0.5 percent. It set the payment on the reserves that commercial banks hold at the Fed at 0.25 percent, down from 1 percent.
Fed policy makers twice pared the federal funds rate, or overnight lending rate, to 1 percent since adopting it as the main tool of monetary policy in the late 1980s. The 1 percent target held from June 2003 to June 2004, and again from the end of October to today.
The Bank of Japan has been the only major central bank in modern times to mix a policy of steep rate reductions with quantitative easing, or the strategy of injecting more reserves into the banking system than needed to keep the target rate at zero.
Spur Growth
Japan’s central bank kept its main rate at zero from 2001 to 2006 while flooding the banking system with extra cash to encourage lending, spur growth and overcome deflation. The abundant funds failed to prompt lending by commercial banks, which expanded their reserves at the central bank almost nine times by early 2004.
The senior central bank official said the Fed’s policy differs from Japan’s approach by focusing on purchases of short- term debt and other assets in constrained markets rather than on adding cash to the banking system.
The FOMC said that inflation pressures “have diminished appreciably.” The senior Fed official said deflation is not a major concern to the central bank.
Bernanke, acting with New York Fed President Timothy Geithner, has set up emergency loan programs aimed at averting a collapse of the nation’s credit markets. Geithner, President- elect Barack Obama’s pick for Treasury secretary, didn’t attend today’s meeting.
Swapping Dollars
The Fed has enlarged bank reserves, supported issuance of commercial paper and provided liquidity to government bond dealers. It is also swapping dollars with the European Central Bank and its other counterparts to supply banks in other countries.
The central bank is trying to lower mortgage rates by purchasing up to $100 billion of debt issued by housing-finance providers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and $500 billion of mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by the companies.
The moves have swelled the Fed’s balance sheet to $2.26 trillion from $868 billion in July 2007. That’s in addition to the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, which the U.S. Treasury has used since October to channel about $335 billion of capital injections into banks and other financial companies.
Still, the economy has crumbled, with employers cutting 533,000 jobs from payrolls in November for a total loss this year of 1.9 million, which more than erases the 2007 gain of 1.1 million.
Scarce Credit
Credit remains scarce in many markets and major financial institutions worldwide continue to report losses and writedowns totaling $994 billion.
The Fed may increase its asset purchases and lend against lower-quality debt should Treasury provide funding, the senior central bank official said.
Macroeconomic Advisers LLC, a St. Louis-based consultant, says the economy is probably shrinking at a 6.5 percent annual pace this quarter, which would be the biggest drop since 1980.
The firm forecasts a 4.2 percent annual contraction rate in the first quarter, returning to no growth in the second quarter and a 2.3 percent expansion rate in the second half of 2009.
Early this month, as a panel of leading U.S. economists declared the recession began in December 2007, Bernanke signaled he was ready to dig deeper into the central bank’s toolkit. He said he may use less conventional policies, such as buying Treasury securities, because his room to lower the main U.S. rate was “obviously limited.”
Flood of Funds
The federal funds target rate has weakened as a monetary policy tool because the Fed’s flood of funds has caused the average daily rate to trade below the policy goal every day since Oct. 10.
The gap between the target and the effective rate, or average daily market rate, has averaged about a half point since Sept. 12. The gap averaged just above zero from the start of this year through Sept. 2.
The Fed’s counterparts around the world have staged their own interest-rate cuts. The ECB has lowered its main rate to 2.5 percent this month from 4.25 percent in July, while the Bank of England reduced its rate to 2 percent this month from 5.75 percent in July.
ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet said yesterday there’s a limit to how far the bank can cut interest rates and signaled policy makers may pause in January. “Do we have a feeling there is a limit to the decrease in rates? At this stage certainly yes,” Trichet told journalists in Frankfurt.
While the Fed can’t push interest rates below zero, “the second arrow in the Federal Reserve’s quiver -- the provision of liquidity -- remains effective,” Bernanke said in a Dec. 1 speech.
To contact the reporter on this story: Scott Lanman in Washington at slanman@bloomberg.net; Craig Torres in Washington at ctorres3@bloomberg.net;
Last Updated: December 16, 2008 17:33 EST
Friday, October 31, 2008
Google Finance: MARKET SNAPSHOT: U.S. Stocks Mostly Lower As Consumer Spending Slows
U.S. stocks on Friday wavered mainly lower, on track for their worst month in 28 years, as generally bleak economic data showed consumers spending less and
Up and down during the morning, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) was recently ahead 12.1 points at 9,192.79, with 17 of its 30 components trading higher.
The S&P 500 (SPX) fell 1.71 points at 952.38, while the Nasdaq Composite ( RIXF) dropped 2.9 points at 1,695.62.
The energy, materials and utilities sectors led the losses among the S&P's 10 industry groups. Telecommunication services and consumer discretionary and staples fared the best in early action.
Among the energy sector's biggest laggards,
In the telecommunication services sector,
Volume on the New York Stock Exchange neared 267 million, with advancers just ahead of decliners. On the Nasdaq, 225 million shares were exchanged, with advancers topping decliners roughly 7 to 5.
Stock futures pared declines after some of the economic data, including the Commerce Department's report that U.S. consumer spending in September tallied its largest drop in four years. .
U.S. consumer sentiment fell in October from the month before to reach a record monthly decline, according to the University of Michigan/Reuters index. .
The Chicago Purchasing Managers reported the Chicago Business Barometer plummeted to 37.8 in October, its lowest level since
U.S. stocks closed with strong gains Thursday as amid indications of furthering easing in troubled credit markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 189 points, the S&P 500 rose 24 points and the Nasdaq Composite added 41 points.
But over the course of October, the S&P 500 has lost 18% of its value, its worst month since 1987.
Federal Reserve Chairman
Overseas, the Bank of Japan defied expectations a bit, cutting rates to 0.3% from 0.5%, rather than the 25 basis point cut many expected. .
The Nikkei 225 dropped 5% in
In
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, crude-oil futures fell
Active issues
On the earnings front, oil giant and Dow industrials component
Electronics Arts Inc. (ERTS) tumbled 16.4% after it late Thursday posted a wider loss and reduced its annual forecast, while saying it would lay off 6% of its workforce. .
Shares of Sun Micro Systems Inc. (JAVA) also fell, down 13.8%, after the software company reported a
Friday, October 17, 2008
Article from Techcrunch: What Did Voters Google During The Last Presidential Debate?
Right after each Presidential Debate both sides and all the big news organizations immediately conduct polls to determine how each candidate did and which issues resonated the most with voters. It is an expensive process that keeps an entire cottage industry of pollsters in business. But one of the best forms of instant voter feedback might be Google.
The most popular search terms during the last debate on Wednesday included “Roe v. Wade” and “Joe the Plumber.” But, less predictably, “charter schools” and “school vouchers” also seemed to hit a nerve. Or at least people wanted to learn more about them. When the candidates talked about a “litmus test” for nominating Supreme Court Justices that too sent people to their keyboards.
Maybe some people just wanted to know what a litmus test is and what it has to do with picking judges, or what the difference is between a charter school and a school voucher. The fact that people are searching for these terms tells us nothing about how they feel about them. But it does suggest that they want to learn more about them. That is an opportunity for each side to hone their message around education and judges, for example, in the final weeks of the campaign. Or they can just keep going negative. That seems to work too.
Now, what would be really great is if Google Trends offered up the option to see such live search trends by the hour. (The most granular you can get right now is the last 30 days). Maybe an engineer there can turn that into a new 20-percent project to disrupt the polling industry.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
From Techcrunch: Glam Teams With GumGum To Serve Free, Legal Images
Image licensing platform GumGum has scored a deal to serve free legal images across Glam Media’s publishing network. Glam publishers will have access to photos from Splash News’ catalog of celebrity images, many of which run from $75-500 apiece under standard licensing deals. In lieu of these fees, GumGum will allow publishers to display their images with ad overlays free of charge (publishers will receive around 20% of the revenue from these ads - the rest will go to GumGum, Glam, and Splash).
The deal comes two months after GumGum annouced a major shift in the technology used to power its platform. In the past, the site would issue photographs as Flash objects, which made them easy to track and monetize with ads. But Flash-based images are slow and clunky compared to a normal image file, which made the system unappealing to publishers.
In July GumGum dropped the Flash technology in favor of a system that uses standard image formats. Now, publishers are free to crop and modify their images (which they couldn’t do with the Flash version). GumGum uses a combination of photo metadata and image recognition to identify the licensed photos, and overlays ads accordingly. If a publisher doesn’t want ads to appear on their images, they can pay a modest fee tied to the number of times an image is viewed, rather than the one-time bulk fee typically associated with image licensing.
While GumGum acknowledges that it’s probably possible to fool the image recognition system, it has shifted its business to appeal to legitimate publishers - anyone who wants to pirate an image probably wouldn’t sign up for the service in the first place.
Glam Media is an advertising/publishing network that focuses almost exclusively on content for women. With over 600 member blogs and sites across Glam’s network, GumGum stands to see its userbase grow dramatically - the company speculates that the number of images it serves could potentially double with the deal.
GumGum competitor PicApp forged a similar deal with blog network b5media earlier this year. And Glam’s biggest rival Sugar Inc allows its bloggers to use images from Getty images.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
From Techcrunch: Why The Online Music Industry Should Move To a Rev-Share Model
Memo to the Copyright Royalty Board: a bigger pie fills more bellies. Tomorrow, the three-judge panel that sets rates on music copyright fees is scheduled to announce new rates on digital music downloads for the next five years. The fees, which go to music publishers (the actual owners of the copyright to each song), are currently set at 9 cents per track. Music publishers want to raise that to 15 cents per track. Apple has vaguely threatened that it might have to shut down iTunes if the new rates go into effect (yeah, right).
Apple still controls about 85 percent of the digital download market, but these fees are also being paid by Amazon, Rhapsody, MySpace Music and others. The music publishers (who are often the artists themselves) want to future-proof their cut of the action and thus want to lock in as high a rate as possible. Apple and the record labels are arguing that the rates should be changed from a flat fee per song to a percentage of revenues. Apple wants to pay 6 percent of revenues, while the labels are suggesting 8 percent. Since, in the case of iTunes, this percentage would come out of the current 99 cents charged for each track, it actually amounts to a reduction in per track fees (6 cents and 8 cents respectively).
On its face, it looks like Apple and the record companies are once again trying to stick it to the little guy (artists, song writers, and other music publishers). But in this case, Apple and the recording industry are actually right. Music on the Web is currently crippled by the fees set by the Copyright Royalty Board (not just for downloads, but for streaming Internet radio as well). As it is, Apple pays 70 cents from each track sold to the record companies (which then pay the music publishers their cut). There is not much margin left out of which to take that extra 6 cents, and charging $1.05 per track will have an impact on sales.
Moving to a revenue-sharing model makes a lot more economic sense. That way digital music sales has more breathing room to establish itself, and the artists will be able to grow with the industry. Eight percent of a bigger pie is better than nine percent of a smaller one. Rather than focus on how much each publisher gets per track, the Copyright Royalty Board should try to maximize the total amount of fees that publishers will get. A rev-share model is the way to go.
from Techcrunch: SoundCloud Streamlines Music Sharing For Industry Professionals
Transferring large files on the web has always been a hassle, especially when you need to do it frequently. One field especially prone to this problem is the music industry - artists often collaborate with eachother by sending rough versions of tracks, but have to rely on clunky services like YouSendIt or FTP servers. SoundCloud, a German startup that launches on October 10, is looking to streamline this process by allowing an artist to upload a file once and easily distribute it to whomever they’d like. The site is currently in private beta, but you can grab one of 500 invites here.
SoundCloud isn’t meant as a consumer site - rather, it’s a service for industry professionals, including artists, music labels, and producers. From the outset, it’s clear that SoundCloud is very well designed, with an intuitive interface that falls firmly under “Web 2.0″. The site revolves around artist profiles and the tracks they’ve uploaded, which are presented in an embeddable basic music widget (you can see one below). Aside from standard playback, the widget also allows artists to open up their tracks to comments from outside visitors, which can be appended to specified times.
Artists can specify how much control their users will have over their content, setting their music to stream-only, or as available for download. The site also supports listener analytics, so artists can see how many visitors have listened to their tracks. And the site supports a wide variety of audio formats, with no restrictions on file size.
SoundCloud also includes some basic social features, with artist profiles detailing professional contact information, much like a musician’s social network, and a follow system that allows you to receive alerts whenever a friend or colleague uploads a track. There’s also a Dropbox that allows visitors to submit songs to you for review - it’s a digital version of the mailed-in demo tape.
Provided SoundCloud can get a foothold in the music industry (which isn’t an easy thing to do), it seems poised for success. There are many other options for media sharing, but SoundCloud has executed extremely well, with an interface that should make sense to even the most technically-challenged users. Major producers and music labels may be hesitant to embrace it in the near future, but there’s a massive market for indie artists and fledgling musicians that will pounce on the service immediately.
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