—Spotify: It’s not exactly carrier bundling, but 3 UK is pre-loading its Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) Vivaz handsets with the music service’s Symbian app. No bundled service, though - you’ll still need a £10-a-month subscription.

—ABC (NYSE: DIS) on mobile VOD: On-Demand Group is licensing Disney-ABC shows like Lost and Desperate Housewives for 3 UK’s TV On-Demand subscription mobile TV service. The service is low-key on 3’s site but costs £5 a month or £1.49 a day.

What’s holding Spotify back in the U.S.? “We are seeing a lot of support. We want to get all of our ducks in a row to make maximum impact” when we do launch.” The number of parties involved makes it more complicated for Spotify to negotiate rights in the U.S. than in Europe. More from Ek:

—Not a social net: Spotify’s communal playlists may seem like a precursor to a social network but Ek was quite clear: “We don’t believe in being our own social network; we believe in working with social networks.” For instance, Ek has experienced first hand how frustrating it can be when someone messes with a playlist you’ve spent time and energy developing. One way to solve some of that would be to add permission levels for different groups of users so people have varying rights. If social nets add that feature, Spotify can incorporate it.

—P2P: I’m sure it was just a coincidence that I lost my wireless connection just as Ek was explaining how using Spotify’s p2p can reduce demands on bandwidth. “We’re consuming more internet capacity than Sweden has as a country ... p2p solves the problem in an elegant way.”

—Apple: Ek doesn’t have any inside knowledge but expects Apple to launch a cloud-based music model. “People want to share, to access independently. I think it makes a lot of sense for them to do something in that area.” But, he added, “I don’t have any magical insight into Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). If I did wouldn’t be sitting here.”

Related

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• Spotify Reportedly Raises New Funding From Founders Fund For U.S. Expansion
• @ Midem: Spotify CEO: Everything Hangs On The Library
• @ Midem: Labels Go Cold On Free Music Services; A Challenge To Spotify?

Music service We7, which this month followed Spotify by launching paid-for options including a mobile app as economics and labels began to command more guaranteed returns, is outsourcing its display advertising sales to Yahoo.

The arrangement only covers visual ads and was to give the service more clout, CEO Steve Purdham tells me. “We’ve moved all of the main function to them. We’re hiring a new sales director to manage the relationship and media sales guys to sell the radio and audio ads mechanism; Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) won’t be doing that.” We7 had only three people on ad sales before the move and will remain on three after the rejig.

Though the focus seemed to have been moving toward premium, Purdham says: “There is a significant subscription opportunity that’s out there - but the new digital economy is about how the spectrum of models can work together, not in isolation.

“I don’t believe you can use ad-funded as a model to drive premium subscription. It needs to stand on its own right. The deal with yahoo is a big step toward that. We feel we can make the ad-funded economics work.”

Aside from banner ads, We7 was offering seven- and 10-second audio ads inside its streaming radio service.  It will soon also add “full, radio-format, 20- and 30-second ads”, Purdham says.

We7, originally funded by Peter Gabriel, initially launched with a model of embedding audio ads inside track downloads but has had to tinker with the model as the market has become clearer.

The Yahoo ad deal could be the start of something bigger for We7. “It’s primarily an ad sales deal, but we’d hope to deepen it over time,” Purdham says. “We’re hoping to provide elements of content in a deeper relationship as time moves on.”

That could be an interesting arrangement for We7, which is trailing in public perception to Spotify but has now built a decent web-based platform, and for Yahoo, which, on Yahoo Music, has outsourced its LAUNCHcast streaming offering to CBS Interactive (NYSE: CBS) in the U.S. and whose Rhapsody-powered track streams (at least at my end) just don’t work.

UK royalty collector PRS For Music, announcing 2009 income, says: “(Digital) growth (£12.8 million) outperformed the decline in traditional CD and DVD formats (down £8.7 million) for the first time, though the legal online music market is still comparatively small.”

Royalty income from online grew a big 72.7 percent (to £30.4 million), “reflecting the increased number of legal licensed digital music services available in the UK and across Europe”.

And this helped push total PRS income up 2.6 percent to £623 million, though most of that effect was contributed from more overseas income, now that PRS is collecting European royalties for some artists and publishers.

The digital tipping point could be a watershed for the industry, which has so far been unable to substitute its shrinking CD sales with rising digital sales…

But these figures refer only to royalty income to songwriters, composers and music publishers - not to the income that labels themselves are experiencing. On that basis, annual digital growth matched the rate of physical-format decline last year - 12 percent - IFPI recently said (though of course the declining segment is larger than the growing one).

Unclear - the extent to which these rises are thanks to Spotify. The popular service, as well as new anti-piracy laws, helped turn income decline in to growth in Sweden last year, and PRS collects royalties from Spotify in the UK and other countries, though neither side will detail terms.

The last couple of years has seen several unlimited-access music services launch, and a few more are due to arrive this year.

Pink Floyd’s contract with EMI - which was signed 11 years ago ago, before the online music boom - says its albums must only be sold as a whole and in a set order. EMI argued this applied only to “physical product”, but, according to Justice Andrew Morrit’s ruling, via Bloomberg: “There is nothing in the terms ‘album’ or ‘record’ to suggest they apply to the physical product only.”

So Pink Floyd has taken a major to court to maintain its creative wish (and has further shaken EMI’s increasingly rickety foundation in the process) - but does its victory really mean a resurgence for the album online, or is it just another brick in the wall… ?

—We live in a single world, at least online. Digital singles outsold digital albums in the Floyd’s native UK nearly tenfold last year - likely because collections of songs still feel better on plastic. And 98 percent of British track purchases are now digital.

—But albums are coming back faster. Global single-track growth of only 10 percent last year is causing the industry to worry about a plateauing of its biggest earner - but digital album sales are now growing by 20 percent a year, twice as fast as singles, IFPI says. In percentage terms, there’s more opportunity for digital migration growth from what is still a considerably analogue segment.

—Digital stores aren’t geared to albums: iTunes Store atomised the album industry, and other retailers have followed suit. Sure, iTunes Store has “Buy Album” options all over its Pink Floyd page - but, to iTunes, an “album” is just a sales multiplication opportunity - and songs purchased can be played in any order buyers want. Apple’s “deluxe” iTunes LP - offering albums with artwork and multimedia extras - seemed like a reluctant concession to labels for exploding the album as a form; stocks a paltry less-than-30 releases, as Gigaom observes. Still, the IFPI says the iTunes LP version of Michael Bublé‘s latest release outsold the standard edition 3:1 this way.

—What about new models? Much consumption is set to move to the cloud or, otherwise, to ad-supported platforms. It’s unclear whether a contract like Pink Floyd’s accounts for music that isn’t “sold” but, rather, streamed or subscribed to. Even if a la carte retailers are forced to offer true albums for download, what’s the equivalent of “album” in a streaming environment? Being forced to listen to all 43 minutes of Dark Side Of The Moon in its entirety and in its intended order?

—Artists are embracing the single: Not every artist will put art before income as Pink Floyd have done, nor will necessarily feel that bundling is an artistic consideration. Former EMI band Radiohead, too, was, for many years, creatively opposed to track-by-track downloads - but it’s now relented (indeed, last time around, it even released the individual stem components of songs for fans to remix). This case could prompt similar actions from a small number of acts who feel the same way as the Floyd, if they have a similar old contract - but it’s likely most will just take the royalties.

EMI has taken a lot of heat—much of it from the band—for refusing to allow embedding of the band’s videos for the new album, a policy that’s linked to YouTube’s own policy for major label music videos.

OK Go manager Jamie Kitman announced the separation via e-mail to industry observer Bob Lefsetz last night: “we secured ok go’s release from capitol—two weeks before the current video (up to 6.6 million hits in under a week)—came out. we’re living in the future, about 15 minutes earlier than we’d expected, and loving it.”

EMI confirmed with a mutual statement full of fun for reading between the lines:

OK Go singer Damian Kulash: “We’d like to thank the people at EMI Music who have worked so hard on our behalf.”  Translation: those of you didn’t do anything for us get nothing.

EMI Music said:  “We’ve really enjoyed our relationship with OK Go.  They’ve always pushed creative boundaries and have broken new ground, particularly with their videos.  We wish them the greatest success for the future.” Translation: Way cool videos without sales to match. Buh bye.

OK Go has set up its own label Paracadute Recording and is taking over the distribution and marketing of the new album. Expect lots of embedding; sample below.

—New blocking measure: Responding to concern that Clause 17 would have given Lord Mandelson sweeping powers to amend future copyright law as is seen fit, the government (in Amendment 120A) proposed scrapping the portion in favour of a new measure that would allow the High Court to issue injunctions that force ISPs to block access to services hosting infringing content. The House Of Lords, currently debating the bill at report stage before it goes to the Commons, adopted the amendment to the bill.

—Web giants oppose: Cue an outcry from 17 of the most influential internet companies, including Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Facebook, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) and leading ISPs. Writing in the FT, they lament “very poor lawmaking”: “(It) would both widely disrupt the internet in the UK and elsewhere and threaten freedom of speech and the open internet, without reducing copyright infringement as intended.”

—Big Music likes it: But the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) trade group, responding to that letter via press release, accuses the group of “pure scaremongering”. It reckons the new measure is “a clear and sensible mechanism to deal with illegal websites”.

The government’s Liberal Democrat Lord Clement-Jones , who is steering the DEB through the Lords, told the house: “This remedy would stop the supply of illegal content by blocking it at source. ... there are several websites, many of which are based outside the UK, which refuse to stop supplying access to illegal content.” Read his full justification.

The astute amongst you may remember that the BPI warned in December about exactly this issue - that much illegal activity occurs via websites, not just P2P services. So the government may be replacing Mandelson’s controversial Clause 17, but it’s replacing it with an idea suggested directly by the music business.

The bill’s spotlight proposal would see ISPs institute one of a range of “technical measures” against customers. To avoid the ethics argument, the government could have added site blocking to the list of measures.

Perhaps the spikiest part of the amendment is this - ISPs would have to pay copyright owners back the cost of their injunction application, thereby incentivising ISPs to block services even before injunctions are set to fly.

So now executive chairman Elio Leoni-Sceti is on his way out; he’s being replaced by Charles Allen, the former CEO of the UK’s top commercial broadcaster ITV (LSE: ITV), on March 31. Allen has chaired the board since January 2009.

EMI, in its announcement, says Leoni-Sceti, who had been CEO of household goods maker Reckitt Benckiser, “has successfully led EMI Music through the first phase of its operational turnaround” - but there’s no explanation for the change, nor what phase two involves. “My job here is now done and it is time for me to move on,” says Leoni-Sceti, who has the cover interview in Management Today.

Indeed, within EMI Group itself, fortunes are looking up - 2008/09 earnings rose 7.4 percent to £1.56 billion, with recorded music (EMI Music) sales up 4.6 percent and music publishing (EMI Music Publishing) up 14.6 percent). The 2009/10 performance is likely to be better, benefitting from Beatles reissues including that Rock Band game.

But Terra Firma last year wrote off 90 percent of the $4.7 billion it spent on EMI in 2007 - ultimately, the label will be on high alert for yet more, wider changes. If Terra Firma loses control of EMI to its financier Citigroup, the bank may yet decide to break up or sell the label.

Leoni-Sceti undid some of the digital moves put in motion prior to his arrival - EMI hired high-profile Cory Ondrejka (Linden Labs) and Doug Merrill (Google) as digital strategy SVP and digital VP, before he bid them goodbye, wiping out digital as a standalone unit, replacing them instead with eight, more junior marketing execs.

Pink Floyd has two beefs, according to some rather bare-bones reporting of Tuesday morning’s initial hearing in London’s High Court…

—PA: “The case concerns how online royalties are to be calculated.”

—And the band also says EMI is breaking their contract by selling individual tracks, unbundled from wider albums.

Aside from that amorphous royalties issue (Bloomberg says “EMI was granted a request to have part of the hearing heard without the media present”), the case illustrates how creative wishes laid down by artists in analogue-era agreements might be trampled over in the online age...

Former EMI band Radiohead, too, complained on both these issues before leaving the label. It was, for many years, creatively opposed to track-by-track downloads, instead preferring whole-album sales, but it’s now relented (indeed, last time around, it even released the individual stem components of songs for fans to remix).

After leaving, in 2008 the band’s Thom Yorke told Wired: “EMI wasn’t giving us any money for digital sales. All the contracts signed in a certain era have none of that stuff. Don’t sign a huge record contract that strips you of all your digital rights, so that when you do sell something on iTunes you get absolutely zero.”

Bloomberg: “Pink Floyd’s contract with EMI says albums are to be sold as a whole with tracks in a specified order and not as singles, Howe said. That should include the band’s music sold online, he said.” But EMI’s lawyer says the stipulation refers to physical, not digital, content.

A court defeat with an accompanying order to back-pay online royalties would be the last thing EMI, with its nightmare financial position, needs.

The music service is today announcing it will be carried by Finnish telco TeliaSonera over its broadband, mobile and IPTV services. But this is really just an extension of the deal it announced in October with the telco’s Swedish subsidiary Telia.

The question everyone’s asking about Spotify right now is: when will it find the U.S. carrier partners that will allow it to launch across the pond, circumventing American label scepticism toward the free-with-ads model… ?

But nevermind America yet - for all the waves and in-roads it’s made so far here in Europe and Scandinavia, Spotify has racked up only two bundled-service deals since launching in October 2008 (the other with 3 UK) - despite pushing hard for premium delivery through services that already having client billing relationships, like ISPs.

Finnish customers will get to use Spotify via TeliaSonera’s IPTV service starting this summer, but so far, a third, fourth or fifth such contract, nor possible deals to take the app on to games consoles, have not been announced. Chinese mobile carriage is likely, however, through Spotify’s investment from Li Ka-Shing, the chair of 3 UK’s parent.

Like the Swedish deal, in today’s Finnish announcement Spotify says it’s given country-wide “exclusivity” to Telia. Telcos are keen on exclusivity because Spotify has become so buzzy in Scandinavia. This risks leaving Spotify without the ability to make its service truly ubiquitous in any one nation...

But, if they didn’t already have them, operators in the UK, for example, are already busy starting their own music services - Sky Songs and Virgin Media’s forthcoming project, rumoured to be called MusicFish, for example - while Mog.com is about to pitch for exactly the same kind of partnerships in the UK this year, all potentially reducing the window for Spotify.

Though it has perhaps attracted more attention, Spotify knows that its free, ad-supported offering will never support the business alone; and that is not the plan. It is an important customer acquisition tool - but why hasn’t Spotify yet signs up any more partners to deliver its premium service? Could it be that ISPs are justifiably replying: “Our customers can already get your free version on our network if they want to”?

Spotify, as it knows, needs to start tipping its income mix farther toward these premium carriage deals, because they are likely to bring in more than ads alone. Talking about music royalties at the FT’s Digital Media & Broadcasting Conference last week, CEO Daniel Ek said: “Predominantly, our deals are on a revenue share - there’s not a fixed cost - it’s based on what we get in.” That means labels only benefit from the tunes they license to Spotify if Spotify can itself make plenty of money (no wonder U.S. labels are reticent).

But the labels, at least east of New York, can be pretty happy about this, because Spotify is so good at pulling music pirates in to a legal service that has at least a chance of making good money for everyone. “We’re taking pirates, moving them in to a legal service, getting revenue from that and upselling (to premium),” Ek said.

Either way, it’s early days for what is still a startup in the spotlight, so let’s just see...

With this promotion, the 17-year Rhino vet takes responsibility for physical and digital sales, along with developing the global digital sales and promotion strategy for the company’s U.S. catalog. He’ll also be working with Warner Music International affiliates on their digital strategies and catalog efforts. He had been in charge of e-commerce activities in the U.S. and operating the international department. Dorn remains based in LA. “How do we globalize our efforts? It’s easier said than done. We trying to get everybody to row in the same direction.”

Not just for fans: As much as people may enjoy the retrospectives or fan compilations, “We don’t make products to sell to people who were there the first time. Every day there is some kid that discovers Led Zeppelin or The Doors or The Ramones and as far as they’re concerned, that’s new music.”

Expansion potential: “We have repertoires around the world that, because of the physical nature of the business up to now, we haven’t been able to sell everywhere. Now that digital has brought us the opportunity to have the never-ending opportunity of shelf space, it’s a great opportunity.”

New formats: Rhino was first with digital EPs and offered two of the first seven extended LPs for iTunes, How have the LPs worked out? “I’m going to qualify this. The initial launch was very successful. We sold thousands and were very happy.” But the way iTunes is set up, the extended LPs don’t always show ahead of standard, which can cost sales. Rhino has talked about the situation with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and it sounds like a fix is in the works. Dorn added, “I think that the LP is a really important next step in digital product packaging.”

Subscription music friend or foe?: “I think subscription music for us right now is a friend; I don’t look at most things and think foe.” Later he added, “My feeling is that there are a lot of consumers out there who are going to choose various paths. Some are going to spend money or take ownership of things. When they buy and take ownership of it, they’re really satisfied, like the handmade collectibles. They are also going to be people who say ownership is not for me. Our job to figure out how do we monetize these experiences. There are so many different kinds of consumers now.”

Related

• Will Rhino's New 'Digital 45' Find An Audience?
• Warner Music Forms JV With Sinatra Family; New Media A Priority

So Universal, the bravest of the four majors when it comes to licensing such new services, commissioned Ovum to research the area for fellow members of the British Phonographic Industry umbrella group…

Their finding - if the top UK ISPs added bundled music options this year, it would earn them at least £100 million, and as much as £203 million, by 2013, recducing customer churn by 10 percent (£20 million a year) in the process.

But Universal, in pointing this out, is not merely being helpful to the ISPs. The label has been first to license Comes With Music, first to license Sky Songs and first to license Virgin Media’s upcoming unlimited music offering. But its counterparts are slower, and still haven’t mandated Virgin’s bundle - as digital sales plateau after what has been a 30 percent, five-year sales dip, this research looks like an attempt to march fellow labels and other service providers forward to further deals…

—It concludes that ISPs are now a “critical” future music distribution channel.

—ISP-bundled music offerings could make 41 percent of UK digital music revenue, on a “medium adoption scenario”.

—Ovum reckons digital music is a value-add extra that will stop subscribers leaving.

The methodology was interviews and it’s not clear how Ovum got to those millions. What’s missing - consideration for the pricing of any bundled service. But here’s a corroborative finding from last year’s EMR Digital Entertainment Survey, which paidContent:UK helped create:-

The research also found a consumer willingness to pay their ISPs extra bolt-on fees for bundled content. Just over a quarter of respondents would add an extra £25 a month for unlimited music downloads, or £5 a month for 50 tracks; 34 percent would pay £1 for unlimited streaming music.

In hindsight, these higher amounts seem optimistic. But the main point remains - when are labels and ISPs going to agree on terms that allow both to benefit?

BPI tells paidContent:UK: “Our aim here is to get ISPs motivated to develop their own bundled digital services by showing them the positive business case that exists.”

The latest is ivi.ru, a Russian portal that launched at the end of February with 9,000 hours of video content including films and television series, all ad-supported and free to view. Oleg Tumanov, the head of owners Digital Access Holding, even says the site was intentionally created as an “analogue” of Hulu, according to Vedomosti. (via Ria Novosti).

Digital Access is a music portal that used to be owned by Warner Music and Sony (NYSE: SNE) Music, among others, which was sold to ru-net II, a division of the investment firm ru-net Holdings, in February 2009. Digital Access also sells the ads on the site.

The site also streams content from the Russian broadcasts of networks like TNT and MTV. Vedomosti notes that 100 content owners have signed up to the service so far.

Looking at the similarities between Hulu and ivi.ru, it’s surprising to think there haven’t been more companies litigating to protect their web site designs as extensions of their own brands, particularly those companies that ultimately have international ambitions.

Russia has track record…
—The main page for the search engine Yandex, of which ru-net is also a shareholder, owes a lot to Google’s minimalist approach.
—Rutube, on the other hand, doesn’t look like YouTube, but certainly rhymes with it. (The site, owned by the media division of the energy giant Gazprom, is also a video uploading portal).

Maybe it’s hard to win copy-cat cases across international boundaries. Facebook lost a case against StudiVZ in Germany last year, in which it claimed that the site ripped off its look and some of its code. Meanwhile, Groovle.com, a Canadian site that lets users customise their search pages, won a case brought against it by Google (NSDQ: GOOG), when the search giant said Groovle’s domain name was too similar to its own.

The deal also gives Sony a game which has been a major hit on its online PlayStationNetwork. LittleBigPlanet players contribute their own content, including levels, to the game—and as of last month more than two million levels had been built, according to Sony.

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Today, the Peter Gabriel-backed company tells us that one of them is Dailymotion, the France-based online video site. And we can report that the second deal, which will be announced in the next couple of weeks, is with a U.S.-based online video site of a similar size to Dailymotion.

The Dailymotion agreement is a big boost for The Filter. World-wide, the video site has about 66 million monthly visitors, which takes up the number of people using The Filter’s engine up to 86 million every month.

The agreement, which will see The Filter powering recommendations for videos on the site, underscores the push from online video companies to increase users’ “dwell time”, a metric that can then be used to sell against higher ad rates. The move into working with online video companies is an emerging area for The Filter: up to now some of its biggest customers have been music-based services.

The Filter also looks like it is also gearing up to do more in the U.S.: the U.S. customer win with an online video provider, which was confirmed to us by a spokesperson for the company, will come on the heels of its appointment of Doug Merrill, the former CIO of Google (NSDQ: GOOG), to its board of directors in May.

Financial terms of the agreement with Dailymotion were not disclosed. Currently The Filter says it processes some 1 billion API calls per month from all of its white-label customers.

Other companies that The Filter works with include the Music Entertainment division of Sony (NYSE: SNE) (it powers recommendations on MyPlay); online video rental site DVDPost; ThePlatform and Evolver.net, along with We7, the Gabriel-backed music site. The Filter also says it “collaborates” with Nokia (NYSE: NOK), presumably on Nokia Music, although a spokesperson would not confirm this directly.

Related

• Recommendation Site The Filter Adds Ex-Googler Merrill On The White-Label Trail

Video of McQuivey’s session is here.

As Apple often does with download milestones, it gave a prize to the 10 billionth download customer and revealed that the song downloaded was Guess Things Happen That Way by Johnny Cash, a song that dates back to 1958. Given that fans of country music skew older than most music fans (nearly two thirds are over 45), it’s interesting to note the age of the downloader of the billionth app: Connor Mulcahey is 13.

Apple’s music and app stores straddle paid content’s demographic fault line. Apps, a fundamentally interactive experience, are tailor-made for the digital natives, whereas the static 99-cent music download remains wedded to a bygone era. Of course, the kids still like music, but the current digital-music product doesn’t compel them to part with their cash in the way an app does. The simple fact is that apps have far greater monetary value for youth than music does.

Music product innovation is the music industry’s way into the app store. The CD generation still values music, but those customers are becoming the foundation of music sales just when they should be making way for the next generation of music buyers. Indeed, three-quarters of digital music buyers are age 25 and older. So while it’s good news for Apple that it has discovered a way to monetize youth, it does little to help music sales.

Which is the reason why the music industry needs to start a period of unprecedented product innovation, whereby apps become a key channel for music sales. (See this for my take on what 21st-century music products should look like.) Of course, there are plenty of music apps already out there, but few are doing much to create a new music product paradigm.

iPod sales slow, while the iPhone and apps prosper. The final pertinent trend here is the slowing of iPod momentum. The simple fact is that iPod sales are slowing. Thus much of the iTunes music download growth is coming from increasing the average number of downloads per buyer but that has limits, particularly considering the weaker appeal among youth. Meanwhile, iPhone sales are growing at the expense of iPods, and app downloads continue to accelerate with unprecedented pace.

Apple remains the behemoth of digital-music sales, but unless the music industry learns how to make products that Connor Mulcahey will buy, the Apple bandwagon will start to leave it behind.

Mark Mulligan is an analyst at Forrester Research, where he serves, and contributes to the Forrester blog for Consumer Product Strategy professionals.

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—Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 shifted $1 billion worth in copies in the U.S. and Europe alone.

—World Of Warcraft has 11.5 million subscribers paying about £8.99/€12.99 a month - though this is the same number that’s been quoted for about a year now.

Activision Blizzard 2009 revenue of €3 billion is 45.2 percent up from the €2.09 billion Vivendi (EPA: VIV) opened with when Activision and Blizzard merged a year ago, regardless of the industry-wide dip in music game sales like its own Guitar Hero. It’s now forecasting its €484 million 2009 EBITA to reach €600 million in 2010.

Vivendi is putting ActiBlizz ahead of its other divisions but, across the group, EBITA is up 8.8 percent to €5.4 billion on 6.9 percent better revenue of €27.1 billion…

—Universal Music Group: Revenue down 6.2 percent to €4.63 billion and, despite 8.4 percent more digital income. “Very strong growth in online sales tempered by softening demand for mobile products in the United States and Japan.” EBITA down 14.7 percent to €580 million.

—NBC Universal: Vivendi’s share of income from the JV fell from €255 million in 2008 to €178 million, but late last year it agreed to sell its 20 percent stake to GE.

—SFR: Revenue up 7.6 percent to €12.4 billion at the French telco on 33 percent more mobile internet income due to data offers. 670,000 iPhones sold April-December.

—Canal+: Revenue stable at €4.5 billion at the TV operator. Churn still high at 12.3 percent, but reduced, and average-customer revenue is growing thanks to multi-platform delivery.

Vivendi is setting aside €550 million to pay estimated damages in a U.S. case brought by shareholders who say they were given misleading information by the group: “We will continue to vigorously defend the company and its current shareholders against the unfounded claims we and they are suffering in light of the class action proceedings in the United States over the last years.”

Release | Slides

The second round closed at around $10 million, with previous investor Menlo Ventures and new investors, European VC firm Balderton Capital splitting the investment, our sources say. The valuation is about double of what it raised $5 million at last summer, so a significant bump up in a short period. Mog is looking for a GM to run the UK service now. The money was raised by media i-bank MESA Global, which has of late been doing a slew of fund raises, along with the usual lineup of M&A deals.

Mog.com had already raised a total $12.5 million from Menlo Ventures, Simon Equity, Universal Music Group and Sony Music in the last four years, including $5 million in August.

Last.fm has been amongst the leaders for a social music experience but doesn’t offer on-demand, Spotify has a fantastic on-demand experience but has little social experience - but Mog.com now has elements of both. Though it originated as a place for members (Moggers) to blog about music they like, in December it added All Access, an on-demand music subscription costing $5 a month.

CEO David Hyman spoke to our UK editor Robert Andrews last month at Midem (prior to the close of this funding), and wouldn’t detail take-up of its newly launched service, but a subscription that cheap could prove popular in UK. Spotify’s subscription costs £9.99 a month (for ad-free or mobile) in UK, and Hyman said: “We’ll be much cheaper than that. We don’t have to offset the burden of haemmorhaging per-track costs.”

Last.fm has not been successful in the U.S., despite being bought by CBS (NYSE: CBS), and the talk is that U.S. labels are adamant they will sanction only Spotify’s premium service, not the free, ad-supported offering. Like them, Hyman will be challenged to launch a service from scratch across the pond - but he was withering in his assessment of each…

—Spotify: “We’d like to do free, but the model doesn’t work - imeem just went out of business - the services are haemmorhaging money. The labels won’t let them continue to do free. Contrary to what you read, I don’t think you’ll be seeing that (free Spotify) in the States at all. Free’s cool, free’s like crack.” Could Mog.com partner with Spotify? “I don’t know why we’d want to. They’re losing a lot of money. You can do free, but that’s the easy thing, almost the booby prize.”

—Last.fm: “Last.fm never gave you the music” (it has playable tracks but, like Pandora, it’s a radio, not an on-demand, offering). “Once they got acquired by CBS, they haven’t done anything. It was cool back in the day.”

Unlike either of those, though, Mog.com has little recognition in the UK and will need to build its brand there.

The market is getting increasingly crowded for subscription music services, with the above, Sky Songs, Virgin Media’s forthcoming service, We7, upcoming Rdio and others all taking advantage of labels’ increasing embrace of legal digital services to launch their own version. The idea of unlimited downloads for a monthly tariff could challenge the a la carte download model pioneered, and still led, by iTunes Store - but many expect Apple, eventually, to launch a subscription package of its own.

Update: Balderton later confirmed its investment Friday morning, saying UK launch will come “by the end of the second quarter of this year, with a comprehensive catalog of music of approximately seven million songs”. It said 17 percent of free-trial users of Mog.com’s All Access service converted to paying for it.

Related

• MOG.com Inks Deals With Majors; Streaming Service To Launch 'Before Thanksgiving'
• Music Blog Network MOG Raises $5 Million; Will New Streaming Service Launch?

The music service is making a song and dance about an “exclusive” new Jimi Hendrix video - it’s first ever video foray - that’s only available to its free users.

Spotify announced its pleasure at bagging a “world exclusive” on the video - but Twitter filled up with depressed onlookers, perceiving Spotify has launched a new video service, scratching their heads that they couldn’t see it.

But Tweeters, chillax - the video, which appears on the Home page for free Spotify users, is a one-off paid ad placement by Sony (NYSE: SNE) Music for the forthcoming new Hendrix album, Valleys Of Neptune - and paying customers don’t see ads.

What’s more, premium customers will get an exclusive five-day window on the album when it drops on March 4. In this sense, the free video drives sign-ups to the paid service.

Just as Last.fm now has animated ad spots, a video is a perfectly acceptable ad format for Spotify to try as it looks for as many income sources as possible, and as it tries to juice various configurations of free-paid synergy.

In a backward way, the grumbles may be an encouraging sign - everyone complaining they are blocked out is actually a premium subscriber. It riled a small number of paying customers nonetheless…

The takeaway - one man’s promo is another’s exclusive piece of content.

Nor does the Hendrix vid signal a full-scale expansion in to music video. Spotify isn’t ruling a future video upgrade in or out at this point - it knows it’s far too young a company to be committing to taking on the likes of Vevo for that segment at this early stage.