Digital Notes: A Metal Label Makes Amends With Spotify

By BEN SISARIO

When Spotify came to the United States last year, not everyone in the music business was pleased with its economics. But slowly there has been a détente.

From the beginning, some artists and record companies have worried that Spotify's royalty system, in which fractions of  a penny are paid each time a song is streamed, would cannibalize more profitable download sales. Last year, Coldplay and Adele withheld their full albums, and some companies, like the independent metal label Century Media Group, pulled their catalogs entirely.

Announcing its decision least year, Century, whose acts include Andrew W.K., Lacuna Coil and Krisiun, said that Spotify's payment system “accelerates the downward spiral” of the music industry, “which eventually will lead to artists not being able to record music the way it should be recorded.”

There are still some prominent holdouts, like the Black Keys. But lately more and more acts have been shaking hands with Spotify. Coldplay and Adele have both put their full albums up, and on Monday, Century said it was reversing its stance and would license its music to the service.

“We respect that music fans wanted to have instant access to our catalog via Spotify,” Don Robertson, Century's president of North America, said a joint statement with Spotify. “But we also have to consider the rights of our artists. After practicing some due diligence, we're moving ahead confident that both the artist and the fan are being fairly served by this developing platform.”

U.S. Indies Pressure Universal: A few days after the Universal Music Group made sweeping concessions in Europe as part of its $1.9 billion bid to take over EMI, an American group representing independent labels has called the Federal Trade Commission to block the deal on the grounds that no such remedies have been proposed in the United States.

The trade group, the American Association of Independent Music, or A2IM, has made brief statements opposing the merger. But on Monday its president, Rich Bengloff, condemned the deal in strong terms, noting that none of the $440 million in EMI divestments that Universal proposed to the European Commission were for assets in the United States:

With no divestitures or operating remedies proposed for the U.S. - the world's largest music market and home to the vast majority of the technology companies who work with the music community - the negative impact on music consumers and emerging technology companies is clear. Such market concentration will diminish healthy competition, providing one dominant market leader damaging clout in terms of both consumer pricing and the means with which music is made available. The effect on both promotional access and monetization for independent music labels and artists is equally clear.

Universal's proposed divestments represent about a quarter of EMI's annual revenue around the world and two-thirds of its sales in Europe. The European Commission must rule on the deal by Sept. 27; the Federal Trade Commission has given no indication when it would make its decision.

Ben Sisario writes about the music industry. Follow @sisario on Twitter.

Reporter Is Banished From Twitter After Post on NBC\'s Olympics Coverage

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

It all started with a little unbridled Olympic enthusiasm. Guy Adams, a Los Angeles-based correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, started posting on Twitter how frustrated he was that NBC was delaying TV coverage of many of the most popular events of the Olympics until prime time.

He wrote, “Am I alone in wondering why NBColympics think its acceptable to pretend this road race is being broadcast live?” He continued with his gripes: “America's left coast forced to watch Olympic ceremony on SIX HOUR time delay. Disgusting money-grabbing by @NBColympics http://t.co/bQxKCCdj”

Then Mr. Adams filed a post to Twitter that was heard throughout social media.

“The man responsible for NBC pretending the Olympics haven't started yet is Gary Zenkel. Tell him what u think!” He ended his post with the work e-mail address of Mr. Zenkel. Soon he was retweeted and some angry followers added the ha shtag #NBCFAIL.

Writing in The Independent, Mr. Adams said he discovered that his account had been suspended “for posting an individual's private information such as private e-mail address.” But he stressed “I do not wish Mr. Zenkel any harm.”

NBC filed a complaint with Twitter; the two media outlets are collaborating to share the reaction of athletes and the public to the Games.

NBC issued a statement saying: “We filed a complaint with Twitter because a user tweeted the personal information of one of our executives. According to Twitter, this is a violation of their privacy policy. Twitter alone levies discipline.”

Mr. Adams declined to comment for this article. A Twitter spokeswoman said the company does not comment on individual users for privacy reasons.

Out of a sense of social-media solidarity, many on Twitter have been posting Mr. Zenkel's e-mail address.

In his article, Mr. Adams shar ed an e-mail he sent to Rachel Bremer, Twitter's head of European public relations.

“I'm of course happy to abide by Twitter's rules, now and forever,” it reads. “But I don't see how I broke them in this case: I didn't publish a private e-mail address. Just a corporate one, which is widely available to anyone with access to Google, and is identical [in form] to one that all of the tens of thousands of NBC Universal employees share.”

Archie Bland, deputy editor of The Independent, wrote Monday afternoon that under those rules, Justin Bieber should also no longer be allowed on Twitter. Mr. Bieber recently briefly posted the phone number of someone who he said had hacked his friend's account.

Jonah Lehrer Resigns From New Yorker After Making Up Dylan Quotes for His Book

By JULIE BOSMAN

Jonah Lehrer, the staff writer for The New Yorker who apologized in June for recycling his previous work in articles, blogs and his bestselling book “Imagine,” resigned from the magazine, he said in a statement.

Mr. Lehrer faced new questions about his work on Monday in an article in the online magazine Tablet that reported that he had admitted to fabricating quotes from Bob Dylan in “Imagine,” a nonfiction book published in March by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

“Three weeks ago, I received an email from journalist Michael Moynihan asking about Bob Dylan quotes in my book ‘Imagine,' ” Mr. Lehrer said in a statement. “The quotes in question either did not exist, were unintentional misquotations, or represented improper combinations of previously existing quotes. But I told Mr. Moynihan that they were from archival interview footage provided to me by Dylan's representatives. This was a lie spoken in a momen t of panic. When Mr. Moynihan followed up, I continued to lie, and say things I should not have said.”

“The lies are over now. I understand the gravity of my position. I want to apologize to everyone I have let down, especially my editors and readers. I also owe a sincere apology to Mr. Moynihan. I will do my best to correct the record and ensure that my misquotations and mistakes are fixed. I have resigned my position as staff writer at The New Yorker.”

Michael C. Moynihan, the author of the Tablet article, wrote that he questioned Mr. Lehrer about quotes that appeared in “Imagine” that Mr. Moynihan could not verify.

Lori Glazer, a spokeswoman for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, said the publisher is “exploring all options” regarding the book. For, the publisher will halt shipment of physical copies of the book and is taking the e-book off the market.

Another Reason Why Women May Be Paid Less Than Men

By TARA SIEGEL BERNARD

The fact that women continue to earn less than men has been well documented. And while part of that pay gap can be explained away, there is still a significant piece that cannot.

But new research suggests that the wage gap may potentially be attributed, at least in some part, to the way women are perceived in the workplace: When a managers know they can blame the company's financial woes for their pay decisions, they are likely to give women smaller raises than their male counterparts. And that's because women may be seen as being more readily appeased by such excuses than men.

The findings, which came from an experiment conducted with 184 male and female managers with real-world experience who participated in a simulation, found that managers who worked about 13.5 years, which was the average for managers participating in the study, gave male employees 71 percent of money available f or raises while they only allocated 29 percent of the funds to female employees. The results were even more pronounced among more experienced managers. (The study, “Engendering Inequity? How Social Accounts Create versus Merely Explain Unfavorable Pay Outcomes for Women,” was recently published in the journal Organization Science.)

“Whenever research reveals disparities between men's and women's pay, there is a common retort: The gap must be due to unobserved differences in men's and women's willingness or skill in negotiating pay,” said Maura Belliveau, the study's author, an associate professor at LIU Post's College of Management. “Although some gender differences in negotiation exist, this study reveals a major disadvantage women incur that precedes any negotiation.”

The study's participants acted as managers and had to determine an employee's raise. The managers were told that raise funds were limited because of financial difficulties that were no t yet public. The only factor that differed among the employees was their gender; everything else â€" including their job, level of performance and amount of money available for raises â€" was identical.

When managers could not explain their decision, they gave equal raises to men and women. But when managers could provide an explanation, they paid women less than men - but they also paid these women less than women in another situation where they could not provide them with an explanation for the raise amount. Raises given to men, meanwhile, were the same regardless of whether they could provide a reason or not. The results were consistent for both male and female managers.

By giving 71 percent of available raise money to men, Professor Belliveau pointed out that “managers ensured that men did not need to negotiate to obtain a good raise.

“In contrast, managers' raise decisions put women who performed at the same level as men in a position where they w ould not only need to negotiate to obtain a reasonable raise, but they would have to do so from the starting point of a lowball amount,” she added. “That's an extremely challenging task, even for a skilled negotiator.”

Professor Belliveau also studied why women were given smaller raises when managers had a ready excuse to fall back on. And she said that since women are stereotyped as people who are more focused on “process,” the managers assumed women would feel that they were treated fairly when given an explanation. “Having the opportunity to explain enables managers to think of themselves as treating women fairly from a process perspective,” she said. “So, paradoxically, managers who give women less pay can think that they are treating women well.”

But research shows that managers' perceptions about women aren't rooted in reality. Past research shows that both men and women value fair treatment equally, she said. But the current study found t hat managers' ideas about women's values “loom larger than the objective reality, she added.

Data did not show that managers thought women would be more likely to believe the excuse, be more reasonable about pay constrains, or be less concerned about the size of their raises.

All of this obviously puts women in a tough position, which is why Professor Belliveau said that “managers and human resource professionals need to closely monitor pay data in their organizations to ensure that the burden of low raises is not disproportionately placed on women.”

This is especially important now, she said, since many employers can easily use the current economy as an excuse for tightening the company's purse strings.

\'The Hobbit\' Will Be Told in Three Movies, Peter Jackson Says, Not Two

By MICHAEL CIEPLY

LOS ANGELES - The two Hobbit movies will become three - so said Peter Jackson, their director, Monday morning in a posting on his Facebook page.

“It has been an unexpected journey indeed, and in the words of Professor Tolkien himself, ‘a tale that grew in the telling,' ” wrote Mr. Jackson, who said he will use the three-movie format to “tell more of the tale.”

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” which is the first of what will now be three films based on “The Hobbit,” by J.R.R. Tolkien, remains set for release by Warner Brothers and its New Line Cinema unit, along with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, on Dec. 14.

The second film is currently scheduled for release in December 2013. The third film can be expected in the summer of 2014, Warner said in a statement.

In an appearance earlier this month at the Comic-Con International fan convention, Mr. Jackson explained that some material from the related “Lord of the Rings” cycle, and a small bit of invention that added a stronger feminine presence to Mr. Tolkien's Hobbit story, had expanded its cinematic potential.

Michael Cieply covers the film industry from the Los Angeles bureau.

One Key to Happiness: Let Go of Some Long-Term Goals

By CARL RICHARDS

Carl Richards is a certified financial planner in Park City, Utah, and is the director of investor education at BAM Advisor Services. His book, “The Behavior Gap,” was published this year. His sketches are archived on the Bucks blog.

We've all heard how important it is to set and track goals.

We're encouraged to write them down, tape them to the mirror and review them daily. It's now common to hear people refer to their “bucket lists.” But after setting all those goals, we're often faced with a hard truth: we will not have enough money to reach all our goals.

Not now. Not ever.

It can feel incredibly painful to discover that you spent years expecting to do certain things but ended up being limited by a lack of money. I often refer to this feeling of disappointment as the gap between our expectations and our reality.

For some, this disappointment comes when we real ize that the retirement we planned is no longer an option. Years of working and saving just didn't turn out the way we'd hoped. So it's no surprise that if we spent a decade or two attached to a certain outcome, even delaying life because we're so focused on that outcome, we're really disappointed when it doesn't happen.

A few weeks ago, I spoke with someone about her bucket list. With tears in her eyes, she told me she finally realized that she might not ever have the money to do some of the things on her list.

Yet this same person appeared to live a life that many would consider a dream. She participated in her community and enjoyed meaningful work. Life wasn't bad in any measurable way. But while that's easy to say, it was clear from our conversation that the pain of her unmet expectations was very real.

The question is what do we do about it? Can we avoid it?

I suggest something radical. I believe it's time we let go of outcome-based goal setting and instead focus on the process of living the lives we want right now. Letting go of outcome-based goals can bring us freedom. We can start by:

1. Letting go of expectations.

Just in case life hasn't already shown you otherwise, the world doesn't necessarily owe you anything. Goals are great, and they can help us focus our efforts toward doing and being better. But you need to focus on having them remain goals and not turning them into expectations.

2. Letting go of outcomes.

Focusing on the process is a far better way to set goals. When I wrote my book, I hoped that in some small way it would help people make decisions about money that were more aligned with what is really important to them. My goal wasn't to write a New York Times best-seller but instead to help people. Even starting out with the right intent, I sometimes forgot that goal and instead focused on a specific outcome out of my control. And no surprise, it led to anxiety and often disap pointment.

3. Letting go of worry.

I know how hard it is to stop worrying about money. After all, there are so many money things to worry about. What if it all goes away? What if I can't afford to send my kids to college? It's a hard habit to break, but it doesn't do us any good. Can you think of one single thing that got better because you worried about it? Obviously it's different from sitting down and crafting an action plan to solve a problem. All worrying does is create an uncomfortable rut.

4. Letting go of measuring.

We're competitive. We like to compare ourselves to other people. We love to race to see if we're good enough to win. As I wrote earlier this year, we're all striving for happiness. But we don't have units of happy we can measure. I think in some instances we've substituted measuring money for happiness even though few people have set the explicit goal of having more money than the next person.

5. Letting go of mindless tracki ng.

A bit different from measuring or comparing yourself against others is letting go of tracking every penny in and out. For some people, there's a belief that spending should be painful. And I'm all for tracking your spending habits to learn about yourself and your relationship with money. After doing it for eight years, however, my wife asked me what good it does to know down to the penny how much we spend on gas in a month. In this case you don't want to confuse the process with the goal. The goal isn't to track every penny but to know where your money goes.

Goals can be a great things. We just need to do a better job making sure they don't turn into expectations that leave us disappointed and unhappy.

The Breakfast Meeting: Social Media Complicates the Olympics, and a Digital Focus at Time Inc.

By NOAM COHEN

NBC's reliance on tape delay for the biggest Olympics events may be a time-tested strategy for maximizing the prime-time audience, but in the Tweet-it-now world of social media those frustrated by the practice have a place to complain, Richard Sandomir writes. And complain they have, organizing around the hashtag #NBCFail, and creating fake accounts like NBCDelayed, which has 13,000 followers, with posts like “BREAKING: Jesse Owens wins gold in 100m sprint.” The network can point to its stellar ratings - 40.7 million viewers for the opening ceremony and 28.7 million for the first night of competition Saturday - to argue that it must be doing something right.

• Another defense of tape-delay from NBC is that it is live streaming every event, via nbcolympics.com, Mr. Sandomir writes. And while there have been complaints of losing the stream at particularly important times - the swimming race between Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps on Saturday, for example - the growth in streaming has been notable. On Saturday, the first day of competition, there were 7 million live streams, up from 1.6 million on the comparable day in Beijing. Total videos streamed through Saturday, including highlights and replays, stand at 13.2 million, compared with 5.2 million in Beijing.
• The “Today” show, which lately has been facing extraordinarily close ratings competition from ABC's “Good Morning America,” is getting a much-needed boost from NBC's exclusive rights to the Olympics, Brian Stelter writes. Some would go so far as to see the event as giving “Today” â€" which dominated mornings for some 16 years - as a chance to hit the reset button. But the show's co-hosts are loath to see it that way; after all, part of what morning shows like “Today” are offering is the comfort of the familiar. As one of those co-hosts, Matt Lauer, put it: “Do we look at it as, ‘Boy, we have to make or break it in these two weeks and then go back and be different people than we were before'? Absolutely not. We still have to go back and do the same show we want to do - and were doing before we got here.”
• One clear influence of social media is how athletes can let the public into worlds that normally would have been off-limits. Kevin Love, of the United States men's basketball team, considers himself the team's unofficial photographer, Greg Bishop writes; a favorite shot of his is the “gotem” photograph â€" that is “got ‘em” â€" when he catches teammates as they sleep. Nate McMillan, a former N.B.A. star and an assistant coach of the team, said: “It's reality. That's what everybody wants now. They want reality TV. They want the instant photographs. The cameras are there, in our locker rooms, huddles, interviewing coaches during games. What happens on the bus was once sacred. Now, it's part of what the fans want to see.”
• A sampling of Mr. Love's photog raphy

Laura Lang, the new chief executive of Time Inc., is enlisting for the task insights from her previous job running Digitas, the digital advertising firm. As such, Amy Chozick writes, Ms. Lang views the company not as a magazine publisher but as a branded news and entertainment company. That company, which publishes titles like People, Time and Sports Illustrated, has assets in its readership - print and online magazines reach 130 million unduplicated consumers a month and the publisher has 65 million households in its database - that would be considered a treasure trove in Silicon Valley, Ms. Lang argues.

 

 

Monday Reading: Refinancing More Than Once

By TARA SIEGEL BERNARD

A variety of consumer-focused articles appears daily in The New York Times and on our blogs. Each weekday morning, we gather them together here so you can quickly scan the news that could hit you in your wallet.

Ask.com Heralds a New Focus

By TANZINA VEGA

In the world of search engines, Google's dominance has propelled it to a permanent place as a verb in dictionaries. But another Web site named after a verb wants to own the business of answering questions. On Friday, Ask.com began an advertising campaign with the hope of getting more people to visit the site when they have questions like “What's the best way to make a potato salad?” or “Who killed J.F.K.?”

“People aren't looking for a new search engine,” said Doug Leeds, the chief executive of Ask.com. “They are satisfied with Google.” Mr. Leeds said Google is a place to do research “where you just want a whole bunch of sites that point you in the right direction.”

Ask.com, by contrast, is where users come to get answers to specific questions. “People weren't using us for search,” he said. “They were using us for Q. and A., and we weren't giving it to them.” According to Mr. Leeds, users were typing long-form questions into the Web site 50 percent of the time. The site draws 70 million unique users in the United States a month, he said.

The site, originally called Ask Jeeves, was bought in 2005 by InterActiveCorp for $1.85 billion. But with so many people Googling for information, the company had little choice but to refocus its strategy. “We're kind of like the Rodney Dangerfield of the Internet,” Mr. Leeds said.

In 2010, Ask.com shifted its focus from a search technology business to a question-and-answer business. The new ads, created by the company rather than an agency, began running in movie theaters across the country last Friday. One ad, called “Sense and Sensibility,” features a Victorian lord and lady. When summoned, the man tells the woman, “You may ask me anything,” to which she replies, “How do I jailbreak this smartphone?”

A second ad is a spoof of “Snow White.” The wicked queen begins her question with “Mirro r, mirror on the wall,” but when told that she is the fairest of them all, she stops and asks, “Why doesn't it tickle when you tickle yourself?”

Spin Announces Layoffs and Drops Nov./Dec. Issue

By BEN SISARIO

Two weeks after its takeover by an online media company, Spin magazine's future as a print publication was cast further into doubt on Friday when 11 employees - a third of the staff - were laid off and publication plans for the bimonthly magazine were suspended.

Whether Spin, an alternative music magazine founded in 1985, will disappear in printed form altogether is unclear.

The next issue, dated September/October and featuring the rapper Azealia Banks on the cover, will come out in late August. But according to a statement on Sunday by Spin's new owner, Buzzmedia, there will be no November/December issue while the company figures out what form a printed Spin might take given the magazine's expansion online.
“Buzzmedia and Spin are committed to moving forward with print, but we are still determining exactly how print fits in with Spin's multiple distribution points and growth initiatives,” the statement said.

On Friday, in its second round of major staff changes in a year, Spin dismissed 11 employees, including Steve Kandell, the editor in chief of the print magazine, and Catherine Davis, its managing editor. Twenty-five staff members remain, led by two editors with deep experience at Spin: Charles Aaron, its editorial director, and Caryn Ganz, the online editor in chief.

“In the coming year, we will build upon this core staff by doubling the editorial team,” Buzzmedia said.

Like most music magazines, Spin has struggled with online competition and falling advertising. To compete with online forces like the Web site Pitchfork, Spin introduced an iPad app and beefed up its Web site. In March, it shifted the print edition from monthly to bimonthly publication and lowered the magazine's rate base, the minimum guaranteed circulation, to 350,000 from 450,000.

Buzzmedia operates a portfolio of music and celebrity Web sites including Stereogum, Idolator, Absolu tePunk and one devoted to Kim Kardashian. From the beginning, the company said it wanted to preserve Spin in print - which could help lure blue-chip advertisers - but it has been ambiguous about the format and the frequency of publication.
One possible model that has been discussed by the new owners, according to two people briefed on the company's plans who did not want to jeopardize their jobs by commenting publicly on private meetings, is Grantland, a pop culture Web site from ESPN that also anthologizes some of its writing in quarterly books.

For the time being, Spin is relying on its Web site and other online platforms. But those outlets face challenges, too. Over the last year, Spin.com had an average of 490,000 monthly visitors, about half the audience of Pitchfork (with 971,000) and about one-sixth the audience of Rollingstone.com (2.97 million), according to the Web measurement service comScore.