The Big Picture - Macro Perspective on the Capital Markets, Economy, Technology, and Digital Media

NYT:

“Rdio and similar start-ups are reinventing a concept pioneered earlier this decade by Rhapsody, a service majority-owned by RealNetworks, and the tamed version of Napster, now owned by Best Buy. A few hundred thousand Rhapsody and Napster subscribers pay monthly fees of around $15 for the right to stream an unlimited number of songs, at any time, from their PCs and mobile devices.

But with modest membership growth at best, neither service has managed to challenge iTunes, with its many millions of users — or enticed music lovers from pirating music. Moreover, Yahoo, AOL and MTV Networks have abandoned their own music subscription efforts.”

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Here is my (obvious) question:

Will any subscription based music service be able to find an audience if the songs cannot be transferred to an iPod?

The next question is, can they get the labels to approve that? If they can, will they be able to make any money doing it?

Here are the various players:

Rdio
Spotify
Imeem
Mog
Orchard
Ioda
Pandora
Rhapsody

Reader suggestions:

Grooveshark
Lala
emusic
Live365

I have no preferences with these — I occasionally use Pandora (but I am not a convert yet)  Mog looks interesting.

Anyone have much insight into these?

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Source:
Still Hoping to Sell Music by the Month
BRAD STONE
NYT, 10/14/09
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/technology/internet/14music.html

investing in real estate, budgeting

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Source:
2nd Quarter 2009 Economic Commentary and Outlook
Andrew Horowitz, CFP
Kevin Hoffmann
http://www.horowitzandcompany.com/

Once again, Ron Griess of The Chart Store:

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This year’s Top 20 companies, with rank, revenues and profits, +/- (in millions) are:

1. Exxon Mobil (442,851.0; 45,220.0)
2. Wal-Mart Stores (405,607.0; 13,400.0)
3. Chevron (263,159.0; 23,931.0)
4. ConocoPhillips (230,764.0; -16,998.0)
5. General Electric (183,207.0; 17,410.0)
6. General Motors (148,979.0; -30,860.0)
7. Ford Motor (146,277.0; -14,672.0)
8. AT&T (124,028.0; 12,867.0)
9. Hewlett-Packard (118,364.0; 8,329.0)
10. Valero Energy (118,298.0; -1,131.0)
11. Bank of America Corp. (113,106.0; 4,008.0)
12. Citigroup (112,372.0; -27,684.0)
13. Berkshire Hathaway (107,786.0; 4,994.0)
14. International Business Machines (103,630.0; 12,334.0)
15. McKesson (101,703.0; 990.0)
16. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (101,491.0; 5,605.0)
17. Verizon Communications (97,354.0; 6,428.0)
18. Cardinal Health (91,091.4; 1,300.6)
19. CVS Caremark (87,471.9; 3,212.1)
20. Procter & Gamble (83,503.0; 12,075.0)

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Source:
2008 “Worst Year” In Fortune 500 History
April 19, 2009
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/19/sunday/main4954725.shtml

Chart of the Day:

Alcoa officially kicked off earnings season Tuesday after the close. Alcoa reported a loss of $497 million in the first quarter. For some perspective into the current earnings environment, today’s chart compares S&P 500 earnings performance during the current economic recession (solid red line) to that of the last recession (dashed gold line) and the average recession from 1936-2006 (dashed blue line). As today’s chart illustrates, the current decline in earnings is several orders of magnitude greater than the average decline during a recession. The current decline is also more severe than what was the most severe earnings decline on record – the decline that began in 2001 (gold dashed line).

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The April oversight report for COP is entitled Assessing Treasury’s Strategy: Six Months of TARP. In this report, COP offers a preliminary look at Treasury’s strategy and offers a comparative analysis of previous efforts to combat banking crises in the past.
Over the last six months, Treasury has spent or committed $590.4 billion of the TARP funds. Treasury has also relied heavily on the use of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet which has expanded by more than $1.5 trillion (not including expected TALF loans) in conjunction with the financial stabilization activities it has undertaken beyond its monetary policy operations. This has allowed Treasury to leverage TARP funds well beyond the funds appropriated by Congress.

The total value of all direct spending, loans and guarantees provided to date in conjunction with the financial stability efforts (including those of the FDIC as well as the Treasury and the Federal Reserve) now exceeds $4 trillion. This report reviews in considerable detail specific criteria for evaluating the impact of these programs on financial markets.

-Assessing Treasury’s Strategy: Six Months of TARP

Assessing Treasury’s Strategy: Six Months of TARP Cop 040709 Report

Sadly amusing:

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via Jesse’s Amercain Cafe

Interesting street art in NY located at Broome & Bowery:

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Thanks, David

We previously looked at a Billion vs 1,000 Million; This is a nice example of relative size of numbers:

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via NYT