What will Hilco Consumer Capital do now that it has iconic music retailer HMV in its hands?

The company, which has previously acquired several other struggling brands like Polaroid, Borders and Linen 'n' Things, recently took over the bankrupt firm, paying off its £176m ($277.45 million) in debt to Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland.

The long-enduring HMV chain has 240 stores in Britain, Ireland, Singapore and Hong Kong, with about 4,000 employees in all. (In 2011, Hilco took in HMV's Canadian operations.) Its struggles come after Blockbuster, Tower Records and other once-dominant music and video retailers have declined or died off as digital delivery and online ordering continues surged.

Hilco is supported by media companies like Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Universal Music and Warner Music, all of which will likely play a big part in the next step. Retail-Digital.com reports that those companies “have offered to cut the price of DVDs and CDS and are even considering offering the retailer better credit terms.” That could soon mean good deals for consumers.

Google Music is now live to the public, with Google+ integration and a library of 8 million songs (soon to be 13 million) via the Android market. Google's cloud-based online music store, which was announced as a beta service in May, will compete for digital downloads with Apple's iTunes and Amazon's growing library of online music. It also challenges Apple's music dominance by serving the 200 million estimated Android phone users just in the U.S.

Google commented in a blog post, "Google Music is about discovering, purchasing, sharing and enjoying digital music in new, innovative and personalized ways." It's launching with music from Universal Music Group, EMI Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Merlin Network — but no deal has been reached (so far) with Warner Music Group, whose catalog represents about 20% of the world's music inventory.Continue reading...

For a band that played its first gig at one of Ken Kesey’s infamous acid tests in the Bay Area in 1965 and disbanded in 1995 following the death of Jerry Garcia, getting involved with licensing and marketing can seem like kind of dealing with evil. But the Grateful Dead brand is stronger than ever, thanks to thoughtful licensing deals for on-brand products and selective lending of the band's vast catalog to films and television.

The change came about last September when Mark Pinkus, SVP of Grateful Dead Properties at Warner Music Group's Rhino Entertainment, was put in charge of merchandising and licensing Grateful Dead products, according to the Los Angeles Times. "The band wants to turn on that 18- to 25-year-old audience," Pinkus told the Times.

As a result, the “band's music has appeared in at least four movies since April, and over the last several months, the number of licensees has increased 20%, including new deals with Burton snowboards, Dregs Skateboards and Wines That Rock,” the Times notes.Continue reading...

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