gHacks technology news » Music Industry

Japan: Mandatory DRM Software In All Mobile Phones To Fight Music Piracy

Martin — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:29:58 +0000

Japanese mobile phone developers, companies and the recording industry of Japan are in talks currently to agree on new anti-piracy measures to fight music piracy in Japan according to the Financial Times. The proposed solution offered by the recording industry suggest digital rights management to be build into every mobile phone sold in Japan. The software would query an Internet server (DRM server) whenever a user would try to play a song to check if the song was purchased legally. It would play if the return would be positive and otherwise refuse to play the song. The proposed system could be launched as early as 2011.

The mobile phone market in Japan is different from that of the rest of the world as Japanese mobile phone companies control the software on the mobile phones meaning it would be very unlikely that these measures, if agreed on, would be introduced in other markets as well.

The article fails to address several difficulties of such a system. The most important ones are the following:

What happens to songs that have been ripped from legally bought CDs? Won’t they be played at all? (this assumes that it is legal in Japan to rip CDs)
What happens if no connection is available currently? (Will it be possible to play songs without net connection?)
Who pays for the traffic that the song checks create?

Please post your opinions in the comments.

Tags: cell phones, drm, japan, mobile phones, music, Music Industry

Free Legal Music Downloads: In China

Martin — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:18:07 +0000

Downloading music is illegal, right? That’s what the Music Industry is telling us all the time. They sue people who download music and do everything in their might to keep up the image that music downloading is a major crime.This is however apparently not true in China where Google struck a deal with major players in the Music Industry – to be precise Universal, EMI, Warner and Sony – to provide free full songs in their search engine. About 350K songs are offered in the beginning. That number is said to rise to 1.1 million songs in the next months alone. The songs will feature both local Chinese artists but also international acts.

The reason for Google is that they are only number two in the search engine market in China. Baidu is first there and offering music downloads as well albeit without a similar deal. The reason why the Music Industry agreed to the deal is simple: Money. The majority of Chinese do not pay for music but download it from the Internet. And so it was decided that sharing some advertising revenue with Google is better than fighting illegal music downloads.

Google is restricting file downloads to Chinese users according to Mashable who were the first to publish the story. The search interface on the other hand is available for everyone.

Definitely an interesting progression especially for Chinese users who can now download music legally while everyone else in the world cannot.

Tags: china, emi, google china, legal music, Music Industry, music-downloads, sony, universal, warner

Walmart To Shut Down DRM Servers

Martin — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 13:29:31 +0000

If anyone is not already convinced that DRM is bad for the customer after seeing major companies like Google, Yahoo or MSN pull the plug on their DRM servers then Walmart’s decision to do the same might convince you finally.

Walmart started selling music back in August 2007. The music was protected by DRM for the first six month after which Walmart decided that the hassle was not worth it. DRM was removed from all songs and users were able to purchase DRM free songs from then on.

The announcement that Walmart would shut down its DRM servers was send by email to all customers who purchased songs protected by DRM from one of the biggest companies in the world. The consequence for the user is dire. It is possible to play the songs on the authorized computer but it will not be possible to burn them or listen to them on a new computer after October 9, the day the servers are shut down.

Walmart is suggesting to burn the music to CD to be able to move them to a new computer. The first thing that is odd about this recommendation is a general observation. DRM was allegedly implemented to prevent the unauthorized copying of protected media. If users are able to burn the media to CD and rip those CDs back to a computer then the system failed miserably. What’s the purpose of protecting files with DRM if anyone can bypass it that easily?

The second odd thing about this is that a company like Walmart is seemingly not capable of providing a better solution to their customers. They simply pull the plug and the customers have to see how they can access their purchased music in the future.

Lastly what happens to customers who would like to re-download a song that they have purchased at the music store? Will they be able to download it again DRM free or will Walmart simply state that the song is no longer available? A commenter at the Boing Boing site mentioned that he tried to download songs that he purchased again from Walmart but was not able to do so because they were no longer available.

The only positive aspect is that another company is getting rid of DRM. The feeling remains though that it has more to do with the complexity of DRM and the additional costs of the servers and support than fulfilling customer demand.

Tags: digital rights management, drm, music, Music Industry, music store, walmart, walmart drm, walmart music

Completely Ridiculous Radiohead Music Experiment

joshua — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:28:56 +0000

Am I alone in thinking these new shock horror reports about Radioheads’ online music experiment are completely ridiculous?

PaidContent today picked up on a story by Big Champaign, a company which monitors file sharing activity. Mashable then joined in with an article entitled “Free wasn’t cheap enough for Radiohead fans” and All things Digital even put up a story about it.

Mashable had this to say on the subject:

“Free isn’t cheap enough for us, apparently. When a band like Radiohead comes out with an album, puts it up on a website for us, and gets more press coverage than just about any album release in recent memory, and says “Hey, pay us for it if you want to,“ we still feel the need to “steal it” off Bittorrent.”

I have no intention of going into the ethics of downloading music, I just found this such a completely pointless report. He continues with this:

“In Rainbows torrent downloads peaked on the first day data was collected, October 27, at 400,000 – what Page and Garland call “a bloody big number”. How big? More than double the top torrent through March and May (Panic At The Disco’s Pretty Odd) got in a whole week (ie. 10 times Panic’s daily average).”

What these reports all seem to forget is that Radiohead is a big band. One of the biggest in the world in fact, but contrast Panic at the Disco is not. Would you expect more people to be interested in Radiohead?

Also most importantly does anyone remember Radiohead’s download server’s crashing due to the amount of demand? Even when it was operating it sure was pretty damn slow to download the album, how does it not make sense that people would just use Bittorrent to get the album.

Considering Radiohead was giving the album for free, you could say it was even beneficial to download from bittorrent seeing as it would save the bandwidth for Radiohead.

I personally would be extremely hesitant to mouth off and tell article just about sums it up perfectly:

“andrew, why don’t you let anyone on the web take your column and post it free, and not get paid by the ft, either…since you love free love and all”

Tags: music, Music Industry, music sales, radiohead, radiohead album

You Are Sharing Files

Martin — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:30:33 +0000

I just send a letter to your ISP telling them that you are sharing files. I did not have to prove my claims because I’m in high standing. Your Internet Service Provider is now sending a DCMA takedown notice / a warning letter / a three-strikes-and-you-are-out letter to the owner of the IP that has been found to sharing files illegally on the Internet.

No, I won’t reveal my methods to you or anyone else. The evidence is solid and you have to take my word for it, and remember, I’m in high standing and trusted. My commercial interests do not play a role, I work thoroughly..

While this could look like a joke it is unfortunately reality in several parts of the world. Last to join the party are users from the United Kingdom who will receive warning letters send from their Internet Service Providers who received the information from the British Phonographic Industry who do not disclose the process of gathering the data in first place.

Scientific studies have shown that the data gathering process of most organizations that send out DMCA notices is flawed and provided access to several methods that explained why. One of the methods was to actively frame other users and they managed to get DCMA takedown notices for one of their network printers to prove the point.

There is definitely a problem with the system if the British Phonographic Industry has the unchallenged might and right to notify the Internet Service Providers of copyright infringements and make them send out warning letters to their customers.

Tags: bpi, file-sharing, Music Industry, riaa, takedown notice, united kingdom, warning letters

Yahoo Does A Microsoft

Martin — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:43:28 +0000

After the fiasco that Microsoft experienced when they made the announcements that they would turn off the MSN Music servers one would have thought that other companies would not follow that lead and would have learned a lesson from it.

Microsoft backpedaled quickly after it became apparent that the public was not that pleased with their decision and decided to keep the servers up and running for another three year period. The huge problem that arises when DRM servers are taken off the Internet is that the verification process will fail which means that users who want to move the music from an old to a new computer – where they had to verify the music again – would realize that they could not do so because of the server being offline.

Yahoo apparently did not pay attention to the media fiasco and decided to close the Yahoo! Music Store and take the DRM servers offline on September 30, 2008.

Yahoo is giving users of their music service the advise to burn the tracks to CD and rip those tracks on the new computer so that they would be able to listen to the music on a new computer as well.

If you needed another reason why DRM is bad then you got it. And it’s not that some small companies decided to turn off their servers, it’s two huge global corporations that decided to do it. (And Google did it as well before with Google Video)

Tags: drm, drm music, google-video, msn music, Music Industry, yahoo music store

Why some ISPs turn against their own customers

Martin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:33:17 +0000

With the recent announcement that Britain’s largest cable Internet Service Provider Virgin Media will start warning its customers, or better the part they suspect to download files without having the proper rights to do so, that they will face prosecution if they do not stop the behavior. Virgin Media calls it educating their customers during a ten week trial campaign but their letters will apparently be accompanied by letters from the British Phonographic Industry that threatens disconnection and court appearance.

Now the interesting question that arises is why they would want to educate their customers. My first assumption would be that they, as a cable provider, want to reduce the average bandwidth usage of their customers in an effort to maximize the profits from their infrastructure. Usually filesharers have a much higher bandwidth demand than the usual Internet user with the exception of video portal junkies maybe.

Reducing the amount of filesharers that are their customers would definitely reduce the bandwidth bill of the ISP. Cable is a shared connection as well which could increase the speed of all customers as well.

The interesting question will be how they will pick the customers that will receive the warnings. Will they actively monitor P2P networks, will they only react when the BPI sends them a list, will they verify those lists ? What about false positives ? Someone who is download music from Jamendo using the Bittorrent protocol. Will he receive a warning as well ? What about secure Usenet connections ? IRC, FTP, file hosts. How the hell will they be able to determine that a file that is being transferred is indeed a copyright violation ? Filenames alone are without doubt not the safest way of determining that. So, how will they do that ?

My second assumption would be that Virgin Media could have some ties with the BPI or a company that is a member of the BPI. I really do not have enough time to research this so if anyone could help me out it would be appreciated.

Tags: bpi, filesharing, isp, Music Industry, P2p, uk, virgin media

Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

Martin — Wed, 28 May 2008 19:59:47 +0000

Can you please hand over all electronic devices that you carry with you, Sir ? I need to check them thoroughly for copyright infringing material, terrorist activity and pornography. Is that a video of you and your wife, wow that looks hot. Is that the new song of Madonna ? Do you have a receipt for it ? No ? Well then we have to destroy the device and you have to pay a fine. This way please, Sir.

I’m feeling like the protagonist in Orwell’s 1984 only that we do not have a though police yet. The so called Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was leaked to the Wikileaks website yesterday which would expand the role of Canadian border guards to search electronic devices for copyright infringing material. This includes searching notebooks, PDAs, mobile phones and mp3 player. I’m not yet sure how someone would be able to judge if a song was copied from an illegal source or legal source to the mp3 player but those that proposed this agreement surely think that this would be possible.

This new agreement is not practicable at all. Besides the problem of identifying copyright infringements in the first place this would also mean a serious delay for everyone travelling to Canada carrying an electronic device. I find it unbelievable that the music and movie industry is pressuring politicians into making such laws and that politicians are giving in to these demands.

Tags: canada, mafia, Music Industry, riaa

Pennywise Reason to Believe Album Free at Myspace

Martin — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:22:56 +0000

There is undoubtedly a trend of releasing music albums for free / for donations / for what individuals are willing to pay on the Internet. The last months were full of stories about bands like Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails who managed to create lots of publicity by using these new distribution methods that would ignore large parts of the recording industry.

Pennywise is the latest band to release a music album for free. Their album Reason to Believe is available at Myspace at a bitrate of 320 kbit/s including the pdf booklet and jpg cover. All that needs to be done is to add the user Textango as a friend at Myspace who will send a message that includes the download link. The music is DRM free.

Textango seems to be a mobile music distributor according to Wikipedia. Pennywise is a Punk-Rock band in case you have not heard of them before, comparable to Bad Religion in many aspects.

The album Reason to Believe will also be sold in stores in Europe and America.

Tags: albums, drm-free, music, Music Industry, nine inch nails, offers, pennywise, radiohead, riaa

Nine Inch Nails’s Music Experiment Successful

Martin — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:56:50 +0000

Radiohead was the first band that used the Internet as their main distribution method for their music and that gave their fans the best price ever for their music by letting the downloaders decide what they would pay. This premiere was not perfect by all means though but it was definitely a step in the right direction.

The second band that created such a stir was the band Nine Inch Nails with the release of their album Ghosts Volumes One though Four. The first nine songs of the album were available freely on the NIN website with lots of extras including digital extras and a 40-paged PDF document.

Three additional packages were on sale that would add value to the free package. The most expensive one was a $300 deluxe release signed by Trent Reznor that was limited to 2500 copies. That limited release sold out after a couple of days which alone marks this experiment an success.

It should also be noted that the full release has been released under Creative Commons and can be downloaded from various Bittorrent sites throughout the Internet.

Tags: music, Music Industry, nine inch nails, radiohead

How users are being tracked on P2P networks

Martin — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 15:15:50 +0000

Have you ever asked yourself how it is possible that users are tracked over months in P2P networks although their IP address is changing regularly ? We only hear reports about session based user identifications. Session based means that shared files of this session are analyzed and recorded opposed to tracking a user over months.

Common sense tells us that the IP address is the major information needed to identify a user, but there are other information available to other users of P2P networks that can be used to track users even if the IP address changes. Those are, among other data the software and version used as well as the MAC address of the computer.

These two values are used to generate a hash that identifies the user even if his IP changes because the IP is not relevant for tracking users over a period of time. It is still recorded though with additional information like shared files, date and time, servers and all other information available.

It could be that even more information are used to calculate the hash value. Everything that is not changed regularly could be possible. The hash value of a new user is then compared to a database table that contains the hash values of users that have been using the P2P network and linked if a match is found.

Tags: hash, Music Industry, P2p, riaa

RIAA is becoming desperate

Martin — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 18:50:39 +0000

In a move that can only be described as desperate the RIAA, or better Cary Sherman, its President, suggested at the State of the Net Conference to bundle filters that check for copyrighted data with programs that would benefit the user such as antivirus applications to counter the problem with encryption that they are currently facing. He did not stop there though and suggested that the ISP would monitor, ehm, filter, the user as well through the likes of the modem for instance.

So, what he suggests is that everyone has to use filters on their computers to prevent copyrighted material from being listened to and traded. He knows that users would not want that kind of filtering on their computers but he thinks that they would accept it if the benefits would outweigh that disadvantage.

Basically he wants that everyone helps them to filter every user on earth to prevent unauthorized listening and spreading of copyrighted music. Here are some quotes taken directly from the video..

Filters can be put in the applications for example. You know, one could have a filter on the end user’s computer that would actually eliminate any benefit from…encryption because if you want to hear it, you’d have to decrypt it, and at that point the filter could work.

When people start moving to encryption and so on, they know that they are engaging in illegal conduct..

via Public Knowledge

Tags: cary sherman, Music Industry, riaa

Need Another Reason why DRM is bad ? Here it is !

Martin — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 10:22:15 +0000

I always asked myself what the main reason for DRM – digital rights media – really is. It – maybe – can be used to stop legit buyers from giving a song to their friends or relatives but it surely does not step the spreading of music at all. Music pirates do get the music before any shop has them in their inventory which in turn means that everyone with a little bit of knowledge about P2P services can get their hands on the music.

If it’s not about preventing the music from being spread, what is it about then ? That’s the question. My thoughts are that someone sold DRM to the CEOs and Executives and that they, with their limited technical understanding thought that it would prevent music piracy. In the end, only the consumers who purchase music are screwed, as you can see in this fine example.

Sony decided to close down their Connect music store that tried to push once again a proprietary format. They miserably failed and that is probably the main reason for the closure. The problem for consumers however is that the music that they purchased from that store had DRM in it.

Don’t worry, the music will play just fine after the store closes down, that is, unless you happen to change your computer hardware. Because at this point, it will stop playing. Ain’t that great ? You bought music thinking that you could enjoy it for the rest of your life only to find out that it won’t play if you change computer hardware or use a new computer.

I’m not sure how you see this but I think that this is absolutely unacceptable. If they want to use DRM they have to make sure that music will play even if they decided to close down their store or change their policy or whatever. My advice: Don’t buy music with DRM ever.

Closing lines are from the Download Squad article, very fitting I think:

DRM does not prevent piracy. DRM merely shafts loyal, paying customers who choose to legitimately obtain their media online

Tags: drm, music, Music Industry, sony

Why I wont be using Qtrax

Martin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:27:08 +0000

Qtrax hype has reached a climax yesterday with reviews on many blogs and websites. The funny thing about this is that the client was not officially available yet and either all those reviewers had beta access or were simply using press material issued by Qtrax to review the service. Well, the client is available now but before I look at it I would like to describe Qtrax in a few words.

Qtrax offers a software based on Mozilla Songbird that is supposed to offer millions of free and legal music downloads using Peer to Peer technologies. There was some confusion behind the scenes because Qtrax confirmed that they had agreements with all four major Music Industry players while all four denied those agreements, now what do you make of this ? If they don’t know if there is an agreement or not how are we going to find out if the service is legit or not ?

The Qtrax client was available for download and I decided to give it a sneak peak. Some users who were using Songbird as well were reporting problems with their music library afterwards, so take care. The software has a 0.2 beta stamp but looks solid after installing. Everything is a bit slow here and there and the registration is not working in the player at all, I did get a blank Javascript window whenever I tried to register an account.

I’m not sure if you do need an account because there are no information whatsoever about the service, just some advertising on the homepage. I was able to register on the website directly by copying the link from the Qtrax player into the address bar of Firefox.

Registration was kinda smooth afterwards, you have to enter the usual information such as email address, username and birthday. The email has to be verified of course. The problem was that the email they send never arrived and that a second registration attempt lead to a Oops ! Requested resource is not available message. They seem to have server issues at the moment.

The player looks solid but is kinda slow and filled with advertisement. Downloads are not working yet, no information when this will be the case. You can add your music to the player but I’m not that sure what they are going to do with it. Offer it to other users of the service ? It’s P2P after all ?

I don’t really mind the server problems, many startups face those. That’s not the reason why I will not take a second look at Qtrax. The main reason is that I simply do not need that service. Why would I want to download music with DRM that I can only play in a few devices, if any. There is zero information about compatibility on their website.

Since I can’t download music right now and I can’t register either I can’t give you information about the music that you download. Are you forced to listen to it in the player (most likely) because of the advertisement ?

If I want to discover music I use a service like Last.fm instead. If I want to listen to music I use Internet Radio stations which I can legally record. I really can’t see a reason for using Qtrax other than using it for the sake of using a somewhat legal P2P software and that reason is simply not good enough.

Tags: music, Music Industry, music player, P2p, qtrax

Seeqpod gets sued for.. yeah for what actually ?

Martin — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 10:45:18 +0000

Seeqpod is a mp3 search engine. You type in a song name, artist or any other information you got and Seeqpod displays results found on other Internet sites. Much like Google does but only for music and with the difference that a player is available on the result page that can play videos and music found that way.

Registered users can save the songs in playlists to play them again at a later time, there is no open way to download the music found directly.

Warner Bros. Records has decided to sue Seeqpod, an unlawful music service that directly engages in, encourages, and facilitates the mass infringement of Plaintiffs’ and other intellectual property owners’ copyrighted works.

Seeqpod on the other hand claims that they do not host files on their own server, merely linking to those files just like any other search engine which would mean that they would be protected under the DMCA’s “safe harbor” provision.

If you perform a search on Seeqpod today you will only get search results from websites like Youtube and Wikipedia. It seems that they filter all other search results at the moment. The Podcrawler is still showing newly found mp3 files directly and those can be played, but the search is not finding them anymore.

What do you think, are they infringing copyright ? If you think they do why ? If you don’t think they do, why ?

Tags: mp3, mp3-search, music, Music Industry, seeqpod

40 years of life and crime in the Music Biz

Martin — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:05:10 +0000

Yogi send me an interesting article published at the Guardian Online written by Simon Napier-Bell who has been a part of the Music Industry for over forty years. In it he takes a look back at the beginning of his career, how the Music Industry evolved in the wrong direction to finally experience today’s meltdown.

I really enjoyed reading the article, how all those small record companies were bought by the majors, how artists had to sign deals that put them at a serious disadvantage if they wanted to sell records, how 2/3 of all Radio stations in the United States were controlled to only play music that was sanctioned and so on.

He is describing the changes that take place these days, that artists sign up at independent labels that give them better contracts and more rights. Wonderful article, really worth a read but be prepared, it’s a long one.

But out of every 10 signed nine will fail. A contract with a major record company was always a 90 per cent guarantee of failure. In the boardroom the talk was never of music, only of units sold. Artists were never the product; the product was discs – 10 cents’ worth of vinyl selling for $10 – 10,000 per cent profit – the highest mark-up in all of retail marketing. Artists were simply an ingredient, without even the basic rights of employees.

Imagine the outcry if people working in a factory were told that the cost of the products they were making would be deducted from their wages, which anyway would only be paid if the company managed to sell the products. Or that they would have to work for the company for a minimum of 10 years and, at the company’s discretion, could be transferred to any other company at any time.

Tags: labels, Music Industry, riaa

Label add voice-overs to review CDs

Martin — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 10:57:28 +0000

The album Ever Changing Times by Steve Lukather got a 2.2 out of 10 over at Komodo Rock which is one of the lowest scores ever. The reason why the album got that bad rating ? No, it’s not the music, the lyrics, the artwork. It’s a new form of protection to avoid leaks of the album to the Internet.

Frontier Records, the recording company, added voice overs to all songs on the record but two. Each song seems to have three low quality voice overs to stop piracy and Internet uploading. His problem now was that he could not review the music properly because of the annoying voice overs.

The album itself, at least the two tracks that he was able to listen to without interference, was superb according to his article. Trying to stop leaks in the distribution chain is one thing but doing it in a way that makes it impossible for some people to do their job is an entirely different one.

So what went wrong? Well that would be the dodgy Italian voice over that the label, Frontiers Records, have added over all bar two tracks on this album, supposedly to stop piracy and internet uploading. Will it stop that? Does anyone honestly believe it will? Regardless, this is not the way to do things, because as a reviewer I have to review what is put in front of me, what my ears hear, no what I want them to hear. What I am listening to here is an album that can best be described as perhaps the Mona Lisa after a 2 year old covered in chocolate has crawled all over it. Yes it might once have been a great painting, and yes you can still see that greatness, but really all you can see now is little chocolate hand prints.

via Torrentfreak

Tags: cds, frontier labels, music, Music Industry, voice overs

Music Industry Thoughts

Martin — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 08:47:23 +0000

I could not sleep well yesterday evening because I was thinking about the Music Industry which was directly related to the article I wrote on that day. I was to tired to pen it down but I would like to try and recap my thoughts. We all know that album sales are down and that it will most likely stay that way. I thought about the reasons for this and came up with the following.

The last big innovation for the Music Industry was the CD and that is where they are stuck with. They cling on that CD no matter what and fail to realize that there another revolution and a shift that has happened in the last years. It’s called digital music. They do not want to accept that digital music will be the successor of the CD.

And digital music has it’s own laws that you have to cope with. You can’t just copy the marketing and business models that worked so well with the CD to digital music. Not working for several reasons. First is all digital music can be downloaded from the Internet without paying a cent.

That’s a major competitor to online sales. Instead of fighting it they should find ways to compete with it and make their digital music more attractive. It is just not explainable why a digital download costs almost as much as a CD that you would purchase in store.

Second there are lots of sources for free music on the Internet. You can listen to Internet Radio which is probably the only source that is also available in the CD world. But, the Internet offers so much more and everything is just a click away.

You get personalized portals like Last.fm where you can listen to any artist known to mankind, you can download free albums from sites like Jamendo which have some incredible works there, you can listen to personalized Internet Radio with Pandora, you can listen to all the music and view the videos on Youtube, you can rip most of the music without much efforts..

All of this is competition and the Music Industry has to face the facts. They can’t just ignore what is happening and hope for the best. It’s adapt or die in my opinion.

Tags: mp3, music, Music Industry, riaa

Rumor: Apple launching Record Label with Jay-Z

Martin — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 09:10:49 +0000

So, what do we make of this ? The rumor is that Apple is launching a record label together with Jay-Z according to BSG who say they have confirmed it from a high-up person attached to Jay-Z. We do not have many details as of yet but we can make some assumptions. The deal makes perfectly sense if you consider that Apple already has a very popular distribution model in place which would profit the most from artists that sign under the new label.

I think they will make the records iTunes exclusive on the Internet but sell CDs in stores as well. Correct me if I’m wrong but Apple would be the only music label, a big one that is, that would have a working online distribution model in place. All the other majors depend on other websites to sell their digital music.

This would be in my opinion a huge advantage for Apple. It could also proof worthwhile for the artists because Apple would be more flexible concerning artists cuts because they would own production and distribution thus eliminating the middlemen who are the Record Companies.

We should however wait until we get more details before we begin praising Apple for the move, because it could very well be that Apple is only replacing the Record Companies in a sector which would not be beneficial for artists and consumers alike.

Tags: apple, itunes, jay-z, Music Industry

Christmas CD Sales are down 20% compared to last year

Martin — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 09:33:18 +0000

Ars Technica are reporting that CD sales this Christmas, that is the period between Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve, are down 20% compared to last year which means that 21.4 million CDs have been sold less than the previous year. This looks serious but is it ? We have to take a look at overall earnings to make a fair judgment.

It is not a secret that online sales are on the rise and are highly profitable and that especially the games sector is seeing a huge rise in sales. I unfortunately do not have numbers for the games and movies sector and online music sales but I suspect if you take everything into account it will even out more or less.

The RIAA will surely whine about pirates once again and fail to see the obvious. I can only speak to myself but I did probably buy three or four albums in the last six years. My main reason is that there are not many releases that please my ear. The charts are dominated by one hit wonders and bands that reunite again to make just another album.

I prefer to listen to Internet radio when I work on my computer and would seriously pay a small amount of money for it. I do not purchase music at iTunes or similar stores because I do not like their pricing structure that much. It is to expensive in my opinion.

I prefer to download music from free sites like Jamendo and reward the artists directly. You will be surprised at the quality of some of the releases at Jamendo.

I did buy more DVDs and Games in that time though. I’d say I roughly bought 50 DVDs in the last two years and maybe 30 games. That’s where my money is going theses days and I suspect that many users are doing the same.

Did you buy music the last years ? Can you think of other reasons why the sales did drop that much ?

Tags: cd, Music Industry, riaa

gHacks technology news » Music Industry

Japan: Mandatory DRM Software In All Mobile Phones To Fight Music Piracy

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