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.

Categories: Music and Video, Music Industry

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.

Categories: Music and Video, Music Industry

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.

Categories: Music Industry

Well, not really. They do sue Usenet.com though because of their service that “sells access to content that includes millions of unauthorized music files” which is exactly what Internet Providers are doing. They give you access to the Internet and it is up to you, the user, what he is doing there.

Categories: Music Industry

Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Oasis, Jamiroquai and even Madonna have something in common. They all decided to turn their backs on the Music Industry and either market their albums directly or – in the case of Madonna – use a company that is not related to the Music Industry.

Categories: Music and Video, Music Industry

The first thing that came to my mind when I read “Attempted copyright infringement” was the term thought crime. It seems that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is pressing the U.S. Congress to enact a sweeping intellectual-property bill that would increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including “attempts” to commit piracy.

Categories: Knowledge, The Web

Did you know that you could get into really big trouble if you post the code 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 on your website ? It is very likely that a takedown notice will be send to the owner of the website as soon as the RIAA, the AACS or some of their lawyers find your website. You might be wondering why they are making such a big deal about this code which only some users might identify as the code to rule them all.. aka the processing key that unlocks the content of every HD-DVD available up to this point.

Categories: Cool, Entertainment

NiN – Nine Inch Nails – added a new announcement on their website stating: “As a reward for stealing Year Zero, We’ve prepared the next batch of multitrack audio files for you to download”. Beneath the announcement are links to three of their songs, Capital G, My Violent Heart and Me, I’m not in Garageband / Logic Format for the Macintosh and a generic format for other applications. The interesting aspect of the generic format is that the links are actually torrent files that point to the Piratebay.

Categories: Music and Video, Music Industry, P2p

Money makes the world go round. I tried to remain true to myself for a very long time but after some initial contacts with Mr. Shepherd from the London office and the money they offered I could no longer reject the offer. I’m therefor announcing that the RIAA has purchased my blog, my domain and my expertise which will now be turned in favor of digital rights management against those unwilling customers who just can’t see what is good for them.

Categories: ghacks