Tuesday, April 7, 2009

This Week In News




Music Fans Will Buy Songs, Says Head of Free Online Music Site Spotify
Record sales are down, illegal file sharing persists and a whole generation is getting used to enjoying music for free. But Daniel Ek, the man behind Spotify (still not available in the US), the world's fastest growing online music service, is convinced that fans will still pay for songs they love if they are packaged in the right way.
Alexandra Spotting, Guardian UK

CD Baby Payouts Cross 100 Million
Sometimes, simplicity pays, and in the case of CD Baby, artist payouts have now passed $100 million. ... The critical question now is whether avenues like CD Baby can generate serious artist salaries, instead of just impressive aggregated payouts. [FYI, CD Baby founder Derek Sivers is also FMC Board of Directors] Digital Music News

Next Generation iPhone & iPod Touch to offer Low Power & Wireless Radio
The next iterations of the iPhone and iPod Touch are likely to have 802.11n wireless radios inside, offering lower power consumption, longer range and faster data rates. More importantly, it will mean that you can hook your handheld up to your n-enabled home network and not slow everything else down. Wired.com

Is MP3HD the Future of Digital Music?
For all its joys, MP3 is an old format - and it's lossy, which means no matter how high the bitrate you never get a perfect copy of the original audio. Thomson, the firm that helped invent MP3 in the first place, has come up with a solution - MP3HD, and you won't need to bin your existing kit as the file format will still play on normal MP3 players.
Techradar.com

The YouTube DJ Cutting Up Copyright
Kutiman has become an Internet sensation with his mash-up tracks and videos culled from YouTube clips. There is indeed something new about Kutiman's approach to making music: all his songs, and the accompanying videos, have been painstakingly clipped together from YouTube clips of disparate, mostly (defenseless) amateur musicians. YouTube.com

Obama: Stop Filling Administration with RIAA Insiders
Nearly two dozen public interest groups, trade pacts and library groups urged President Barack Obama on Thursday to quit filling his administration with insiders plucked from the Recording Industry Association of America. Groups such as Public Knowledge, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Consumer Electronics Association, and the Wikimedia Foundation and, among others, the American Library Association, are demanding Obama to look outside the content industry when filling up his administration.
Wired.com

Drama on Top of Drama: Ticketmaster Scrutiny Keeps Intensifying
The concert industry's favorite bad guy is now getting pummeled. After a Springsteen-inspired flare-up, the investigatory and legal flurry surrounding Ticketmaster keeps intensifying, across several fronts. [For more info on the proposed Live Nation and Ticketmaster merger, check out our earlier post.] DigitalMusicNews.com

Let the Fans Decide: KISS Practices Touring Democracy…
Why not let the fans decide where a band should tour? That is exactly what KISS is now doing, a novel concept that could reshape live gigging. The band has now announced a partnership with Eventful, specifically for upcoming North American dates. "No matter where the fans say - from stadiums to cornfields - if there are enough votes, KISS will be there," the group declared. DigitalMusicNews.com

D.I.Y & the Death of the Rock Star
The industry has long theorized that the current media landscape is simply unable to create the mega-bands of old, on the order of Guns N' Roses, Kiss, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, or Black Sabbath. Why? DigitalMusicNews.com

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