Chad’s News

Buying music from the iTunes Store has taken a turn for the better. First, all songs will be DRM-free. Existing libraries can be upgraded for 30¢ per song. The music files will still be in Apple’s AAC format but can be converted to MP3 by right-clicking on the song in iTunes. Second, there’s a new pricing system, with three price points: 69¢, 99¢, and $1.29. I’m assuming that popular new releases will be the highest, while older, library songs will be the lowest. The majority of songs are DRM-free right now, with the remainder switching over by the end of March. The new pricing scheme will take effect in April.

Link: http://www.apple.com/…
(via Lifehacker)

Atlantic Records is the first major music label to have more than half of its revenue come from digital sales (e.g., iTunes, mp3s, ring tones, etc.).

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/…
(via Slashdot)

For years, musicians have been trying to duplicate the initial guitar chord of the Beatles’ song, “A Hard Day’s Night” (listen here). Turns out that it’s not possible to do this using only guitars, because the chord includes a note from a piano. I found it funny that the mathematical operation mentioned in the article—a Fourier transform—is something every engineering student learns about in his/her first year or two of college.

Link: http://www.noiseaddicts.com/…
(via digg)

The general consumer probably doesn’t know that sellers of DRM-protected music have to actively maintain DRM management servers for the rest of eternity or else the digital music files will become unplayable. When a seller decides to leave the business, it’s not very long before executives wonder if running expensive DRM servers is really going to enhance shareholder value, especially since the servers no longer have any effect on revenue.

Let me share my own experience. About a decade ago, I purchased a nifty program named MusicMatch Jukebox. I mainly used it to rip or burn CDs. But it also had a music player and, rather than having one program to rip CDs and one to listen to the music, I just used MusicMatch for both. Over the years, MusicMatch started selling music via its player, and I eventually started buying tracks. Sure I was constrained to one music player and a few portable music devices, but I typically listen to songs via my computer. In all I bought about 50 songs. Then in 2007, MusicMatch was purchased by Yahoo!, and I was forced to migrate to the Yahoo! music player in order to listen to my songs. I didn’t like Yahoo’s player, and I finally decided to cut my losses and start over with iTunes (I’d had a hard-drive crash and bought an iPod in the interim). The story ended there for me, but it continued for others. Earlier this year, Yahoo! Music announced its decision to shut down its DRM servers, effective tomorrow. Songs purchased from MusicMatch will still play, but they cannot be transferred to other computers or devices, and they won’t survive a Windows install. So at some point they will become unplayable. [See update at end of article.] The recommended method of keeping protected songs is to burn them to CD and then re-rip them as mp3 files. But if you do this, you’re taking a song that has already lost some of its quality due to compression and then losing even more quality by re-compressing it. This is not a satisfactory solution.

Here is what I do. When I want to purchase a music track, I first go to amazon.com. Amazon sells non-protected songs for about a dollar apiece. If I can’t find it there, I go to the iTunes store. I cannot conceive that Apple will ever shut down its DRM management system, because it’s sold billions of songs. Should Apple attempt to do such a thing, the customer outrage would be of epic proportions. Sure, it restricts me to the iTunes player and iPods/iPhones, but I’m okay with that.

Link: http://www.engadget.com/…

Update: Apparently I missed an update in regards to the Yahoo! shutdown. After an angry customer response, Yahoo! offered coupons for DRM-less mp3 downloads.

Update #2: Walmart has changed its mind. Also, xkcd has published a comic that explains the situation.

This Flash video is hilarious. The song is for real. It’s “Cows With Guns” by Dana Lyons. It can be purchased from iTunes or via the artist’s website.

Link: http://www.arcadekill.com/…

This article is several years old, but it has a breakdown of where the money paid for a $15.99 music CD goes (at the very end of the article). The actual manufacturing cost is less than a dollar.

Link: http://www.rollingstone.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Amazon has added the Sony BMG catalog to its library of DRM-free music downloads. This is significant because Amazon now has all four of the major US music labels on board and is a serious competitor to Apple’s iTunes store. Note that, with the exception of EMI, Apple is required to sell the same music with copyright protection.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

In a bid to compete with the iTunes music store, Amazon is now offering music downloads in MP3 format with no copy protection. The full catalog contains about 2 million songs, which is a far cry from iTunes’ 6 million, but I think it would be worth checking out the songs on Amazon before purchasing them on iTunes. It will be interesting to see where this leads.

Link #1: http://arstechnica.com/…

Link #2: http://tech.blorge.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Apple has now sold over 3 billion songs from its iTunes store (which has only been in business since 2003). That’s pretty impressive.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

This system reads vinyl records with a laser instead of a needle. It can handle fragile and even broken records. Developed for the Library of Congress to help preserve old recordings, I can see a modified version becoming popular with audiophiles.

Link: http://www.npr.org/…
(via Slashdot)

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is the bane of all music-lovers and has caused its share of problems with Sony. But two recent news items indicate that DRM may soon be a thing of the past. First, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has publicly stated that he is willing to consider an iTunes price increase, but only if the labels agree to drop copy protection. Second, Amazon.com has signed a deal with EMI (one of the major labels) to sell their music online without DRM. These are good signs and may mark the beginning of the end of music copy protection.

From the article: “In Florida, Utah, and soon in Rhode Island and Wisconsin, selling your used CDs to the local record joint will be more scrutinized than then getting a driver’s license in those states.” For example, in Florida, the CD store is required to copy your identification and take your fingerprint. Just to sell a used CD?!? I think the author of the linked article hit it on the head when he suspects the music industry of being a force behind these laws.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/…