Music – Page 31 – Digital-Lifestyles

Sony Eyes P2P Venture

A new partnership of opposites may be in the offing, one that will allow you to download pay-for and free songs from the Internet. The partnership called Mashboxxx, first reported in Friday’s Los Angeles Times, will happen between Sony BMG Music Entertainment and online peer-to-peer software distributor Grokster. This is quite an historical venture really, being the first earnest public partnership between a major recording company and an established file-sharing outfit. There have been many rumours (whispered behind the hand) of these schemes already being run.

Yes, Sony BMG has broken ranks with the rest of the entertainment industry by embarking on this venture with Grokster, that combines free music sampling with paid downloads. The free downloads will be promotional versions of songs by Sony BMG acts, and / or you can buy licensed, higher quality versions. Punters already use Grokster to search, download and distribute a wide variety of music files, but most of these are only copies of CD-quality recordings.

To many, this looks like a case of joining the enemy when you can’t beat them – a tactic that has worked well in many instances throughout history. As it happens, Grokster only recently settled a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against them by recording companies, over a Spanish Web site that was selling music downloads without permission.

But why go down the expensive and lengthy road of litigation when, like Sony BMG and Grokster, you can settle on a legitimate business model that allows you to work together, using each other’s expertise in a mutually beneficial way?

Well finally the music industry is starting to acknowledge that Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks are very efficient at distributing files. Not only that, but they get to save money by not paying all of the bandwidth charges for distributing the files, as the consumer bandwidth is used to share the files around.

Mashboxxx is expected to employ some kind of digital fingerprinting technology that will be able to filter out unauthorized song copies from file-sharing networks, and a version of this type of filtering technology has been developed by San Francisco-based Snocap Inc.

Report: Euro Music Download Market $5.7 Billion by 2009

A new report by research and analysis firm Generator, predicts that the digital song download market in Europe will reach $5.7 billion (€4.5 billion) by 2009. If this figure pans out, it will mean that the download market will account for about 40% of the total recorded music market.

The report also predicts that the mobile channel will figure largely in this market growth, up to $777 million (€610 million), 13.5% of the total by 2009 – and that’s not including huge ringtone market. But Europe first needs to change its usage-based mobile data tariffs and adopt flat-rate 3G tariffs like DoCoMo in Japan to encourage the successful use of the mobile channel, says the report’s author, Andrew Sheehy.

Operators will also need to develop their WAP portal strategies, so consumers can directly access existing Internet music resources, such as artist Web sites and digital music stores.

The Generator report, ‘Digital Music Meets Mobile Music’, differs considerably from last months Jupiter Research report, ‘European Digital Music: Identifying Opportunity’, which predicts that digital music revenue will reach €836 million, or 8% of the total market, by 2009. With a difference of 32% between Generator and Jupiter, one perhaps slightly conservative and one perhaps slightly ambitious, it might be safest to pitch the predicted figure somewhere between the two.

Only one year into the legal digital music industry, but in real terms more than a few years in, it has permeated the world of commercial music consumption far quicker than happened with the CD.

While both Generator and Jupiter agree that sales of downloaded digital music in Europe will continue to grow steadily for the forseeable future, Jupiter says the trend but will not replace the CD anytime soon, while Generator says it will be largely replaced within ten years.

Don’t throw anything away yet!

Court Orders New Protections for People Targeted by RIAA

A district court in Pennsylvania has forced the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to rethink the privacy and due process rights of people it has accused of copyright infringement. The impasse arose after the music industry filed a flood of lawsuits against anonymous individuals who they claimed were sharing copyrighted music, but because the industry did not know the identities of the file sharers, it served subpoenas to the individuals’ ISPs seeking their names. The court held that before the ISPs turn over these names, they must first send notices to each file sharer advising them of their rights.

The judge ruled that the RIAA cannot sue alleged file sharers simultaneously, since they had grouped 203 of them, called “John Doe” because their identities are not yet known – into one lawsuit last month. The RIAA must now identify alleged file swappers by their Internet Protocol addresses.

On Friday a subpoena was authorised in the case of John Doe No. 1, but the RIAA will have to make separate requests to seek the identity of each of the remaining 202 alleged file sharers, and must pay court fees of $150 for each lawsuit filed.

“Piracy, both online and on the street, continues to hit the music community hard, and thousands have lost their jobs because of it”, said Mitch Bainwol, Chairman and CEO of the RIAA in a recent press statement. The RIAA and its partners in the music community have continued a variety of public education efforts. These include joining with the FBI to unveil a new anti-piracy warning and seal; expanding the acclaimed “I Download…Legally” media campaign; and working with the university community to develop new programs to educate students about intellectual property laws, discourage illegal peer-to-peer use, and offer legitimate online music alternatives.

Notwithstanding, the RIAA, for the first time ever, included digital downloads in its semi-annual shipment report. For the first half of 2004, there were 58 million single tracks downloaded or burned from licensed online music services.

www.riaa.com
www.eff.com

Sony PSP Arrives on 12.Dec in Japan

After months of speculation that the Sony PlayStation Portable would not appear until 2005, Sony have just announced its release in Japan on 12 December, just ten days after Nintendo DS, and at a price that is much lower than expected.

The PSP, Sony’s entry into handheld games machine market will be available in two flavours. The normal edition PSP at $186, (~ £101, €145) will include the handheld itself, an AC adapter, and a battery pack. A value pack $232, (~£126, €181) will be the normal pack plus a 32MB Memory Stick Duo, a set of headphones with a remote control, and a carrying case.

The PSP is more than a mere games machine, it can also be used for watching movies and listening to music files – but not just yet. The standard for films is still under discussion with several movie studios, and a movie line-up and download service won’t be announced for several months. It’s a pity this last task was not completed before announcing the launch, as doubtless much of PSP’s success will depend on it, but we suspect it will be down to rights and DRM protection.

Sony denies that competition from Nintendo DS influenced the PSP price, offering several other plausible reasons. One being that the price was possible because about half of PSP’s parts, including the main computer chip, are produced internally by Sony. Another being that it was apparently set, based on an informal survey of Sony officials who were asked what they would pay for the PSP if they were going to buy it. Whatever the reason, Sony doesn’t expect to make a profit on PSP until well into next year, obviously being prepared to sacrifice it for strong PSP branding.

There will be 21 games available for the PSP launch, including high-profile third-party titles such as Electronic Arts’ “Need for Speed Underground” racing gaming and Tiger Woods PGA Tour, Konami’s “Metal Gear Acid”, and Sega Corporation’s Puyo Pop Fever – Puzzle

In Japan, Sony plans to sell 500,000 PSP machines by the end of this year, and 1 million by 31st March. Dates and prices for the United States and Europe have not yet been set, although overseas sales are being planned for the first quarter of 2005.

Sony

U2 iPod and Photo iPod Become Real

Apple’s much anticipated and predicted new iPod – iPod Photo, launched late yesterday, has moved into the multimedia realm, allowing users to view and share photos as well as the normal music play back. The new iPod Photo can hold up to 25,000 pictures and can be connected to a television to play video slide shows. The 40-gigabyte version is priced at $499 (~£272) and the 60-gigabyte model is priced at $599 (~£326).

The new iPod features two Apple patent pending features – Click Wheel and Auto-Sync technology that automatically downloads an entire digital music library onto iPod and keeps it up-to-date whenever it is plugged into a Mac or Windows computer using FireWire or USB.

Separately there is the special edition 20GB U2 iPod as predicted by Digital Lifestyles earlier this month, which is … shock, horror … black with a red wheel! Its is part of a larger agreement between U2 and Apple, whereby Apple will have exclusive rights to sell all the songs from the band’s new album online through its iTunes Music Store for at least the first few weeks following the release. U2 iPod The U2 iPod is expected to be available mid-November for a suggested retail price of £249 (~$456) through the Apple Store, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorised Resellers. IPod TV adverts showing U2 were shown on UK television this evening.

The timing of the U2 iPod release coincides with the immanent release of U2’s new album “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb”, and “Vertigo,” a single from the album is available exclusively in the US through the iTunes Music Store.

A “Digital Box Set” offering from Apple called surprisingly, “The Complete U2”, apparently the first of its kind, will contain over 400 tracks including all of the band’s albums and over 25 rare and unreleased tracks. These can be downloaded from iTunes in the United States and Europe from late November for $140 (~£76).

There are challengers to iPod’s throne though. Would be kings include Dell Inc.’s new Pocket DJ, Virgin Electronics’ Player, Creative Labs Inc.’s Zen Micro, iRiver America Inc.’s H300, and Archos Inc.’s Gemini XS200.

Notwithstanding, analysts estimate the company could sell close to 3 million iPods this Christmas, so Apple can sing for this year anyway, “It’s good to be the king!”

Preminet: Nokia’s Mobile Content Move

Courtesy of Nokia, mobile content distribution and transaction will reside in a one-stop-shop, making life easier for mobile networks and perhaps more interesting for the owners of some 350 million Java-enabled handsets (at last count.)

Preminet is a hosted open service model that streamlines all the steps involved in delivering content for smart phones through a single channel.

As a result of an agreement announced yesterday between Nokia and Starcut, a Finland-based mobile media publisher, content from Universal Studios and Warner Music Group Content will be made available to operators and consumers through the one-stop content shop. Preminet and Starcut will provide operators with pre-certified content such as life-style and sports, ringtones, graphics, games and video that they can brand and offer over the Web, or via Java or Symbian OS enabled mobile phones.

Here’s how it works. Preminet sources premium Java and Symbian OS software from leading developers and content aggregators worldwide to give operators a master catalogue of certified applications, games and other mobile content. A chain supply experts dream system – the sequence includes the Preminet Master Catalogue, Preminet Service Delivery Platform and Preminet Purchasing Client, an innovative software application that make it easy for end-users to trial run mobile applications, content and services before buying. Operators can integrate Preminet content into their own download delivery systems or have Nokia provide a complete hosted solution.

Until now, each operator was responsible for maintaining hundreds of relationships with individual Java and Symbian OS developers as well as sourcing and testing each application before bringing them to the end-user. Now they have a single channel – the Preminet Master Catalogue containing a whole range of Java and Symbian OS software as well as a framework for delivering billing and distributing revenues.

In February, Nokia took one of its first steps towards Preminet when it joined with Sun Microsystems, Motorola, Siemens and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications to create the Java Verified Process for testing and certifying Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) applications for wireless handheld devices.

Preminet is not a new concept though, coming after the Brew development platform for mobile devices from Qualcomm. Preminet has been launched worldwide and Nokia expects a complete commercial deployment by the end of November.

Time will tell as to how the mobile and content industries will react to Nokia taking this role on, and taking a percentage for each transaction in the process.

Preminet
Starcut

EU iTunes Expands to 9 Further Countries

Now customers in Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain have their own EU iTunes with the same features and price of €0.99 per song. A better deal than their UK neighbours who pay £0.79 (€1.16) per track since iTunes opened its store there in June. This 17% extra loading prompted the Consumer’s Association to ask the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to investigate the pricing difference, claiming it is a potential breach of the competition law.

With the launch of EU iTunes Apple now reaches customers in almost 70 percent of the global music market, and it also announced that it will launch the iTunes Music Store in Canada this November.

The EU iTunes Music Store features over 700,000 songs from all four major music companies and more than 100 independent record labels. It also features exclusive tracks from leading worldwide artists, including Anastacia, Marc Anthony, Andrea Bocelli, Black Eyed Peas, Destiny’s Child, Bob Marley, George Michael, The Prodigy, Gwen Stefani, Travis and Zucchero.

EU iTunes has the same personal use rights as in the US, UK, France and Germany. Users are allowed to play songs on up to five personal computers, burn a single song onto CDs an unlimited number of times, burn the same playlist up to seven times and listen to their music on an unlimited number of iPods.

The EU iTunes Music Store offers PC and Mac users the same features. iMix playlist sharing, the dynamic ‘Party Shuffle’ playlist, over 8,000 audiobooks, which can be listened to on any PC, Mac or iPod, and ‘Artist Alert’ email service. And last but not least, automatic WMA to AAC conversion, enabling Windows users to automatically create iTunes versions of songs encoded in unprotected WMA.

iTunes for Mac and Windows includes the EU iTunes Music Store and is available as a free download immediately from their Website. The EU iTunes Music Store works, of course, with the Euro, and purchase and download of songs requires a valid credit card – that is until Apple finds a company like PayPal to partner up with, as Naptser did this week.

Apple iTunes Music Store

Napster Take PayPal Payment

As an appetiser, Napster introduced pre-pay cards at Dixons’ stores across the UK earlier this month, in an effort to attract customers who don’t have a credit card. As the music business is fretting most about teenagers downloading music, it would appear to make perfect sense to give them a payment method that allows them to pay for the music. Now, the Los Angeles-based digital music provider has announced that customers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada can now pay for tunes using PayPal, using it to purchase monthly subscriptions or individual tracks and albums. PayPal, owned by eBay is one of the largest payment handling companies on the Internet.

Napster obviously wants its payment options to be as convenient and accessible as its music download options. If you don’t already have a PayPal account, Napster will set one up for as part of its registration process, while existing customers can select the new payment option when they enter billing information.

The ultimate benefit of PayPal, which already has nearly 57 million customer accounts around the world, lies in its flexibility. It acts like a virtual wallet, allowing users to pay for products online with multiple funding options including a bank account, a credit card or an existing PayPal account. Other payment options on Napster, such as credit and debit cards as well as prepaid cards, will continue to be available.

Unless you have been living in a parallel universe, you will know that Napster popularised free music swapping over the Internet, primarily using the MP3 format, before turning into a legal music service. Now the popularity of legal downloading services like Napster and Apple Computer’s iTunes has resulted in a resurgence of interest in online transactions that use micropayments.

iTunes still only accept the credit card, but no doubt they will now feel under pressure to offer an alternative payment method also, and are probably already talking to an online payment handling company as I write.

Napster
PayPal
Apple iTunes

Treo 650 Launched by PalmOne

PalmOne Treo 650 A finer, mellow blend of phone and PDA, PalmOne launched the Treo 650 in the US yesterday. There are changes on the outside and changes on the inside – some cosmetic, some ergonomic, and some fundamentally technical. I’d be happy to ditch my current phone if I won this in a raffle!

PalmOne plans to make two versions of the Treo 650. A dual-band version will support CDMA/1XRTT cellular networks, used by Sprint PCS and Verizon Wireless. A quad-band version will run on GSM networks, used by T-Mobile, Cingular Wireless and AT&T Wireless. The GSM model will also support AT&T’s EDGE, a higher-speed data network. But built in Wi-Fi support is still missing as is, we understand, support for PalmOne’s own add on WiFi cards. We expect this is bowing to pressure from cellular providers who are terrified of Voice over WiFi eating their high-charging services for breakfast.

The Treo 650 has a higher-resolution screen – 320 by 320 pixels compared with the Treo 600’s 160 by 160 pixels. It’s faster with a 312MHz Intel processor compared with the Treo 600’s 144MHz Texas Instruments chip, while memory capacity remains the same at 32MB. An improved VGA camera can record video as well as still images and should work better in low-light situations. Storage is provided by Flash memory enabling expansion. The Treo 650 has a removable battery, which gives up to five hours of continuous digital talk time and over two weeks of standby time

A new e-mail application, VersaMail supports Exchange Server 2003, POP3, IMAP4, and SMTP, so 650 users can now connect remotely to corporate networks to get e-mail. Furthermore, built-in Bluetooth Wireless Technology allows you to wirelessly synchronise with Bluetooth-enabled desktop or laptop computers.

Software applications include Documents To Go 7 with native MS Office support allowing you to View and edit Word and Excel documents, an audio player for MP3s, and the new palmOne Media suite from Zire 72.

With all that improved technology on the inside, simple ergonomics have not been forgotten. The 650 has an improved backlit QWERTY keyboard with larger, flatter keys, and strategic button placement for easier one-handed access.

A touch too far might be the vanity mirror for self-portraits, while a community service to movie and theatre buffs might be the hardware silent switch. Sprint will be the first carrier to offer the smart phone from mid-November, and pricing is expected to be in the $400 (~£217, €312) to $500 (~£271, €390) range.

PalmOne Treo 650

Targeted adverts for P2P

AlmondNet, Inc. and Intent MediaWorks will separate the appropriate from the irrelevant to exclusively bring you only the good ads.

Should your browsing habits make you fair game for any advertiser or should you only be subjected to ‘relevant, targeted interactive ads’? The latter option is obviously a lot more preferable, and if done in the right way, it shouldn’t be too much of a nuisance.

Two technology companies in New York and Atlanta are trying to achieve the latter option and have consequently signed a deal whereby advertisers can target specific ads to P2P users.

During the download process users are served ads via the INTENT MediaWorks client, using AlmondNet’s technology, which is cookie based and they say doesn’t collect personally identifiable information, adverts should be targeted.

The two companies involved are AlmondNet, Inc., a New York-based advertising technology company that offers web publishers targeted ads based on audience attributes, and Intent MediaWorks, an Atlanta-based company that provides a technology platform for secure distribution of content via legal peer-to-peer networks. They have signed a co-operation agreement whereby Intent MediaWorks will use AlmondNet’s patent-pending behavioural targeting technology to target ads to P2P users who use their secure distribution platform.

Intent MediaWorks already has technology that allows recording artists and music companies to distribute their digital content securely via major P2P systems like Kazaa, Gnutella, and Bit Torrent. INTENT say they already has 600 artists on its books for music distribution.

Ads come in good, bad and ugly flavours, not to mention irrelevant and downright inappropriate. As usual it is the 18-34 year old that is being targeted in this space, and while one has to be slightly suspicious about users being targeted based on their online behavior and interests, since no ad campaign is altruistic, at least they are being spared the irrelevant and inappropriate.

We’re not certain that anyone who is downloading via a P2P network will be looking at their screens while the files are coming down, it’s normally a fire-and-fire operation. If this is widely-so, we’re not sure who is going to pay to advertise?

INTENT MediaWorks,LLC
AlmondNet, Inc