Category: Music

Napster Signs Distribution Deal With the Association of Independent Music

Napster will have just acquired another 50,000 tracks for their summer launch in the UK in a new deal with the Association of Independent Music (AIM). AIM is a UK body of 800 independent music companies, and Napster have licensed tracks from 50 of them. US Napster users will have access to the music too, once it has been uploaded.

“Napster creates the ultimate community experience for music fans and the variety, quality and originality of music from the independent UK sector is a vital to delivering this experience,” said Napster president Brad Duea. “The Association of Independent Music has shown great foresight in joining forces with Napster at this time and has underlined its reputation as an influential player on the international music scene.”

“Napster is going to make a big difference to music fans in the UK. At last we have a legitimate service from the world’s leading online brand, which offers flexibility in streaming and downloading to music fans. It also takes our music to fans around the world, confirming the promise that the internet can deliver a global business to independent artists and record companies,” said AIM chairman and chief executive Alison Wenham.

Artists made available through the deal include darlings of Hoxtonites such as Coldcut and Kruder & Dorfmeister. Billy Bragg will also be available.

Wippit, a subscription-based music service previously reported here has also just licensed tracks from Sony Music for distribution in the UK and Ireland. Sony Music’s artists include Bruce Springsteen and Beyonce.

It looks like the battle for legal music downloads is hotting up with Napster and iTunes launching almost simultaneously in the next few weeks.

Napster UK – get five free tracks when it launches

AIM

CNET launches a new MP3.com

After a lot of uncertainty about the future of MP3.com following its demise, and rumours that all of the content had been deleted, CNet has re-launched MP3.com, but as something completely different to its original guise.

The new version of the service combines extensive information about the musical groups such as the history of each member of the band and details of all of the tracks they have released. The reviews and background information about each of the major albums is also extensive. At a quick glance, the depth of detail is very impressive.

Once an individual track or album has been selected, a page is displayed showing a number of ways to get to the track. Online music download services, on-demand streaming and even where the physical CD are listed. Currently there are fourteen service listed, which we assume will increased as Cnet signs more deals. Each of the download services show the music file format, computer platform for each, as well as highlighting if the service protect their tracks with DRM.

As would be expected MP3.com provides many routes to content that you might not have thought of listening to or buying. One of the novel ones is Musicvine. A graphical representation of artists is shown, with groups of a similar musical type clustered around them, joined by lines. When a band is selected, further information about them is shown on the left-hand panel. It’s a neat idea, but we are at this stage unsure how useful it will be long term.

MP3.com is a clear attempt by Cnet to try and become the Meta music service – THE destination when individuals want to buy music. On first impressions it looks like a pretty good stab at it, but we are unsure if there is sufficient here to keep the idea unique to them.

MP3.com

Musicvine on MP3.com

Nintendo DS and Sony PSP news hits mainstream

E3, the LA games show, is on the nearly upon us and it’s a reflection on the level of competition within the games industry these days that lots of news is coming out prior to the show. Yesterday we covered the pre-show news of EyeToy:Chat and today Reuters is covering the upcoming battle between Sony and Nintendo with their new handhelds.

To those who have been following the gaming market, the arrival of the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS are not news. What will be news is the exact specification and capabilities of them, as most discussion on the subject has been conjecture.

What is known is that the PSP will be more than a games machine, it will also play music and films. The DS will have two screens – DS stands for Dual Screen.

Nintendo has tempted furious discussion in how the DS will be operated, with some who may know more added to this. “This will not be a machine where you push the ‘A’ button or ‘B’ button and move the direction pad, but a completely different way to interact with the device,” said Hirokazu Hamamura, president of “Famitsu” game magazine publisher EnterBrain.

Nintendo has been very strong in the past in getting their gaming platforms working together. The portable GameBoy Advance (GBA) can connect to the GameCube games console, and in fact games such as Animal Crossing let the game characters pass between the two to ‘live’ between them. As we’ve previously covered, Sony is planning to mirror this with the PSP, PS2 and PSX connecting.

Before either the PSP or DS are released, Nokia will be releasing its new version of N-Gage, the QD. We will be testing and reviewing it at the end of May.

Reuters – Sony, Nintendo Aim to Wow Gamers with New Handhelds

Apple iTunes hit 3.3m song in 1 week

Apple are very proud that they have reached their record sales of 3.3m paid-for music tracks in one week. We feel it is no coincidence that they are keen to tell everyone about it in the week that Sony launch their Connect music service.

They are putting it down to the introduction of iMixes. iMixes is a clever idea, which combines a recommendation list and old-school mix tapes, encouraging purchasers to widen their musical choices and in the process opening them up to buying a lot more songs. Apple report that over 20,000 of the have been uploaded already.

The big sales figure might also be down to attracting more people to the service by giving away free tracks to mark its one year anniversary. More that 500,000 tracks were downloaded.

The iTunes Music store now has 700,000 song and is adding to them all of the time. They have just done a deal with Motown, who are marking their 45 year anniversary, are to make the “vast majority” of their albums available digitally for the first time.

Apple iTunes press release

Dixons to promote Napster 2.0 in the UK

The now-legitimate music download service Napster has signed a multi-faceted deal with UK electronic retailing giant Dixons. Dixons will install Napster 2.0 software on all the own-brand computers (Advent, Ei System and Patriot) and sell Napster-branded blank CDRs, CD wallets and CD labelling kits in store. Dixons have also committed to promote the service on its Web site and in stores, with the campaign starting in two weeks.

Despite announcing the closure of 300 stores around the UK Dixons are the dominant electronics retailer in the UK with more than 1,100 outlets in the UK, including the PC World, The Link and Currys chains.

The costs of the UK version of Napster are not known but at current exchange rates the US equivalent would be singles at $0.99 (£0.53) and full albums for around $10 (£5.33).

Napster have also announced that they will launch their service in Canada, claiming it to be the first legitimate offering there. They will be provding Canadian consumers a localised version of Napster 2.0, complete with Canadian-specific radio stations, promotions and content from domestic acts. Details of the UK offering have not been revealed.

Apple’s iPod dissenters continue. Are they right?

It is no surprise to see a rise of articles questioning whether Apple can hold onto their storming lead in selling MP3 player and the music that goes on them. They currently have, by most estimates, around 50% of the MP3 player market to themselves and 70% of song sales. Many companies, technology, consumer electronics and content owning, are now waking up to how far they have let Apple go.

Some people are starting to raise the possible ghosts of Macintosh – where Apple foretold the rise of windowed interfaces for computers, only to be overtaken by the growth of Microsoft. Apple’s response then was to pursue niche markets, originally DeskTop Publishing (as it was known then) and latterly Desktop Video. It is arguable that this is the approach they have taken again with music

Last time around they made mistakes. Steve Jobs bringing John Sculley onboard to run the company, and Sculley subsequently persuading Apple to remove Jobs, being the biggest. Sculley then went on to make many, many mistakes of his own. Who knows how different it might have been if Jobs had stayed in charge.

Many have drawn comparisons between the recent attempt to ‘open up’ iPod to other music services and Microsoft’s similar, and ultimately doomed attempt to open up Macintosh.

We feel it is important to not forget Apple had a 909 percent increase (not a misprint) in iPod sales in the first quarter of 2004 over the same period the year before. Equally let us also not forget that this is the start of media becoming digital and Jobs hasn’t even started on either music devices for home use or and type of video device.

Reuters – Apple’s iPod Lead Creates New Challenges, Analysts Say

Jens of Sweden release MP130, complete with mirror

The latest MP3 Flash-memory music player from Jens of Sweden has just been announced (so recently that they don’t have English details available). The stylish devices has all you would expect from a mini-MP3 player, currently up to 512Mb of storage, record function dictaphone and FM-radio. Amazingly this little beauty weighs the same as eight sheets of A4 paper.

The unexpected features start with a mirror finish for use when it’s not on. When it is on, the multi-coloured organic LED display shines through the mirror and interestingly it has a clock and alarm built into it. The other surprise is the addition of support for Ogg Vorbis, the open, patent-free audio encoding format that is the preference of the tech-savvy. Jens have improved the battery time over the MP-100 to 18 hours and can drive big headphones.

We’ve spoke to Jens and they tell us that there is a 1Gb version coming out in June. The recommended ex-VAT UK prices are 128Mb £105, 256Mb £145 and 512Mb £190, which should be slightly cheaper in store.

Sadly they are only supporting USB1.1, not USB2.0, which would significantly reduce the speed music could be exchanged with it.

We at Digital Lifestyles office are fans of Flash MP3 players, given their unnoticeable weight during commutes. Longer journeys demand hard-drive-based players.

Jens of Sweden MP-130

Ogg Vorbis

EU challenges EU-wide music royalty structure

The European Commission has sent a shot across the bows of the EU royalty collection agencies, saying they fear by them working closely together across the EU, but bound within their own territories, they will extended the national monopolies the societies current hold in the off-line world, to the Internet, potentially in breach of EU competition rules.

The EU executive said it sent a ‘statement of objections’ detailing its regulatory concerns to the organisations over their so-called ‘Santiago Agreement’ – a pan-EU system that allows national organisations to collect music authors’ copyright proceeds.

In 2001 the collecting societies of the UK (PRS), France (SACEM), Germany (GEMA) and the Netherlands (BUMA) notified the Commission of the ‘Santiago Agreement’. Since then, all other societies from the European Economic Area, with the exception of the Portuguese society (SPA), have signed up. They were also joing by the Swiss society (SUISA).

While strongly supporting the “one-stop shop” portion of the Agreement, and acknowledging adequate copyright protection and enforcement, the Commission “considers that such crucial developments in online-related activities must be accompanied by an increasing freedom of choice by consumers and commercial users throughout Europe as regards their service providers, such as to achieve a genuine European single market. “. The EU wants to encourage competition between the agencies, not consolidation, in their words,

“The Commission considers that the territorial exclusivity afforded by the Santiago Agreement to each of the participating societies is not justified by technical reasons and is irreconcilable with the world-wide reach of the Internet”.

Coming on the heels of the EU record fine of Microsoft Media player, we feel this shows that the EU Commission is serious about protecting the rights of the public to the fair and reasonable access to media in a digital age.

The collecting societies have two and a half months to reply to the Commission’s objections.

EU Press release – Commission opens proceedings into collective licensing of music copyrights for online use

Vodafone to power consumer focused Live! service with 3G

As expected, Vodafone announced this morning that it will enhance its Live! consumer content offering by making it available over 3G. It will be immediately available in Germany and Portugal on the Samsung Z105, with other countries around Europe following in the coming months.
As well as taking advantage of the enhanced resolution and colours that are constantly evolving with each iteration of handsets released, the less than catching named “Vodafone live!TM with 3G” will speed the delivery of content and widely-enable the streaming of audio and video content. They, like rival operator 3, are hoping that high bandwidth video calling and messaging will grab the imagination of their users, bringing them far higher revenues that standard SMS text messaging currently do.
The number of Vodafone-approved handsets available will increase. Following the Z105 will be the Sony Ericsson Z1010, a clamshell-design with two displays and two cameras that was announced over a year ago. Availability of Nokia handsets was not mentioned.

Peter Bamford, Vodafone’s Chief Marketing Officer said “Extensive consumer trials of Vodafone live!TM with 3G indicate that early adopters are keen to try this technology and so we are giving them a taste of it prior to the full launch of enhanced services later in the year.” We suspect the trialist were not paying their own phone bills so were pretty liberal with usage, it remains to be seen if the bill-paying consumers are quite so free and easy in the months following their first video-enhanced bill.

USB Key Concert Recordings from eMusic Live

A club in Hoboken, New Jersey is offering a new twist on concert recordings, by offering uploads to USB keys. After a live show, fans at Maxwells can pay $20 (€16.80) for a USB key and then a further $10 to have a MP3 of the gig copied to it.

The kiosk-based service is being offered by eMusic Live, who regard the service as a step beyond clubs who burn CDs of concerts for sale at the end of the night. The DRM-free music is also for sharing – providing free publicity and word of mouth for small bands.

Scott Ambrose Reilly, president of eMusic Live says the thinking behind the service is simple: “What we were seeing is that a large number of people were taking their CDs home and ripping them to MP3s, so we thought it would benefit music fans to eliminate that middle step. Admittedly this won’t be for everyone. But since the direction of music is increasingly going digital, I don’t see why this wouldn’t find its niche.”

eMusic Live are looking to roll more kiosks out to other venues around the US soon.

Founded in 1998, eMusic currently operate a music subscription service that offers tracks from its 300,000-strong library starting at US$0.25 (€0.21).

eMusic have long had one of the fairest usage clauses in the online music business (from their website):”Unlike other subscription services that put strict limits on how and where subscribers can listen to music, eMusic offers extremely flexible usage terms that allow the convenience online music fans want and expect. All eMusic’s tracks are in the industry standard MP3 format and subscribers are encouraged to make multiple copies for personal use, burn the music to CDs and transfer their music to portable MP3 players. Because eMusic uses the standard MP3 format, consumers can use their music the way they want. In addition, eMusic subscribers own the music they download.”

eMusic Live