Right - even though I can't sing along to any of the lyrics, Sigur Ros tunes regularly feature on my iPod with their wonderfully atmospheric quality. Over the past year one track from Sigur Ros' 1999 has had a revival thanks to film making student Liron Damir who created this dark brooding video clip that has attracted a lot of attention on YouTube and throughout the blogosphere.

Indie rockers Silverchair achieved a fair bit of notoriety for themselves tagging along with the tail end of the grunge movement when still only in high school. These days things the lads are a little more melodic with Luv Your Life being one of their more mellow tracks. This video was directed by top animator and director Steven Scott and has a really wistful quality about it that's nicely in tune with the music and even though it's a few years old now is still a top clip.

Rumours are circulating that the Beatles and Apple have finally settled their long running feud and as a result that Beatles tracks will finally be available on iTunes. The members of the legendary 60s pop group had a long running trade mark dispute with Apple over the Apple trade mark - which the Beatles controlled in terms of the music industry - as a result of their Apple Recordings label.

Although the two companies had a agreement to allow their trade marks to co-exist, the issue came to a head as a result of Apple's enormous success with the iPod and iTunes, which reinvented the technology company as a heavyweight in the music world. As a result of the tensions the remaining members of the Beatles and Yoko Ono took Apple to court in London during 2006 but lost their case to challenge Apple's use of the trade mark in the music industry.

There were hints of a reconciliation at the iPhone launch last week which featured at least two references to the Beatles - so it would appear that the remaining members of the Beatles have now licked their wounds and bowed to the inevitable - giving permission for Beatles tracks to be sold on iTunes. I'm sure it won't hurt their already swollen hip pockets much either.

Amidst all the hype about the iPhone there have been a lot of articles written about the potential benefits of the iPhone and bucketloads of Apple hype being thrown into the ether. However, there are a stack of questions that remain to be answered about Steve Jobs' supposedly revolutionary new mobile device.

I read an excellent article today that doesn't actually provide any answers, but does have all of the questions - twenty of them in fact. UK Web site Digit just published a great article titled 'iPhone: 20 Things We Don't Know' which asks twenty big questions that are yet to be answered, including: 'How much will it cost to own an iPhone?', 'Will the iPhone scratch or peel?', 'Can you use the iPhone to make VOIP calls?' and 'Why is the iPhone Being Launched Without 3G Capability'?

It's an excellent article that cuts through the Apple hype and gets a lot of the key issues out into the open about this very expensive new product from the folks at Apple.

[Via Digit]

The IFPI has released figures showing that digital music sales worldwide doubled in 2006, climbing to 10 per cent of the entire market for music worldwide, with a value of around US$2 million. The figures were released by the industry trade body in its 2007 Digital Music Report, which presents a rosy outlook for digital sales in the coming three years, such that digital music sales will reach a quarter of total earnings by 2010.

Despite the good news for the industry the IFPI still isn't satisfied though - they're still looking for the so-called 'holy grail' an increase in digital music sales equivalent to the reduction in CD sales. IFPI Chairman John Kennedy had a bad case of sour grapes when he said that he wouldn't be happy until the digital music sales exceeded the drop in CD sales.

Given that the music industry has been suffering from declining CD sales for most of this decade and the industry has been ruthlessly cutting costs as a result so to me Kennedy's statements sound a bit cynical. The majors have been rationalizing their businesses for many years now in response to competition from DVDs, video games and pirated music so I'd expect that increases in digital revenues should be a boon. Maybe it's time to for the IFPI to stop crying wolf and start thinking about better methods of delivering music that consumers will actually want to use.

EMI is trying to turn defeat into victory in China with the launch of a new advertising driven music service with Chinese search engine heavyweight, Baidu.com. EMI acting in concert with the rest of the majors recently lost a a copyright infringement suit against Baidu.com in China brought in an attempt to stop Baidu's practice of deep linking to pirated music files.

Now, in a stunning about face, EMI will share revenue with Baidu for a new streaming music service, and has agreed to drop its part of the appeal against the earlier ruling for Baidu. Further Baidu will not cease its practice of deep linking to pirated music tracks. The decision by EMI is a gesture of defeat in China, a reflection that the majors have failed to cut down on piracy through the use of heavy handed litigation.

Whether or not this has any wider implications for court actions launched by the majors in the US and Europe against file downloaders remains to be seen, but maybe someone up high has started to weigh up the cost of litigation and impact the poor publicity against their actual losses due to Internet piracy.

Lily Allen is British pop's latest enfant terrible, with a bad attitude and some great tunes to match. The lyrics on this tune are well worth a listen, and I'm doubly fond of this one since the video is filmed around my old neighborhood of Westbourne Grove in London. Have a good listen to the intro in the record store which is pure genius.

Apple has developed quite a reputation recently for the excessive attention that its lawyers seem to pay to Apple fans who post company information online, create mods or do anything else that may tangentially reflect poorly on the illustrious Apple brand.

The latest nut to be cracked by he Apple legal sledgehammer is a site called MoDaCo, who made the mistake of publishing screen shots of a mod to Windows Mobile that would create an iPhone look and feel on any Windows Mobile device.

The screen shots were quickly the subject of a cease and desist letter from Apple's lawyers O'Melveny and Myers LLP who are clearly looking at a bumper billing year in 2007. When is Apple going to realize that the sort of people who post mods like this are the sorts of fans that have kept the company going for all these years?

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been testing out the enigmatically titled, The Venice Project, a next generation Internet video/TV project from the folks that brought you Skype, which has been blowing me away with the speed and quality of the video and its exciting interface.

Today it was announced that The Venice Project name has been retired and it will from this point onwards be known as Joost.

While not just about digital music, The Venice Project Joost has huge implications for the music industry as well as every other section of the entertainment industry. It's currently in Beta testing, if you're interested in testing it out, then you can apply at the site to see if the good folks at Joost will sort you out - or you can find an existing user with some spare invitations.

Cult/pyramid scheme Multi-level marketing scheme BurnLounge today added a new addition to the legion of people that the service has mislead by ripping off hip hop legends Public Enemy.

Earlier today one of BurnLounge's army of zealots spammed TDMW with a press release entitled 'Public Enemy's New Track Exclusively Available on BurnLounge' yet again demonstrating its questionable conduct in the music industry by trying to associate Public Enemy as an entire act with their dodgy service.

Closer examination reveals that the track available on BurnLounge is by Professor Griff, with no involvement at all by core band members Chuck D., Flava Flav, DJ Lord or Terminator X. Not to take anything away from Professor Griff, but anyone with a passing knowledge of Public Enemy knows that his primary role is about managing the hype not writing the music.

It's yet again a classic example of BurnLounge spin. You've got to wonder how the rest of the band members are feeling about all of this? There certainly wasn't any mention on the official Public Enemy Web site. Maybe they're wondering if it's time to Burn BurnLounge, Burn?

The folks at Napster have been busy lately, earlier this month they took on the entire subscriber base of Virgin Digital's US business and now it's been announced that AOL (parent company of Weblogs inc who run this site) is jettisoning its entire music subscription business and handing it off to Napster.

AOL purchased Music Now just under two years ago but music subscription business is clearly not paying off for players such as AOL and Virgin. Music Now had in the vicinity of 350,000 subscribers which will provide a welcome boost for Napster which had been struggling to gain critical mass. The addition of Virgin digital and Music Now's subscribers will be a welcome shot in the arm for Napster which had itself up until recently been the subject of sale rumors.

Reminiscent of early Suede, Ninja Tune signing Pop Levi have been resurrecting a glam pop rock sound with their blend of geek rock. While there's a lot of dross being released as part of the new Brit rock movement, Pop Levi seem to stand out of the crowd and they have been getting a lot of attention from the British media, Time Out described their music as 'one of the most infectious yet mind-blowing things you'll have heard'.

They've got some pretty hot video clips too, check out the clip above, which features some pretty funky stop-frame animation and tasty sepia toned cinematography.

DJ and producer Deepchild has been making waves around Europe recently with his mix of smooth electro dubs and mellow sounds that sound equally good on the dancefloor or on the stereo at home,

Deepchild is a regular fixture on the Berlin club scene when away from his home in Sydney and was recently named as producer of the year in Australia and has been working with electronic music heavyweights Luomo. Described by UK Music bible The Wire as 'as sexy and addictive as nu-dub electronica gets' Deepchild's tunes are getting well worth keeping track of.

It's been the subject of a ridiculous amount of speculation and today we've finally seen the result of all the hard work that Apple has been doing behind the scenes with Steve Jobs' launch of the iPhone at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco.

Like all Apple products the iPhone is a pretty sexy device, but doesn't exactly present a radical rethinking of the mobile phone as we know it. Rather the iPhone is more along the lines of a good looking iMate and seems to largely replicate the efforts that Microsoft and hardware partners have made in the mobile phone space with it's Window's Mobile offering.

That's not to say that the iPhone won't become an indispensable accessory for Apple fans the world over, but it's going to be entering into a very mature market with some pretty hefty competition, unlike when Apple entered into the digital music player market with the iPod. And don't think this is going to be the device that will replace your iPod - with a choice of between 4GB and 8GB models the iPhone has enough space to store a medium sized library of music but not enough to store a big library of songs, photos and video.

The iPhone features WiFi, Bluetooth, OSX, a 2 Megapixel Camera and either 4GB or 8GB of flash memory and a touch screen which doubles as a virtual keyboard and is being launched in the US exclusively through mobile phone provider Cingular. The rest of the world will have to wait I guess.

[Via Apple.com]

Virgin Digital has quietly backed away from the operation of it's Virgin Digital subscription service in the US, striking a deal to allow Napster to take over its existing customer base. Virgin Digital charged a standard monthly charge of $7.99 for access to its library of around 2 million tracks, however in the face of competition from iTunes and problems with awareness of music subscription services Virgin Digital hasn't proved successful in the US.

Customers wanting to use the US Virgin Digital service Web site are now met with a message pointing out Virgin's new alliance and linking through to Napster. The move is further proof of problems trying to compete with the near monopoly power of iTunes but also demonstrates that subscription services have to do more to generate awareness of how their model works.

[Via The Times]