The Digital Music Weblog is retiring from active duty as of today. I'd like to say a huge note of thanks to everyone who has helped or contributed to this fantastic blog since its launch in 2004. TDMW has seen some brilliant bloggers and has been a launching pad for many among the ranks of Weblogs, Inc; I will always be proud to say I'm one of them.
TDMW may be retiring but, I will continue to write for other Weblogs, Inc sites. You can still read my work, along with a stable of other great bloggers, on Download Squad.
Thanks to everyone who made TDMW a great place to be! Some high-points on TDMW from our last year.
Watch out Mariah Carey, the diva days are coming to an end. According to an article in The Daily Express, cost conscious labels are starting to cut the cord on bratty divas and their expensive entourages. No surprise given the overall tightening of the purse strings, and its certainly encouraging to see labels wising up to the idea of running like a real business.
Glenn Coolfer points out the funniest bit or, if you're a shareholder, perhaps the saddest, "One of Warner Music's biggest mistakes last year was an album released by socialite Paris Hilton. It sold just 13,000 copies, a disaster made worse by the money spent on the heiress and her entourage. [...] she brought 14 people with her to the UK [...] A week's accommodation at the exclusive Metropolitan hotel on London's Park Lane came to around £160,000."
That's $24.28 per album sold for the hotel bill alone. Bombs like Paris get the royal treatment while hard-working bands on the lower rungs get the shaft. Something's gotta give; If you're making your living teasing Paris Hilton's hair on the rare occasion she appears live to do some off-key caterwauling, you might should polish your resume.
Sellaband, a unique crowd sourcing site which allows emerging independent artists to take seed money from fans until they amass enough capital to record a full professional studio album, has announced its second fan funded breakthrough.
Less than four months ago Jacob Kongaika, performing under the artist name Cubworld, decided to take a chance and upload his music on SellaBand. "I saw this as a long term plan, I was thinking more in the lines of 5 or 10 years, before I would have reached my recording budget", comments the artist. But soon after the first fans (Sellaband terms them, "Believers") bought Parts in his future recordings, things took a different turn for Cubworld. He became one of the leading artists on SellaBand and a mere 150 days after signing up, he had acquired the full $50,000. "The last 24 hours have been really mad", comments SellaBand Managing Director Johan Vosmeijer. "There were still 1,000 Parts left for Cubworld, which is a healthy $10,000, but they sold in less than 24 hours."
Two well known mixtape producers have been raided in Atlanta by police accompanied by RIAA jacketed quasi-agents. The agents confiscated boxes of CDs, production equipment and cars from the location, and scored a lead story on local news for themselves where they were quick to remind the public that raids on pirate mixtape producers often yield drug and gun arrests in addition to stopping piracy, just not this raid.
DJ produced mixtapes are a strange animal. Record companies often welcome and profit from the hype generated by mixtapes for upcoming artists, but are bothered by the competition mixtapes can provide once an artist is well established. Wikipedia explains, "The mixtape format is increasingly popular as a way of generating hype for hip hop artists. [...] Hip hop mixtapes are usually sold on the street or through independent record dealers or mail order, mainly relying on word of mouth to increase the artist's street credibility. An unsigned artist might release several mixtapes to generate buzz, leading to interest from record labels, while a signed artist may release a mixtape to promote a future studio album."
The two arrested suspects, DJ Drama and Don Canon have yet to be officially charged, but it looks like their successful production house is out of commission. Drama and Canon claim to be responsible for breakaway success by Hip-Hop artists such as T.I.
You can watch the (heavily biased and misleading) news footage from Atlanta's Fox 5 here. If you're looking for an informed look at the balance between piracy and promotion that exists in the mixtape culture, the documentary Mixtape, Inc. is worth the watch.
According to the IFPI's "Digital Music Report 2007", your residential ISP is the their next front in the war on piracy.
The report spells out in pretty stark language exactly what the IFPI expects from the ISP who's services you pay for, "We should not be doing this job alone. With cooperation from ISPs we could make huge strides in tackling internet piracy globally. It is very unfortunate that it seems to need pressure from governments or even action in the courts to achieve this, but as an industry we are determined to see this campaign through to the end." (emphasis added)
It's unclear exactly what the IFPI wants ISPs to do but, it is pretty clear that they want it done now. With Bittorrent carrying more and more legal content every day, blocking a specific protocol or port is a non-starter. The next logical request would be that ISPs take up the business of data monitoring, inspecting what traverses their network and playing Big Brother by informing the IFPI, RIAA or law enforcement of what you're downloading at any given time.
Ah Doug Morris, unibrow baby to the digital music revolution. His hard-ball approach with Microsoft, fighting hard for a $1 cut of each Zune sold in exchange for allowing Microsoft to license Universal Music's stable of artists, won him a place on the enemies list of every music blogger from Anaheim to Zurich.
Morris' next hardware licensing target is Apple, who's current deal with Universal expires in May of this year. According to the AP, "Speculation in the industry is that he'll seek a slice of iPod sales. Apple declined comment." Morris stopped short of threatening to pull Universal's catalog from iTunes if the Cupertino kids won't cough up extortion payments royalties but, I wouldn't consider that option completely off the table.
Hip-hop producer Timbaland is finding himself embroiled in a controversy that spreads from the shores of North American pop music to the unlikely locale of Finland.
Belgian web magazine Side Line writes, "Part of that Furtado track ["Do It"] (both the intro and the melody) holds an astonishing resemblance with the Amiga .MOD which was originally entered into a music-competition at 'Assembly 2000', a multimedia-party held in Helsinki, Finland in the year 2000. The entry titled "Acid Jazzed Evening" won the competition and now seems to be ripped to feature in the Timbaland produced track."
The controversy has gained large amounts of attention after making the front page of Digg, and being featured on Slashdot. Don't take our word for it, watch the video below and decide for yourself.
Ever think that there's never been an industry group in the history of man with the sort of bulldog spirited anti-competitive mindset of the RIAA? Think again. Techdirt draws an interesting parallel between the RIAA of today, and French button makers of the 1700's. It seems tailors began making buttons out of dense cloth, which outraged the established button making industry, leading to the government imposition of strict fines on the cloth button makers, and some rather-paranoid tactics to ensure control of the market.
"Shortly after the matter of cloth weaving has been disposed of, the button makers guild raises a cry of outrage; the tailors are beginning to make buttons out of cloth, an unheard-of thing. The government, indignant that an innovation should threaten a settled industry, imposes a fine on the cloth-button makers. But the wardens of the button guild are not yet satisfied. They demand the right to search people's homes and wardrobes and fine and even arrest them on the streets if they are seen wearing these subversive goods."
Looks like the RIAA's play book is a little less updated than we thought.
Considering the wide selection at CES, that's a pretty strong compliment. What did they like so much? Grahm Skee writes, "The interface is simple, yet has enough buttons to do what you need to do quickly- including dedicated volume buttons. I am not a fan of touch interfaces but the black square in the middle was responsive and accurate, more so than other touch interfaces."
It's still months away but, I'm super excited to see how this player performs on the open market, and what it leads other PMP manufacturers to develop. For sure, competition is heating up and, at least as features go, it's not an all iPod game anymore.
It isn't digital music but, it's a perfect example of how DRM isn't an effective method of keeping your content from the hands of pirates. The first HD-DVD rip is available via Bittorrent, ending any and all speculation about whether the HD-DVD's DRM format has been successfully cracked.
Brad Linder of Download Squad writes, "The breakthrough came when members of the Doom9 Forum tracked down several unique memory keys that BackupHDDVD needs in order to decrypt HD-DVDs. Apparently the keys for King Kong and 12 Monkeys are also available, although Serenity appears to be the only movie to have made it online so far."
The point? Even the most advanced DRM available isn't effective against piracy and, if DRM isn't effective against piracy it serves as nothing more than a way to control the legal use of rightfully purchased media. Have the urge to build a better media player? You can't, unless you first pay royalties to the DRM licence-owners to legally decrypt the content stored within. Have an idea for a media player that makes those DRM license-owners a little nervous? (i.e. playing back your legally purchased content on a non-blessed Linux?) You won't be getting a license for love or money. It's just that simple.
Boing Boing reports on the PERFORM act, something we've covered before but had written off for dead. Sen. Dianne Fienstein has reintroduced the bill that would outlaw the creation of any device that can record digital radio or internet streams. In layman's speak, PERFORM makes a TiVo like device for radio illegal to manufacture, produce or sell.
Your Sirius s50 or XM2go is toast under a bill like this. Even the simple pause to time-shift of a receiver like the Sirius Starmate could be in danger. And stream recording? Forget about it. This bill makes illegal a great number of things we consider fair use and makes criminals out of radio fans.
The IFPI is pretty proud of stopping a bunch of blank media from making it into Argentina. The culprits weren't exactly trying to smuggle as the IFPI would like to claim; The media was clearly identified on customs forms.
The FCC isn't quite as aggressive as Eliot Spitzer and, as a result, radio may well end up walking away essentially unscathed by the payola probe started by New York's pro-active attorney general. This quote from the Hollywood Reporter nearly makes me want to gag, "While details of the Enforcement Bureau's proposal were sketchy, sources said that radio station groups would be required to set aside a certain amount of airtime for music produced independently. The radio groups also would agree to a code of conduct and an education program, the sources said. As part of the deal, the radio broadcasters would not admit to any wrongdoing." It's disgusting that what passes for a settlement with the FCC amounts to little more than playing a few indie bands every once in a while and promising not to be bad little radio stations ever again. Message received, find more creative ways to violate the public trust next time. Meanwhile no one takes blame, no one admits any wrongdoing and the practice essentially continues unabated.
These are your airwaves, and the FCC is selling you down the river. Everyone seems to have forgotten that the FCC has a mandate to protect the public interest in the radio spectrum, rather than that of the station owners.
Oh how things have changed. When a payola scandal hit in the late 1950's, DJ's were run out of town on rails, Alan Freed ended up broke, drunk and eventually dead for taking songwriting credits and cash to play rock music and Dick Clark only narrowly escaped a similar fate by divesting his interests in recording, and sticking to radio.
I'm always enlightened when Glenn Coolfer grabs his calculator and starts making sense of the sales figures Billboard and Nielsen throw around. Often you find that when Coolfer works over the numbers he gleans insight that no one else is spouting.
This week is no different. While the nay-sayers are forecasting the demise of the music business (once again), Coolfer shows us that optimisim may be the better track, "Last week, digital track sales totaled over 21 million, a 29% drop from the previous week but still 61% higher than the same week in 2006. That 29% drop was an improvement over last year's 33% decline. In other words, sales are higher and are not dropping off the holiday peak as quickly as last year."
He's talking about the same week in which the Dreamgirls Soundtrack was the best thing going, which slipped into the top spot while only moving 66k copies. Its the same week Paul Resnikoff used to declare, "Album sales continue to drop year after year, and chart-topping releases are losing their sales potency. [...] the continued declines are generating anxiety among investors."
Patience and prudence Grasshopper. I say 2007 will end up a banner year, and the year we'll all look back on as the point when a solid transition was made from physical to digital. No doubt, it'll be a bit painful for some. Transition is never comfortable, nor should it be expected to be.
EMI announced a slew of major changes this morning, including a "de-layering" of its executive management and the ousting of two key execs. EMI plans:
De-layering the Group's management structure to allow a more streamlined approach, particularly within the developing digital landscape
Investing and operating in territories and business areas where superior, secure returns can be generated, and reducing exposure to territories and business areas in which these conditions are not satisfied
Continuing expansion of the Group's presence across the music value chain
Extracting revenue and cost synergies between recorded music and music publishing
Strengthening EMI's digital and consumer marketing capabilities
Pursuing partnerships which allow EMI to extract further leverage from its operating infrastructure (e.g. distribution and administration arrangements)
Two things this makes me wonder; First, EMI had been looking for a buyer recently, and I've been worried that they'd be snapped up by a less experimental and more evil competitor. That could still be the case however, if their plan to increase free cash flow is successful, it might take the panic off of looking for a sugar daddy to sure up the financial house. Second, I'm hopeful EMI's new management continues the course EMI's old management was headed towards; DRM-less digital sales and solid differentiation from its competition.
It's been nice watching EMI shake the tree while the other labels try and pretend not to notice. If EMI stops shaking that tree, we could be in for another long period of digital dark-ages.
Watch out Mariah Carey, the diva days are coming to an end. According to 
Two well known mixtape producers have been raided in Atlanta by police accompanied by RIAA jacketed quasi-agents. The agents confiscated boxes of CDs, production equipment and cars from the location, and scored a lead story on local news for themselves where they were quick to remind the public that raids on pirate mixtape producers often yield drug and gun arrests in addition to stopping piracy, just not this raid. 
According to the IFPI's 
Ah Doug Morris, 
Ever think that there's never been an industry group in the history of man with the sort of bulldog spirited anti-competitive mindset of the RIAA? Think again. 
Remember that 
It isn't digital music but, it's a perfect example of how DRM isn't an effective method of keeping your content from the hands of pirates. 
Yesterday I went balistic over the FCC's failure to protect the public interest by 
The FCC isn't quite as aggressive as Eliot Spitzer and, as a result, radio may well end up walking away essentially unscathed by the payola probe started by New York's pro-active attorney general. This quote from the 
EMI 
