I wanted to share an interesting article I was reading for TechCrunch

Enjoy…

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All the big music sellers may have moved to non-DRM MP3 files long ago, but the watermarking of files with your personal information continues. Most users who buy music don’t know about the marking of files, or don’t care. Unless those files are uploaded to BitTorrent or other P2P networks, there isn’t much to worry about.

A list of which music services are selling clean MP3 files without embedded personal information, and which aren’t, is here. Apple, LaLa (owned by Apple) and Walmart embed personal information. Amazon, Napster and the rest have resisted label pressure to do so.

A music industry insider who’s asked to remain anonymous writes to us:

Hidden in purchased music files from popular stores such as Apple and Walmart is information to identify the buyer and/or the transaction. You won’t find it disclosed in their published terms of use. It’s nowhere in their support documentation. There’s no mention in the digital receipt. Consumers are largely oblivious to this, but it could have future ramifications as the music industry takes another stab at locking down music files.

Here’s how it works. During the buying process a username and transaction ID are known by the online retailers. Before making the song available for download their software embeds into the file either an account name or a transaction number or both. Once downloaded, the file has squirreled away this personal information in a manner where you can’t easily see it, but if someone knows where to look they can. This information doesn’t affect the audio fidelity, but it does permanently attach to the file data which can be used to trace back to the original purchaser which could be used at a later date.

Retailers aren’t talking, but there’s ample proof of what’s transpiring. Using simple file comparison tools it’s possible to verify this behavior by purchasing identical songs using different accounts and see if they match. I emailed support departments for several retailers asking if they would acknowledge these actions and inquiring about what specific information they are embedding. Only 7digital responded saying they don’t use any watermarks. What retailers won’t say publicly is that the major record labels are requiring this behavior as a precondition to sell their music.

Certain record labels have aspirations to use this hidden data to control future access to music in a return to DRM (digital rights management). The labels yearn to control where you can listen to your music and this could be a backdoor for them to achieve it. When personal libraries are stored in the cloud, it becomes possible to retrieve this personal data and match it to a user identity. If the match is successful the song plays, but if not, access can be blocked through a network DRM system such as the one Lala patented (which is now owned by Apple).

For the scheme to work record labels need all retailers to support this and so far some notable names are resisting. Napster, Amazon and UK based 7digital are selling clean MP3 files. Files purchased from these stores do not have any user information whatsoever embedded into them. Other retailers such as Apple and Walmart have succumbed to label pressure to embed personal info.

Retailers and record labels should have the right to sell dirty files if they wish, however they should be obligated to disclose their practices in advance. Consumers should have this information so they can make an informed buying decision about whether to support dirty or clean MP3 vendors. If Barnes and Noble printed your name on pages of books you purchase that would be important information to know because it would affect the value of your book. Here the clandestine actions are even more worrisome because it could lead to a future lockdown of purchases. If the labels have plans to require cloud vendors to use this information in the future, they should disclose that as well.

Cloud Music And The New DRM

Apple, Google and Amazon are all reportedly in discussions with big labels to provide a cloud music service. These services will allow users to purchase rights to stream music, and they will also allow syncing of songs on your hard drive already so you can play those without repurchasing them (this was the original LaLa model).

The labels, say our source, are demanding that a user can only stream music that is watermarked to their username. Change the username, or try to stream music that you’ve ripped from a CD, and those songs won’t play.

In other words, it’s DRM déjà vu all over again.

Here is an interesting article I found on mashable.com
Leave a comment with your opinion.

There’s a new dustup in the long and rocky transition to digital music publishing. This time the industry has its sights on collecting performance fees for downloads of music, film and TV as well as licensing fees for the 30-second song samples Apple uses to let iTunes customers preview tracks.

CNet reports that the two major agencies in charge of collecting royalties in the U.S., ASCAP and BMI, have been unsuccessful to date in negotiations on these points with electronic music retailers. They’ve since begun lobbying Congress to pass legislation that would require any music retailer selling downloads to pay a performance fee.

Performance fees are typically collected when music is performed in public: at radio stations, in restaurants, in sports stadiums and other venues for example. The argument that ASCAP and BMI are trying to make is that downloading a song from the web should be considered a performance and thus subjected to this fee.

The courts thus far have not been favorable to this argument. Past rulings have tended to side with music retailers, with a precedent-setting ruling from a U.S. district court finding that streaming music should be subject to performance fees but not downloads. ASCAP has since appealed the decision, with the case returning to court later this year.

The royalty agencies are also going after performance fees from downloads of movies and TV shows. The argument goes that when music is included in film or TV that is shown on broadcast, cable or satellite, a performance fee is collected. So when that same TV show is downloaded over iTunes, music industry representatives say, they should also be subject to this performance fee.

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30 Second Song Clip Licensing

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Lastly and likely even more controversially, the licensing agencies are going after licensing fees for the 30 second track previews used by iTunes to give customers a taste of the music they presumably may want to buy. Apple has obtained the necessary legal licensing to use these song previews, but music publishers complain that no money changed hands in the deal — and they want their pound of flesh.

We tend to agree with Jonathan Potter, executive director of the Digital Media Association that represents web-based media services like Apple and Pandora(): “They aren’t getting paid for the public performance in a download because there is no public performance in a download.” How is a download a public performance? When I click the “buy now” button my friends don’t spontaneously gather ’round to hear the glorious “ding” sound of a completed transfer or anything. It will be a hard argument to make, and the courts seem at least initially to agree.

As for the 30 second samples brouhaha — since when did it become smart business to spend time and money actively preventing your potential customers from finding out if they want to give you money or not? It’s unfortunate that in the shift to a digital media ecosystem licensing agencies are getting squeezed, but some of these tactics reek of desperation.

What do you think: does the download of an MP3 file constitute a performance? Should Apple be forking over money to ASCAP and BMI for track previews? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Newly resurrected rap label Death Row Records is expanding into film production.

Death Row Records CEO Lara Lavi said her new Death Row Films division is set to shoot “Sons 2 The Grave” in Toronto this October, with Tonya Lee Williams, Dorian Harewood, K.C. Collins (“Flashpoint”) and child actor Cameron Miles Jones on board.

The indie hood drama, written and produced by Lynn Stoltz and near to signing a director, features Collins as a young basketball phenom returning to an embattled inner city ghetto after two gunshots cut short his dream of an NBA career.

“This film embodies what we’re trying to do with Death Row, to tell human stories that don’t always have happy endings, and that allow us to learn from violence and disenfranchised lives, but not glorify it,” said Lavi.

WIDEawake Entertainment Group, Lavi’s Toronto-based shingle, acquired Death Row Records out of bankruptcy last January for $18 million.

Death Row Films will tap the rap label’s catalogue to score “Sons 2 The Grave,” before moving on to other projects.

“We’re looking at film properties that relate to Boyz in the Hood-type stories, and to power the films with Death Row music,” Lavi said.

She added the Death Row library, which includes iconic songs and albums by Tupac, Dr. Dre, Snoop Doggy Dogg and Danny Boy, is barely exploited.

“We’re sitting here with 10,000 masters, of which only 10% to 15% have been released to the public,” she said.

Death Row Records is licensing its songs to film, TV, video game and advertising producers, including to EA Games, and the “CSI” and “Cold Case” TV series.

Music publisher Evergreen Copyrights is providing worldwide administration for the rap label. And Death Row Records is also to re-release on September 1 Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic.” “The Chronic Re-lit” collectors disc will feature 16 original songs and seven new tunes, and unreleased video of Dr. Dre and other artists.

Death Row is also readying box sets of unreleased master recordings for the holiday season.

Source: Billboard.biz

Spotify wants to release and iPhone app and dominate the world of music streaming.

“Spotify has been gaining popularity in Europe since its launch in 2006. The peer-to-peer program, which lets users share music from their own collections with other users, is considered one of the top music-streaming sites thanks to its huge library of songs which play with almost zero buffering delay (that annoying choppiness that can make streaming songs — or video or TV shows — particularly frustrating). Add to that the fact that Spotify’s basic service is free — advertising pays for artists’ royalties — and it’s easy to see where it gets its approximately 6 million users.”

I dont know about you guys but as a music consumer, i like the idea of having access to millions of tracks and never having to use the storage space on my device. I also like the fact that i can stream content from a list of millions of song for a small monthly fee. For about $15 a month ( the cost of about 15 songs in iTunes) Spotify will allow users to stream it’s library of 6 million songs in CD quality and without that long buffering wait.
I have to add that as a music creator (artist/producer) Spotify does create some concerns. Sometimes i want to be able to download the track so that i can remix it and what happens to music ownership?  How will copyright owners will get payed with this model?

Leave your comment and thoughts below

Article: Will Apple Open the iPhone to Rival Spotify?

Interesting report released this week by Will Page, chief economist at PRS for Music, the UK’s performance rights organization. The entire report can downloaded here, but the details, in a nutshell:

* The value of the recorded music biz fell 6%
* The value of the live music industry in the UK increased 13%
* Licensing revenues from labels increased 7%
* Other publishing revenues increased 7%
* Digital music grew by almost 50% in 2008, with physical declining by roughly 10%

Read more

hegemony:

–noun, plural -nies.  1. leadership or predominant influence exercised by one nation over others, as in a confederation. 2. leadership; predominance. 3. (esp. among smaller nations) aggression or expansionism by large nations in an effort to achieve world domination.

Source

Jay-Z (Shawn Carter) is the closest thing to a hegemon which the rap world has known for a long time. He’s #1 on the Forbes list of the top earning rappers. He has an unimpeachable reputation, both artistic and commercial, and has produced some of the all-time best (and best-selling) hip hop albums including standouts Reasonable Doubt, The Blueprint and the Black Album. He spent several successful years as the CEO of Def Jam Records before buying out his contract a few months ago to release his new album on his own label. And he’s got Beyonce. Nobody, but nobody, in the hip hop world has his combination of hard power and soft power. If there be hegemony, then this is it. Heck, when he tried to retire after the Black Album, he found himself dragged back into the game (shades of America’s inward turn during the Clinton years?).

But the limits on his ability to use this power recalls the debates about U.S. primacy. Should he use this power to its fullest extent, as neo-conservatives would advise, imposing his will to reshape the world, forcing others to adapt to his values and leadership? Or should he fear a backlash against the unilateral use of power, as realists such as my colleague Steve Walt or liberals such as John Ikenberry would warn, and instead exercise self-restraint?

Read more

here’s an interesting article i wanted to share with y’all:

Source

“It’s hard to tell what’s legal when once-defunct sites like KaZaA and Napster –former bastions of illegal downloads — crawl out of the grave with legit subscription plans.

And digital music offerings are expanding.

Instead of buying CDs or downloading songs, younger consumers appear to be shifting toward streaming music online and on mobile devices.

That’s partly because music streaming services like Pandora are largely free, and also because younger people aren’t as tied to the idea that music must be owned to be enjoyed, said Russ Crupnick, a senior industry analyst at NPD Entertainment, which conducts market research.

In a survey released earlier this year, NPD Group found the number of teens streaming music online jumped from 34 percent in 2007 to 52 percent in 2008. CD sales and music downloads dropped over the same period.

It’s unclear which online music models will survive, said John Simson, executive director of SoundExchange, the nonprofit that collects royalties for recording companies and artists.

But some music industry experts say the shifting landscape of digital music could help save struggling musicians and record companies.

“To survive, music labels must get revenue from multiple sources, with the consumers deciding which of these sources they want to use to access music,” he said in an e-mail. “These sources need to include streaming services like Pandora, SomaFM, Yahoo, etc. and subscription services like Napster and Rhapsody.

“These services are good for the industry as long as artists who create the music and the music labels that invest in that music creation receive fair compensation.”

To help you sort through the many options, CNN.com compiled a list of 10 sites that are rethinking how people access music on the Internet.

Try them out and let us know what you think with comments on this story.

Subscription services

Some sites, like eMusic, offer monthly fees for music downloads. Others, like Rhapsody, let subscribers stream music on demand.

eMusic

An indie-music fan favorite, eMusic is a paid subscription site that lets users download a certain number of songs per month. The baseline plan offers 24 songs per month for $11.99. Bonuses: free song previews, and new users can download 35 song files for free.

KaZaA

You may remember the days when KaZaA was the post-Napster king of illegal music downloads. The former peer-to-peer file sharing site had been shut down but recently came back to life in a legal form. Its service costs $19.98 per month for unlimited downloads from KaZaA’s catalog of 1 million songs, which is relatively small compared with its competitors. The blander, legal site isn’t getting much love from reviewers.

Rhapsody

Crupnick, the analyst, called Rhapsody the “grandfather” of the subscription sites. Owned by RealNetworks, Rhapsody lets users play any of its 6 million songs on demand for $12.99 per month. That’s pricier than some, but the site comes with an air of respectability and a variety of songs.

Napster

The site was big in the ’90s before it closed amid legal wrangling over copyright. It’s back now, owned by BestBuy, and offers a $5 monthly plan that gives you access to stream Napster’s 7 million songs on demand and to download five music files per month. It has a larger catalog than any of its close competitors.

Free online streaming

These sites let listeners stream music over the Internet, usually for free, instead of downloading it to their computers. Some of the sites don’t always give consumers song-by-song choices of what they’re listening to.

Pandora

The most buzzed-about music site at the moment, Pandora users create their own radio stations simply by typing in the name of an artist or song they love. Pandora’s computers analyze your choices and stream music that’s similar stylistically. After legal battles, the site recently reached an agreement in which it pays royalties to musicians and record companies.

MySpace Music

The former social network juggernaut now is known mostly for its music site, where bands blog, promote new albums and often offer up full versions of some of their songs for users to play on demand. Observers look for the music aspect of MySpace to make or break the original site, which is being eclipsed by Facebook and Twitter.

Social music

Concerts are a social experience, so why not online music? These sites combine elements of online social networking with trends like mixtape trading of the 1980s and our inner desires to be everyone’s favorite DJ.

Blip.fm

Blip.fm turns its users into micro-blogging DJs. Blip fans post songs they’re listening to and make comments along the way in a Twitter-like fashion. Site users can tune into anyone’s radio station to learn about new music and to keep tabs on friends’ moods. The site also integrates well with social networks like Twitter. So you can also fill your Twitter feed with the latest tunes, if you so choose.

imeem

Imeem combines social networking with music discovery. Users can stream music from the site for free and can easily share tracks with their friends. It’s essentially the digital revival of the mixtape — make a playlist and send it to your friends online. No dual tape deck required.

Other takes

The Hype Machine

The Hype Machine offers a new take on the radio station. The site looks for song files posted to music blogs, then stitches together the week’s coolest tracks in a single feed. The free service is best for the indie crowd or those looking for something new.

The Pirate Bay

This illegal download site has been sailing troubled waters lately. In April, the site’s four founders were convicted of collaborating to violate copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail. But in May, a Swedish company, Global Gaming Factory, bought The Pirate Bay. Its chief executive recently told CNET the company still has plans to restart the site in a legitimate form. It’s still a bit unclear what the business model may look like, however.”

Here’s an interesting article that discusses an important milestone in the music industry. I can’t stress this enough…the future is digital! The next milestone i would love to see is the day we retire mp3s and deal with wave or any other lossless digital files.
This article comes from The New York Times
Enjoy!

Since MP3s first became popular a decade ago, music industry executives have obsessed over this question: when would digital music revenue finally surpass compact disc sales?

For Atlantic Records, the label that in years past has delivered artists like Ray Charles, John Coltrane and Led Zeppelin, that time, apparently, is now.

Atlantic, a unit of Warner Music Group, says it has reached a milestone that no other major record label has hit: more than half of its music sales in the United States are now from digital products, like downloads on iTunes and ring tones for cellphones.

“We’re like a college basketball team on an 18-2 run,” said Craig Kallman, Atlantic’s chairman and chief executive.

At the Warner Music Group, Atlantic’s parent company, digital represented 27 percent of its American recorded-music revenue during the fourth quarter. (Warner does not break out financial data for its labels, but Atlantic said that digital sales accounted for about 51 percent of its revenue.)

With the milestone comes a sobering reality already familiar to newspapers and television producers. While digital delivery is becoming a bigger slice of the pie, the overall pie is shrinking fast. Analysts at Forrester Research estimate that music sales in the United States will decline to $9.2 billion in 2013, from $10.1 billion this year. That compares with $14.6 billion in 1999, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

As a result, the hope that digital revenue will eventually compensate for declining sales of CDs — and usher in overall growth — have largely been dashed.

“It’s not at all clear that digital economics can make up for the drop in physical,” said John Rose, a former executive at EMI, the British music company, who is now a senior partner at the Boston Consulting Group.

Instead, the music industry is now hoping to find growth from a variety of other revenue streams it has not always had access to, like concert ticket sales and merchandise from artist tours. “The real question,” Mr. Rose said, “is how does the record industry change its rights structure so it captures a fairer percent of the value it creates in funding, marketing and managing the launch of artists?”

Ever since 1999, when the popular file-swapping service Napster was created, the music industry’s fate has been closely watched by other media companies — television, film and print publications like newspapers — whose traditional businesses are also under siege.

In virtually all these corners of the media world, executives are fighting to hold onto as much of their old business as possible while transitioning to digital — a difficult process that NBC Universal’s chief executive, Jeff Zucker, has described as “trading analog dollars for digital pennies.”

In each of these sectors, digital remains a small piece of the business. NBC has said it expects $1 billion in digital revenue by 2009; over all, the company’s revenue last year was more than $15 billion. Time Inc., the largest magazine publisher, with publications like Sports Illustrated, People and Fortune, said that about 9 percent of its $2.2 billion revenue in the first half of this year was derived from digital. In October, The New York Times Company said that online revenue accounted for 12.4 percent of its overall revenue.

On Tuesday, the Warner Music Group reported that digital revenue for the full fiscal year rose 39 percent, to $639 million, or 18 percent of the company’s total revenue. Over all, the company topped the expectations of Wall Street analysts — who on average were forecasting a small loss, according to Reuters — by reporting a net profit of $6 million in the fourth quarter. Revenue fell 1 percent, to $854 million.

Atlantic, whose artists include the Southern rapper T. I., the rock band Death Cab for Cutie and Kid Rock, appears to be the first of the major labels to claim that most of its revenue is coming from digital sales — and it says it has done so without seeing as steep of a decline in compact disc sales as the rest of the industry.

This performance is sharply at odds with the trends in the music industry over all, where data show that sales of compact discs still account for more than two-thirds of music sales. Forrester Research does not expect digital music to reach 50 percent of the overall pie until 2011.

Analysts said they were surprised that Atlantic — with the highest overall market share in the industry this year — had such a high percentage of digital revenue.

“That’s a lot,” said David Card, a digital music analyst at Forrester Research. “That’s very high. No one is near that.”

The question, then, is whether Atlantic’s performance an outlier or a signal that the music industry is reaching a pivot point as it moves toward a new business model?

“I think we’ve figured it out,” said Julie Greenwald, president of Atlantic Records. “It used to be that you could connect five dots and sell a million records. Now there are 20 dots you can connect to sell a million records.”

In making that transition to a digital business, the music business has become immeasurably more complicated. Replacing compact disc sales are small bits of revenue from many sources: Atlantic Records’ digital sales include ring tones, ringbacks, satellite radio, iTunes sales and subscription services. At the same time, record labels — Atlantic included — are spending less money to market artists. In the pre-Internet days, said Ms. Greenwald, “we were so flush, we did everything in the name of promotion.” Among the cutbacks are less spending to produce videos and to support publicity tours when a new album is released.

“Today you have to be like Leonard Bernstein,” said Mr. Kallman, “making sure everyone is hitting the right notes at just the right millisecond. The tipping point, if you will, is when everything converges and your timing with everything is impeccable.”

The New York Times

“It takes 10 years of extensive training to excel in anything”
Herbert Simon – Nobel Laureate

As 2008 wines down, I’m already thinking about 2009 and realized that 09 will mark my 10 year anniversary in the game. This journey started for me in 1999 as a 17 year old freshman in university. That’s when i started producing, flowing, witting, ect…

Scientific research has concluded that it takes 10 years of training for a player/athlete to reach elite levels or for an artist to master his/her craft or create their best work. This is called the ten year rule or 10,000 hour rule, which translates to slightly more than three hours of practice daily for ten years. I’m at the stage where i feel like I’ve mastered my rhyming, flowing, producing, mixing skills and I’m ready for the big league. It didn’t come easily but the long term result has put me in a place where my confidence, skill and swagger is unmatched and 2009 will prove me right.

I will write more about this at the end of the year as I look back at the past 10 years and set goal/expectations for the next 10.

I discovered and fell in love with Hip hop in 1989, started my journey as an emcee/producer/entrepreneur/engineer in 1999 and heading to the big leagues in 2009. IT’S MY YEAR….stay on the look out because big things will happen.

I’m not a rapper, I’m a LYRICIST on nice beats.

Lyrically yours,

Logiq
OOMG MUSIC INC.

The future is digital and google wants to own it all! Anyone hesitant to embrace this future will be left behind. This is the new way media will be delivered in the future and google (and others…amazon ect) are positioning themselves to be leaders in this digital future.

Check out this collection of videos and leave your comment.

Prometeus – The Media Revolution

Prometeus – The Media Revolution part 2

Artificial intelligence and digital media (this one is pretty long but some cool stuff start 28:28 minutes in)