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

Enjoy…

——————–

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.

With so many outlets to enjoy music online, the search process can be quite confusing and time consuming. Here is a list arranged by the good people at techcrunch to help make this process easier.

Music Recommendations:

Pandora is a service that can be used only in a specific locale, this one being within the U.S. Luckily, I had the chance to test the service when it was first released and became available to everyone. Launched way back in July 2005, the project had been in the initial testing phases for five years prior to launch date. Pandora recommends music to you by matching similar musical attributes. All you really need to do is choose an artist or a band you like, and Pandora will do the rest. Pandora delivers high quality 128Kbps audio streams, offering recommendations similar to the artists you have chosen. Pandora’s player looks like a radio, you can open up to 100 stations and navigate through them quickly. Registering for Pandora will provide you with a free account (advertising-supported). Free Pandora accounts will play up to  40 hours of music for free per month, you also have the option to pay 99 cents for unlimited listening hours for the rest of that month, or pay $36 to upgrade Pandora for one year. If you want to download music from Pandora, you can do it through iTunes or Amazon. You can see our past Pandora coverage here.

With almost 3 million unique visitors a day, Last.fmis one of the most powerful social music communities on the Web today. Like Pandora, the service allows you to enjoy music that you like, but unlike Pandora, Last.fm analyses what you and your friends listen to and like, and then suggests more music based on that analysis. When you recommend music to a friend or you tag it, or you write about it, or simply just listen to it – you shift the song’s importance on the site, and will in turn get recommended to more people. Based on the music you’ve already listened to, Last.fm will recommend new music you might like, as well as suggest other users with a similar music taste to yours, which you might be interested in friending, and you can also easily communicate with them. If you live outside the U.S., U.K. or Germany, you can listen with a free 30-track trial or subscribe for a low price of $3/month for unlimited radio streaming. (Launched in 2002!)

Thisis how BlogMusik, looked in 2006, and this is how Deezer(formerly BlogMusik) looks today – pretty impressive change, don’t you think? The French-based service is one of the largest and happens to also be a very successful music recommendation search engine. Once registered here, you can create your personal profile and reach the Deezer community. You can create playlists, send messages to your contacts, leave comments, add artists and albums to your favorites, and more. But here’s what I like the most – The SmartRadio, which is an intelligent radio that automatically generates 3 hours(!) of continuous listening based on one artist – completely free. Priceless! You can see our past coverage of Deezer here.

I think the first Adobe AIR application that I ever tried was Finetune. Finetune provides you with the most interesting new playlists of related music from your choice of artists. Besides the site’s community where you can browse, listen to music, create a profile, connect with other users and more, Finefune also has some cool feautures to complete their suite, and each tool gives you an extraordinary music experience. Take for example the Finetune Wii project(which can be played also over the web), it’s a great sight and sound for the eyes and ears. Just enter an artist’s name and Finetune will create a playlist with similar music that will play for hours. Best of all it’s free, and you also get an iPhone, Facebookand a Desktop app that all sync with your music playlist, no matter where you play it from. You can see our past coverage of FineTune here.

Also worth mentioning in this same topic group are, of course: Ilike.com (acquired by Myspace), and music.strands.tv

Independent Music:

Amie Street is a home for musicians. The service allows music fans to discover new and independent music. Visitors at the site can search for new music based on genre, region, or recommendations. Fans can also search for music according to its price -  Amie Street is actually the only marketplace where listeners determinethe price of the music. How does it work? Every song is originally priced free or very inexpensive and increases in price, up to 98 cents, as more and more users purchase it. Musicians then get 70% of the revenue from each sale. Additionally, Amie Street matches you with music that you might like, for example: I couldn’t locate Coldplay on the site, but I got more than 70 results that sound similar to the band. Obviously, this exposes me to music that I’ve never heard before, which is always a welcomed experience. You can see our past coverage of Amie Street here.

Why is Jamendo one of my favorite music services? It offers the largest catalog of music under Creative Commons licenses – worldwide. And, not only are all of the albums free to download, there’s also a large chance you won’t know any of the artists. If you already have an open mind about music, surely it won’t stop you from listening to some new albums, right? The best way to find music at this site is to search by the genre tags. Found something that you like? You can review, comment, rate, share and as I’ve said download it for free.  The service is available in seven languages, and has an iPhone app that you can download for free. Business model? Yes they have one too.

SoundCloudis by far the best looking music application there is today. It offers a great interface, a great user-experience and above these all, great music! SoundCloud lets music professionals receive, send and distribute their music. The service allows professionals (and non-professionals) to exchange, and follow music and musicians at the site. It’s a full community where people can easily communicate with each other based on shared tastes, but it is also a place where musicians can store and showcase their music using high quality standards. With the free account, you can only upload 5 tracks maximum per month, but if you are an industry fanatic and you find this plan to be somewhat lacking, you can check the pro page for packages that are more suitable to your needs. See our past coverage here.

TheSixtyOne allows artists to upload their songs and lets thousands of listeners decide whether they like it or not. The most popular songs hit the front page. Think about it as a Digg for music, the more people heart a song, the higher it goes. The site connects musicians and fans, giving them all the tools to communicate with each other. For artists, it’s good place to promote their work. For anyone else, it’s a wonderful place to discover and support new music.

Create & Listen to Playlist:

I’ve never been very much of a Project Playlistfan, but I have to say it’s a good service. Ultimately, it’s a community based on playlists. You don’t have to register to be able to listen to the music, but once you do, you can start building your playlist and enjoy more features such as the Playlist IM, which is a chat system similar to Facebook where you can connect your ‘playlist’ friends or even friends from AIM, Facebook, Yahoo Messenger, etc. What else? You can write blog entries, upload photos, privately connect with other members, browse thousands of other music playlists, comment, share, and much more. My guess is that people use this site mostly to share their playlist on their blog/site or social network. Playlist allows you to grab a playlist code and embed it anywhere you want. One thing that bugs me though is that the member’s search feature is missing. Today, when everything is so connected to your identity, this is a must have feature. On the other hand, I was impressed to see they saved my playlist from 2006…

Jiwa.fmallows you to create personalize playlist and share it in the Jiwa.fm community or with friends & family. As a member, you are able to share, exchange, and explore music. You can also expand your tastes with the SmartRadio tool. I found this service to be unique in a way because no matter what you are doing at the site, it won’t prevent you from listening to your playlist, it just plays in the background. Amazingly, when you click on an artist from within a mixed artists playlist, it will automatically createan album playlist of that artist. You might find the site to be a bit cluttered at first time, but once you get it, it works like a charm – highly recommended.

At Jogli, you don’t really need to create a playlist – they create it for you. Think about it as a giant web-based CD store where you can search for an artist, see all of his/her albums, and then listen to them exactly as listed in original CD  Let’s take Michael Jackson for example: Hereyou can find all his discography, and listen to his CDs one by one. Clicking on the button ‘Play Radio’ will open a radio station generated from music you might like from similar artists. As a registered member, you are able to save playlists, write reviews, and more. You can also import your playlists to Last.fm or iTunes to make it a video playlist. Check out our past coverage of Jogli here.

MixTubewould have been better and easier if they allowed you to search for Youtube videos on their site to create a playlist. But no, you have to supply them with a Youtube URL, which means, you’ll have to go directly to Youtube, search for a song, then copy-paste that song URL back into MixTube. Thus, I found it to be frustrating. But looking at the bright side, you can always search for someone else’s playlist, and save yourself time and agony. One word about the Youtube music integration – lots of services use it, but unfortunately, it doesn’t offer you much control of your playlist, and what plays today, may not play tomorrow..

Lalais another great music store/playlist maker that we’ve covered extensivelysince the site relaunched last year. It allows users to listen to any song they want one time. If you want to listen to a song more than that, you buy a 10 cent ‘web song’ that lets you stream the song from the cloud as many times as you want (you can also purchase a full download of the song as you would from iTunes or Amazon). The site has a great integrated music player and a variety of pre-made playlists built by other users.

Worth mentioning: Imeem, and Maestro.fm

Music Visualization:

There’s no doubt in my mind that Musicoveryhas a strong following of avid users. The site is an interactive and personalized webradio enabling its users to generate in a few clicks a musical program adapted to the various listening situations and their preferences. Their unique mood matrix proposes a relationship between music and mood in an ergonomic and attractive manner. I’ve submitted this item about the serviceto Digg in 2006 and it’s good to see the site still works . But things have changed. You have limited navigation if you’re not a pro user ($15/3 months or $48/12 months), but once you are – the sky is the limit. In any case, this service will blow you away.

CitySounds.fmis perhaps just a mashup site, but it’s a good one! CitySounds.fm collects music from SoundCloud and pictures from Flickr to create a wonderful music experience from a single page. You can listen to the latest music from cities all around the world. At the top are the most active cities and the list is constantly changing as new music is being created.

Web-Radio:

Very similar to Last.fm in concept, Jangoallows you to create your own custom radio stations and share them with friends. Just type in what you want to hear – and your station will immediately play the music you want along with similar favorites of other Jango users who share your tastes. You can customize your stations further by adding more artists and rating songs. Each artist get a page, containing the web-radio, the music playlist, biographies, events list, comments from members at the site, and fan list for easy communication. The service claims to be legal and says it pays royalties due to all labels/artists every time a song is played. Moreover, Jango runs a program called Jango Airplay. This program gives emerging artists an unprecedented opportunity to be proactively exposed to the millions of visitors at the site. See our past coverage of Jango here.

RadioBeta is an efficient way to locate radio stations in your area or around the globe. You can search stations by geography, genre, band, language or tags. You can listen without signing up, or you can log in and create your personal dashboard with favorite stations that  you can then listen to on a daily basis. We mostly hear radio on the go, but now you can easily track your favorite radio stations on the web. All the radio stations are public so you aren’t asked to pay anything to use the site.

OK, TheRadiois also one of my favorites because of its simplicity. Entering an artist or a genre gets you custom channel, but if you go over the channel listing, you will find much more interesting suggestions. I don’t know about you but I actually like when someone else picks the music as long is it in the range of my request. Anyway, TheRadio does a great job on finding music that I like – it simply works.

Aupeofits in the Recommendation list as well as this category. The service lets you experience music in a fours different ways: by Stations, Artist, Mood, and Personal. The Stations area is pretty limited if you don’t have a pro account, but you can still get the feel of it. In the Artist zone, you enter your favorite name and choose from a variety stations suggested. The coolest way is the Mode area, which plays music based on your chosen mode. These stations are created by music experts, says Aupeo.  The Personal station streams music based on your music behavior at the site. Overall, very intensive and powerful!

Worth mentioning: Tun3r, Mugasha, and  Play.fm

That’s it for Part 1 of this music guide. If you have any other suggestions related to these groups, you are more than welcome to add them in the comments. In the next part of this post, I’ll offer the best options for Music search engines, Music web-players, Twitter-Music craziness, and more. Stay tuned!

I personally prefer and use Beatmaker for iPhone but this new app from IK looks promessing.

GrooveMaker for the iPhone is a re-invention of IK’s original Mac/PC application now with interactive touch control and complete mobility. Each GrooveMaker Pack is a powerful combination of software and sound loops, allowing you to produce beats, grooves and even full soundtracks, all in real-time, anywhere! GrooveMaker offers a totally new experience working with loops! The library sound content is organized in groups of over 60 loops per “Song”.

“Songs” are like mega-construction-kits where all the loops can be combined with one another for millions of possible, unique mixes. Loop types include entire drum grooves, kicks, bass lines, percussions, effects, instrumental lines and pads.

4 style-based randomization buttons allow you to instantly combine a massive amount of synchronized grooves together with one touch. Using IK’s patented “groove generator” technology, GrooveMaker allows you to produce millions of different combinations of loops on the fly. No other software gets you so many remix groove variations so quickly and all with real time control of your mix!

Entire groove snapshots can then be sequenced to produce a whole song with ease and exported to your Mac/PC using a WiFi connection as high-quality 44Khz-16 bit WAV files. You can import your tracks into your preferred DAW or DJ program and take it even further!

There are currently 4 GrooveMaker Style Packs available: FREE, Club, House and Hip-Hop plus 4 more coming soon: Techno, Trance, Drum ‘n’ Bass and Electro.

If you are into DJing/remixing, GrooveMaker can be an invaluable source for making beats and grooves and can even be incorporated live into innovative DJ sets.

If you are a composer using loops, GrooveMaker will allow you to come up with inspirational rhythmic tracks, efficiently, with incredible speed and a totally new approach to loop browsing and groove composition.

All of this for only $9.99 (EUR7.99) /$4.99 (EUR3.99)! Plus a totally FREE version! Hundreds of loops are included in each pack yet it is sold at a fraction of the cost of comparable loops libraries. Each pack also includes the software for your iPhone/iPod Touch! Available on the App Store now.

Source: Music Industry Newswire

I dont know much about the band “Underworld” but i think this was worth posting since it will be apple’s 1st live stream event for the iPhone and i wonder how the quality will be.

Source: QuickPWN

Tonight Apple will stream a live concert by the electronica band Underworld to iPhone users. This is Apple’s first live stream event for the iPhone, and they’ve kept it quiet because they don’t want to overwhelm the AT&T network.

The live stream is free and will begin at 9 PM PT/ Midnight EST time. You must be running iPhone OS 3.0 software in order to view this stream.

If you’re interested in watching the Underworld band live tonight bookmark the following URLs on your iPhone:

• http://www.iphone.akamai.com
• http://www.underworldlive.com

Underworld’s band members admit to being huge fans of Apple products. Underworld band member Karl Hyde has licensed the entire Underworld catalog to iTunes and also plans to launch an iPhone iDrum application that allows fans to remix classics like “Cowgirl” and Borny Slippy,” and a brand-new track.

I honestly believe that Apple’s exclusive distribution deal with AT&T (and Rogers in Canada) is hurting iPhone sales! What do you guys think? Leave a comment.

According to research firm IDC, RIM’s BlackBerry Curve has taken the top spot as the top-selling smartphone for the second quarter in the US. Despite the iPhone and it’s success with the App Store, the BlackBerry has managed to do better in sales.

  Here is the list of the top 10 selling smartphones for Q2:

1. BlackBerry Curve (8310, 8320, 8330, 8350i, and 8900)
2. Apple iPhone 3GS (16GB and 32GB)
3. BlackBerry Pearl (8110, 8120, 8130)
4. Apple iPhone 3G (8GB and 16GB)
5. BlackBerry Bold
6. BlackBerry Storm
7. HTC/T-Mobile G1
8. Palm Pre
9. HTC Touch Pro
10. HTC Touch Diamond

I’m surprised that the BlackBerry has been able to perform better than Apple. One of the major factors that I believe is bringing lower sales to the iPhone is that it’s only available on AT&T. If the iPhone was to be available on other carriers like Verizon, or Sprint I’m sure that  it would easily beat BlackBerry in sales.

If you read the list you’ll notice that there are five different models of the BlackBerry Curve, while there are only two different models of the iPhone 3GS. So the list is a bit unfair! IDC is also saying that they haven’t finalized the numbers yet, they’re preliminary.

The Palm Pre which was launched on June 6th ranked 8th in this list. It’s good to see that Palm’s new Pre at least ranked on this list

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?

On Wednesday Apple released a new version of iTunes that disables the ability for any non iPod/iPhone to sync with it. The Palm Pre, which has been in circulation for 6 months now, has been highlighting it’s ability to “trick” iTunes into thinking it was an iPod.

Fortunately for Palm, that move from Apple did not deliver a death blow and Palm’s stock who went for a nosedive early wednesday (falling 7.4%) recovered by the end of the day.

Is the Palm Pre the real iPhone killer…as they call it? Leave a comment

Source: CNN Money / Brainstorm Tech

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)