Label:Life

Badly Drawn Boy, Travis and Spiritulized are the first three acts giving tracks to warchildmusic.com, a new web site selling exclusive downloads in aid of the War Child charity’s global relief work.

The project, to launch in mid-June, will offer a monthly flow of new music from many of the world’s finest acts. Pricing will be 99p per track or an inclusive £3.50 monthly subscription. Downloads will be Apple Macintosh and iPod, and PC compatible. [more @ www.revolution.haynet.com]

The new owner of MP3.com has launched a separate site offering songs uploaded by independent and unsigned artists

Online-technology company CNET Networks has launched a free digital music service, allowing users to search and download what it says are thousands of songs contributed by independent and unsigned artists.

The service, based on CNET’s Download.com Web site music.download.com, has been collecting music for the past few weeks, encouraging musicians to register on the site and upload their songs. [more @ www.zdnet.co.uk]

What a difference a year makes in digital music.
A year ago this week, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced an online music store that promised to make buying and playing digital music on portable devices like Apple’s iPod less cumbersome.

It wasn’t exactly a revolutionary idea, but it had a profound effect. Many thought legitimate services couldn’t compete with free, unlicensed services like Kazaa. But Apple has sold 50 million songs and helped spawn an array of me-too services from Wal-Mart, Musicmatch and a revived Napster. [more @ www.usatoday.com]

JupiterResearch, a division of Jupitermedia Corporation, today announced that the sweet spot for capacity of portable music players by online consumers is 1,000 songs.

Based on a JupiterResearch online consumer survey, the new research report “Portable Media Devices – Beyond Music” states that 90% of consumers who maintain a music collection on their PC have no more than 1,000 songs in their collection and that 77% of consumers interested in purchasing a portable media player would want a portable music player with a capacity of 1,000 songs. [more @ www.mi2n.com]

Finally shedding its stodgy fatcat image, the Recording Industry Assocation of America (RIAA) has picked up on the remixing craze with their own unique, patented style: the RIAA-Mix*!

This slamming new remix style pairs today’s hottest Top40 tracks with the rough’n’tumble aesthetic tradition of anti-pop freeform noise! Shooting straight up from the underground, this ear-bleeding mash is sure to catch the ears of the naught generation’s youthful angst the same way that Nirvana’s screeching feedback and Public Enemy’s authentic grit gave voice to the early 1990’s with sharp, street-level indie cred.

All RIAA-Mixes are the result of an unprecedented collaboration between industry heavyweights in the RIAA, and up-coming talent, Overpeer/Loudeye. [more @ riaamix.com]

This weeks pick is absolute class.

‘Pulseprogramming’ by SchneiderTM taken from their album ‘Reconfigures’, released yesterday on Earsugar Records, is nothing short of brilliant.

The clicky glitch-ridden intro leads you to believe you’re about to be battered by some Aphex twin style nastyness, only to morph into a beautiful electronic blues song with real character and style.

The album features Dirk Dresselhaus’ reworkings of artists including Lamb, Lambchop, The Faint and Boss Hogg among others, although musicweek described it as “more a “SchneiderTM feautring…” set than a collection of remixes.” Click HERE to listen to ‘Pulseprogramming’ and HERE for a V-card with more audio clips from the album.

The music industry’s trade group has dropped a program that offered to spare individuals from being sued by recording companies if they admitted to illegally sharing music online, courts documents show.

The Recording Industry Association of America launched the “Clean Slate” program in September, when it embarked on a strategy of suing individual computer users for copyright infringement. [more @ www.usatoday.com]

RealNetworks made a direct appeal last week to Apple Computer, its Internet music rival, suggesting that the two companies form a common front against Microsoft in the digital music business.

The offer to create a “tactical alliance” was made Friday by Rob Glaser, chief executive of RealNetworks, the Seattle-based Internet music and video service, in an e-mail message to Steve Jobs, Apple’s chairman.

But if an alliance with Apple could not be struck, Glaser strongly hinted in the e-mail message that he might be forced to form a partnership with Microsoft to pursue “very interesting opportunities” because support for Microsoft’s media-playing software seems to be growing. [more @ www.news.com.com]

Apple Computer apparently doesn’t want to sing the same tune as its Internet music rival RealNetworks.

Seattle-based RealNetworks said Thursday that Apple chairman Steve Jobs had declined an offer by RealNetworks’ chief executive Rob Glaser to meet and discuss forming an online music alliance involving Apple’s best-selling iPod portable players.

“He’s in the neighborhood, but whatever meeting Rob wanted with Steve isn’t happening,” RealNetworks spokesman Greg Chiemingo said Thursday. “Steve just doesn’t want to open the iPod, and we don’t understand that.”

Apple executives declined to comment. [more @ www.wired.com]

The Los Angeles Times today [04/16/04] is reporting that Universal Music Group, the largest record conglomerate in the world, has announced an increase in the prices of their CDs.

This comes only months after UMG slashed prices in order to make CDs more competitive in a marketplace that features pay downloads as well as the dreaded “free” (or as record executives and the RIAA like to call them “illegal” downloads”). Representatives from Universal Music Group were not available for comment at the time of publishing. [more @ www.audiorevolution.com]