Label:Life

This weeks pick is the forthcoming installment from the ‘Late Night Tales’ series of compilations on Azuli Records, this one presented by Four Tet (aka Kieran Hebden).

Taking in the far-flung reaches of Kieran’s legendarily expansive musical map and unveiling many of the influences behind his ‘Pause’ and ‘Rounds’ albums, this collection pitches warm psychedelia against cool jazz against free floating folk against hardcore hip hop against straight up
experimental lunacy, and emerges with a cohesive game-plan… after a fashion.

Some of the highlights of the album include ‘One Way Glass’ by Manfred Mann’s Chapter 3, all fat 60’s drums and even fatter horns and Four Tet’s own interpretation of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Castles Made Of Sand’, which strips away the vocals and guitar to leave a pretty unique reading of this classic song from ‘Axis Bold As Love’. Strange and beautiful.

Have a listen to some of the album HERE and check out www.azuli.com.

Pop piracy should be decriminalised and the music industry should realise that efforts to stop illegal downloading are doomed, a conference has been told.

Instead the music industry should embrace file-sharers, said technology journalist and author Andrew Orlowski in a keynote speech at the Interactive In The City conference being held in Manchester. [more @ www.bbc.co.uk]

Apple’s iTunes Music Store may be the current 800-pound gorilla of the online music industry (as far as paid downloads are concerned), but now Yahoo, possibly the most visited site on the Internet, is getting into the fray, paying $160 million in cash for MusicMatch, a Windows-only online music service.
[more @ www.tidbits.com]

A British consumers’ lobbying group has complained to the Office of Fair Trading about prices on Apple’s iTunes online music download service.

The group, the Consumers’ Association, said that the service charges 20 percent more per track in Britain than it does in France and Germany and that the disparity could be anticompetitive. [more @ www.iht.com]

Recent reports in the British press hint that lawyers for both sides are working toward a resolution that might result in not only a multimillion-dollar settlement but in making the Beatles catalog available online, initially at Apple’s iTunes Music Store. Both Apple Computer and Apple Corps declined to comment.

Should a deal come to fruition, fans would say yeah, yeah, yeah. The effect on digital music “would be huge,” says Paul Resnikoff, editor of the Digital Music News Web Site. “Nothing is bigger” than the Beatles catalog. [more @ www.macnewsworld.com]

Independent musicians are losing patience with all-conquering download shop iTunes after being made to wait to join its download list.

When iTunes launched, the Association of Independent Musicians (AIM), which covers a large number of independent record labels, protested its members had been neglected. Months later, some labels have signed to iTunes but not seen their catalogue appear, some have started talks and seen no contracts and others have seen no interest from Apple full stop.

Indie labels Domino and Ninja Tunes did sign a licence with Apple but haven’t heard from the song shop since while others haven’t even had a sniff of any licensing paperwork from Cupertino, despite repeated overtures from the record label. [more @ www.silicon.com]

Record companies are taking such a large cut from tracks sold online that many of the burgeoning online music stores will go out of business, experts warned yesterday.

Figures obtained by The Independent show that the labels take home the lion’s share of the cost of a digital download, making more money per track than they do with CDs in shops. [more @ www.independent.co.uk]

Record labels and Microsoft are in discussions about ways that the next generation of the Windows operating system, code-named Longhorn, can support copy-protected CD technology.

The music labels, in large part led by top executives at EMI Group and coordinated through their U.S. and international trade associations, are creating a “wish list” of CD rights protection features they want to see provided or supported by Longhorn. Microsoft, in turn, has provided its own set of guidelines for the labels, without yet promising anything, sources familiar with the situation said. [more @ www.news.com]

Beep Science today announced its partnership with Sony Network Services Europe to provide Digital Rights Management solution for its mobile music streaming service StreamMan, the next generation of mobile phone entertainment.

Beep Science provides an end-to-end OMA Digital Rights Management (DRM) system in the StreamMan service provided by Sony Network Services Europe. StreamMan represents the next generation of mobile phone entertainment, offering instant mobile access to music and the convenience of listening to personalised selections anytime and anywhere. [more @ www.phonecontent.com]

Dwango Wireless, a developer and publisher of entertainment content, applications and Mobile Lifestyle Brands for mobile phone users, announced today it has signed an agreement with INgrooves, the world’s largest digital record company, to create music ringtones from INgrooves’ dance, electronic, hip-hop and R&B artists and labels.

A key player in the digital music industry, INgrooves provides Dwango Wireless with the ability to license master sound recordings from top artists including Felix Da Housecat, Armand van Helden, Sander Kleinenberg, Dujeous and breakout R&B star Kieran. Dwango will transform the recordings into high-quality consumer music ringtones to be distributed across Dwango’s Mobile Lifestyle Brands, giving fans the ability to select from a diverse library of music ringtones that fit their unique tastes. [more @ www.businesswire.com]