Label:Life

Audio equipment manufacturers want as few restrictions as possible when designing new products. Audio content providers, on the other hand, seem hell-bent on locking down any music you buy tighter than Fort Knox.

An uneasy truce between the manufacturers and music industry results in components that are more cumbersome than necessary (no universal digital outputs on a SACD or DVD-A players), have limited options for use (copying restrictions that run counter to Fair-Use laws), and are generally not what the customer wanted.

The result can be sluggish equipment sales, and a synergistic nightmare for companies like Sony that have one foot in each camp.
[more @ www.stereophile.com]

DVD Jon, erstwhile menace to the movie moguls has allegedly turned his attention to the music industry.

Jon Lech Johansen became famous six years ago after cracking the copyright protection on movie DVDs.

According to reports, he now has joined forces with two other crackers and released software that can bypass Apple’s Latest News about Apple iTunes FairPlay digital rights management (DRM) code.

The software, called PyMusique, is said to allow people to copy songs bought through the iTunes site onto music players other than iPods.
[more @ www.toptechnews.com]

While many consumers are willing to pay for digital music, there are still those who believe music should be shared widely and freely as a means of artistic expression or self-promotion.

According to research by Pew Internet and American Life in May 2004, artists are split on whether free downloading on the Internet has hurt or helped their careers. [more @ www.macnewsworld.com]

Pity the classical-music fan. While lovers of pop, rock, jazz, folk and rap can surf the Web and easily download everything from Iggy Pop to 50 Cent, the digital age has left consumers with a taste for portable Tchaikovsky more or less in the lurch.

Popular sites like Napster, Yahoo Inc.’s Musicmatch and Microsoft Corp.’s MSN Music devote only 2 percent to 10 percent of their offerings to classical works, and the hunt for a specific track can be tough going, especially for classical fans with sophisticated tastes. [more @ www.azcentral.com]

U2 star Bono believes the legends who have been a part of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame wouldn’t stand a chance of survival in today’s cut-throat music business.

The rock star, who became a Hall of Fame member at a ceremony in New York a few days ago, insists that the modern music industry isn’t carved for artists who think longevity is far more important than immediate success.

“There is very little chance for there to be another U2 the way the business is constructed right now. You have to have the single immediately. If you don’t, you don’t get a second chance ”, RatetheMusic quoted Bono as saying. [more @ www.obviousnews.com]

Somewhere between the live music showcases on Sixth Street and the endless schmoozing that ran well past midnight, the deep-fried drunkfest known as South by Southwest also squeezed in some discussion of technology and how it’s changing the music industry.

In the tradition of the annual Austin music festival, which ended Saturday, panels covered both the industry and artistic side of the music game. Labels and managers, after all, are just as interested as the artists themselves in how the internet, digital downloading and other technologies are turning the music business on its head.

In some cases, talk focused on opportunities. But in many other instances, panelists warned about the perils and uncertainty that face both the artistic and business sides of the industry—especially when it comes to peer-to-peer file sharing. [more @ www.wired.com]

Global sales of recorded music were flat in 2004, with a slight reduction in physical audio sales offset by growing sales of DVD music videos and a sharp increase in sales of digital music. Regionally, 2004 saw strong markets in the US and UK and a slowing rate of decline in other major markets.

Sales of physical formats declined by 1.3% in value (and by 0.4% in units) to US$33.6 billion. (The growth calculation is net of exchange rate fluctuations, comparing with US$34.1 billion in 2004). But with sales of music downloads via the internet and mobile phones making their first mark on the global market in 2004, total global sales are estimated to be flat in comparison to the previous year. [more @ www.mi2n.com]

Leading online digital entertainment distributor Altnet, a unit of Brilliant Digital Entertainment [OTCBB:BDEI], has secured top label V2 to its roster of world-class indie customers, including Koch Media, Artemis, Epitaph / Anti, Side One Dummy, Palm, Simmons/Latham and Digital Rights Agency.

With V2’s exciting addition comes the announcement that its hit U.K. band, Stereophonics, plans to release their eagerly awaited album, Language. Sex. Violence. Other? through Kazaa, and other P2P operators. [Read on]

The Source Magazine, the most trusted voice for the Hip-Hop Nation [Allegedly. -Ed], has announced that it supports the proposal by Reverend Al Sharpton to institute a 90-day ban on radio and TV airplay for music artists that engage in violence.

The Source and its principals, David Mays and Ray Benzino, have been the leading voice over the past two years on the issue of corporate responsibility in Hip-Hop and are joining Reverend Sharpton in encouraging top executives in the industry to meet immediately to find a permanent solution to the violence. [more @ www.urbanmecca.com]

Songs from Fiona Apple’s latest album are widely available on the internet and are being played on the radio, but much to the chagrin of fans, the album can’t be bought for love or money.

Apple apparently finished Extraordinary Machine in 2003 but it was never released by her record label, Epic Records. (Epic is a subsidiary of Sony BMG Music Entertainment).

Recently, a radio DJ in Seattle obtained a copy of the album and has been playing it on 1077 The End. The tracks are also available on peer-to-peer networks, and have been downloaded thousands of times.

Fiona fans are thrilled to hear the recordings but baffled that they can’t buy the record anywhere. [This is a clear indication that downloads do not necessarily equate to lost sales, in fact if the label in question was clever, they could look at the astounding figure of 38,000 downloads of this material at any one time as a pretty good pre-sales indicator. Read on and draw your own conclusions. – Ed.] [more @ www.wired.com]