Label:Life

When podcasting got its start, it seemed like the perfect way for the little guy to bend the ear of audio junkies everywhere. Flash foward six years and the commercial market, specifically talk radio, seems to be the big winner. The big networks use the downloadable files as a sort of Tivo for radio — pre-recorded audio feeds that can be accessed anywhere at any time.

But all may not be lost for underdogs of independent and college radio. This summer, Seattle’s KEXP-FM 90.3, a college/independent radio hybrid, became the first of its kind to incorporate podcasting, starting a trend.

More@seattletimes

The record industry has won a landmark court case resulting in bills of thousands of pounds for individuals caught illegally swapping music on the internet.

Civil court proceedings were announced against the music fans in August last year. Five individuals have been accused of, between them, making 8,906 songs available to millions of people around the globe.

Today’s announcement follows high court action against two of the five who refused to settle with the British Phonographic Industry, the UK’s record industry’s trade association.

The cases, in which both men were ordered to stop filesharing illegally, are the first of their kind to be heard in the British courts. The other three civil cases are pending.

More@guardian

Time Warner (TW) is embracing peer-to-peer technology to distribute films and other media in Germany. Despite leading the digital rights charge against Napster, the firm can now see the benefits of the technology.

From March, when the service should launch, Time Warner will offer a selection of films including Batman Begins and Harry Potter. The subsidiary will be called In2Movies and will offer films for about the same price as a DVD, on the same release date, according to the Wall Street Journal. The service will also offer TV programmes.

Users, who need to register, can keep the films indefinitely. The service will initially work on PCs but it is hoped it will spread to more mobile devices soon.

But TW is not just offering downloads from a central server – it is using a peer-to-peer network structure. This means you download parts of the film from different computers – depending who has the files you need, where they are, and what bandwidth they have. TW is working with Bertelsmann subsidiary Avarto on the project. Avarto’s P2P system is called Gnab.

More@theregister

Nettwerk Music Group head says, ‘Suing music fans is not the solution, it’s the problem,’ will pay one family’s legal fees.

The Recording Industry Association of America has drawn plenty of fire from the thousands of consumers it has sued for illegally downloading music. But on Thursday, a record label threw its hat in the ring, speaking out strongly against the RIAA’s actions and offering to pay the legal fees and fines for one family that has been sued.

Nettwerk Music Group, the Canadian record label and artist-management company that is home to Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, Barenaked Ladies and Sum 41, is taking on the RIAA on behalf of Elisa Greubel, a 15-year-old Texan whose father was sued by the recording industry trade group in August 2005 for owning a computer that allegedly shared more than 600 music files.

More@mtv

The European Union’s top antitrust regulator will this week issue formal charges against the societies responsible for collecting music royalties across Europe for breaking competition rules, according to people familiar with the case.

The charges are a response to a complaint brought by RTL in 2000. The broadcaster, owned by Bertelsmann of Germany, argued that it should be able to get rights to use a piece of music across Europe by going through a single collecting society rather than having to negotiate with a different society in each country in which it broadcasts.

The case has raised concerns in smaller European Union countries that their collecting societies could lose out to more powerful bodies such as Gema in Germany and MCPS/PRS in the UK.

More@ft

Warner Music Group Corp. and Skype Technologies SA, the telephone company, are likely to announce a licensing agreement on Monday that will put ringtones on Internet phone services, the Wall Street Journal reported.

More@reuters

Vivendi Universal posted a 7 percent rise in fourth-quarter sales on Monday as its mobile unit SFR helped compensate for weaker music and games sales that missed expectations.

The stock, which has gained nearly 10 percent in the past year, was down 1.1 percent at 26.10 euros in early trade.

The French telecoms and media group saw revenues in the three months to December 31 rise to 5.48 billion euros ($6.7 billion) from 5.12 billion euros a year earlier, just above the average forecast of 5.43 billion euros in a Reuters poll.

Vivendi is cementing its recovery after a three-year restructuring during which it had to sell assets to cut debt that nearly sank it in 2002.

It is now back on the acquisition trail, looking to strengthen its telecoms, media and games businesses which include World of Warcraft, a popular online game, and Universal Music Group, the world’s biggest record label

More@reuters

Tunecore is a new service that allows artists to feed directly into Itunes and Rhapsody and doesn’t take a cut of the profits and with no attempt to take a slice of the rights. There’s a small charge per release and a yearly admin fee for each release. Artists music can go into any of the ITune shops around the world and the Rhapsody service with others coming soon.

Take a look at tunecore.com

A little off topic for Label:Life I know, but this has been driving me mental.

Basically the MPEG 4 container that Videora creates (and other various converters) isn’t liked by the new 1.1 firmware. So, open Quicktime Pro, load in your video that stops after 30 seconds, click export as mpeg4, set the video to “pass thru” and the audio to “pass thru” and save. It’ll take a few minutes instead of the eons it takes to re-encode.

This works.

LHReturnables, an online and in-store revolutionary method of distributing music, encourages all artists from around-the-globe to get paid for renting their music. “I can’t believe how awesome this company is. People are going to rent my music, I’m glad I found this site,” said Jessie, lead singer of the Durty Blues. (more…)