wax&wires

Sticking with the new shorter format, I give a quick rundown of what iTunes LP brings to the table, what works and what doesn’t. Can it resurrect album sales in a digital market?

It’s being reported that Universal Music Group, the largest label in the world, has earned more money from Spotify in the past 5 months than it has from iTunes Sweden.

What are you doing to bring an experience along with your songs? Apple Cocktail, Muse’s new album, and more!

It’s official. 1 in every 4 songs purchased today is purchased on iTunes. Are you surprised?

Singles sales have been crushing album sales ever since the development of the digital marketplace. How do Apple and the big four major record labels team up to combat that?

Depeche Mode’s new single Wrong, from the upcoming Sounds of the Universe
Well, I can’t say we didn’t see this one coming. Depeche Mode has signed on with iTunes to offer a subscription to fans in order to help generate some hype for their upcoming Sounds of the Universe album. This will be the first iTunes [...]

For indie artists looking to distribute music via the myriad of online avenues, RouteNote provides a great solution. They will distribute your music to iTunes, AmazonMP3, eMusic, Last.fm, imeem and others, while only charging you a light commission.
It’s a no brainer that your music needs to be easily accessible in the MP3 markets that people [...]

IMAGE: Declan McCullagh PhotographyI was just in LA last night for the live Diggnation and Digg meetup. My wife and I left The Knitting Factory around 10 PM or so and proceeded to stroll around downtown looking for a good place to grab a bite. It was pretty dead out. Baristas were stacking chairs on [...]

Universal Music Group GM & VP, Rio CaraeffCNET posted a great interview with UMG chief Rio Caraeff a few days back.
In the interview, Caraeff discusses everything from internet radio, to DRM, and mobile music platforms.
Some noteworthy points:
Caraeff admits that the industry has come a long way in the past few years. He views streaming music [...]

Become a fan of “Apple Students” on Facebook to get a redemption code that will give you access to 20 free songs on iTunes.
The tracks are good too, including songs from Brett Dennen, Joshua Radin, Jon Foreman and Emiliana Torrini.
Thanks Kyle Starr for the link!

Expect an announcement at MacWorld today about Apple’s new plans for iTunes. After a year with EMI being the only label to offer DRM-Free songs on iTunes, Apple is expected to announce today that all tracks are to be DRM-Free by the end of 2009. Reportedly, Apple has inked deals with Warner Music Group, Sony, and Universal Music Group, all agreeing to allow DRM-Free songs to be sold on iTunes. Apple was way behind the times on this one, and I would bet that this move comes only after recognizing their slip in marketshare to outlets like the Amazon MP3 store who had strong selection, higher MP3 quality, lower prices, and a growing fan base for the better part of the past year.

Beyond the lack of Digital Rights Management, it looks as though there will be plans for labels to impose pricing brackets on songs within iTunes. While that may make iTunes more competitive with other online MP3 stores, rumor has it that many of the songs will actually go up in price rather than down. Back catalog tracks will be priced as low as 79 cents each, but newer hit songs are expected to jump in price. I have to assume these terms were part of the compromise in getting the major labels to come on board…

I found this a couple months back and figured a lot of you might get a kick out of it:

Daito Manabe’s Electric Stimulus to Face Test 3 is a bizarre (but awesome) innovation where he attaches electric stimulators to his face, and syncs them up with music to force his facial muscles to contract on [...]

I found this article on ArsTechnica and it’s a good follow up to my post on bopaboo, the used mp3 store.

It unveils a few more details that I didn’t know about in my initial post, including the application of the first sale doctrine in a digital media world. The first sale doctrine was initially drafted in 1908 and essentially said that the purchaser of a good is entitled to sell it without permission of the original owner, publisher, or copyright holder as long as no additional copies are made.

So I’ve been playing with the new firefox-based music player Songbird for a bit of time now, and must say it’s even more awesome than I expected.

In reading the features and reviews, most of the additions seemed “nice”, but not anything that was going to blow me away or sway me from iTunes. After installing and actually using it though, it’s functionally far superior. The scarier part is, since it’s open source, it’s guaranteed to gain even more features and functionality; and all with a high level of user customization.

DowloadShopper.com lets you compare the prices of the Amazon, iTunes, and WalMart music download stores. You can then click a link to purchase the song from the selected retailer.
I tried it out and it works, but I’m still likely to roll with Amazon for the specials they put out daily.
The interface could use some work [...]