Mark's Digital Music Blog

The lawsuit that EMI personally served on the CEO of MP3Tunes, Michael Robertson, has been dismissed by a New York District Judge. William H. Pauley III ruled that EMI's lawsuit, detailing copyright infringement by the CEO, be dismissed and that the case against the actual company, MP3tunes, would proceed in the court.

Last November, EMI started proceedings against MP3Tunes for copyright infringement. Their objection was, and still is, the digital music lockers that it provides for its users to store music online. In Michael Robertson's blog he says, "Increasingly, media companies are suing CEOs of companies as individuals. This intimidation tactic has permeated cases involving Limewire, Multiply, isoHunt, Usenet.com and others. At MP3tunes, I had the same personal pressures, but decided to stand up to their threats and was, fortunately, successful. I believe consumers should have rights with their music libraries, and that this is a worthy cause to stand up for."

MySpace's parent company, News Corp., has launched its long awaited free music service. The new service, named MySpace Music, is backed by the big four record labels (Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, EMI) and will provide its users with free streaming music. The business model is based on revenue from advertisements that will be displayed to its 120 million users.

As we see continued growth of digital music being delivered via streaming, MySpace's new service could deliver a sizeable blow to Apple's dominant iTunes Store. According to MySpace statistics, approximately two-thirds of users host playlists on their social Web space to stream music.

The executive vice-president of Universal Music, Rio Caraeff, said, "We're not sure how big this will be, but it's exactly where we need to be. We need to diversify our sales away from just physical sales, and that means selling music any place a consumer wants to get it."

The struggling Napster digital music service has agreed to a $121 million takeover deal with Best Buy Inc. The all-cash deal which recently boosted Napster's shares to $2.65 will help Best Buy to strengthen its digital music business. At present, Napster has approximately 700,000 subscribers who pay a monthly fee to access unlimited music downloads.

Chris Gorog, chief executive and chairman of Napster, said, "We believe Best Buy will be an ideal partner for Napster and are very excited by the benefits that this transaction delivers to our shareholders, partners and employees."

If you are a Napster customer, you will be pleased to know that Best Buy won't be making any big changes in the short term, and Napster will be remaining in Los Angeles under the present team. In the longer term, Best Buy are looking to extend its online services to include videos, Photos, and video games.

The deal is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

The British rock band, Marillion, have pre-released their new album by giving it away for free on P2P file sharing networks. Their new double-album, Happiness is the Road, is set to be released on CD, October 20th. For file-sharers though, the good news is that the 19-track album can be legally downloaded now from certain BitTorrent sites, such as The Pirate Bay, Mininova, ISOHunt, etc. When the songs are played for the first time, a pop-up screen will ask for your email address. The band hopes that they can generate money from the sale of CDs, merchandise that it sells, and gig ticket offers via email promotions.

The rock group's Keyboard player, Mark Kelly, told BBC news, "We're willing to try new things and we want to see what happens. Everybody's aware of the effect of peer-to-peer file-sharing on CD sales and the music industry in general."

Following on from the likes of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, Marillion have now raised the bar in the way that music is offered to the masses. This move is likely to annoy representatives of the music recording industry, like the RIAA and BPI, who have targeted P2P file sharing networks in particular as the biggest source of music piracy. What makes Marillion remarkable is that it has bypassed record companies since the 90s and has used the Internet to great effect for its promotion and revenue.

In an interview with BBC news, Mark Kelly commented about Radiohead's Internet experiment, "People forget Radiohead were still number one in the album charts. They also say they weren't very successful because they only got an average of £2 per download. But they wouldn't have got £2 per sale from EMI, so in those terms it was actually a big success, and they still sold CDs."

The long awaited cell phone music service from Nokia, Comes With Music, has finally been penciled in for launch in October. Nokia will initially launch its 'all-you-can-eat' service in the UK before a global rollout to other countries. The success of the iPhone in particular is seen by Nokia as a challenge in the very lucrative digital music download market. The ace up Nokia's sleeve though is that their service will be unlimited rather than the pay-per-download model that Apple use for its iTunes Store.

Purchasers of the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic device will be able to access the music service for a year and download an unlimited amount of media; an added bonus is that consumers will get to keep their downloads even after their subscription ends. The Comes With Music service also offers a social networking element where users can connect and share their music.

The executive vice president of Nokia, Tero Ojanperä, said, "Sharing music becomes legal, and you can start to build the offering into a social network."

For more information on music social network services, be sure to take a look at the following articles:

• Maestro.fm review - a social music network that gives you online storage for your music library.
• Top 4 Music Streaming Sites

According to a recent article by The Business Review, Trans World Entertainment Corp. is trialling a digital kiosk in two of its For Your Entertainment stores (Colonie Center, NY, and at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.) This is the first time that a U.S in-store digital music download service has been launched, and if successful, the company is planning to launch a further 38 kiosks by the fall.

The chairman and chief executive officer, Robert J. Higgins, said, "Customers can burn songs onto iPods and other MP3 players using the Mix and Burn kiosks in stores. Previously, they could only burn songs onto CDs"

If you're a keen user of the nostalgic Muxtape service then you may already know that the very large finger of the RIAA has pressed it's stop button for the time being. Muxtape enables users to create a virtual custom mix-tape that can be shared with others who can listen to it via streaming audio. At present, visitors to the Muxtape website will see the image of a cassette tape with a short message that reads: "Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA".

The fact that users can upload music, and create playlists that are available to others via streaming audio has raised concerns with the RIAA. It is the unauthorized hosting and delivery of this music that has caused the shutdown due to copyright violation.

Streaming audio is rapidly gaining in popularity through the use of streaming services, and Internet radio in particular. The danger for the music industry with this latest development is that music discovery sources such as Muxtape could be muted, resulting in less promotion for music artists and a decrease in music purchases.

I've always thought that analog tapes were unreliable, but on this occasion it's the RIAA that has chewed one up!

We7, a UK-based digital music service, has struck a deal with Warner Music to provide free streaming music tracks to its registered users. The agreement will enable users to listen to an unlimited number of full-length tracks rather than the 30-second clips that are usually the case with download services. The streaming music service will be funded using audio advertisements that will be played prior to each track; listeners will also be able to use We7's a la carte download store if they prefer to purchase the music.

The idea behind the latest deal is to give consumers the chance to listen to songs in their entirety which could boost paid-for sales. Users of We7's website will also be able to create personalized playlists, and embed code in their blogs, and other websites to stream music. The new agreement between Warner Music and We7 also paves the way for special digital content offers through the website such as videos, albums packaged with bonus tracks, and interactive booklets.

John Reid, the president of Warner Music Europe, said, "This innovative partnership brings together two increasingly popular modes of consumption, ad-supporting streaming and MP3 downloads, to create a rich, versatile digital musical experience that will monetize a broad spectrum of consumer behavior."

For more information on streaming music, be sure the read our Top 4 Streaming Music Sites article.

Even with the serious online music contenders that have surfaced in recent times (Amazon MP3 etc.), Apple's iTunes Store is still king according to the latest research. The NPD group have recently released market research data that shows for the first half of this year, Apple's iTunes held onto the number one spot in the United States.

The survey quizzed consumers aged 13 and over about their music purchases of CDs, a la carte music downloads, and tracks from wireless services. From January to June this year, NPD's statistics show that the iTunes Store maintained it market lead, beating Wal-Mart into second place, followed by Best Buy, Amazon MP3, and Target.

NPD's entertainment analyst, Russ Crupnick, said, "We expect Apple will consolidate its lead in the retail music market, as CD sales continue to slow. Amazon’s CD buyers tend to be older, so they haven’t abandoned the CD format to the extent seen in the average music buyer. Plus Amazon’s successful introduction of its digital download store will help the company improve its position in the future."

For those who are Yahoo Music Unlimited customers, you will probably already know that Yahoo is to close down its DRM validation servers on September 30th. What this means, is that if you need to transfer your downloaded music after this date to another computer, or storage device, then the tracks will become unplayable without a DRM validation key. The good news is that on July 30th, Yahoo announced a concession for customers who find that their DRM'ed music library has gone south. The deal is, it will provide support by either refunding the cost of the purchased tracks, or will issue coupons that can be redeemed on the Rhapsody music service to replace non-working tracks. Yahoo are keeping this deal open until the end of the year.

This isn't the first time something like this has happened. Readers who regularly scan the digital music blogsphere will know that Microsoft's MSN music store suffered the same fate, and the DRM validation servers would have also closed down if it wasn't for the complaints it received from its many irate customers. Luckily, because of this, Microsoft have kept support open for up to another 3 years.

This highlights the constraints of DRM, and how little control consumers have over tracks they have purchased legally. Yahoo are recommending to its customers that they burn their music to audio CD, but what if you've got hundreds, or even thousands of tracks?

One sure-fire way of quickly removing DRM is to use DRM removal software, such as Tunebite, Noteburner, or one of the other software applications on the market that deal with legally removing DRM copy protection.

Is the DRM coffin finally being nailed shut as we see a trend developing of music services either going DRM-free or closing down?