MySpace to Enable Users to Sell Songs
MySpace.com plans to let its 77 million users sell music downloads, another move by corporate parent News Corp. to make the social networking site as profitable as it is popular.
Shawn Fanning, whose Napster software upended the music industry in 1999, will provide technology that enables musicians on MySpace to sell songs directly to fans — [...]
Samsung to launch music download service
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (005930.KS) on Friday said it plans to introduce a line of digital music players and a download service, under an agreement with privately held media provider MusicNet.
Terms were not disclosed.
MusicNet will power the service and provide the underlying technologies and library of music for Samsung’s new subscription digital music service and [...]
Google MP3 Player found in GMail
A new GMail feature lets you play MP3 files right inside the GMail interface without having to download the MP3 or open an external media player.
When you receive an audio file as an email attachment, click the play button and Google will play the audio file for you in a popup window. Very neat implementation [...]
Major Australian Broadcaster Pushes Into Digital Downloads
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, or ABC, has just dipped into music downloads. According to a recent article in Digital Webcast, the broadcaster has tapped destaMusic.com to power downloads for various ABC properties, including ABC Shop, Triple J and ABC Classic FM.
“The ABC will be Australia’s first broadcaster to align an online digital music download [...]
The New Stax Label Can Reinvent The Role Of Labels In The Digital Age
The world of pop culture was abuzz last week with Justin Timberlake’s overly candid comments about his drug use. We hope he was stone cold sober when he decided to resurrect the Stax label in Memphis, because with the dizzying changes in the music industry, it will require all of his faculties for success.
As New [...]
EMusic’s pitch: Download song – and own it
The smash success of Apple’s iPod is paying huge dividends for a less-well-known music industry player, online retailer eMusic.
Apple has sold nearly 60 million iPods since 2001, and music fans regularly frequent the company’s iTunes online store to buy songs for their iPods – giving iTunes a nearly 70% share of the music-download market.
Rivals
Napster, Rhapsody, [...]
Dylan album lands on web
EXERPTS OF CROONING Bob Dylan’s next opus have been accidentally leaked online by, you guessed it, his record company Sony.
The Sony Music Store served up snatches of Modern Times, the unwilling toastmaster of a generation’s first album of new material since “Love and Theft”, released almost five years ago on the day of the 9/11 [...]
In 2005 8% of American Internet users paid for digital music, in 2006 – 23%
As digital music players grow in popularity, so do the number of Americans who download music from the Internet, Solutions Research Group says. Nearly half of all American Internet users (45%) downloaded music at some point in the past from pay sites or p2p sources, up from 31% only a year ago.
Number of Americans [...]
Yahoo sells Jessica Simpson single sans DRM
Yahoo announced Wednesday that it is selling Jessica Simpson’s latest single in MP3 format–in other words, with none of the usual copyright protection coding.
Because the song, a party-pop track called “A Public Affair,” has no digital rights management (DRM) protection coded into it, it will be compatible with just about every type of digital music [...]
Stoic Napster troubled by Grecian formula
Last autumn, Napster launched a striking advertising campaign. It drew inspiration from, of all places, the stoic philosophers.
The most memorable slogan was “Have Everything, Own Nothing”, and we asked the company about it at the time.
Did Napster mean what it said?
Yes, insisted Alan Cohen, Napster’s chief marketing officer.
“In today’s world, everything is becoming digital, and [...]
