Music Downloads

Archive for the "Music Downloads" Category

Nov24

Paid P2P Options Gain More Traction

Posted at 12:47 AM • No Comments

Three of the four biggest record companies in the world have signed “a pact” with peer-to-peer start up company Peer Impact it was revealed today. Universal Music, SonyBMG and Warner Music have all agreed to licencing agreements with Wurld Media, the Saratoga Springs, New York company developing the Peer Impact system for launch in the new year. Wurld Media are said to be in negotiations with the remainder of the ‘big four’ major labels, EMI.

The announcement continues the general thawing in the major labels reticence to work with P2P companies. Top label executives have increasingly said they are willing to support file-swapping networks, as long as no pirated songs appear alongside authorized works, something which seems to have blocked any agreements with Altnet (the KaZaa/Sharman subsiduary). This month alone there has been talks and deals and rumours of talks and deals between EMI and Universal (Snocap) and SonyBMG (Mashboxx, powered by Snocap).

Back in May of this year, US royalties organisation the BMI inked a royalties deal with Australian P2P software company QTrax which made it the worlds first licensed Gnutella based file sharing network.

Not a lot was revealed about Wurld Media, either in the press release or on the companies website. A cursory search in Google (bless ‘em) for “wurld media spyware’, however returns some interesting results and reveals that this is not Wurld Media’s first foray into the world of P2P. Back in 2002 Wurld Media were getting busy with another popular (though not with the major labels) P2P company, Morpheus. A Browser Helper Object (BHO), developed by Wurld Media was one of the ‘bundled extra’s’ that piggy-backed into a users computer along with the Morpheus software.

Morpheus automatically installs Morpheus Shopping from WURLD Media, which monitors your on-line shopping, redirects your web browser to alternate sites when you attempt to visit certain shopping sites, and diverts redirects sales commissions belonging to other referring sites. Morpheus also installs Cydoor and IPinsight, which monitor your Internet usage and display advertisements. Uninstalling Morpheus does not automatically remove these applications. from Wellesley College ResNet

Nov23

BT Announce the ORG Digital Music Platform

Posted at 1:40 PM • No Comments

As we suggested on Sunday BT (aka British Telecom) today unveiled full details of their latest online digital music venture.

Using Digital Rights Management specialist, Blueprint’s technology, BT plan to jointly develop a new service for hosting, managing and distributing digital music and related content online using Blueprint’s ‘Open Royalty Gateway’ and ‘Song Centre’ services.

The Open Royalty Gateway (ORG) service allows rights holders to actively manage all aspects of their content, including setting business rules, pricing, electronic contract creation, sales tracking and royalty reporting. In addition to handling ‘major label’ music content, the ORG will enable thousands of independent labels and artists, many of whom control their own rights, to encode, package and upload their content to the service, and then manage contracts using the ORG.

Song Centre will give retailers the ability to offer new experiences to consumers, combining in-store, internet and mobile. In addition, powerful referral and reward programmes, using viral recommendation, mean that consumers can earn back the cost of the music they purchase by rewarding them with a commission each time one of their friends buys recommended content.

The service has already been trialled successfully for Robbie Williams’ recent No.1 hit single ‘Radio’ with Australia’s and New Zealand’s leading music retailers, Sanity and Sounds and the service will be powering the global Robbie Williams ‘Greatest Hits’ digital download store.

Richard Bron, CEO of Blueprint, said, “The time is right for the music industry to embrace new technologies and new partners to propel itself forward. Growth is dependent, however, on consumers being able to choose from the widest possible selection of digital media content, provided by artists from all the record companies, both major and independent.”

“At the same time, we understand the clear industry requirement to be able to manage rights and digital licences, report royalties and sales to rights holders, and to offer a wide variety of digital media to consumers, using variable pricing structures.”

BT and Blueprint are hoping the package will appeal to companies keen to sell music online – be they retailers, the artists themselves, or labels – but lack the resources to build the back-end financial and rights management applications themselves. The service will use Windows Media Player and content will be encrypted with Microsoft’s Janus encryption.

Related Reading

Press Release [Yahoo Finance]
BT to Launch Online Music Site (Again)? [MusicbizNews24.com]
BT to Power Robbie Williams Back End [Silicon.com]
BT Music Site Uses WMA [the Inquirer]
BT Preps Pre-Fab Digital Music Store Service [the Register]

Nov23

Universal Music Debut’s First Major Digital Download Label

Posted at 1:37 PM • No Comments

Universal Music today had the much trumpeted launch for what they are billing as “the World’s First All-Digital Download Label from a Major Music Company”, UMe Digital. All UMe product from individual tracks, EPs and full length albums will be exclusively distributed online.

Said Bruce Resnikoff, President of UMe: “UMe Digital is another significant development in the expansion of our business and our efforts to reach more consumers in more creative ways. Last year the music industry sold fewer than 5,000,0000 downloads; this year the industry will exceed 100,000,000. I think every label will have a download-only imprint at some point; UMe wants to be sure that it continues to be an industry leader and innovator.”

One of the first signings is Tennessee based the Shazam who rather than see their releases in traditional music retailers will see their music on digital download stores like the MSN Music Store, iTunes, Rhapsody, Virgin Digital and Napster first.

UMe New Media director Jay Gilbert anticipates that the number of recordings and artists will progressively expand from the launch roster of seven artists. Also, he added, “When artists find success with downloads, we may opt for a physical release as well.”

To be considered for Universal’s digital label, Gilbert said an artist needs to have an established fan base and a tour. “We’re really not looking to develop brand-new, unknown artists,” he said.

Certainly it could be hailed as a move in the right direction for the majors but an artist roster comprising of seasoned rockers like Dan Reed, Black N Blue, John Jorgenson and Rusty Anderson could hardly be called cutting edge in itself.

The royalty split is said to be 75/25 in favour of the label and works out at roughly 15c per download to the artist, given that the label share of a standard 99c download equates to something like 65c. In contrast, an artist taking the independent distribution route via someone like the established indie CD Baby can look forward to something closer to 50+c per download, so as in the case of a physical record deal the only benefits an artist can hope for is the unquestioned marketing muscle of a major label and the promise of possible TV and ad placement.

Some critics argue that this new digital label is more about music economics than about lending a helping hand to artists. Greg Scholl, CEO of The Orchard, a major global distributor and marketer of independent music, told technology news website TechNewsWorld

“This is a way of laying off risk when figuring out what acts they should really invest in rather than trying to have a vibrant small- to mid-artist tier business. The major labels have created a marketing and radio promotion machine that requires an artist to constantly sell significant units and garner significant air play, he explained. Once an artist’s popularity wanes, a label will drop them. “The horses that don’t perform get shot,” he said.

“What this is doing,” he continued, “is laying off some of the risk so they don’t have to invest so much to determine if it makes sense to invest more.”

Todays launch came two weeks after a similar set up was announced by Universal in the UK, where the major announced a number of similar ‘incubation’ and digital distribution deals with independents in that territory.

Related Reading

Official Press Release [Business Wire]
Universal Music Debut’s Digital Only Label [TechNewsWorld.com]
Universal Music’s Budget Route to Stardom [International Herald Tribune]
Universal Music Group Creates Digital-Only Music Label [Digital-Lifestyles]
Universal UK To Offer Digital Distribution To Indie Labels [MusicbizNews24.com]
Digital Distributors Open The Door For Independents [MusicbizNews24.com]

Nov23

Freenet Creator Unveils Dijjer P2P

Posted at 1:39 AM • No Comments

If you had to name the P2P file sharing applications that have sent seismic shockwaves through the music industry (and as broadband catches on, the film industry) in terms of column inches and court appearances, Napster (in its original untethered form) and KaZaa would be the names that came to mind. Next down the list would quite possibly be Gnutella and some of its variants, including Bearshare, Limewire and Morpheus.

Dijjer the new P2P client from Freenet founder Ian Clarke

Gnutella was written by Nullsoft founder (makers of Winamp and Shoutcast) Justin Frankel who Rolling Stone magazine once called “the worlds most dangerous geek”.

Just as geeky but not quite as ‘dangerous’ is Ian Clarke another P2P software pioneer and the man best known for Freenet which, unlike other peer-to-peer networks, is primarily intended for decentralized content redistribution, to combat censorship and allow people to communicate with near-total anonymity rather than act as a search engine for free Eminem and Britney Spears downloads.

Clarke has recently unveiled his latest project, Dijjer a new open source P2P content distribution tool designed to allow the distribution of large files from Web servers while virtually eliminating the bandwidth cost to the file’s publisher.

The work in progress is aimed at anyone who needs to distribute large files to large numbers of people but who can’t afford to pay for the bandwidth that this would normally require .

Dijjer also offers ‘sequential downloads’, so if you tried to download a video through Dijjer you could start watching the video before the download completed. This is because Dijjer behaves like a web server, pieces of a file are download in-order and fed to your web browser when they arrive, allowing your browser to start displaying content before it has completely downloaded. Kind of like a Bit Torrent that streams, though one of the reasons behind the project was Clarkes dissatisfaction with apps like BitTorrent.

Nov22

Weed Downloads Find Home at Ebay

Posted at 1:50 PM • No Comments

An audio format that is gradually gaining in popularity in recent months is Weed. Weed is a proprietary digital music codec that allows interested music fans to download a song and play it three times for free. They are then prompted to pay for the “Weed file” the fourth time. A no risk try before you buy set-up.

Each time the song is downloaded by a new listener, the Weed file resets itself so the same rules apply: three free plays, then pay. The music can also be transferred to any Windows portable media devices.

Songs cost about a dollar and can be burned to an unlimited number of CDs, passed around on file-sharing networks and posted to web pages.

Seattle based Shared Media Licensing, launched the Weed format in December last year and in laymans terms Weed is small piece of software that ads Digital Rights Management or fingerprinting to audio tracks in the Windows Media format.

Weedshare allows users to distribute songs in a manner that resembles P2P. However, all songs distributed by Weedshare are licensed from rights owners and protected by the Microsoft DRM technology to stop unauthorized reproductions. In many ways its not unrelated to the audio finger printing technologies being developed by companies like SnoCap, Audible Magic and Relatable, amongst others.

In addition to distributing Weed Files (which number over 80,000) from its home website, Weed recently joined eBay’s digital music distribution program trial with its own store on the auction giants website. There was also a distribution hook-up with leading independent distributor CD Baby back in June and amongst the artists signed up to use the burgeoning distribution format are Chuck D, Heart, Sir Mix-A-Lot, Built to Spill, Kristin Hersh and one Sananda Maitreya, previously renown as pop star Terence Trent D’Arby.

Related Reading

File Sharing Growing Like a Weed [Wired.com]
Its a . Wrap [MusicbizNews24.com]
What is the Term Super Distribution? [MusicDish.com]
An Intriguing Business Model: Superdistribution and Weedshare [DigitalMusicNews.com]
96 Decibels
[96Decibels.com]
A Highly Robust Audio Fingerprinting System [Philipsstudy ] 9pg PDF

Nov21

BT To Launch Online Music Site (Again)

Posted at 1:54 PM • No Comments

The Guardian newspaper have started chins wagging via a little snippet on their ‘Media Diary’ page, online today. There’s a rather large hint that BT (thats British Telecom, not Bit Torrent by the way) are to announce the launch of a new online music website at a press release in London this coming Tuesday (23rd).

BT's Now Defunct GetOutThere.com was an early MP3 pioneer
“Something big is going down at BT, which is holding a high-profile press briefing on Tuesday attended by Tony Wadsworth, chairman of EMI, Robbie Williams’ manager Tim Clark and Paul Burger, chairman of SoHo artists and former managing director of Sony Europe. Sounds like the launch of a flashy new digital music site to us, although BT refuses to comment. “

BT’s Openworld online brand were actually early movers in the online music space. In 1999 they launched the now defunct GetOutThere, a platform aimed at unsigned bands and young film makers and an early attempt at cashing in on the hype around MP3.com and the pioneering early MP3 sites, including a young upstart called Napster.

More recently BT sold the DotMusic.com music portal (which they purchased for a million pounds from United Business Media in March 2002) to Yahoo in October 2003, which has now been merged into Yahoo’s Launch brand. DotMusic were offering downloads through a technology partnership with OD2.

Last month BT revealed that it was in talks with a leading provider of digital music content about a deal which would transform many of its phoneboxes into virtual jukeboxes. Under the plans, anyone owning an iPod or portable music player would be able to go into a phonebox and download a song while out shopping or on a lunch break.

Related Reading

Hanging on the Musical Telephone [BBC News]
Yahoo Joins up Dots For UK Music Site [Guardian Unlimited]
Spotlight:BT GetOutThere [Adobe.co.uk]
BT Accused Over Music Piracy [BBC News]

Nov20

EMI Revenue Down But Paid Downloads Skyrocket

Posted at 2:06 PM • No Comments

EMI, the worlds third largest record company with acts including Coldplay, Radiohead, Nora Jones, Robbie Williams, Starsailor and Kraftwerk announced a drop in first half yearly revenue this week.

EMI’s digital music revenues more than quadrupled in the six months to September 30 on the success of mobile phone ringtone sales and online stores like Apple’s iTunes. Digital sales of 12.2 million pounds in the first half, up from ï¿½2.1m a year earlier, now represent more than 2 percent of group turnover of 851 million pounds, which was down 11.4 per cent on the year-ago half.

EMI shares surged upwards 10 per cent on Friday on the London Stock Exchange the days top percentage gain. EMI Chairman Eric Nicoli said: “We have already seen a significant year-on-year pick-up in our sales since the end of September. “This, along with the strong growth of music DVDs and the explosive growth in our digital market activity, leaves us well placed to maintain our market share for the full year.”

“We have seen an improving trend in the global recorded music industry. The industry decline of 1.3% for our first six months represents a significant improvement on the 9.6% decline seen in the same period of the previous year. The legitimate digital music market continues to expand rapidly and we remain confident that digital represents a key driver for future industry growth.

EMI, as a progressive and innovative music-content company, remains committed to embracing and maximising the opportunities presented by advances in technology and changes in consumer trends.” Said Nicoli in a statement on the EMI Groups website.

Nov20

EMI Records Join the Snocap Queue

Posted at 1:58 PM • No Comments

EMI are the latest major record company said to be in talks with SnoCap, joining rivals such as Universal Music Group and SonyBMG in embracing a legal version of the internet file-swapping technology behind most online piracy. Last week Universal were the first major record company to officially announce a deal with Snocap, while SonyBMG also admitted preliminary talks with former Grokster president Wayne Rosso about his latest venture, tentatively titled ‘Mashboxx’, which is also said to use the new technology being developed by the former Napster developers at SnoCap.

EMI Join Universal and SonyBMG in Snocap talks
In the Times Online this morning journalist Nic Hopkins revealed that, “Alain Levy, chairman of EMI’s recorded music division, said the company was in advanced negotiations with Snocap, a San Francisco company launched by Shawn Fanning, the Napster founder and former internet music pirate which has created a legal version of peer-to-peer (P2P) file swapping.”

“We are in discussions with Snocap. We are very close to a deal. We think its a very interesting technology. There’s definitely something in it,” Levy said. But he added that while P2P would fill a gap in the market for digital music distribution, it would not replace subscription services and internet stores.

Snocap is a technology embedded in a P2P network to block sharing of unauthorized works, including unlicensed music and pornography and facilitate commercial transactions. Snocap has been working on ways to identify songs, as they are traded through a file-swapping network, including using a technique called audio fingerprinting, which monitors the sonic characteristics of music files.

That fingerprinting tool could be integrated into the file-swapping software itself in several different ways, sources said. When a file is being downloaded, the software could check its fingerprint and then compare it against a database Snocap operates, for example. Once an identification is made, the download could be blocked, unless the computer user pays a fee, as if they were downloading a song from iTunes or another digital song store.

Up to now the major record companies have opposed licensing their content to file-sharing software firms, refusing to offer their artists’ music for sale while unauthorized, CD-quality versions of the songs are being traded for free over the same networks. Still, the recording industry is interested in turning millions of computer users now swapping music online into paying consumers on ready-made online distribution networks.

Related Reading

Record Companies Join Online Domain of Top Pirates [Times Online]
Universal Music Licences Catalog to Snocap [DRMWatch.com]
Fanning Snocap Saga [P2PNet.net]
Shawn Fanning is Back into Digital Music [Slashdot.org]
Music Rebels Seek to Tame P2P [CNet News]
Grokster Sony/BMG to do Legal P2P Service? [the Register]
Sony-BMG, Grokster Deal [P2PNet.net]
Sony Eyes P2P Venture [Digital Lifestyles]
File Sharer Eyes Major Label Coup [Wired.com]
Napster to Use Audio Fingerprinting [Internet.com-2001]

Nov19

MPAA Eyes Internet2 P2P Traffic

Posted at 2:12 PM • No Comments

The MPAA, better known as the Motion Picture Association of America ( a conglomerate of Universal Studios, Disney, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros, MGM, 20th CenturyFox and Paramount ) have been having talks with the ultra high speed Internet2 consortium according to CNet News today.

The MPAA are hoping both to test next-generation video delivery projects and to monitor peer-to-peer piracy on the ultra high-speed network. Internet2 is essentially a vastly faster version of the Internet, “run by a consortium led by 207 universities working in partnership with industry and government to develop and deploy advanced network applications and technologies, accelerating the creation of tomorrow’s Internet.” (according to the i2 website).

One of the applications that i2 have been working on is the Digital Video Initiative who have been working on a new generation of digital video applications that take full advantage of the potential of high performance networks.

Not surprisingly, student file-swapping traffic has also has found its way onto the network, and in the light of lawsuits announced this week by the film body and a more vigorous anti file sharing stance, the MPAA are taking a serious look at the connotations superfast bandwidth brings for digital delivery, legal and illegal files. Using ordinary broadband connections, movies can take many hours to download, particularly if a network is congested. In tests earlier in the year researchers from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and Geneva-based CERN transferred data across nearly 11,000 kilometers at an average speed of 6.25 gigabits per second. The achieved speed is about 10,000 times faster than a typical home broadband connection according to CERN.

“We’ve been working with Internet2 for a while to explore ways we can take advantage of delivering content at these extremely high speeds, and basically manage illegitimate content distribution at the same time,” said Chris Russell, the MPAA’s vice president of Internet standards and technology in the CNet article.

The MPAA has been talking with the research consortium for several months, with an eye toward possibly joining the Internet2 group as a member, or simply opening up a collaborative relationship. At least one studio, Warner Bros., is already a member of the group, as is the Napster online music service.

In the light of recent lawsuits by both the RIAA and the MPAA, there has been some concern at the involvement of both entertainment bodies in the role of P2P police. Also in the last year, more than 20 schools have signed up for deeply discounted access to music services such as Napster, MusicNet and RealNetworks’ Rhapsody.

Internet2 is part of the Abilene network, a proving ground for high-bandwidth technologies. The cross-country backbone is 10 gigabits per second, with the goal of offering 100 megabits per second of connectivity between every Abilene connected desktop. Speaking to Tech Republic recently Steve Corbato, the director of backbone network infrastructure for Internet2 said “Abilene has become a necessity for research universities,” and, “It’s not just about building a really fast network. University members rely on it to collaborate with colleagues and students around the world.”

To put that into more perspective a very fast broadband connection from Comcast for example would be around 3.5 megabits per second, a mere fraction of the Abilene target.

One of the biggest groups of users on the Internet2 network is the supercharged student file sharing project, i2Hub. i2hub arose early this year as an on-campus alternative to older swapping services such as Kazaa, offering speeds that far outstripped its rivals.

To connect to this extremely fast network students need to download a free client from Direct Connect who’s website states, “Unlike other impersonal, server-driven file-sharing networks, Direct Connect offers a community-oriented, open, user-controlled network. Moreover, Direct Connect’s network architecture is built on a peer-to-peer foundation; users run, control, and maintain the network.”

Many colleges in the United States and Europe allow student communications to default to the Internet2 network, which connects universities at speeds much higher than the ordinary Internet can provide. The i2hub software takes advantage of this to let students at participating universities swap files using this bandwidth bonanza.

Related Reading

Hollywood Seeks Internet2 Tests [CNet News]
MPAA P2P File Share Weapon [P2PNet.net]
Internet2 Activities at Georgia Tech [Gatech.edu]
Internet2: File Swopping Heaven? [NewsFactor.com]
Internet2 at Stanford [Stanford.edu]
Colleges Shut Down the Network to P2P Users [Copyfutures]
the Internet2 Project [Cisco.com]
College P2P Use on the Decline? [ZDnet News]
Internet2:2004 and Beyond [Tech Republic]
Why the RIAA Targets College Students [Boycott-RIAA.com]

Nov18

Japanese P2P Lawsuits Looming

Posted at 2:21 PM • No Comments

The Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) is the latest rights association to take action in the ongoing and increasing global war against illegal file sharing.

The trade group has asked eight internet service providers to disclose the names of 12 subscribers suspected of illegal p2p file-sharing. Jiro Imamura, an RIAJ spokesman, stressed to Digital Music News that “the action was not a ‘lawsuit’ against individuals by RIAJ. That is the procedure taken by each record company to request disclosure of the information of each individual, such as the names and addresses, to ISPs”.

The RIAJ has been investigating illegal file-swappers since March this year when they began to send warnings using Instant Messenging to individual P2P users uploading music files illegally on the Internet. It was a pre-emptive warning tactic also used by the RIAA in the US before their anti file-sharing campaign began in June 2003 and by the BPI in the UK in March this year.

The RIAJ may see opposition similar to what the RIAA experienced in the US, with ISP’s highly protective of user identities. Nifty Corp., Japan’s largest ISP and a recipient of an RIAJ request, offered to “make a decision on the matter after carefully examining the situation”.

The ‘war on downloaders’ has been slow on the uptake in Japan, with one of the first legal moves last December against two suspected online film swoppers. A more celebrated case began in May this year when Isamu Kaneko, a college researcher at Tokyo University was arrested and jailed for helping and promoting copyright infringement and piracy. Keneko, who is still awaiting trial was the author of popular P2P software app, Winny.

Related Reading

Top Software Developer Arrested for Winny File Sharing [ABC Australia]
Police Arrest Two P2P Users [CNet Asia]
Winny P2P Software Creator Arrested [Slashdot.org]
Japanese P2P Founder Arrested [the Register]
Verizon vs. RIAA [Google.com]
Tokyo Police Arrest Two For Alledgedly Swopping Movies, Games [SiliconValley.com]
Japanese P2P Developer Arrested [Afterdawn.com]
UK Music to Sue Online Pirates [BBC News]