music

Apple's big announcement this week is that it struck a deal with the Beatles to offer all 13 albums in digital form via iTunes, but Apple wasn't the only online groupie in the mix. According to reports. both Amazon and Google also tried to strike licensing deals for The Beatles music.

Refusing to get with the times, The Beatles for many years downright refused to let their music be offered in digital form, prompting music lovers to take matters into their own hands and illegally distribute their songs ripped from CDs. Terms of Apple's deal with EMI were not disclosed, but has to wonder if The Beatles catalog will shuffle over to other digital download services as well.

Apple's big announcement today is that...the Beatles are now on iTunes. Well that's a big deal for iTunes, we can't help but feel this should have been announced a long, long time ago. But hey, it's finally here, a13 of the group's remastered studio albums at $12.99 a pop, or double albums for $19.99 (individual songs run $1.29).

"We love the Beatles and are honored and thrilled to welcome them to iTunes," said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. "It has been a long and winding road to get here. Thanks to the Beatles and EMI, we are now realizing a dream we’ve had since we launched iTunes ten years ago."

For $149, you can snag the special digital "Beatles Box Set" with all 13 albums with itunes LPs and all mini-documentaries. That's great and all, but $130, Amazon sells The Beatles Stereo Box Set, which would look a lot cooler under the Christmas tree than an iTunes card, no?

"Apple is promising a $10,000 gift card to the person who makes the ten billionth iTunes download.

'It’s our way of saying thanks,' says the company, sweetly. You're very welcome, I'm sure.

The competition is open to anyone over the age of 13 who lives in a country with an iTunes store and can think of that much music that they want. There's a limit of 25 entries per person per " source

"World-famous record label Warner Music has announced today plans to stop providing content for free music streaming services such as Spotify and Last.fm. Speaking to BBC News, Warner chief executive Edgar Bronfman Jr said that "free streaming services are clearly not net positive for the industry and as far as Warner Music is concerned will not be licensed."

Instead, Warner has expressed interest in a subscription-based model. Similar to Spotify's premium service, the model would allow consumers to pay a monthly fee in order to get access to the streaming catalogue. Claiming that there are more potential subscribers than people buying music on iTunes, Bronfman believes that subscriptions could be taken up by "hundreds of millions, if not billions of people."

Spotify has rejected claims that Warner Music may stop providing content for its free music streaming service. According to a post on Spotify's official twitter account Warner Music is not pulling out of Spotify and the company claims it's the media "taking things out of context". " source

"We're receiving word from multiple early-bird readers indicating that they've received the 4.2 update on their Zunes and that, now that they're out of that nasty maintenance window, all is right with the world. That said, our tipsters are not spotting any major differences, and neither are we, certainly nothing as exciting as 4.3 brought to the Zune HD." source

"Everyone remembers that story about how a bunch of people were suing Apple for potential iPod-induced hearing loss, even though they hadn't lost any hearing. It got shot down last year, appealed, and today, killed for good. CRANK IT." source

"Earlier today we covered rumors that Apple was in talks to acquire streaming music service Lala. Now New York Times tech reporter Brad Stone has tweeted that it’s a done deal. He writes, “Apple has acquired digital music startup Lala. Now updating our story”.

This could be bad news for Lala users. It’s unlikely that the innovative deals negotiated by Lala will survive through the acquisition. For over a year, Lala users have been purchasing the rights to stream their music an unlimited number of times for ten cents per song. If the deals with the music labels go up in smoke, Lala may lose the right to stream those songs. In other words, all the money users have been spending on web songs may go down the drain. If the deals are nullified, hopefully Apple will renegotiate them to at least cover existing purchases until it releases its own streaming music service. We’ve reached out to Lala but have yet to hear back.

Likewise, this may well affect the Lala music gifts that have been recently offered by Facebook, and it could also harm the Music OneBox service Google recently launched (though Google can still rely on MySpace/iLike for its song streams)." Source

"On August 1, 1981, a cultural and entertainment juggernaut flickered onto TV screens and rocketed out of obscurity with these six words: "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll."

With that, the iconic cable network, MTV, was launched and a popular entertainment category--music videos--was born. Now, 28 years later, MTV has largely abandoned the genre and the record industry is preparing for the debut of a possible successor.

On Tuesday, video start-up Vevo is scheduled to launch. Supported by three of the top four largest record companies (sources say EMI has agreed to provide content to the site) and backed by the technological muscle of YouTube, Vevo is a Web site that will feature videos from many of the world's biggest recording stars, including U2, Cold Play, the Black Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga, Avril Lavigne, Bruce Springsteen, and Pearl Jam, according to the site's backers" Source

"Research conducted by London-based Global Web Index, a collaboration between online market research agency Lightspeed Research and Trendstream, suggests that streaming might in fact be the right antidote against content piracy.

The findings are in line with other researchand conclusions reached earlier this year by The Leading Question, MusicAlly’s consumer research division, which suggested that the number of teenagers who download copyrighted content from illegal sources has fallen dramatically over the past few years in favor of streaming." source