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Yet another bad, Big Media idea

Sony plays new copy-protection song

The company touts a forthcoming CD technology that prevents users from copying songs to file-sharing sites but lets them make copies for themselves. [CNET News.com]

I’m sure this won’t be the last time digital media is encoded with single player player capability, but it just seems ridiculous to me that a) if you use a Mac, you get no play and b) people want DRM protected pre-cut digital music on the CD.

In Sony’s mind, this is a reward for buying protected albums. Too bad they are not the major player in the digital music player space. Good try with a bad idea. This is exactly the reason why people try and (do) defeat these techniques.

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Penn State Will Pay to Allow Students to Download Music (not exactly…)

Pennsylvania State University has agreed to cover the cost of providing its students with a legal method to download music from a catalog of half a million songs. [New York Times]

Taking student mandatory student fees does not classify as the school paying for anything. It’s the students who are paying for the service… just aggregated through the university’s deal. I guess it doesn’t hurt that the university president led a committee with the RIAA and the entertainment companies to find alternatives to file sharing networks. They came up with quite a revolutionary alternative plan… you pay.

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ITMS a loss leader…

“Most of the money goes to the music companies,” admitted Jobs.

“We would like to break even/make a little bit of money but it’s not a money maker,” he said, candidly.

So now we have it on record: the music store is a loss leader. Jobs said Apple would pay its dues to the RIAA, then seek to make money where it could, from its line of hardware accessories. When the conversation turned to rivals such as eTunes and Napster, Jobs said: “They don’t make iPods, so they don’t have a related business where they do [make money]” [The Register]

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McDonald’s to give away up to 1 billion iTunes songs?

If this is true, this would make Apple the defacto leader of digital music.

A story appearing in today’s New York Post claims that McDonald’s is close to announcing a deal with Apple, whereby the fast food giant will give away up to 1 billion songs from the iTunes Music Store. Pepsi and Apple recently announced a deal with Apple to give away 100 million songs to customers. According to The Post, both Pepsi and McDonald’s are paying Apple’s regular retail price of 99 cents for each song. The article notes that “a spokesperson for Apple declined comment, and a representative of McDonald’s was unavailable for comment.” [MacMinute]

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MTV eyes digital music store by early 2004

Via MacMinute…MTV Networks is preparing to launch a music download service with plans to go up against Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes and other competitors, said MTV chief Tom Freston on Monday.

“There’s no doubt it’s a strong brand, with a strong profile of viewers,” said Phil Leigh, senior analyst at Inside Digital Media, about MTV’s plans. “But they can’t rely solely on their brand come next year … After iTunes launched in April, MTV should have been like a hawk on a field mouse.” [Reuters]

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Musicmatch tries to stay plugged into iPod

On Monday, the San Diego-based music software company sent an e-mail to its customers letting them know that, despite the arrival of Apple Computer’s iTunes for Windows, customers can still use its jukebox program to connect to Apple’s iPod. However, the message warns them that if they install iTunes, Musicmatch’s connection to the iPod will be severed. [CNET News.com]

I would just go for it… F- Music Match. You get better ripping speed (for free) and a much better interface for accessing music you already have, not to mention a great store from which to purchase new music.

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Digital Networks: PC to Stereo

A new class of device that transmits music, photo and video files from the computer to home entertainment systems may play an important role as digital music and home networks really take off. [Wired News]

Quick overview on some home media sharing options… leading with the SliMP3, one I have and will continue to recommend.

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iTunes Catalog

iTunes Catalog is a new app that will create a visual catalog of your iTunes library in HTML, PDF or XML. It has the ability to download artwork for albums automatically and apply them to your files. Looks promising… I am playing with the demo now… the full version costs $9.95.

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MIT Network Shut Down

Two MIT students who thought they’d found a way to give their fellow students access to a huge music library without running afoul of copyright law hit a snag Friday when the school shut down the service in the midst of a licensing dispute.

The “LAMP,” or “Library Access to Music” system officially went live Monday, pumping music into dorm rooms over the school’s cable television network. By sending the music over cable, rather than swapping files over the Internet, the system avoided making an exact copy of the music and was expected to face lower copyright law hurdles.

The students, Keith Winstein and Josh Mandel, said they had negotiated for the Harry Fox Agency, the mechanical licensing arm of the National Music Publishers Association, to grant a license to a Seattle-based company called Loudeye to sell the school thousands of MP3s for the system.

But even last week as the system prepared to go live, there was confusion. The Harry Fox Agency said no such license was complete, while Loudeye insisted it was. [AP NewsWire]

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Assign Shortcut Keys to iTunes AppleScripts

“Panther has a cool feature that allows you to set keyboard shortcuts for pretty much any application, including iTunes. However, one thing I discovered is that you can set keyboard shortcuts to the AppleScripts in your iTunes Scripts Menu. [macscripter.net news]

Something I will certainly have to deal with when my system gets Panther… This would be a great and simple way to initiate my connection with my SliMP3.

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Nicecast offers Internet streaming under OS X

Rogue Amoeba Software has announced Nicecast, an new application to broadcast music using Mac OS X: … [MacNN]

This looks outrageous! You can broadcast any audio from your Mac with this and then tune in yourself or tell others – across any platform.

Update – Gave this a shot tonight and was a bit under-whelmed. First the good… it looks REALLY pretty. It’s very simple to configure and get set up to stream. The bad… On my home network, the iMac was my server streaming to my Powerbook through iTunes. You open a URL (icy://ip-goes-here:8000) and you are streaming whatever is playing in iTunes on the server. I had some drop-outs which are not something I thought would happen given the number of times I’ve streamed music to myself at home and at work. I’ve done this using SliMP3 as well as remotely mounting my external drives and streaming as if connected locally to iTunes.

For some reason there is a delay in what you play. I was not aware this was the case until I manually changed tracks… I was unable to initiate a Mic either internal input with the iMac or with my Griffin iMate. I guess I could have tried the iSight, but frankly I did not think to try.

Seems like a lot to pay 40 bucks for this when my FREE slimp3 server software does a better job with no delay. PLUS, you can control what you listen to remotely without forcing the local machine to hear everything… did I forget to mention that part??? Unless you put the Mac on mute, you’ll be listening to the broadcast as well.