The music industry hopes to benefit from the competition for control of the mobile phone and computer desktop between Apple and Google. Both technology leaders are going head-to-head in a wide range of media and consumer technologies including online TV and movies, mobile phones, software and even advertising.

read more……

• social networks (23%)
• online games (10%)
• e-mail (8%).

These categories increased from 37% a year earlier.

2) Internet users over 65 are adopting Facebook at a rate faster than any other age group – 6.5 million joined in May, three times higher than same period last year.
3) There will be an estimated ten million e-readers out there by the end of the year (up from four million a year ago).

4) Streaming music subscription services continue to be rolled out even though no one service has caught fire (the labels insist on doing subscriptions their way, not a consumer-friendly way)

5) Android is now the number two smart phone behind iPhone, with Blackberry slipping to third place.

In spite of the enormous investment by the various industry players, the global user base is estimated at under 2 million current subscribers.

If ultimately everything is “up in the cloud” and accessible anywhere, anytime on any device, then convenience and size of on-line library trumps a local hard drive. Until that time, people will continue to buy (or steal) media files that untethered to any subscription service.

“(Apple CEO) Steve Jobs has his own idea and he’s a brilliant guy,” Ono, the 77-year-old widow of John Lennon, told Reuters. “There’s just an element that we’re not very happy about, as people. We are holding out.”

Ono didn’t offer details on the hold-ups in the negotiations, but hinted that her concerns were not necessarily shared by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and Olivia Harrison, George Harrison’s widow.

McCartney’s comments earlier this year seemed to finger record label EMI as the one holding up a deal, but Ono suggests that there may be a more fundamental disagreement, at least between herself and Apple.

Apple and The Beatles have had a rocky relationship over the years, starting with a dispute over Apple’s name, which came into conflict with The Beatles’ holding company Apple Corps in multiple trademark disputes dating back to the late 1970s.

While earlier agreements had resulted in Apple agreeing not to enter the music industry, the iPod and iTunes clearly crossed the line in the eyes of Apple Corps, leading to a lawsuit and eventually a revised trademark agreement that saw Apple acquiring all of the disputed “Apple” trademarks and licensing a portion of them back to Apple Corps for future usage.

MTV would not reveal the reason for the breakdown, other than commenting that Vevo was demanding something “outside industry standards.”

One possibility – Money from advertising! Vevo wanted control not only of the overlay ads that appear in video windows when MTV’s websites embed Vevo videos, but also over banner ads and other types of advertising on the page.

Vevo, now the number three most popular video site on the internet behind YouTube and Yahoo, is a Universal Music- and Sony-led initiative to concentrate all major label music videos under one roof, so that websites including YouTube must embed those videos from Vevo if they want to display them, rather than forging deals directly with the labels themselves.

read more…..

“If they continue to rip everybody off, it’s going to be the kiss of death,” Harvey Goldsmith told an audience at Musexpo in Los Angeles in late April.

Overpriced shows, overpriced contacts, and lots of cancelled dates are pointing to a music business sector in serious trouble.

Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield questioned whether the music industry was “screwing up the last good part of its business,” while shifting the blame for nosebleed tickets onto artists, agents and managers.  This is a group that “keep[s] pushing for higher and higher guarantees from touring companies such as Live Nation and AEG… in order to compensate for recorded music sales declines,” according to Greenfield, who recommended softer demands to make the fan experience more affordable.

Apple and Google both want to dominate the mobile-phone market. ITunes has been a major part of Apple’s success in first iPods and then phones. The music industry has never been comfortable with Apple’s dominant hold on digital-music sales.

Google would be free to offer better terms to music companies, one of several ways it has available to it of making mischief for Apple, should it decide to join it in the business of digital tunes.

The bill will modernize Canada’s copyright laws through a series of reforms that will affect everything from what Canadians can play on their iPods to how artists pay their bills.

While CD owners can finally make copies of their music for their iPods, expect that future CDs and DVDs will come with digital locks to restrict mulitple copying.

So get ready for the next round of independent code crackers to trump corporate progammers

rest of National Post article

 Read more

The songs will be available for download next week across Xbox, PS3, and Wii systems.  “Lady Gaga Pack 01″ will include “Bad Romance,” “Just Dance,” “Monster,” and “Poker Face,” from the multi-platinum album, The Fame.

Also, MTV and Harmonix are expanding the Rock Band content channels – recently launched is the Rock Band Network Music Store, open to any aspiring band.

“Who owns the words?� Mr. Shields asks in a passage that is itself an unacknowledged reworking of remarks by the cyberpunk author William Gibson. “Who owns the music and the rest of our culture? We do — all of us — though not all of us know it yet. Reality cannot be copyrighted.�

Mr. Shields’s pasted-together book and defense of appropriation underscore the contentious issues of copyright, intellectual property and plagiarism that have become prominent in a world in which the Internet makes copying and recycling as simple as pressing a couple of buttons.

In fact, the dynamics of the Web, as the artist and computer scientist Jaron Lanier observes in another new book, are encouraging “authors, journalists, musicians and artists� to “treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind.�

———————————–

Sounds pretty communist to me – How do creators get rewarded for their work?

With new media pillaging old media sources for content through copying and mashups, and personality-driven news trumping ideas-based content, with loud opinion getting more attention than facts, where are we headed as a sentient species?

Full Article Here

Google, expanding beyond its main Internet-search business, would challenge Yahoo! Inc., TiVo Inc., Rovi Corp. and Microsoft Corp. in delivering the Internet to TVs.

Intel, meanwhile, aims to get its Atom chip into TVs, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes.

“It’s a sign of the legitimacy of Internet connectivity moving well beyond the PC and mobile spaces, which Google has tackled already,” said an analyst at industry researcher Parks Associates in Dallas.

from Canadian Press

A Canadian man who drew international attention for illegally copying movies has been handed a two-and-a-half-month prison sentence.

In a landmark decision, Geremi Adam will also be forced to perform 100 hours of community service, and has been given a two-year suspended sentence.

Prosecutors had wanted him to serve four months behind bars, but they’re still heralding the sentence as the toughest of its kind in Canada.

The 27-year-old was once considered by the FBI to be among the most prolific movie pirates in North America.

He pleaded guilty to two counts, under the Copyright Act, for distributing copied Hollywood films on the Internet under the alias maVen.

The movies were then distributed for a fee by a network.

During his sentencing hearing, the court heard that Mr. Adam only recorded the movies for notoriety and not really for monetary gain.

Mr. Adam is also detained on an unrelated charge.

The maximum sentence he could have received was six months in jail and a $25,000 fine.

The charges against Mr. Adam came shortly before the Conservatives introduced tougher camcording laws in June 2007.

The new law made recording a movie without permission a crime punishable by two years in jail, and taping a film for future sale or rental now carries a maximum five-year jail term.

Canada has been considered a hotbed of illegal film reproduction, and that has been an irritant in relations with the U.S.

Industry figures blamed Canada for between 20 and 70 per cent of global camcords and huffed that Montreal alone was responsible for up to a quarter of the world figure.

Even the governor of California, former action-movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, referred to the country’s reputation during a visit to Canada.

But in an interview with The Canadian Press last summer, the RCMP said the number of complaints had dropped drastically.

In two previous movie piracy cases, one in Montreal and one in Calgary, the two accused were handed fines or probationary sentences. They were also both banned from movie theatres for a period of time.

According to a new report by the PC Gaming Alliance (PCGA), worldwide PC gaming software revenue rose 3% in 2009 to $13.1 billion, fueled by growth in the Asia Pacific region and the growing popularity of digital distribution models.

PCGA, a non-profit group led by Randy Stude, the director of Intel’s Gaming Program Office, issued the findings today in its annual Horizons Report, a study that encompasses all aspects of the PC gaming industry. The most notable trend in the industry, Stude said in a statement, is the movement to digital distribution models and consumers showing a willingness to pay for add-ons and upgrades in digital games.

“In 2009 we saw North America and Europe experience a rapid uptake in purchasing virtual items (italics mine). This model is what drove growth in Asia and we think it is just starting to come to Western markets.”

Great Picture and Rest of Article