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You may have noticed my frequent complaints here about the greedy actions of the RIAA. They have all been for good reason. The latest is their treatment of Internet radio.

Musical artists, listeners, and Webcasters, have joined forces in the SaveNetRadio coalition  to help save Internet radio. The members of the coalition believe strongly in compensating artists, but Internet radio as we know it will not survive under the proposed new royalties. You must help. Please take a moment to call your members of Congress to let your representatives know how much Internet radio means to you.

On March 2, 2007 the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), which oversees sound recording royalties paid by Internet radio services, increased Internet radio’s royalty burden between 300 and 1200 percent and thereby jeopardized the industry’s future.  (Read more)

No, this is not a satire. Unfortunately, it is what passes for reality at the RIAA.

It would appear that the recording industry now likes to call any sort of business model it doesn’t like “piracy.” At least that’s the only explanation I can come up with in its latest battle, where it has referred to traditional radio as “a form of piracy.” It’s almost too bizarre to be true, and that’s before we even explain how this involves a (literal) can of herring.

It’s difficult to pick a side to cheer for in a dispute between the RIAA and the NAB — as we’re talking about two organizations with a history of saying the most outrageously incorrect things in misguided attempts to “protect” the industries they represent (which almost always ends up backfiring and hurting the industry). However, in the latest battle between the two, it seems pretty clear that it’s the RIAA that’s being more ridiculous. This is the latest skirmish in the battle that the RIAA started last year, in trying to get radio stations to pay royalties to musicians. If you’re not familiar with the details, as it stands now, radio stations have to pay royalties only to songwriters and publishers for the music they play. The musicians themselves don’t get royalties, with the (very reasonable) explanation that having songs on the radio acts as a strong promotion for the musicians. This explanation is supported by the history of radio, in which “payola” has almost always played a large role. The record labels have always paid the radio stations to play their bands — a rather overt admission that radio helps promote new artists. (Read more)

SOURCE: TechDirt

Here is some great news for my visually impaired friends who want to have access to a multi-track, software based, audio recording and editing application. The feature-rich, open source, cross platform, freeware Audacity® has been in my arsenal of audio tools for several years. However, I just discovered that they have a Wiki dedicated to the use of Audacity by blind users. The following is a sample.

This page contains information for blind or visually impaired users of Audacity. It includes tips that make it easier to use the current stable Audacity 1.2.x version without a mouse.

However we strongly recommend the visually impaired to use instead the current 1.3.x Beta series of Audacity until its much improved screenreader and other accessibility features are incorporated into the next stable release (1.4).

SOURCE: Audacity Wiki

Another stake has been driven into the black heart of the RIAA.

Probably the biggest piece of digital music news to come out of CES 2008 was that Napster was planning to offer its complete catalog of more than 6 million tracks in the unprotected MP3 format.

On Tuesday, with the launch of version 4.5 of the software and store, that announcement becomes a reality. Although digital music stores such as eMusic, Amazon MP3, and even Napster itself already had MP3s on offer before this point, the collective catalogs of all three didn’t even come near the volume of tracks you can find in the entire Napster library. All four major labels and thousands of indies are represented in the store, and every track will be available at the standard 99 cent price point.

SOURCE: Cave

Speculation is running wild on the Web about Microsoft possibly building a content censor into the Zune software.

It comes as a result of a New York Times article that looked at why NBC pulled its TV content from Apple’s iTunes store and is now distributing it for the Zune.

NYT’s Saul Hansell writes:

Late Tuesday afternoon I reached J. B. Perrette, the president of digital distribution for NBC Universal, to ask why NBC found Microsoft’s video store more appealing than Apple’s.

He explained that NBC, like most studios, would like the broadest distribution possible for its programming. But it has two disputes with Apple.

First, Apple insists that all TV shows have an identical wholesale price so that it can sell all of them at $1.99. NBC wants to sell its programs for whatever price it chooses.

Second, Apple refused to cooperate with NBC on building filters into its iPod player to remove pirated movies and videos.

Microsoft, by contrast, will accept NBC’s pricing scheme and will work with it to try to develop a copyright “cop” to be installed on its devices.

Microsoft’s official word has been to deny this. According to Microsoft’s Cesar Menendez:

We have seen some chatter in the blogosphere over the last 24 hours around a couple of posts speculating about what Zune may or may not do in terms of putting content filtering features directly into the Zune family of devices in future releases.

We know you guys are following this discussion closely, and wanted to be absolutely clear on this issue:

We have no plans or commitments to implement any new type of content filtering in the Zune devices as part of our content distribution deal with NBC.

We think some folks in the industry were expressing hopes for how the entire industry, not just Microsoft, would come to look at content distribution, and some speculation has ensued. Again, no plans are in place toward this end.

Menendez’s comment are unlikely to clear up the controversy. (Read more)

SOURCE: Podcasting News

A federal district court in New York ruled Wednesday that the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is owed “reasonable license fees” by online media powerhouses AOL, RealNetworks, and Yahoo for the music streamed and distributed on their sites.

Currently, music streamed by sites owned by the three companies is advertising-supported and no dividends are paid to ASCAP.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York will now determine appropriate fees for AOL, RealNetworks, and Yahoo, all of which have applied for ASCAP licenses but have not been able to agree upon fees. The total payments to the group, which represents over 320,000 songwriters, composers, and music publishers — not record labels — could reach $100 million. (Click here for a PDF of the court’s decision.) (Read more)

SOURCE: Cnet News.com

Lord, save us from Clear Channel Communications and others of their ilk’s lowest common denominator approach to radio music programming. Unfortunately, CCC owns most of the radio stations on the planet. OK, it just seems hat way, but they do own SEVEN of the Detroit stations, as an example. If you are like me and love unusual, ethnic, regional, or otherwise just plain strange music, you are also no doubt a fan of streaming audio on the Internet.

USLiveradio.com is an Internet radio directory listing over 2,500 radio stations in the United States that are streaming live on the internet. What that means to you is that you can find sources for music that extend beyond the narrow limits of a tight playlist as found in most cookie-cutter commercial radio formats. (Read more)

As was reported here earlier, Creative Technology does have its problems dealing productively with its customers.

In the wake of last week’s driver debacle, Creative has finally decided to back down for PR purposes. Modder Daniel_K, author of the offending Vista drivers, has had his posts on the Creative forums reinstated. According to Creative the move was to avoid infringing on other company’s IP.

“Daniel_K is incensed by Creative. ‘They publicly threatened me, just to show their arrogance,’ he told El Reg by email. He told us that Creative contacted him on a chat session. ‘They were sarcastic, ironic and asked me if I wanted something from them, as if I were expecting something,’ he wrote. ‘It was my protest against them and would like to see how far it would go.’”

SOURCE: Slashdot

This tears it. My new $99.99 X-Fi Xtreme audio card will probably be the last Creative audio product I buy. The financially troubled company, after decades of treating purchasers shabbily, has finally gone too far for me.

What would you think of a company who actively discourages a third-party developer who has found how to return critical usefulness to their product after the company said that it cannot be done in the Vista OS? Further, Creative says that he is stealing from them by charging people to use X-Fi drivers from a Dell-specific file set to reactivate the missing X-Fi features. That is like complaining that an electrician charged someone to replace your defective light bulbs.

Read the whole sordid story over at ars tehnica.

This story is a primer on the new realities of the music business. Will the RIAA please read and take note.

What does the Eliot Spitzer scandal tell us about online music sales? Possibly that social network effects that have nothing to do with hardware or music stores will determine the successful business models. In other words, his call girl’s music is insanely popular on Amie Street. (Read more)

SOURCE: Ars Technica