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Samsung NV4 CD Freaks.com, Netherlands AUTO, P Mode: After the brightness distribution in a shooting scene is measured, the exposure and focus are automatically adjusted (P Mode: user-controllable). DIS Mode: A shooting mode intended for low light conditions where digital correction of ...

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Digital marketing company Trinity Street, which provided e-commerce facilities for acts including Oasis, has ceased trading.

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MUSIC NEWS - To celebrate Warner Bros. Records' 50^th anniversary, the label will release Covered: A Revolution In Sound; an eclectic compilation CD that features such contemporary WBR artists as The Used, Mastodon, The Black Keys, Against Me!, Missy Higgins, and James Otto performing new versions of classic songs from WBR artists, including Madonna, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Joni Mitchell, Talking Heads, and Black Sabbath.

Each contemporary artist chose the songs themselvers from Warner Bros. Records' catalog. Highlights include The Flaming Lips performing Madonna's "Borderline," Disturbed on Faith No More's "Midlife Crisis," The Used covering Talking Heads "Burning Down The House," The Black Keys taking on Captain Beefheart's "Her Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles," and actor/comedian Adam Sandler giving his rendition of Neil Young's "Like A Hurricane" (check out the video below of Sandler performing the tune on Late Night with David Letterman). 

Covered: A Revolution in Sound will be available both digitally and in CD form exclusively from Amazon.com, beginning March 10^th, for two weeks (oreder your copy here) . The digital version will be available from all other online shoppes beginning March 24^th and the CD will be in stores on April 7^th. Sandler's "Like a Hurricane" is available now for purchase on iTunes.

"Going through Warner Bros. Records' back catalog of music and picking a favorite song wasn't easy," says Missy Higgins. "There have been so many classics over the years, and it was particularly intimidating to attempt to cover a song that was so perfect in its original form. For that reason, I chose one with a real '80s sound so that I could make it my 'folky' own. It's funny how the meaning of a song can change suddenly with its musical interpretation."

"We were really excited to be asked to record a song for the Warner Bros. Records' 50th anniversary compilation album," says The Used's Quinn Allman. "We were in the studio working on our own album and one day in September we decided on the spot to do "Burning Down the House" by Talking Heads. We liked the natural energy of the song so we kept it pretty simple and just had fun with it."

Track-list for Covered: A Revolution In Sound is as follows:

1. Mastodon: "Just Got Paid" (by ZZ Top)

2. The Black Keys: "Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles" (by Captain Beefheart)

3. Michelle Branch: "A Case Of You" (by Joni Mitchell)

4. Against Me!: "Here Comes A Regular" (by The Replacements)

5. Missy Higgins: "More Than This" (by Roxy Music)

6. James Otto: "Into The Mystic" (by Van Morrison)

7. Adam Sandler: "Like A Hurricane" (by Neil Young)

8. Taking Back Sunday: "You Wreck Me" (by Tom Petty)

9. The Used: "Burning Down The House" (by Talking Heads)

10. Disturbed: "Midlife Crisis" (by Faith No More)

11. Avenged Sevenfold: "Paranoid" (by Black Sabbath)

12. The Flaming Lips With Stardeath And White Dwarfs: "Borderline" (by Madonna)

Adam Sandler performing Neil Young's LIKE A HURRICANE on Late Night with David Letterman -

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Hardware, Software, Hacks, Odds and ends, Open Source, Apple, Jailbreak/pwnage

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has posted the news that Apple has filed comments with the US Copyright Office stating that the act of jailbreaking your iPhone is a copyright infringement and a DMCA violation, and therefore illegal. The EFF says that Apple is claiming that jailbreak apps still require modified versions of Apple's software, and Apple apparently believes that those versions are infringing on their copyrights.

The EFF responds, in turn, that "reverse engineering is a fair use when done for purposes of fostering interoperability with independently created software," saying that yes, even though jailbreakers are using Apple's copyrighted code, they are doing so in a way that allows them functionality that Apple doesn't provide access to on their own.

At this point, of course, this is just a complaint in the copyright office, and Apple hasn't made any legal moves yet against anyone responsible for jailbreaking. As the EFF states, it would be extremely hard for them to go after individual jailbreakers -- if you buy an iPhone, it should be your right to "get under the hood," as they say, and do what you want.

But (and keep in mind that this is TUAW, not The Unofficial Legal Weblog, and we are not lawyers) it seems Apple may be able to try and make a case against anyone offering software that does modify or otherwise "misuse" their copyrighted code. We'll have to see if they explore that position more in the future. You can read Apple's full response here (27 pages). You can see the EFF's initial filings here.

Stay tuned for more news and analysis on the issue.

TUAWApple says jailbreaking is illegal originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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Sony finalizes a new licensing deal with YouTube; Viacom is countersuing videogame company Konami; Shazam service almost doubles user base.

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Rollo & Grady Interview // Gerd Leonhard - Los Angeles Music Blog - Good read. Here are some of the best snippets:

R&G: Can the labels regain the trust of “people formerly known as consumers?” Gerd: They may not be able to, and this is the Number One problem. I think it’s a very tough road. The only chance they have – and that goes for everyone, not just the majors, but also the indies – is to drastically open up, put their cards on the table and start doing business like everybody else. This means being transparent, sharing, putting deals on the table and making them public. They need to create real value rather than pretend to do so.

R&G: You’ve talked about how the record industry should adopt Twitter. Can you elaborate? Gerd: Twitter is a mechanism of micro communication, like RSS feeds. Therefore, it becomes something that is completely owned by the people who are doing it, rather than by the people who are making or receiving it. It’s a completely viable mechanism that is cost-neutral, at least to us. It becomes a very powerful mechanism for peer response and viral connections. That is the principle of what music is all about. It’s word of mouth, connecting, forwarding and sharing. A musical version of Twitter would be a goldmine. It already exists to some degree in blip.fm, but the music industry should use that mechanism to broadcast directly to fans. They’re starting to do that, but the problem is that many music companies perceive their primary mission as gatekeeper for the artists rather than getting the music out. That is a big problem today, when you’re in an economy where everybody wants a snack before buying a sandwich.

R&G: What other technologies do you think are necessary for the do-it-yourself artists and managers of the new music world?  Gerd: Widgets and syndication have made YouTube the world’s leader in video. 60% of videos are not played on YouTube.com but on blogs and other people’s sites. Music has completely overlooked that very powerful tool. That is this whole idea of syndication – getting people to transmit music to each other and then reaping the attention on the other end.

R&G: Are you saying they need to recognize any revenue stream they can generate from their content? Sell CDs, subscriptions, etc.? Gerd: The flat rate is the next CD. Its simple mathematics. If you charge or indirectly earn one dollar from each user of a network, that dollar can be ad-supported. It can be supported by bundling, so the user won’t feel it, so to speak. If you look at the total number of people who are active on digital networks, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 ½ billion people, they’re not all going to pay a dollar because they’re in different countries. But the money that comes in from such a flat rate is humongous.

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Copyright © 2009 PatrickJ. Visit the original article at http://justanotheriphoneblog.com/wordpress/2009/02/12/bizarro-iphone-apps-weirdclock/.

Today’s bizarro iPhone app is weirdClock. Based on its App Store description, I’d say it lives up to the weird part of its title very well. Here’s its short and, has to be said, weird description on its App Store page:

Weird Art, Weird Design, Weird Clock
This is not functional but is very simple and weird design.
You can see background that go from bright, to dim smoothly as breath.
The clock needle on the screen can be moved by your touch.

Right. Not sure why I would want to touch or move the ‘clock needle’. And what exactly is a clock needle on a digital clock? So many questions, so little concern for having them answered.

To be fair, I don’t think any clock apps that require opening the app to see the time (including the built-in app) are much use (as far as just the clock portion). I’ll get by looking at my watch, or the time displayed in the iPhone’s top status bar. I have noticed a few ‘live clock’ apps over in the jailbreak arena - and I can see some appeal for those.

If weird is to your taste in iPhone clocks, you can find weirdClock in the App Store now, for $0.99.

 

---

© PatrickJ for Just Another iPhone Blog, 2009. | Permalink | | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bizarro iPhone apps, weirdClock

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CD Baby has shared its 2008 performance figures (via TechDirt) and they show modest to good growth. CD sales increased 2% to 1,013,478 units while digital download revenue rose 45% to $25.4 million (that's wholesale, not retail).

Proving that it matters for hits as well as niches, iTunes accounted for 82.3% of CD Baby's digital download revenue (a slight drop from 85.6% in 2007).

How valuable is the long tail? To CD Baby, which aggregates the slow-moving and unpopular, there is certainly value in the long tail. It takes a cut from each sale. But at the artist level it's a different story. The average CD Baby payout was $228 in 2008. The average digital album generated wholesale revenue of only $131. That's $10.91 per month.

To put things in perspective, Lil Wayne sold more CDs than did CD Baby in 2008. The $35 million (retail) in download revenue (not all of which was earned through U.S. stores) generated by 194,000 albums and 2,233,891 individual tracks equals roughly 2.2% of 2008 U.S. digital download revenue.

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"Guitar Hero" fans can now upgrade on an instrument-by-instrument basis; T-Pain is working on an Auto-Tune application for the iPhone; Former IFPI chairman and EMI exec Per-Eirik Johansen says that fighting P2P was a waste of time.

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You should always stick to your guns, right? Well, not necessarily. Plenty of companies have rethought their business model or approach – and you can argue that this kind of flexibility is increasingly important, given the current economic climate. Here’s five music firms that changed something important – their business model, for example, or their user interface.

We7

UK-based We7 has always focused on ad-supported music, but the format changed pretty drastically in October last year. Originally, the company tacked audio ads onto music downloads. However, its new model is a more standard streaming music service with adverts in between the songs. They claim they’re not abandoning ad-supported downloads – it’s just that they thought the market wasn’t quite ready for them yet. Since then, We7 has focused on promoting its streaming service, revamping its site in the process.

Imeem

Another Music 2.0 service that’s adapted with the times is Imeem. Users had been able to upload as many songs as they liked to the service for no cost, but last month that changed. Imeem now charges $29.99 a year if you want to upload up to 1,000 songs and 100 videos, and $100 if you want a higher limit of 20,000 songs and 500 videos. A spokesperson explained: “We will continue to experiment with new monetisation opportunities if they add to the user experience.” Which is a nice way of saying ‘We need to make more money, and advertising sure ain’t providing it…”

Pandora

Pandora has always been an ad-supported online radio service, but those ads have been banner ads. That changed last month, when the company started serving audio adverts in its music streams. Pandora clearly feels a bit sensitive about the launch – on the company’s official Twitter feed, they said “So you know, we did not take on audio ads lightly. We try to be extremely respectful of your listening experience, & promise to be prudent”. The message showed the problem of this kind of move – a service like Spotify can launch with audio ads from the start and have no problems, but a service like Pandora, which hasn’t had them for its early years, faces consumer unrest when it does introduce them.

Lala

Lala started life as a free streaming music site, which planned to make its money through selling CDs to users, who’d be so excited about the digital music that they’d want to own the physical product. So much for that. In May last year, the company changed tack, with a new business model that involved charging users $0.10 for unlimited streams of a track, and then giving them the option to purchase it as a download (knocking the ten cents off the price if they’d already paid to stream it). Users could also synchronise their existing music library with the site for free streaming of those tracks.

Napster

Okay, so there’s one very obvious change that Napster has gone through – from illegal P2P tool to legal subscription service. But more recently, there’s also been a shift from being a client-based service accessed through a desktop PC application, to a web-based service accessible from any computer. US users got this option back in October 2007, but UK users had to wait until, ahem, this January to get it. With cloud-based music about to be all the rage, it’s a sensible direction to be going in.

Muxtape

The original Muxtape site was a playlisting tool that let people upload any music they wanted in virtual mixtapes for others to listen to. The RIAA stamped it out, so it came back as the same technology, but focused on artists using it to promote their own music. It’s a powerful example of the way even services that fall foul of the music industry can change their business models to try and work within it. Whether the new Muxtape is successful remains to be seen, of course.

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