Tagged: downloadsdrmandp2p

( UPDATED ONILINE ) The four founders of The Pirate Bay were found guilty in Swedish court today. Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom were sentenced to a year in jail and a fine of 30 million SEK ($3,620,000 USD). The defendants say they will appeal On learning that the verdict had been leaked prior to an official announcement one The court decision will mean little to record labels suffering fro reduced revenue caused in part by the kind of online file sharing facilitated by Pirate Bay. "Every time you get [...]

The court filing seeking to have the Rhode Island filesharing trial of the RIAA vs Joel Tenenbaum webcast live has been rejected, A statement from the Harvard law school team defending Tenenbaum posted on their Joel Fught Back website vowed to appeal: "We are disappointed by the First Circuit's decision and maintain that Joel is being denied a constitutional right to a public trial in the age of the internet. We believe that Judge Gertner was within her authority to make decisions regarding her own courtroom. We intend to explore every legal option available to Joel."

Billboard is reporting that the recent price increases to $1.29 on some hit tracks at iTunes lead to lower sales, but slightly higher revenue last week. Sales figures shows that tracks whose price rose from $.99 to $1.29 sold 12.5% fewer units than during the previous week. Tracks that stayed at $.99 sold 10% more than the previous week. On iTunes's Top 100, of which about half the tracks are sold at $1.29, sales dropped 1%. But revenues were up over the previous week, according to iTunes who declined to provide exact [...]

The artist to fan relationship is the mantra of music 2.0 and direct to fan sales are touted as the most effective monetization strategy. But two roadblocks have kept this dream from becoming a reality for most indie musicians: consumer trust and transaction costs. Now PayPal's MicroPayments system offers a solution to both problems. Selling tracks direct to fans makes sense. Providers like Nimbit make it easy and some like Bandcamp turn tracks into viral promo [...]

But Pirate Bay Could Reverse Trend In what should provide ammunition for the supporters of ISP three strikes legislation and anti-piracy efforts worldwide, early figures show a 100% sales increase in legal music downloads in Sweden since a new anti-file sharing IPRED law went into effect last week. "The first week after the introduction of IPRED, sales increased by 100 percent compared to the previous weeks. I don't know if this is only because of IPRED, but it is definitely a sign of a major change," managing director Klas Brännström of digital [...]

The Qtrax saga began with lavish parties and a botched launch at Midem 2008. But after a seemingly endless series of partial launches with one or two of the major labels, the ad supported p2p finally "officially" launched last week with all four major labels on board. Despite a rough climate for both venture funding and ad sales, Qtrax anticipates launching "at full capacity with portability" to over ten countries with the next month followed by a phased global roll out. Qtrax searches the via p2p for tracks and if lisenced downloads them wrapped in DRM. [...]

Amazon, Wal-Mart Follow Apple, Raise Prices On Some Top-Selling Tracks - Washington Post Amazon Follows Apple To $1.29 - cNet Amazon, Wal-Mart Follow iTunes, Up MP3 Prices - PC Magazine [...]

Startup doubleTiws t has received $5 million in second round financing from former CAA and Disney chief Michael Ovitz and former Warner Music Head of Digital Strategy Alex Zubillaga among others according to VentureBeat . After loading the application, you can drag and drop music and other media files to any device or friend's registered account. Behind the scenes doubleTwist handles issues like ITunes file format compatibility seemlessly. You can also upload files to Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. Here's a video overview of the Mac app. [...]

Startup doubleTiws t has received $5 million in second round financing from former CAA and Disney chief Michael Ovitz and former Warner Music Head of Digital Strategy Alex Zubillaga among others according to tech journal VentureBeat . After loading the application, users can drag and drop their music and other media files to any device or to a friend's registered user account. Behind the scenes doubleTwist handles often tricky issues like iTunes file format compatibility seamlessly. Users can also upload files to Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. Here [...]

Variable pricing including hundreds of hits tracks at $1.29 debuted this morning on iTunes. And while it's track prices remained at $.99 or less early this morning, Amazon and other services are expected to mimic the rise shortly. Record labels, for the most part, determine download pricing. But sources tell Hypebot that no clear strategy has yet emerged despite several years of label pressure forcing variable pricing. Sony, Universal and EMI are said to be raising the price of hundreds of tracks each with an emphasis on hit product and a few big selling classics. WMG's offering [...]

7digital is now being incorporated into AOL's Winamp media player in Europe allowing users to purchase tracks within the application and on Winamp.com. The two companies are partnering in ten regions including the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria, Portugal and Ireland.. Winamp is using 7digital's API to pull data including artist, track and album information to create a built-in music store. Spotify also recently began utilzing 7Digital's API to sell tracks on its popular [...]

Mubito, which builds direct-to-consumer web platforms for artists and record labels, has entered administration. The Swedish company will continue to operate while a court appointed administrator seeks a buyer. Andrew Martyn, the CEO and founder, has left the company as part of a restructuring that will reportedly see the company shrink from 45 to 30 employees. Jorgen Gransoe of Norventum Capital is running the company temporarily and is implimenting a plan to re-launch Mubito later this month.

Amazon's MP3 music download store is now online in Germany with many top selling mp3 album releases priced at 4.89 EU during the launch. After a successful year in the United Sates and a more recent UK launch that has the online retailer surpassing iTunes in major customer satisfaction surveys, Amazon MP3 continues its global roll-out.

Teens age 13-17 bought 19% less music in 2008 than they did in '07 according to a new NPD survey. CD purchases declined 26% and paid digital downloads fell 13% compared with the prior year. 32% of the teens who bought less digital music "expressed discontent" with the music available and 23% said that they already had enough music. 24% of teens said they had cut back all entertainment spending. The downturn in paid acquisition was also matched by a downturn in the number of tracks downloaded from P2P [...]

Swedish torrent tracker Pirate Bay has added a "Share on Facebook" link to the download page of every torrent. If another Facebook user has a BitTorrent client installed, clicking the link launches the download of the song without even visiting The Pirate Bay's website. Here is a Facebook link on the page for platinum selling Lady Gaga's latest release.

In conjunction with Chinese music site Top100.cn, Google has launched an online music service in China. Users can download and save free songs from Warner Music Group, Sony, Universal Music Group and 140 independent labels Google's moves counters Baidu.com, which has more than double the search market share in China . The labels share of ad revenue generating at least some income in a market where 99% of all downloads are illegal according to the IFPI. "It's really a case of innovate or die for the music companies in China," Duncan Clark of Beijing research company BDA China [...]

Under a deal announced this morning, links to 7Digital will be integrated into Spotify's popular ad supported streaming music service. The partnership is designed to help Spotify reach profitability in the current difficult ad sales environment. Beginning with the UK, France, Spain and Germany, the deal enables Spotify users to purchase 320kbps MP3 downloads from 7Digital's 6M track catalog along with a selection of FLAC downloads. Sweden, Norway and Finland will [...]

Following months of lobbying by the major labels, the iTunes store will add variable pricing on April 7th. Tracks will be priced at $.69, $.99 and $1.29. There''s been no official word as to which downloads will be sold as various price points, but presumably some older catalog will be reduced in price; while some hit product will be cost 30% more than before. But will the major labels use this opportunity to lower overall prices or abuse it by trying to ring a few extra pennies from the few paying customers that have left? TAG's Ted Cohen [...]

On April 1st, PirateBay is scheduled to launch a service that will help users cover their internet tracks. IPREDator is a network service that makes online users more anonymous using a virtual private network (VPN). It will costs about 5 EUR a month and store no traffic data is ever stored. Ipredator comes in response [...]

A few months ago, The RIAA announced that it was going to stop suing individuals and start working with the ISP's to warn and then shut off those engaged in illegal file sharing. In recent days, AT&T, COX and several other ISP providers have gone public with their TIAA backed efforts and then just as quickly clarified them. As predicted months ago, ISP's will support that RIAA with warning letters, But except for perhaps the token takedowns that Cox is promisng, the ISP's have stated consistently that they [...]