The Fourth Estate (Moved)

The Day The Music Started

My favourite CD shop when I was a kid was small and selectively stocked. Small handwritten comments adorned every cover, and the owner had a forensic ability to make music recommendations that bordered on precognition. Unfortunately his story ended on a familiar note. Run out of business by a chain store. Now there is the new generation of online recommendation networks chasing the Holy Grail of consumer preferences analysis. Namely – can you help people figure out what they like?

The Kazaa KO

The outcome of the Kazaa case in Australia is a win for the music industry's slash and burn approach to peer-to-peer file sharing networks. On the face of it, their objections seem reasonable. Content creators should be able to protect their intellectual property, otherwise it would be harder than it currently is to earn a living from singing, dancing or pretending to be able to do either. But there is more to it than that. What makes the record labels nervous is not copyright infringement per se, but any form of distribution that is not entirely within their control.

Perfectly Podcast

Stuffy members of the radio industry might be forgiven for thinking that the fuss over 'podcasting' is nothing more than a new kind of fly fishing technique. Geeks blogging on Slashdot is one thing - but when Business Week, the bible of conservative CEO aspirants calls it a "New Radio Revolution", the broadcast luddites had better take notice.

Caught Napping?

When word trickled out that the revived new economy bad boy Napster had wrapped up a $52 million equity raising - it seemed pretty clear they were raising a war chest to take the fight to Apple's iTunes.

And now they have finally played their hand with the announcement of a $15 a month subscription offer, which lets customers download an unlimited number of songs from a library of over a million tracks, and transfer these to compatible MP3 players. The songs are protected with Microsoft's Janus rights management software and are playable as long as the user has an active subscription. Burning them to CD costs a bit extra.