iLounge

Web sites like iTunes, BuyMusic, Musicmatch and the new Napster make it possible to download your favorite songs for $1 each. Some of them even have subscription services that charge a monthly fee for unlimited use, or you can download an album starting at $10.

Now it’s legal and cool.”

That’s going to be a key question as the music download market warms up to a white-hot temperature in 2004. The rush is underway among several companies to build music download services and replicate the success of others already leading the way.”

Nielsen/NetRatings says the average number of users on Kazaa, the top music and movie trading program, has dropped 53% since June — when the RIAA first warned of lawsuits.”

Ownership of MP3 players such as Apple’s market leading iPod is also climbing: 19 per cent of US music downloaders own such devices - up from 12 per cent in December 2002.

A quarterly digital music behaviour report from research firmIpsos-Insight shows that in late June 2003, “roughly” one out of six (16 per cent) of US music downloaders aged 12 and older had paid to download music online. The company says this is the equivalent of 10 million people.”

Loca Records wants to foster experimentation and freedom in music by building a stable of free music which can be shared, remixed and manipulated by anyone. Songs are not locked by digital rights management technology.”

Music sales have been in freefall for three years, hit by online file sharing and widespread CD copying by organised criminal gangs and pirate factories across Asia and eastern Europe.”

One company, Beverly Hills-based BigChampagne, began mining such data from popular peer-to-peer networks in 2000 and has built a thriving business selling it to recording labels. [...]

BigChampagne has certainly done well by file-swapping. It formed in July 2000, just as the Internet boom was beginning to bust, and now counts Maverick, DreamWorks, Warner Bros., Disney and Atlantic Records among its clients. All the major labels have worked with BigChampagne ‘in one capacity or another,’ Garland said.”

The Feinstein-Cornyn proposal would make illegal recording a federal felony, with a maximum punishment of five years in prison, an unspecified fine, or both. The maximum prison time increases to 10 years for a second offense.”

‘The consumer’s rapid and enthusiastic acceptance of iTunes and other download services gives great meaning to that data,” says Geoff Mayfield, Billboard director of charts. “We will need to factor those transactions into The Billboard Hot 100 . . . .’”

I believe that any industry that is seeing a move of their intellectual assets to a digital medium will go through four basic stages: ignorance, panic, protection and litigation, quiet acceptance. This was the case with software in the 80s and 90s, is currently the case with music, and will soon be the case with movies. I suspect that other industries like the professional photography market are facing similar issues currently or have in the past.”

To copy the music to the Sony portable player, the technology requires an extra step to copy the files to a separate program to transfer the music to the portable player.

At this point, music can be transferred only to Sony portable players, although Sony executives note that Apple Computer’s popular iTunes service works the same way with the Apple-branded iPod.”

“We expect as soon as we get the word out to consumers that Napster is back, it will significantly impact our growth,” Gorog said in an exclusive interview with TechNewsWorld. “We would also expect to be taking away market share from Apple on a weekly basis."”

The company is still finalizing deals with the five major music companies and has told music industry executives it could launch the service by Nov. 15. If it doesn’t meet that date, the company hopes to launch the service by Thanksgiving, sources say.”

Freston, who addressed investors at the Harris Nesbitt Gerard Playtime conference, said the as-yet-unnamed service would debut within the first half of next year, but gave few details.”