I’ve been reading the Digital Music News today – with another report of sales declining. I presume that the article is built around press releases of the likes of the IFPI and the BPI. The problem I have with these stats is when I look at the IFPI’s figures (for the UK at least) unit volumes are increasing.  Taking figures from 2000-2005 (2006 figures you have to pay for) as you can see here.

Unless I’m mistaken that is definitely an upward trend. Now the relative value of individual CDs could be argued as download on the basis that prices are probably rising at lower rate than your preferred measure of inflation, but so are a large number of things (including simple production costs) – this is simply a reflection of market pressures and the evolving global market.

The other thing is that the music industry is highly seasonal – in part this is the record industries own making.  How many high profile artists release a new album in the first three months of the year?  Very few – your U2’s REM’s, Coldplay’s either hit the Easter period or are released in the August – November period. So you’ll see seasonal drops and rises – so 6% drop between first and last quarters is to be expected.

But releasing major artists and promoting them all in a shortish period, aren’t they creating a tougher competition between themselves for people’s dollar and pound? I know now we have a little one too take care of, I have notably more limited budget – so more albums get pushed onto my amazon wishlist if I spend my month’s music money before I’ve got all the releases I’d like. Those albums on my wishlist that aren’t purchased soon after will probably get deleted from the list – and that’s lost sales. So spreading releases means I can spread my spending better – means more sales. And I’m damn sure this is a common situation.

So as Disraeli said – There are lies, damned lies, and statistics, and the music industry may have problems but it can do a lot to help itself without resorting to suing the hell out their customers and people trying to sell their product.

Well its official that Apple will offer a DRM free solution; BUT at a fairly hefty premium of 20p (~$0.39) per track.  You could argue you’re being asked to pay more for less!

Ok, so the quality is meant to be higher – although it does leave question begging – does that mean that normal DRM’d tracks are substandard, and that buying CDs and ripping them is still the better option?  Oh, and the interoperability issue – well, the files are Apple’s AAC – so to be seriously portable, you’ll need to know how to transcode to MP3 (or Ogg Vorbis or FLAC to avoid quality loss), and how many high street punters know how to do that?

Given the finger pointing and sabre rattling coming from the European Commission and governments, are Apple likely to be out of the woods?  According to the Financial Times today (Brussels to target Apple’s iTunes site) probably not as it would appear that Apple are the subject  of an investigation for violating EU regulations on cross border purchasing with regards to country restrictions on purchases. Something I find kind of ironic given the successful BPI attack against CD-Wow (see recent posts) for its sourcing of CDs.

 According the unofficial Apple weblog (Link to EMI to say goodbye to DRM? – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) ) who are in turn reporting from the Wall Street Journal – EMI have taken the bull by the horns and will be announcing the removal of DRM from their catalogue. 

If true, then its horrah for common sense and I hope that the move pays dividends.

 A friend of mine pointed a rather interesting article out to me (Link to p2pnet.net – the original daily p2p and digital media news site) which basically slaps the RIAA’s legal representatives for very poor legal practice in their typical pursuit of a perceived downloader.

Reading through an interpreting the legal wording, the lawyer highlights to key points, firstly following of due process and technical requirements for proof.

In terms of due process as is well known the RIAA are asking companies to watch IP traffic, then identify the recipient without in terms of the translating IP traffic to ISP known information.  Then having identified someone telling them of legal prosecution unless they negotiate that they will pursue court proceedings.  However, the lawyers must go through the courts to get the information from the ISP, then check all the proofs of liability properly, rather than simply accept their client’s claim – as without doing this means they are liable for counter claim. Rebuttal of assumption that a response or lack of in request to negotiation for settlement as an  admission to committing the offence. Lastly, at least one of the companies being used by the RIAA to acquire the basic information appear to have been proven to not be qualified expert witness – so just because they identify IP traffic suggesting that someone has taken copyrighted material isn’t sufficient to qualify as an expert to the whole case.

On the technical side, the letter indicates that the only conclusive proof of liability is finding evidence of the copyrighted material concerned on the hard disk (or other storage device) as the network traffic as seen by the ISP is not enough given the other potential opportunities to abuse someone’s system such as:

• operating system security (and Windows XP one of the most common home PC OS’s has regular weaknesses fixed) can be subverted,
• wireless networks hacked (easily regardless of WEP etc),
• the presence of malware such as bots operating unknown to the owner/user

So prior to pursuing the litigation the RIAA should by mutual consent have the media inspected. I should say, that thinking that you could just delete the files if you found yourself in this situation will be enough – certainly wont work. 

Hopefully the RIAA will realise that pursuing and suing their customers just is not practical, and the solution to the problem is to make it attractive to people to get their music legally.

According to the BBC P Diddy and Snoop Dogg have canceled their UK tour at the 11th hour because Snoop has had his entry visa refused (more from BBC News).

The whole situation seems a little inconsistent to me as he had already been in trouble with the UK authorities prior to Live 8 (pictures of his UK appearance then here)  but was allowed into the country for the Live 8 concert. His checkered history with the law has been a long standing fact so why the change of heart now?

If the visa refusal is based on the existing charges in the USA, then a number of other major artists should not have been allowed into the UK. For example the late James Brown was arrested in 1988 and served six years for drugs and firearms offences, but was subsequently allowed into the UK to tour and perform. A little inconsistent to say the least.

Sadly the biggest losers in all of this are the ticket buying fans.  Not just musically (depending on you opinion of course), but they’ll be noticeably out of pocket.  With ticket prices being charged with a substantial booking fee (£5 or about $9 being common) which is never refunded when a ticket is refunded as it doesn’t form part of the face value.

On the subject of missing RSS feeds, Peter Gabriel’s realworld site is also missing RSS – so I’ve only just discovered that he will be performing in London. Question is what are the chances of new material? 

Link to Peter Gabriel announced for Hyde Park Calling | News | NME.COM