According to Digital Music News (article here) Amazon are readying an music download offering that will integrate with the existing store (rather than an independent entity like iTunes etc).  The really exciting part is that the downloads will be in MP3 – no DRM!  According to the article the will happen regardless of whether or not the majors want to participate.

This of course is all good news for the indie labels who have been selling DRM free content, so shouldn’t have too much trouble striking agreements with Amazon. This can only apply further pressure to the majors to drop the DRM position.  At the same time eMusic aren’t going to be happy as it is likely to eclipse their presence on the web for selling DRM free content.

 The noise and protest about the change in royalties for web broadcasts is picking up, check out Link to News: Higher Music Royalty Rates — KCRW | 89.9FM and Save The Streams.

 There has been an going debate about how much webcacts should be charged in royalty fees to match with public & commerical radio.  Well it would seem that some decisions have been announced on the subject.  The daft thing is that with the possible exception of the very big players (ClearChannel et al), the rates will kill the small indy stations accounding to Radio & Internet News Letter (article – Link to RAIN: Radio And Internet Newsletter).   If these figures are correct, and they seem viable then it appears that the RIAA have scored an own goal as they’ll end up putting a lot of indie stations out of business which doesn’t do the music industry an favours.

 In a new article by Steve Jobs (Link to Apple – Thoughts on Music) he indicates he would happily say goodbye to DRM, but explains why he believes FairPlay shouldn’t be made licenable.  It is a well written article, but deliberately misses several points.

On the subject of lock in to a particular store, he points out on average each iPod has only 22 songs from iTunes – or 3%, and given that proportion it is hardly lock in.  Well, it is unless you’re willing to throw away £17.38 and spend the same to purchase those songs again from a different store. Not to mention that this is averaged over the owning population.  How many first generation iPods are in circulation now; how many people like me who refuse to get suckered by DRM wont load any iTunes material?  When you consider these points, then those who have purchased from iTunes probably do have a lot more to lose.

Further more with lock in, the problem also manifests itself in the situation of not all record companies have licensed to iTunes, particularly the smaller indie players and they may only work through a Microsoft DRM’d store, so can’t simply download you favourite obscure artist’s tracks to you iPod, or vice versa.

I don’t believe that Steve Jobs’ position is altruistic, but a case of it means he no longer has to carry the encoding burden, the DRM maintenance cost – which from his article is implied has the potential to be rather significant. Not to mention DRM free downloads means he has the potential to capture more download business.

Steve suggests the effort being spent on EU interoperability cases that have been going on in France, Belgium and other countries would better spent pressing the record companies. Yes, I’d agree with that; but as the boss of one of the biggest online stores, you’ve not been the most vocal proponent of removing DRM. Not to mention that as the biggest online vendor of music at the moment you probably have as much or more influence than many governments to persuade the ‘big four’ to try a new approach.

Tags: Apple iPod DRM Music MP3

As an blog entry on Idolator points out with charts taking into account downloads, the task of capturing the data has become a lot more problematic.

The article (here) also highlights the fact that particularly for America, radio playlists change slow thus slowing any changes to the chart – so they’ve offered another interesting one – Top 50 Music torrents – here.