bruceb news

A fascinating article in today’s Wall Street Journal discusses some of the ways that software manufacturers are going to cooperate with the recording industry and attempt to kill the .mp3 format. The competing formats – Microsoft’s Windows Media Audio, Real Networks’ Real Audio, and others – all have more or less effective ways to lock up the files and prevent you from burning CDs, sharing the files, or loading them onto portable devices. The .mp3 format is open, not really amenable to “protecting” the songs in the same way. You’ll be under lots of pressure to use other formats – the kind of insidious, nasty pressure that’s hard to resist. […] continued

My lawyer friends will appreciate this story. Last week jurors in a federal court trial in New York awarded $300,000 to an independent record label for copyright violations – delivered as 145 individual awards, one for each infringed song. The defendant, MP3.com, was ecstatic, since it’s already been stung with multimillion dollar verdicts in other cases, and the plaintiff in this case was seeking $8.5 million.

Over the weekend jurors read news accounts and started calling the judge to confess that they messed up. They meant to award three million dollars, you see, and just got tripped up by that hard multiplication and division stuff. […] continued

Here’s a good article that explains all the issues about file formats and pricing for downloadable music from the record labels – and concludes that they stand a good chance of getting it completely wrong.

Here’s a glimpse of the future according to the recording industry.

Like the announcement with RealNetworks a couple of days ago and MSN yesterday, MTV and VH1 are rolling out a service with the cooperation of the major record labels. It’s routine – Internet radio and the option to buy songs by downloading them. Still no information available on file format or the extent of the restrictions on the use of the downloaded files. But look at the prices! Anywhere from a buck to $2.50 for a single song, and anywhere from ten to eighteen bucks for an entire CD. Think about that! […] continued

RealNetworks and three of the five biggest music companies announced a new Net music service yesterday. Notably absent was Universal – the biggest catalog, but also the most vociferous opponent of online music – and Sony, busy developing its own service.

RealNetworks intends to operate the infrastructure and make the entire back catalog from the three companies available for download or streaming into your computer. AOL and RealNetworks are the first companies to sign up to offer the service to consumers, but the library will be licensed to third parties, including Napster if it wants in.

All the interesting details have been left out of the announcement. […] continued

Napster is gone. Its death may be more or less protracted, but it’s all over. There will now be a period of confusion – most of you will be well served by waiting until the dust settles. I’m a big fan of Media Jukebox, so I like their offer of $3 billion to the record industry to begin a new subscription-based source for legal online music. Here’s the web site they created to demonstrate their seriousness – afternap.com. (And I still encourage you to give Media Jukebox a try if you’re at all frustrated with RealJukebox, MusicMatch Jukebox, or Windows Media Player!)

Even if Napster survives the court case, it won’t be fun for much longer. In addition to its plans for paid subscriptions, Napster now plans to add a “protection layer” to .mp3 files during their progress from someone else’s computer to your computer. The “protection” would prevent you, for example, from making an audio CD from the .mp3 file. Here’s an article about Napster’s plans.
There will be a period of confusion after Napster either shuts down or becomes annoying, but don’t worry. It’s a safe bet that downloadable music is here to stay.