Digital Music

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - As much as he enjoys singing about the double lives of computer geeks ("Online") and amorous country boys ("Ticks"), Brad Paisley says there's too much going on in the world to be too lighthearted on his new album, "American Saturday Night."

A digital rights group is contesting a U.S. music industry association's assertion that royalties are due each time a mobile phone ringtone is played in public.

SINGAPORE (AFP) - Computer security firm Sophos issued a warning about an Internet virus transmitted from a mass email claiming to contain secret songs and photos of Michael Jackson.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sony Corp's Sony Music Entertainment, the second largest music company in world, said on Wednesday it made a strategic investment in IODA, a digital distributor of independent music.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Lawyers for Michael Jackson filed the pop star's 2002 will in court on Wednesday that puts his multimillion-dollar estate in a family trust for his three children and his mother, but were denied a bid to take immediate control of his music fortune.

With all the outrage over The Pirate Bay going legit, I think it's time to reconsider the merits of illegally media sharing. The world has changed since Napster introduced peer-to-peer file sharing in 1999, and the culture that made the practice seem necessary has transformed.

Sony introduced its Walkman portable cassette player thirty years ago this week, kicking off a revolution in the consumer electronics industry by changing the way people enjoy music.

TOKYO - When the Sony Walkman went on sale 30 years ago, it was shown off by a skateboarder to illustrate how the portable cassette-tape player delivered music on-the-go — a totally innovative idea back in 1979.

TOKYO (AFP) - Thirty years ago Sony launched the Walkman, a gadget which revolutionised the way people around the world listened to music but has since been overtaken by an icon of the digital age -- the iPod.

Dell is developing a pocket-sized gadget fashioned after Apple's iPod Touch that will play music, videos, and connect with the Web and is based on the Google Android mobile operating system, according to reports in today's Wall Street Journal.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (Reuters) - Child pornography was downloaded from a Swiss hip-hop music website to around 2,300 computers in 78 countries, Swiss police said on Monday.

NEW YORK - Michael Jackson's death has led to skyrocketing sales of his music and videos, with major retailers like Amazon.com Inc. and Barnes and Noble Inc. selling out of products that have regained immense popularity overnight.

An Illinois couple has filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple for deceptive advertising and breach of contract over iTunes gift cards that advertised 99-cent music downloads despite a price hike to $1.29 on certain songs.

A week after the U.K. unveiled plans to establish a super-fast broadband infrastructure across the country within the next three years, Viviane Reding, the European commissioner for telecommunications, Thursday warned E.U. member states, including the U.K., not to go it alone.Coordinating policy on the roll-out of next generation broadband networks with other European countries is necessary if the ambitious goals of the countries, and the E.U., are to be achieved, Reding said in a speech at a conference in Brussels."To make the most of the E.U. single market, and to prevent the various national initiatives from getting out of rhythm and resulting in disharmony, guidance is needed at European level," she said, adding: "Europe cannot afford to get its ICT and telecom policies wrong; too much is at stake."Faster broadband connection speeds allow content such as music and video to be uploaded and downloaded to and from the Internet faster. They will also spur software innovations that will result in a greater choice of online applications for users.Politicians also see faster broadband as a vital tool for creating jobs and kick-starting their economies.Unilateral efforts from countries including the U.K. illustrate the frustration these countries feel about the lack of progress in updating E.U. telecom laws.The European Parliament has effectively vetoed a package of measures that included laws designed to help upgrade Europe's telecom infrastructure.Members of the European Parliament agreed to add a clause forcing governments to seek formal judicial approval before banning anyone suspected of illegally sharing copyright-protected material online.The French and British governments are trying to set up systems that would allow government agencies to ban individuals from the Internet without having to go to court.The national governments refused to accept the Parliament's now infamous amendment 138. As a result the whole package of laws cannot proceed along the law-making process. Reding said Thursday "we need to seal the deal on the new regulatory package so that we can move on to the other pressing regulatory issues that we face."Ed Richards, the chief executive of Ofcom, the U.K. telecom regulator, who was also attending the conference, agreed. "We cannot let it [amendment 138] hold everything else up. Nor can we afford to now re-open the substantive points of the proposed Framework," he said."At a time when governments across Europe are seeking to promote large-scale investment in next generation networks, and competition at the deepest possible layers, a failure to adopt the package before the end of the year would be a significant blow," said Richards.In addition to the telecom package, the Commission has also proposed recommendations aimed specifically at the creation of next-generation broadband networks across the E.U. One is designed to help national governments to step in and assist companies with state aid, while respecting the state aid rules. The other tries to balance two seemingly opposed interests: encouraging investors to spend billions on the new infrastructure on the one hand, and ensuring cheap access to the new networks for rival telecoms firms in order to spur competition.The draft recommendation published earlier this month was criticized by both sides in the debate: incumbents, usually former state owned telecom monopolies, argue that to recoup their investment in the infrastructure they should be allowed to charge higher prices to rivals that use their networks.But the rival firms argue that this would stifle competition and that it amounts to a regulatory holiday for the incumbents.Historically, Reding has been more supportive of the rivals' argument than the one posed by the incumbents. Nevertheless, she said Thursday that she supports the idea of allowing incumbents a light regulatory touch when they team up with other firms to invest in new broadband infrastructure, as long as the infrastructure uses fiber-optic cables."I strongly believe that this support by regulators should not apply in a mere VDSL context," she said. VDSL is a faster version of DSL (digital subscriber line) connections common today, but is slower than fiber-optic cables.The aims of the British initiative, dubbed Digital Britain, include having all U.K. homes connected with broadband of at least 2M bps (bits per second) by 2012.

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - After months of speculation about the fate of the 2009 Virgin Mobile Festival, organizers have made an announcement that should please music fans who've felt the economic pinch of the recession: this year's event is free.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Verizon and Alltel have agreed to refund an estimated $30 million to Florida cell phone customers billed for unwanted third-party services including ringtones, music and horoscopes.

LOS ANGELES - Phil Spector is hoping to get a few comforts of home in his new prison cell, and a television, iPod and computer access are at the top of his list.

DENVER (Billboard) - A new NPD Group study finds that active Twitter users buy 77 percent more digital music downloads on average than non-users. Additionally, 12 percent of those who have bought music in the last three months also report having used Twitter, versus 8 percent of overall Web users.

DENVER/NASHVILLE (Billboard) - In April, soon after Apple gave labels the ability to set different prices for their songs on iTunes, every track on Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" was raised to $1.29.

DENVER (Billboard) - At first glance, Spotify isn't much different from other on-demand streaming music services. It includes roughly the same library of songs, pays the same per-stream licensing fees for music and contends with the same poor ad-sales environment.

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - The recording industry secured a resounding victory last week when a Minneapolis jury awarded the four major labels $1.92 million in damages after unanimously finding that a 32-year-old mother had willfully infringed on their copyrights by downloading and sharing 24 songs on the Kazaa peer-to-peer network.

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Animated chimps having sex, a smattering of radio airplay and a college tour don't exactly add up to a traditional path to Billboard's Top Latin Albums chart. But Sony Music Latin threw out its rulebook when it came to the new act Da'Zoo.

Some legal experts question the constitutionality of a $1.92 million fine given to a woman accused of pirating 24 songs. A Minnesota jury ordered Jammie Thomas-Rasset to pay that yesterday, saying she "willfully" violated music copyrights and should cough up $80,000 per illegally downloaded track.

MINNEAPOLIS - The $1.92 million verdict against a Minnesota woman accused of sharing 24 songs over the Internet could ratchet up the pressure on other defendants to settle with the recording industry — if the big fine can withstand an appeal.

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (AFP) - A US jury has ordered a 32-year-old woman to pay nearly two million dollars in damages for illegally downloading 24 songs over the Internet in a high-profile digital piracy case.

A woman who won a retrial after a US$220,000 verdict against her for sharing music files has now been ordered to pay $1.92 million by a jury in Minnesota.

Video killed the radio star, as the old song goes. Now, online video could make a killing for network gear makers over the next few years.

STOCKHOLM - Norway's Opera Software ASA on Tuesday launched a new feature for its Internet browser allowing users to share photos, music and files directly with one another, without needing to go through outside services such as Facebook and Flickr.

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Norway's Opera Software opened a new, free service on Tuesday that enables simple sharing of personal computers' pictures, files or music with anyone on the Internet.