The popular music site Last.fm announced today that beginning immediately, you can listen to entire music tracks and full-length albums for free. Previously, you could only hear excerpts of most tracks, which made Last.fm a great place for discovering new artists but a rotten one for actually listening to them. The site is taking a Flickr-style approach to its new service, offering a free version—you can listen to a track up to three times—and a forthcoming subscription service which will allow for unlimited streaming. This sounds good, but we’re curious about the three-listen limit, and how frequently that count is reset, if ever.
music
Video Game Industry On Nitro While Music Cries Alone In The Dark With No Friends
By 1.18.08
The video game industry is on fire! Wooo! Sales are up! Times are good!
In December, Nintendo had its biggest month ever with the hot-selling game system. Holiday shoppers bought 1.4 million Wiis, according to sales data released Thursday by the NPD Group. The Wii’s success helped drive the video game industry to a record-setting $17.9 billion in sales, about 43% higher than 2006’s $12.5 billion, which was also a record.
Meanwhile the music industry isn’t having such a fun time. Sales are down. People are getting fired at EMI and the Rolling Stones are all pissed off about it.
By 1.11.08
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Sony has agreed to sell its songs DRM-free on the Amazon MP3 store, completing the set—now all four big record companies are on board. It’s amazing how a little iTunes competitiveness will bring a bunch of executives together.
Napster Drops DRM, Will (Finally) Sell MP3s
By 1.7.08
Napster, once a file-sharing service that famously drug the RIAA kicking and litigating into the digital music era, will finally drop DRM and start selling mp3s, says Ars Technica.
Canceling Napster Takes 30 Minutes On The Phone
By 12.31.07
Eliot Van Buskirk over at Wired found that he was no longer in need of his Rhapsody, Napster and Yahoo! Music subscriptions now that the RIAA is starting to warm up to the idea of DRM-free music.
Amazon Expands DRM-Free Music Store, Adds Warner Music
By 12.28.07
Starting today, Warner Music songs are now available on the Amazon MP3 music store, in DRM-free formats and at prices competitive to what iTunes charges. According to Reuters, Amazon has now reached “deals with music labels Universal Music Group, part of Vivendi, and EMI. The remaining major recording group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, has yet to offer its songs for the service.” Sony BMG, you guys are very, very old dorks.
RIAA Sends Out Fake News Clip To TV Stations
By 12.21.07
The RIAA wants you to know that everyone loses with pirated products, so they’ve put together a fake news story and sent it out to TV stations around the country—maybe it will show up on your cash-strapped local news over the next few days, if you’re lucky. We’re torn, though, on posting this because it’s being leaked (promoted?) heavily by the video news release (VNR) company that produced it—we want you to scoff at it with us, but keep your bullshit “stealth marketing” sensors up.
Article Recounts Sony's Rootkit Debacle In Detail
By 12.18.07
Remember Sony’s cringe-inducing copy protection scheme a couple of years ago, where they secretly installed rootkits on millions of customers’ PCs and then pretended it was no big deal? (“Most people, I think, don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?” — Thomas Hesse, Sony BMG’s President of Global Digital Business.) There’s a new article (PDF) about to be published in the Berkely Technology Law Journal called “The Magnificence of the Disaster: Reconstructiong the Sony BMG Rootkit Incident.” It’s a very detailed and entertaining read that examines the conditions that led Sony BMG “toward a strategy that in retrospect appears obviously and fundamentally misguided.”
Are High-End Sound Systems Worth The Price?
By 12.15.07
Audiophiles claim that their fancy-schmancy sound systems serve up rich melodic delicacies that our crud-laden ears just don’t appreciate. Slate asked if their high-end systems were anything more than effete indulgences.
Walmart Hates DRM
By 12.3.07
Ars Technica says that Walmart has given an ultimatum to “some of the largest record labels, including Warner Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, to provide more of their respective music catalogs in MP3 format (that is, without DRM) next year.”
By 11.30.07
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Warner Music profits down 58%. Discuss. [NYT]
RIAA Told To Provide Breakdown Of Expenses Per Each Downloaded Song
By 11.27.07
Over the Thanksgiving weekend, a Brooklyn judge made a defendant in an RIAA lawsuit very happy when he ordered the RIAA to document the actual expenses incurred per downloaded song.
RIAA Defendant: Best Buy Replaced My Hard Drive During Warranty Repair
By 11.5.07
The RIAA defendant who lost her jury trial, Jammie Thomas, is telling her side of the story on p2pnet. Of particular interest: She claims that Best Buy made the decision to replace her hard drive, under the terms of her extended warranty, 6 months before she was served with the RIAA’s subpoena.
NIN's Trent Reznor Shared Files On OiNK, Compares iTunes To Sam Goody
By 10.31.07
Trent: I’ll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world’s greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me.
AT&T: Napster On Your Phone For $1.99 Per Track?
By 10.22.07
Here’s some news for those of you out there who have so much money you literally can not think of anything else to do with it: AT&T has announced a partnership with Napster in which you can download songs to your phone for “only” $1.99 a track or 5 for $7.49.
"In Rainbows" Pirated A Lot, Despite Name-Your-Price Deal
By 10.18.07
Radiohead may have moved 1.2 million copies of its new album “In Rainbows” when it was released last week, but according to industry analysts, over 500,000 copies were downloaded through old-fashioned file sharing networks, eroding the perceived success of the distribution plan and possibly hindering similar release plans for other artists in the future.
By 10.18.07
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Reach humans at eMusic customer service: 212-300-2856, 11AM-5PM, Eastern.
Southwest Gate Agent Entertains Passengers With Ukelele
By 10.12.07
Plug in your work headphones and get ready to rock out classic-easy-listening-style.
