February 26, 2007

Birdwatchers have long headed into the woods with little more equipment than binoculars and a notebook. But when Laura Erickson sets out on a birding trip, she now brings along two digital cameras, a Palm device with a bird-species database and an iPod loaded with bird songs.

February 23, 2007

FWIW, this isn't a Zune thing - it's an MSN thing. MSN is trying to get people to make MSN their home page and offering 50 Zune devices to give away.

February 22, 2007

February 21, 2007

26 -- always or almost always add additional items (or wait until they have several items to order) to reach $25 and qualify for free shipping

6 -- sometimes pay shipping and sometimes qualify for free shipping on their larger orders

3 -- had paid for Amazon Prime

1 -- used an Amazon Prime account paid for by a family member

And just 1 person said that he usually pays for shipping on Amazon.com orders! (No mention of free shipping at all...)

February 20, 2007

Instead of playing full songs, clubs now play one-minute samples of songs and barrage you with choruses. I like this trend because you never know what's coming next, although it's depressing that our attention spans have been whittled down to the degree that clubs feel obligated to change songs every 60 seconds. Whatever.

Society is overwhelming. We've got 300 TV channels, if not MORE! We've got a bunch of new movies EVERY weekend. We've got video games. We haven't got time to sit down and listen to an hour of crap over and over again in order to get hooked. We want something ear-pleasing, NOW! We ONLY want GOOD STUFF!

February 15, 2007

February 14, 2007

Some people have been asking, so I just wanted to let everyone know:

Snocap (http://snocap.com/), the company that makes the "MyStore" on MySpace.com, is one of our partner companies as part of CD Baby Digital Distribution.

After 18 months(!) of contract negotiation, we got you an incredible deal as a "Premiere Snocap Partner", which means:

#1 - You'll be paid MORE for your Snocap sales through CD Baby than if you were to go through Snocap directly. (about 3 cents more per-track, but also no need for their annual fee)

#2 - You won't have to send your music to two different places. We can be a GREAT distributor for you, and do it ALL for you here.

#3 - As a "Premiere Snocap Partner", CD Baby can offer lots of PROMO opportunities, including:

- a featured "CD Baby Artist of the Week" on MySpace

- a chance to become the "Snocap Featured Download" on the Music Home Page of MySpace

- Top Seller charts for CD Baby on snocap.com and the Snocap MySpace page

... and more to come.

Soon you'll be able to personalize your Snocap store (that appears on your MySpace page if you have one), and do everything from inside your CD Baby Members Login Area, including adding new tracks, changing prices, and everything else.

They are still importing our audio files, and will be ready in a few weeks. As soon as that's done, we will send you your unique codes for linking your Snocap store, and have more details on how to make changes.

February 13, 2007

1. I pay them

2. I usually place orders of $25+ and qualify for free shipping

3. I paid for Amazon Prime and pay no additional shipping for individual orders

4. A family member paid for Amazon Prime and shares the account with me (I believe you can share it with four family members...)

February 09, 2007

If you've only bought 10 songs, the lock-in is obviously not very strong. However, if you've bought 100 songs ($99), 10 TV-shows ($19.90) and 5 movies ($49.95), you'll think twice about upgrading to a non-Apple portable player or set-top box. In effect, it's the customers who would be the most valuable to an Apple competitor that get locked in. The kind of customers who would spend $300 on a set-top box.

February 08, 2007

February 07, 2007

February 06, 2007

In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.

Apple Could Sell CDs and Bundle Music with iPods: The old agreement (at Sections 1.3 and 4.3) seemingly prevented Apple from selling music on physical media, such as CDs, even though it could sell music through the iTunes Store. On paper, this seemed like a simple limitation: Apple could sell music-playing hardware like iPods, but it couldn't sell you the discs full of music to play on the iPod.

Apple's iTunes Store - the subject of the 2003 lawsuit - successfully stepped around this limitation by using the Internet to distribute music, but it left Apple with two major limitations: Apple couldn't pre-install music on iPods, or otherwise sell it on any physical medium, such as discs. This was one of the reasons that the prior U2 Special Edition iPods didn't actually include U2's music - Apple's contract with The Beatles forced you to buy it separately online.

February 05, 2007

"We love the Beatles, and it has been painful being at odds with them over these trademarks," said Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs in a prepared statement. "It feels great to resolve this in a positive manner, and in a way that should remove the potential of further disagreements in the future."

Neil Aspinall, manager of Apple Corps, said the company was glad to resolve the dispute. "The years ahead are going to be very exciting times for us. We wish Apple Inc. every success and look forward to many years of peaceful co-operation with them,'' he said.

The settlement resolves what had been a major roadblock to Apple's efforts to make the Beatles catalog available on iTunes. The joint statement didn't address whether Beatles songs would be available online.

Let's review how many copyright violations I have committed. First, I'm using a published work in a synchronous performance with my video, so I would need a sync license from the publisher. Next, I would need master rights from the record company. I edited the piece (I used the beginning in the end and did a few cuts on the beat, then shortened the work and left out 80% of the song), so I would need permission to edit the master. I would also need public performance rights because it's being "broadcast" on YouTube. And lastly, I would need to pay a mechanical royalty for every download. But how?

Believe it or not, as a consumer, there is absolutely no way for me to obtain any of these rights. There's no button to click in iTunes, no publisher's site to visit, no way to find out who owns what. In fact, iTunes doesn't even tell you who the composer or the publisher of the song is. All you can find out from the metadata is that it was from "The Best of Van Halen Vol. 1" and that the work was copyrighted in 1996 by Warner Bros. Records Inc. . Anyone want to try to send them an email or call the main switchboard. I tried this morning and didn't get very far.

Now, I'm not selling this piece, so there is no commercial value being lost here -- is there? Of course there is. If I was told that to use the piece in a video I needed to pay an extra $.99 or some token amount, I would have been happy to do so. If I was told that I could not use this song with some special warning, I would have been happy to find an alternative. Unfortunately, there is no consumer education being done at all. (Unless you count the lawsuits that the RIAA keeps bringing against consumers as educational.) In the "year of self-expression" how many millions of dollars are the recorded music companies leaving on the table by not licensing music to consumers for personal use online?

February 02, 2007

February 01, 2007

Black Eyed Peas Will.I.Am likes nothing more than rushing straight to the internet after a gig - to catch fans who posts illegal clips of their show on the web. The 31 year old says, "I check MySpace and I look on YouTube to see who posts up phone clips of the show first. They get arrested."

Eventually, more than two-thirds of the roster had piled on and turned this team into baseball's official iSquad. Every player gets his own custom set of videos loaded onto his personal iPod, sorted by date, hitter, pitcher and opponent -- and updated every week or so.

"The great thing is, it's so easy to use," said Jennings, who became a happy iPod convert in a hurry. "It's such an easy thing to have access to. You can go to Best Buy and, by that night, you can have all your starts for the last four years on there."