Michael Robertson

A federal judge ruled in the favor of Michael Robertson and his MP3tunes.com music cloud locker site, and essentially all others like it in a not guilty verdict for copyright infringement. Lawyers for EMI and 14 other record companies argued that Robertson’s streaming service was akin to a public performance and demanded a royalty–33,000 to be exact, Read the rest of this entry »

You have to tip your hat to the people at Apple. They’re always seeking out new ways on how to get your money business. In the battle to ween the 23-40 age demographic off buying physical music for the album artwork, they’re teaming up with EMI, Sony Music, Warner Music and the Universal Music Group to start packing digital booklets and music videos with every album you download from iTunes.

The labels and Apple are working towards a September launch date for the project codenamed “Cocktail”, according to people familiar with the matter. Apple is looking to attract larger purchases by creating a new type of interactive album material, including photos, lyric sheets and liner notes that allow users to click through to items that they find most interesting. Consumers do purchase large amounts of digital music, but they are buying individual songs rather than higher-margin full albums.

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If the object of the game was to find every way but the right way solve a problem, the labels would be more prolific than Encyclopedia Brown, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys combined!

The four major record labels, along with leading U.S. retailers and memory card maker SanDisk on Monday introduced a new music format, where microSD cards will come pre-loaded with DRM-free MP3 albums from top artists. The “slotMusic” cards will be playable in mobile phones and MP3 players that support microSD cards — which excludes Apple’s iPod — as well as on any computer with a USB port and a number of in-car systems.

I like how they think they’re so slick putting music in a form that isn’t compatible with the iPod like people can’t find a way to put it on one. For me it would actually be easier than ripping a CD since I had both SD and MS slots right on the laptop. Sadly, their reasoning for this is Read the rest of this entry »