snapshot 7/29/08

BlackBerry Thunder due Oct 8 with Rhapsody?
The BlackBerry Thunder now has a specific release date and over-the-air music downloads, if a leak is found to be accurate. Research in Motion's first-ever touch BlackBerry is now purportedly due to launch with Verizon on October 8th and will have access to Verizon's version of RealNetworks' Rhapsody service. The feature may supply a technical advantage over the iPhone, which is both prevented from downloading whole songs outside of Wi-Fi and must pay per track rather than getting a flat rate for songs.


RoyaltyShare Adds 7 Download Stores
RoyaltyShare has added to seven new digital services to its Content Management system: AmieStreet, Hot Topic/ ShockHound, PassAlong Networks, Puretracks and SpiralFrog. Record label customers and distributors using RoyaltyShare's Content Management Service can now deliver content directly to these and 72 other digital music retailers. RoyaltyShare's offering is an alternative to the standard aggregation model... offering record labels an on-demand system for managing digital sales, including metadata, storage, delivery and sales processing, as well as, analytics for monitoring sales and artist and mechanical royalty processing at lower cost than most digital distributors.


Hollywood shows musicians the money
DEVELOPING alternative revenue streams first is no longer a case of putting the cart before the horse for recording artists, especially the independent acts who are finding that placements in television and film provide a bit of financial freedom. THE "MOVIE MONEY" as several young artists call it, is having a dramatic effect on the direction they take with their albums. The bonus money provided by placements has led to everything from major label signings to enhancing the sound quality on an album to being in a position to offer downloads for free.


Ad-Supported Music Startup trueAnthem Raises $2 Million
The startup raised $2 million and added Adidas as a sponsor. Unlike most free ad-supported music, songs from trueAnthem are available as MP3 files (the ones I downloaded were 128kbps) and begin with brief audio advertisements. There is also an ad at the bottom of each widget from which songs are streamed and downloaded. The press release says ad-free tracks can be purchased for $0.99 apiece, but I have not found a widget with this option.


Westerberg on Amazon: an exercise in frustration
I'm a Replacements fan. Paul Westerberg's new album, 49:00, sounded intriguing. Like Radiohead and Trent Reznor and others, he's released it as a download first. Unlike these previous experiments, 49:00 is sold as a single album-length track. And while he's not technically giving it away, it costs only $0.49--a bit more than one cent per minute. (Paradoxically, the album is not 49 minutes long, but 43:55. The number refers to his 49th birthday, which occurs on the last day of 2008.)

So I headed over to Amazon.com's MP3 store. The front page has 49:00 as a highlighted selection. But the album download page says this song is available as a "full album only."And you can't download it by clicking on the title. Helpful. After stumbling around a between title pages, I finally figured out the only way to download the album is to click on the button on the upper right that says "Buy MP3 Album with 1-Click."