snapshot 8/08/08

Kid Rock's Hot Summer; No iTunes Required
Since Rock has long refused to sell his music as digital downloads, fans who want to get "All Summer Long" — legally, at least — have to buy the album. (Other prominent digital holdouts include AC/DC, who have an album coming out this fall, and the Beatles.) "I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here," says Rock. "Good music just doesn't go out of style, and if you hear a great song that moves you, you'll obtain it — by any means necessary."

As the record industry struggles with weak album sales, Kid Rock's success has execs considering a new strategy. "It's definitely interesting that he's the only artist that's not available on iTunes with a monster hit right now, and we're seeing that kind of a growth," says Livia Tortella, general manager of Atlantic, who acknowledges that the company is considering keeping other artists' singles off iTunes in hopes of building album sales. "It's certainly spurring a lot of debate in our company."


The Record Industry’s Digital Distribution Plan (TotalMusic) Comes Back From the Dead
The music industry’s attempts to create its own digital distribution business is like a bad horror movie. It just keeps coming back no matter how badly bludgeoned it gets. Back in 2001 in response to Napster, the music labels launched two competing music download sites, PressPlay and MusicNet (the latter became a white-label music service called MediaNet. Meanwhile, Pressplay was bought by Roxio, and formed the basis for the current version of Napster). Both were utter failures.

Then in 2007, in response to iTunes, Doug Morris at Universal Music had the brilliant idea of bundling music subscriptions into the price of digital music players. The effort was called TotalMusic, and the idea was to get all the record labels on board, until the Department of Justice launched an antitrust investigation that killed the idea. Or so everyone thought.

Multiple sources in the Web music industry (including two CEOs and another executive) have told us that the music labels are mulling over another attempt at creating their own digital distribution business, or at least one they can control. Details are sketchy, but the buzz is increasing around a project to create a free, advertising-supported streaming service that would be licensed or white-labeled to other Websites. Each stream would link directly to a paid digital download. Some believe that a revived TotalMusic and this project are one and the same.


Nokia Music Store goes live in Nokia Music PC Client
Integration between the Nokia Music PC Client (available via Beta Labs) and the Nokia Music Store has now gone live. This means you can browse and buy music, from the Nokia Music Store, within the Nokia Music PC Client application. This gives Nokia a seamless music experience, akin to Apple's iTunes, for discovering, purchasing, downloading and transferring music to a mobile device. Nokia Music PC Client has been available for some time. Previously, however, only the music library and transfer functions were available. The integration with the Music Store has now been activated.


08.08.08: Auspicious Beginnings For People’s Music Store
The concept is simple and enticing: you sign up to create your own online music shop at The People’s Music Store. Then you personalize your shopfront and search the MP3 database for the products that you would like to sell. The developers have thought of everything; you can arrange and rearrange various playlists and compilations, keep a back catalogue, write commentary on individual tracks and albums, and there’s even a shoutbox!

Once your shopfront is up and running and the sidewalk outside is swept, the punters come in and purchase music from you. The more music you sell, the more points are added to your account and the more DRM free music you can buy from other shops on the site. Every time you buy from someone else, they earn points with which to buy music and you leave a little flyer in their shop window, letting their patrons know about you.


Free Software Turns the iPhone Into an E-Book Reader
Now, though, a free version of the Mac ebook reading software, Stanza, has found its way into the store, and it rocks. Here's a quick rundown of how it works, and just how to turn your iPhone into a mini-Kindle.


New Video helps indies get access to iTunes
For independent filmmakers and suppliers, getting access to market-dominating movie download service Apple iTunes can be even more difficult than landing prime shelf space at Wal-Mart. Because Apple only works with a limited number of companies, more and more independent filmmakers have found the easiest and sometimes only path onto iTunes is through aggregators such as New Video, which is quietly becoming one of the largest digital distributors of independent content thanks to its deal with Apple.

Over the last 18 months, New Video, which distributes DVDs for Docurama Films, A&E, NASCAR and others, has amassed 5,000 hours of TV and movie programming for digital distribution, and it hopes to double that by year-end.