The second trial confirmed the first for the 32 year old mother in Minnesota who illegally downloaded 24 songs. $80,000 per song – ouch. Lots of reasons she was found guilty and the RIAA continues to find, sue and settle with illegal downloaders and reasons that the fine was so high – read more on Yahoo (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_tec_music_downloading).

Three main points to make:
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Pricing for digital music just became WAY more confusing. With Apple iTunes new variable pricing (as low as $.69 per old song and $1.99 for new songs), a reasonably complex process – buying downloading installing playing music – just became even MORE complex and confusing to people who just want to listen to music. Economists call this price discovery, I call it a pain in the ass. I don’t want to spend my time looking for the best deal on a new album or a single track which is why I like Rhapsody. The new U2 album? Heard it on Rhapsody – and I didn’t pay an extra penny. Classic Van Morrison live album? Heard it on Rhapsody and didn’t pay any extra.

iTunes did a great thing when they launched and had pricing at an easy to understand and calculate $.99 per song for everything. Variable pricing will be a rat hole of confusion and online tools to scope out the best price for a particular song which takes away from the fun of discovery.

I really liked Beck’s version of Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat at the the end of the Academy Awards. It played during the movie clips for films coming out in 2009. It’s a classic Dylan song on Blonde on Blonde and I can’t find the Beck version on Rhapsody and it’s not on Modern Guilt (latest CD) so I hope it’s on a new album coming out or maybe he’ll release on iTunes/Rhapsody/Napster/Internet.

Looks like the Recording Industry Association of America is changing it’s strategy of suing individuals who are caught downloading pirated music. In a recent statement, they stated that no new lawsuits will be filed against individual – I guess all of the bad press, high cost and ineffectiveness of the campaign has come to roost. The new strategy involves working directly with Internet Service Providers to “warn” people of illegal activity.

The truth is that the downloading networks have gotten progressively worse over the years and to both find and download a significant amount of clean music is more difficult than ever. File sharing has never gone mainstream and you can’t stop people from swapping CDs and ripping them onto their computers.
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I just read a nice article from Portfolio.com that talks about Apple’s dominance in the music distribution business and how it won’t last. I’ve read a lot of these types of analysis and personally believe that services like Rhapsody, Napster and Zune pass are the way of the future. No per song fees, access any music anywhere, single monthly fee is the model that will allow MORE music discovery, MORE enjoyment of music, a WIDER spectrum of listening and a sound music industry that is MORE fair to the artists.

The main point of the article is that it will take Apple to convert to this model in order for it to really take off. It may not be Apple, but someone big or something really discontinuous needs to happen in order for the broader public (ie – everyone with an iPod) to try the services. Here is the link to the article – enjoy.

I’ve been playing with the new version of Zune Software 3.0. It includes Zune Collection (manages your music collection), Zune Marketplace (purchase music), Zune Social (share music with other Zune members). Each section has sub-categories and there is a Zune Pass overlay (a subscription service).

Things I Like about Zune 3.0
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I just read an interesting article about the reality of the music industry from the perspective of the artists vs the mass news articles about the health of large labels. In essence, the internet and digital distribution of music is changing the business model from a tightly controlled big label structure to a more egalitarian structure in which artists have the recording and marketing tools to go directly to the people. Here’s a link to the article that discusses this with Ian Rogers - CEO of Topspin Media – a company that sells tools for musicians to publish their own tunes.

Think about the before and after scenarios:
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I’ve just posted a feature by feature comparison of Rhapsody vs Napster. I selected the elements that are the most important and quantifiable and left out things like look and feel, stability, etc. as those are hard to get hard facts around. Click here to compare Rhapsody vs Napster.

I read the daily Digital Music News email to try and keep up on music business and lately there are lots of stories about stock prices plunging (LiveNation), Stores closing (CircuitCity, Tweeter) and estimates on music sales dropped for the holiday season (Best Buy and Everyone but Walmart). Times are tough for everyone no doubt, but I am not dropping my Rhapsody music subscription and here’s why:’
- I haven’t purchased a new CD is 6+ months. No need to. I can listen to just about everything published without purchasing the CD.
- The artists, writers, publishers of music that I like are still getting paid when I listen – Rhapsody handles all of that (and it’s both complex and intense – believe me).
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Best Buy, a strong retail partner for Rhapsody, has purchased Best Buy to help expand their offerings into subscription services, pair with hardware and compete more aggressively with iTunes music store. Lots of stories about how this will impact Napster (avoid a big internal shareholder fight that was brewing, effectively removes rhapsody from one of the largest retail channels and gives Napster a purpose) but not a lot of chatter about how it will impact Rhapsody. I think a few things will happen:
- Rhapsody will be moved out of the Best Buy channel next year
- Best Buy will use it’s influence to pair Napster with some additional devices
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