According to “multiple music industry sources,” MediaMemo reports that Apple is planning a music-centric keynote event for the week of Sept. 7, possibly to debut the new “Cocktail” format that Apple has been working on, which bundles full-length albums with special features and interactive content like album covers and liner notes.

That Apple floated the ‘news’ to music industry executives has rumors swirling about what the tech company might be unveiling.

Continue Reading

You would think that Apple would give you a refund if your iPod exploded and gave you burn scars. Well, that’s not really what Ken Stanborough (in Liverpool) and his daughter, Ellie (pictured above with the deceiving iPod) got. Instead, what they got was a gagging order.

What does that exactly mean? This means that Apple tried to give them their money back ONLY if they were to stay hush-hush about the incident. Gagging orders can be seen as another form of blackmail if you think about it and there are sure a lot of companies that try to get away with it in order to save their good name. However, when people are getting scars from one of their devices which burst into flames and burn their skin, people will just not stay silent.

Continue Reading

The music ‘biz was-a-stirrin’ Monday with news that Apple had partnered with the four largest record labels — EMI, Sony, Warner and Universal — to help boost digital sales of albums by packaging new interactive booklets, liner notes and other interactive features with music downloads.

It’s a move Apple believes might tweak buying trends on its iTunes store.

“It’s all about recreating the heyday of the album when you would sit around with your friends looking at the artwork, while you listened to the music,” one executive familiar with the plans told Financial Times.

The Apple album project has been code-named ‘Cocktail,’ and there’s talk of a September launch date.

Continue Reading

Sony is jumping into the online music distribution market, as sources told CNET that Sony is attempting to deal with other major recording companies to provide music downloads through the PlayStation Network.

This comes after Sir Howard Stringer, Sony Chairman, President and CEO, said that the company can compete with iTunes by providing “something that Apple can’t” and will “grab that opportunity before Apple begins to provide support for other hardware and blocks [Sony] out.” Digital music served on the Playstation Network seems to be the answer.

Continue Reading

TuneUp, an iTunes plugin that provides artist names, genres, track numbers and cover art for you music collection, is launching a new user interface today with some added features. Since its launch in 2008, TuneUp has over 200,000 registered users, and you can try a free version of the software at tuneupmedia.com.

Launched in 2008, the plugin does what you don’t have time to do: it homogenizes your entire iTunes library. The free version corrects 100 songs and downloads 50 album covers, but the “Gold” version, purchased for $30 or for an annual subscription of $20, give you unlimited access to the Gracenote Global Media Database of more than 100 million songs.

Continue Reading

Penny Arcade is usually a gaming webcomic, but today, music is the focus after Microsoft aired a new commercial for the Zune Pass, which gives you unlimited music for fifteen dollars a month. The catch? If you stop subscribing to the service, all of your music gets erased. Penny Arcade says it best in today’s comic: “It’d be like you murdered all of your favorite artists.”

Granted, since a few major deals in Nov. 2008 (press release), the Zune Pass lets you choose ten songs to keep every month for your collection, but if you stop paying, the “obliteration” of the remainder holds true. Penny Arcade writer Jerry Holkins owns a Zune, and said that the new marketing campaign is “dumb”, while the rest of the internet is more intent on bashing the new face of Microsoft’s Zune, Wes Moss, and his lack of musical credentials. Watch the infamous advertisement after the jump:

Continue Reading

Sony Music Group has a long history of non-transparency with customers, even scandals involving the inclusion of dubious copy protection software on CDs, but is seems like the media company is trying to change. In an interview, Sir Howard Stringer, Sony Chairman, President and CEO, said that “Sony has begun the transition from a closed system to an open one.”

He explains that “Sony hasn’t taken open technology very seriously in the past. Its CONNECT music download service was a failure. It was based on OpenMG, a proprietary digital rights management (DRM) technology. At the time, we thought we would make more money that way than with open technology, because we could manage the customers and their downloads.”

Continue Reading

Digital Rights Management software (DRM), when used, attempts to control use of digital music by preventing access, copying or conversion to other formats. Until recently, Apple used the technology on all music they sold.

Now it seems that music service Lala, backed by Warner Music, filed for a patent last year on “a network-based DRM system [that] manages digital media assets stored in the network.” So instead of wrapping individual songs in DRM, Lala uses their servers to control the use of music on the platform.

“The Web restricted nature of the offering,” Lala writes in the filing, “means that the digital assets are at all times controlled by the system and thus result in minimal piracy.”

Continue Reading

Executives within the major labels are confirming decreased sales on iTunes ever since Apple implemented variable pricing on the popular digital music store in April. Digital Music News reports that individual song sales have dropped, resulting in a decline in overall revenue.

The most popular songs on iTunes were set to $1.29, and even though a drop in sales was probably expected, the higher prices were supposed to compensate for that loss. Even worse, the sales slump has for all songs, not just the top tier tracks. One of the industry execs told Digital Music News:

“It’s back to the abacus to figure out the best mix.”

Continue Reading