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Today's Topics:
1. Virtualization Vendor Warns Mac Users With Vista Dreams
(Monty Solomon)
2. Steve Jobs Wants To End DRM, But Apple Develops New Access
Control Technology (Monty Solomon)
3. First Impression: Switching From A PC To The Mac (Monty Solomon)
4. Windows To Mac: A Frustrating Transition So Far (Monty Solomon)
5. Jobs Calls for End to Music Copy Protection (Monty Solomon)
6. iTunes and Windows Vista (Monty Solomon)
7. Breaking the Myth of Megapixels (Monty Solomon)
8. Bledsoe: True love means never resorting to these tunes
(Greg Williams)
9. Wireless Industry Heads to Spain Meeting (George Antunes)
10. Students Charged in Online Snow-Day Hoax (George Antunes)
11. Review: Adium 1.0 (Monty Solomon)
12. Hands On: Running Vista Home on a Mac (Monty Solomon)
13. Fatal drug mix killed US R&B star (Greg Williams)
14. 'Old' music's digital comeback (Greg Williams)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2007 23:02:37 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Virtualization Vendor Warns Mac Users With Vista
Dreams
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Virtualization Vendor Warns Mac Users With Vista Dreams
Parallels says the licensing agreement makes it uncertain whether its
customers will hear from Microsoft's legal department in the future.
By Antone Gonsalves
InformationWeek
Feb 8, 2007 06:56 PM
Parallels, a maker of virtualization software, on Thursday warned
that people who run Vista on the Mac cannot be certain that they
won't violate Microsoft's end user license agreement.
Parallels is concerned with wording in the EULA that makes it
impossible, according to the company, for people to know what they
can, or can't, do with Vista running on a Mac. "We don't know what
the hell it means, and no one else knows what it means," Benjamin
Rudolph, a spokesman for the company, says of the licensing agreement.
The portion of the EULA bothering Parallels has to do with the use of
Vista with virtualization technologies. It's already known that
Microsoft only wants the higher-priced editions of the operating
system -- Business and Ultimate -- to run on virtual machine
software. But what the EULA doesn't make clear is what you can do
with Vista once it's running on a Mac, Linux, or some other OS.
...
http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197004648
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2007 23:05:34 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Steve Jobs Wants To End DRM, But Apple Develops
New Access Control Technology
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Steve Jobs Wants To End DRM, But Apple Develops New Access
Control Technology
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has published a new Apple patent
application for securing and controlling access to digital data.
By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek
Feb 8, 2007 01:00 PM
Apple CEO Steve Jobs may be calling for an end to digital-rights
management (DRM), but engineers at his company continue to develop
data security technology.
On Thursday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a new
Apple patent application titled "Securing and controlling access to
digital data," which describes how motion tracked by an input device
other than a keyboard -- say, an iPhone touch pad -- can be used to
emulate a combination lock to secure digital data.
While this isn't DRM, strictly speaking, the patent application
nonetheless contemplates the technology's use as a means of access
control, which is, after all, the primary function of DRM.
...
http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197004497
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2007 23:15:38 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] First Impression: Switching From A PC To The Mac
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
First Impression: Switching From A Pc To The Mac
By Mitch Wagner,
08:34 PM ET, Feb 5, 2007
Do I look different to you? More genteel? More elegant? Maybe even
taller? I just made the switch from using a PC as my primary machine
to using a Mac. As a matter of fact, I've spent more time on the Mac
in the last day and a half than I've done in the preceding 24 years
of using personal computers.
Why did I make the change? Well, I was due for an upgrade anyway. My
main PC was getting on in years. I was quite happy with it until two
weeks ago, when I discovered Second Life, and then suddenly it became
inadequate to the new performance demands I was putting on it.
I wanted to learn more about the Mac, because it seems to be becoming
a mainstream computing platform again, after years as a boutique
machine.
I'd been hearing for years -- decades -- about how Macs are superior
and more stable.
Also: Why not?
I ended up with an iMac with 2 Gbytes of memory and a sweet,
24-inch display.
...
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/02/first_impressio.html
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2007 23:15:38 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Windows To Mac: A Frustrating Transition So Far
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Windows To Mac: A Frustrating Transition So Far
By Mitch Wagner,
04:34 PM ET, Feb 7, 2007
My first couple of days as a Mac user, after a quarter-century using
Windows and DOS, have been pretty frustrating. But it's not the Mac's
fault. When you're used to working on one platform, you get used to
doing things a certain way, and it's maddening to go to another
platform that has different ways of doing the same things.
Keyboard hotkeys are killing me here. I had no idea how often I use
keyboard hotkeys, and how much I came to rely on them for cutting and
pasting text, for selecting blocks of text, and for navigating around
in text documents.
To get things done on the PC, you mostly use combinations of the
control key with some other key. On the Mac, you use something called
the "Apple," or "Command" key, instead of the control key. Except for
when you don't -- there's just enough exceptions to the rule to keep
things lively.
Adding to the confusion, there's also a control key on the Mac
keyboard, which is in the same place as the control key on the
Windows keyboard.
...
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/02/windows_to_mac.html
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2007 23:27:01 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Jobs Calls for End to Music Copy Protection
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Jobs Calls for End to Music Copy Protection
By JOHN MARKOFF
February 7, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 6 - Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive,
jolted the record industry on Tuesday by calling on its largest
companies to allow online music sales unfettered by antipiracy
software.
The move is a gamble for Apple. Its iPod players and iTunes Store
have defined the online music market, and they have much at stake in
the current copy-protection system.
Under terms reached with the major record labels, online music stores
embed software code into the digital song files they sell to restrict
the ability to copy them. Because Apple uses its own system, the
songs it sells can be played only on the iPod. That limitation has
drawn increasing scrutiny from European governments, pressure that
Apple has recently begun to acknowledge.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/07/technology/07music.html?ex=1328504400&en=db8a9b1f487a8f53&ei=5090
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2007 23:29:12 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] iTunes and Windows Vista
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
iTunes and Windows Vista
iTunes 7.0.2 may work with Windows Vista on many typical PCs. Apple
recommends, however, that customers wait to upgrade Windows until
after the next release of iTunes which will be available in the next
few weeks. This document will be updated as more information becomes
available.
If you are upgrading to Windows Vista or have purchased a new
computer with Windows Vista pre-installed, here is some information
you may find helpful:
...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305042
------------------------------
Message: 7
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2007 23:35:21 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Breaking the Myth of Megapixels
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
STATE OF THE ART
Breaking the Myth of Megapixels
By DAVID POGUE
February 8, 2007
For an industry that's built on science, the technology world sure
has its share of myths. Thousands of people believe that forwarding a
certain e-mail message to 50 friends will bring great riches, that
the gigahertz rating of a computer is a good comparative speed score,
or that Bill Gates once said "640K of RAM ought to be enough for
anybody."
But one myth is so deeply ingrained, millions of people waste money
on it every year. I'm referring, of course, to the Megapixel Myth.
It goes like this: "The more megapixels a camera has, the better
the pictures."
It's a big fat lie. The camera companies and camera stores all know
it, but they continue to exploit our misunderstanding. Advertisements
declare a camera's megapixel rating as though it's a letter grade,
implying that a 7-megapixel model is necessarily better than a
5-megapixel model.
A megapixel is one million tiny colored dots in a photo. It seems
logical that more megapixels would mean a sharper photo. In truth,
though, it could just mean a terrible photo made of more dots. A
camera's lens, circuitry and sensor - not to mention your mastery of
lighting, composition and the camera's controls - are far more
important factors.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/08/technology/08pogue.html?ex=1328590800&en=ae10a0cfdacc3c4d&ei=5090
------------------------------
Message: 8
Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 03:38:43 -0500
From: Greg Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Bledsoe: True love means never resorting to these
tunes
To: Media News <medianews@twiar.org>
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Bledsoe: True love means never resorting to these tunes
By WAYNE BLEDSOE, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
February 11, 2007
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/entertainment_columnists/article/0,1406,KNS_360_5338434,00.html
OK, I admit I'm a little jaded. I've heard a lot of love songs, but the
songs that people consider romantic classics have always bothered me.
Valentine's Day is coming up, and I don't want someone to make a tragic
mistake by playing the wrong love songs on that special day of romance.
Here's a list of some songs that I think should never find their way
into a Valentine's Day playlist:
1. "Sometimes When We Touch," Dan Hill
This sounds like it was written by that guy who just can't recognize
that the girl of his dreams has gotten tired of his clinginess, but
doesn't have the heart to tell him he's dumped. "Sometimes when we
touch, the honesty's too much"? C'mon. She has another boyfriend. She's
changing her number. She'd move if she could. So quit following her.
PLEEEASE quit hanging around outside her house!
She doesn't need your love song. She needs a restraining order.
2. "I Will Always Love You," Whitney Houston
Now, I'm not throwing down on Dolly's version. It had dignity. It spoke
of moving on, but still feeling that deep affection for an ex-lover. But
listen to Whitney. That's not singing. That's hyperventilating on key.
The guy left because he got tired of bringing along an oxygen tank every
time they got it on.
3. "All Out of Love," Air Supply
Speaking of a lack of oxygen. Who gets in the mood listening to guys who
sound like girls? I will say this: If a couple can stay in the mood even
after the singer has hit that last long, excruciating note, it must be
true love.
4. "Wind Beneath My Wings," Bette Midler, Willie Nelson, anybody
Here's what this song says to me: "I'm great!!!! . and you helped."
5. "You're Having My Baby," Paul Anka
Want to have some fun? Send this to a philandering guy as an unlabeled
CD in an envelope with no return address. You can have weeks of light
entertainment for only the cost of postage. Despite Anka's paternal joy,
this song can be a "loverly, loverly way to say" "Uh-oh."
6. "You Light Up My Life," Debby Boone
I have to admit that after hearing Patti Smith perform this number
(sounding like she'd just sold her third toddler to the black market in
order to buy her abusive boyfriend a crack rock and he still dumped
her), I gained a sick appreciation for it. However, it still didn't wipe
out the awful memory of the year this song came out, when every kid who
thought he or she knew sign language sign-synched this song.
And I still don't think that wavy thing with the hand meant "light" in
sign language, either. It could have just as easily meant
"hoochie-coochie girl."
7. "Beautiful," James Blunt
I thought this was just some love song until I listened closer to the
lyrics. This is about a guy who sees this girl he thinks is hot, but
he's never going to meet her. Worse still, he was HIGH when he saw her.
You can't trust the observations of someone who's stoned! She could've
been bucktoothed, harelipped and older than grandma's ghost. He might
have a big night with this woman and wake up singing a totally different
song.
8. "Every Breath You Take," The Police
People have been crazy enough to use this in their weddings. This is in
no way a love song, unless you are a CIA operative smitten with the
subject of his spying operation. They were listening to this one when
they wrote the Patriot Act.
9. "My Heart Will Go On," Celine Dion
Another inter-pretation: "Uhhhhh, you're dead, but I'll get over it."
10. "The Greatest Love of All," Whitney Houston
Whitney again. This is a love song that contends that loving yourself is
the greatest love of all. I don't know. Maybe if you're alone on
Valentine's Day, it's worth a shot.
--
Greg Williams
K4HSM
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.twiar.org
http://www.etskywarn.net
------------------------------
Message: 9
Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 15:37:27 -0600
From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Wireless Industry Heads to Spain Meeting
To: medianews@twiar.org
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
Wireless Industry Heads to Spain Meeting
Feb 11, 2007 3:11 PM (ET)
By MATT MOORE
Associated Press
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20070211/D8N7NHD00.html
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) - The wireless industry meets in Barcelona this week
with a bevy of flashy new cell phones, faster networks and more
entertainment geared for the small screen taking center stage at the 3GSM
World Congress.
The four-day event, which starts Monday, is expected to draw more than
50,000 industry officials from major cell phone makers like Finland's Nokia
Corp. (NOK) and U.S.-based Motorola Inc. (MOT), as well as Samsung and LG
from South Korea.
The event is also expected to see the official debut by Microsoft Corp.
(MSFT) on Monday of its next step in mobile computing, Windows Mobile 6,
which has been talked about in the industry by its code name, "Crossbow."
The operating system for smart phones, the handheld gadgets that marry the
functionalities of personal digital assistants with full-featured cell
phones, is expected to sport a design like that of Microsoft's new Vista PC
operating system and connect more completely with PCs that are running the
new OS. Windows Mobile 6 is expected to improve e-mail accessibility and
speed and make for easier editing of Office documents, a frequent target of
criticism from previous Mobile Windows efforts.
Other companies plan to introduce new models of phones from devices that
are set to be on the market within weeks to the dream designs that are
still in the planning stage.
Looming over 3GSM like a cloud, albeit perhaps one with a silver lining,
will be Apple Inc. (AAPL)'s already announced iPhone.
On Friday, in Seoul, Samsung Electronics Co. showed off its Ultra Smart
F700, which is expected to take center stage at Samsung's presence in
Barcelona.
Mobile phone makers have been scrambling to match the iPhone, which was
unveiled last month. The device, which will be available starting in June,
marks the iPod and Macintosh computer maker's entry into the mobile phone
business.
The ultra-thin iPhone is controlled with a large touch screen, plays music,
surfs the Internet, and runs a version of the Mac OS X operating system,
among other functions.
Last month, Samsung rival LG Electronics Co. announced its own touch-screen
mobile phone, the KE850 Prada.
The LG phone, produced in partnership with the Italian fashion brand, will
go on sale in late February for $780 at mobile phone dealers and Prada
stores in Britain, France, Germany and Italy.
But phones are just one element of the event, said John Strand, of
Copenhagen, Denmark-based Strand Consulting.
"One could call it the world's largest trade related 'networking party'
with the sole purpose of stimulating the mobile development that has over
the past years changed billions of people's daily lives," he said.
Last year's event focused greatly on VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol,
the technology used by Skype and others to trade phone calls using not
wireless or land lines, but the Internet.
This year, though, the issue of bringing more content - music, movies and
television - to tiny screens is expected to be the biggest draw.
"The biggest Hype this year will probably be mobile-TV, IMS (instant
messaging services), mobile VoIP, as well as user generated content,"
Strand said.
Much of the content will come from familiar brands, such as The Cartoon
Network, as well as new initiatives to bring the wildly popular feel of
"Bollywood" films to the super-small screen.
News broadcaster CNN International said it plans to do its first global TV
broadcast from a mobile phone from the conference.
The "live via phone" piece will be broadcast by correspondent Jim Boulden
for the daily news show "Business International," the company said of the
90-second planned broadcast that airs Monday.
The conference is also a chance for the industry's major technology
suppliers - Nokia-Siemens, Sweden's LM Ericsson (ERIC), France's
Alcatel/Lucent, Canada's Nortel Networks Corp. (NT) and U.S. company
Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM), among others - to talk directly to their corporate
customers about what is upcoming and, more importantly, what can
implemented quickly.
Strand, however, said it would be more important to see what the newer,
less-established firms will offer up, at least in terms of the wireless
industry's infrastructure needs.
"The mobile industry is developing in the same way as the pharmaceutical
industry, which in one side is consolidating into a few large players, and
it is not these big old players who are delivering the innovation anymore,"
he said. "Innovation is something you purchase from smaller companies. We
believe that the exiting news this year will come from the smaller and
medium sized players, who only have their unique products to profile
themselves on, against the big boy's PR machines."
---
On the Net:
3GSM World Congress: http://3gsmworldcongress.com
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
------------------------------
Message: 10
Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 14:44:11 -0600
From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Students Charged in Online Snow-Day Hoax
To: medianews@twiar.org
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
Students Charged in Online Snow-Day Hoax
Associated Press
Feb 10, 2007 6:04 PM (ET)
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20070210/D8N74VEO0.html
TRENTON, Ohio (AP) - Two teenage girls posted a fake announcement on their
school district's Web site that said school was closed for the day due to
winter weather, police said.
The notice, posted Monday, confused many parents - snow was not in the
forecast - and persuaded some students to stay home.
Edgewood City Schools Superintendent Tom York said he discovered the
posting when he logged on to write his own announcement that school would
be delayed for an hour because of an extreme cold snap.
"I didn't make that call, and I'm the guy who does, so I knew something was
up," York said.
The two Edgewood High School students, whose names were not released, were
charged in juvenile court on Friday and face expulsion. One of the girls,
16, was charged with delinquency by unauthorized use of a computer and by
reason of records tampering. The other, 17, was charged with delinquency by
reason of complicity, Sheriff's Sgt. Monte Mayer said.
The company that runs the Web site, RCH Networks Inc., said the system was
not hacked into because no security breach was detected. Administrators say
the girls must have somehow gotten the password.
RCH helped the district track down the girls by supplying the
identification numbers from computers that accessed the system, which
authorities could then track to the girls' homes.
Trenton is about 25 miles north of Cincinnati.
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
------------------------------
Message: 11
Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 20:36:02 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Review: Adium 1.0
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Review: Adium 1.0
by Tanner Godarzi
Feb 09, 2007
Adium has finally reached version 1.0 and has come a long way. Can
Adium stack up against Apple's iChat?
Adium is an awesome alternative to iChat, picking up on the features
it lacks. One of Adium's greatest strengths is its support for more
than 4 chat networks (16 to be precise) and its focus on a
customizable interface.
...
http://www.applematters.com/index.php/section/comments/reviw-adium-10/
------------------------------
Message: 12
Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 20:41:52 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Hands On: Running Vista Home on a Mac
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Hands On: Running Vista Home on a Mac
In spite of what its license says, you can run Vista Home via
virtualization apps
By Christopher Breen
February 07, 2007
If you care about running Windows on a Mac, you've undoubtedly heard
that the end user license agreement (EULA) for Windows Vista Home
Basic and Home Premium forbids you to use these versions of
Microsoft's latest operating system release with virtualization
software-software that allows you to run operating systems other than
the Mac OS in a windowed environment within the Mac OS. Such
virtualization software includes the popular Parallels Desktop for
Mac. What the reports on this matter don't reveal is whether this is
simply a legal restriction or also a technical one.
I hoped to have the answer. And then, last night, it came to me in
a dream.
...
http://www.macworld.com/2007/02/firstlooks/vistamac/
------------------------------
Message: 13
Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 21:10:19 -0500
From: Greg Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Fatal drug mix killed US R&B star
To: Media News <medianews@twiar.org>
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6351765.stm
Fatal drug mix killed US R&B star
Levert's most recent album was 2005's Voices
Grammy-nominated R&B star Gerald Levert was killed by an accidental
mixture of over-the-counter and prescription drugs according to a US
coroner.
The singer, who died last November, had pain killers, anxiety medication
and allergy drugs in his bloodstream, said Cleveland coroner Kevin
Chartrand.
The official cause of death was acute intoxication, and the death was
ruled to be accidental, he said.
Levert found fame in R&B trio LeVert, and had a UK top 10 hit with Casanova.
He also recorded as a solo artist, and worked with soul legends such as
Anita Baker, Barry White and Patti LaBelle.
Pop royalty
The soul crooner, son of O'Jays vocalist Eddie Levert, was born in
Philadelphia, and often accompanied his father on tour.
He set up his first band in 1986 with brother Sean and childhood friend
Marc Gordon, naming it LeVert.
The trio were particularly successful in the US, scoring two gold albums
in 1987 and 1988 before Levert left to pursue a solo career.
In 1992, he had an unexpected number one R&B hit, Baby Hold On To Me,
with his father, which led to an entire album of duets, Father And Son,
in 1995.
Levert also received a Grammy nomination for writing Barry White's
comeback single, Practice What You Preach, in 1994.
Andy Gibson, a family spokesman, said Levert was taking pain medication
because of a lingering shoulder problem and surgery in 2005 to repair a
severed Achilles tendon.
The autopsy also revealed that Levert had pneumonia.
--
Greg Williams
K4HSM
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.twiar.org
http://www.etskywarn.net
------------------------------
Message: 14
Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 21:12:22 -0500
From: Greg Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] 'Old' music's digital comeback
To: Media News <medianews@twiar.org>
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/6346507.stm
'Old' music's digital comeback
Spencer Kelly
With music downloads outselling CD singles by four to one in the UK and
the music charts revamped to include download sales, the digital
revolution is having a big impact on the music industry.
Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars was one of the biggest selling singles of
2006. On sales of CDs and downloads it went as high as number six in the
UK charts.
As is standard practice, a few weeks later the record company deleted
the CD and removed it from the shops.
With no physical format available to buy, the song no longer qualified
for a chart position and disappeared from the top 40.
But with music download sites now the UK's favourite place to buy
singles, each with massive back catalogues of songs, it was decided that
just listing the singles currently on release may not reflect the way
people were actually buying songs.
So from 1 January 2007, every song that is available to download is now
allowed to chart.
Long-tail
"In the days of the physical single you were basically restricted to
what record companies released in a particular week, and what physical
retailers were able to stock," explained Steve Redford of the Official
UK Charts Company.
"And even the biggest store wasn't going to stock more than about 100
singles at any one time."
"In this new world you've literally got a choice of 300 million tracks
every week. This changes the whole economics of the record business,
because keeping things in stock isn't really that expensive in the
digital world."
It is called the long-tail, the gradual sales of music, books and DVDs
that are permanently available long after their release date.
Some analysts think this is going to make the most money in the internet
age. Instead of trying to selling a lot of a little, you sell a little
of a lot.
So how did all this affect the new look chart? Well, in the first week,
long after the CD was deleted, Snow Patrol re-entered the charts at
number nine on downloads alone - people had been downloading it in
enough numbers all along.
Unsigned and in the charts
The following week, another first - the band Koopa became the first band
to enter the top 40 without ever having a record deal, or a record in
the shops.
Doing their own online marketing, the band bypassed the need to have a
big record company behind them.
So, definitely one in the eye for the industry, but as Joe Murphy from
the band points out - without any help, it was tough going.
"We built our own website. Then we started advertising that on Google,
places like that. From there it was just getting on MySpace and our
website, and making sure you're keeping people up to date with regular
newsletters, messages and blogs on MySpace."
"From MySpace people were taking our banners and things like that, and
putting them on their MySpace pages and we thought we could take that
further and have things on MySpace and our website that people can
download or send to their friends, just to invite them to check out the
band."
It is not the first time an artist has used the power of the web, and
social networking sites like MySpace, to create the hype to launch their
career - Lily Allen famously did just that last year.
But Koopa were the first successful band who did not even wait to be
signed up by a record company.
So is this the nirvana every band has been searching for? A world where
you can have a hit without having to impress the suits at the big music
labels? The suits do not think so.
"To make a splash in the consumer mind these days, more often than not,
you need the power of a big company behind you," says Mr Redford.
"Even in the digital world there's a requirement for someone to do that
job."
"It may well be the case that some bands decide, effectively, to create
their own record company, but nobody should be in any doubt that there's
a lot of work attached to that. They can't simply decide that they're
going to have a hit, they're going to have to work it just like a record
company would do."
"In other words, the band becomes the record company."
In fact, the big music companies may be tempted to just sit back and let
the bands do the work.
Fan base
"I've heard rumours of A&R departments that will only go to a band's gig
once they've got a thousand friends on MySpace because they want that
momentum to exist already, they don't want to have to create it
themselves," said Paul Stokes, news editor of NME.
"So it's almost like the bands have to do the work and then A&Rs can
come along and cherry pick the ones they want."
The UK is ahead of the curve on this one. Worldwide, downloads only
account for 10% of music sales, but it is a good indicator of how the
industry in each country will eventually change.
And there are more changes to come, thinks Steve Redford.
"Go back a couple of years ago and there was a real chance that the
singles chart had gone stale. It was predictable. Record companies
became very good at marketing things into the charts. In the new digital
world all bets are off."
"There's growing speculation that the Beatles catalogue is going to be
made available online for the first time in the next few weeks.
"The significance of this new rule change in the charts is it's entirely
possible that you could end up with the top 10 in the singles chart
entirely dominated by Beatles tracks."
--
Greg Williams
K4HSM
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.twiar.org
http://www.etskywarn.net
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End of Medianews Digest, Vol 180, Issue 1
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