A while ago, we heard that Apple had planned to cut the cost of legal music downloads through its iTunes store. Well, so much for that, as Apple has cancelled those plans already.
Music downloads bought by UK music fans were set to have their prices slashed to even up the playing fields with what people pay for iTunes music around Europe. The British public was understandably very excited by this news. However, Apple has now come out and said that the music downloads will stay at 79p per file.
Steve Jobs was very vocal about how important it was to level out the cost of legal music downloads across Europe. The trouble is that the value of the euro is rising against the trusty British pound and so there isn’t all that much difference in the cost of a tune from an iTunes Euro store and the UK store anymore.
It’s no longer necessary to cut the cost of the UK’s legal music downloads. It’s a shame for UK music fans, but based on the reasons why the change was to occur in the first place, it’s understandable that the plans have been scrapped.
BitTorrent service Mininova has rolled out a new feature that will make downloading files a little easier. The features allows people to download files to a home computer from any remote computer. Sounds cool, right? You can do this by using Mininova’s new bookmarking system.
You subscribe to an RSS feed on your local computer and it will download as long as you have it running. RSS feeds can also be shared with friends and family.
If all this sounds a bit confusing, you can check out the Mininova blog for a detailed walkthrough of how to use the new function.
We’re big fans of Mininova. There are links to heaps of free music downloads through the service and the library of links is pretty comprehensive. It’s good to see Mininova not sitting on its hands and actually adding to its service. We welcome change.
7digital.com, an online digital music store, has said that sales of DRM-free music from major record labels such as EMI and Warner have surged by about 300% since they were first introduced.
7digital.com now plays second fiddle in the UK only to Apple’s iTunes store. The store for legal music downloads saw sales for the year ending in June skyrocket 300%. DRM-free MP3s are the future of music and have proved infinitely more popular than restricted WMA files.
Many Internet users aren’t keen on Apple’s AAC files and so are turning to stores such as 7digital.com for their music downloads.
About 80% of the legal music downloads available in the 7digital.com store are DRM-free. MP3 downloads are perhaps the future of the music industry and, let’s face it, restricted music files are nothing but a pain in the ass.
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has come under fire after the announcement that it is teaming up with Virgin Media to send warning letters to people who use filesharing services, such as Ares.
There was a BBC article about the issue that suggested that Virgin Media is more concerned about the music industry than it is about its customers. The article went on to say that such a move only really highlights the fact that Virgin is monitoring its customers’ Internet usage.
A rep from BPI responded to the BBC article by saying that action must be taken against illegal music downloading in order for licensed music services to make any money.
It’s a typical case of the filesharing community versus the music industry. The only difference here is that the filesharing community is represented by someone in a powerful position, namely a BBC author.
We had no idea that Fergal “Teenage Kicks” Sharkey had a blog, but he does, over at the Guardian website. Fantastic. In his latest post, Sharkey says that a recent survey of 14-to-24-year-olds in the UK revealed that 63% use filesharing services to download music.
Those surveyed said that they love music and that they do still like CDs. More than 80% who use filesharing services said they would be interested in legal filesharing services.
Even if such a filesharing service were created, more than half of those surveyed said they would still buy CDs. Fergal Sharkey sees the solution to all of this in subscription-based filesharing models. He may have a point here.
Fergal Sharkey seems to be one of a select group of musicians in tune with the way the music industry is heading. It’s refreshing to read a balanced and insightful opinion on filesharing and music downloads from someone who has a powerful voice.
Good job, Fergal.
Comcast’s recent attempts at reconciliation with the filesharing crowd have been hindered somewhat this week after three fresh lawsuits were filed against the company. This time, the lawsuits allege that Comcast deliberately misled customers by advertising completely unrestricted access to all of the Internet.
This is the latest in a series of complaints against Comcast, which has been accused of blocking traffic to BitTorrent services. It was confirmed that Comcast had been restricting BitTorrent traffic, but then after continually denying the allegations, Comcast came out and announced that it was partnering up with BitTorrent to ensure that traffic to BitTorrent was not hampered.
The latest complaints are attacking Comcast for not outlining that it would meddle with any traffic and not informing customers of its actions. The customers who have filed the complaints basically think that they paid for a service that wasn’t delivered.
We’ll keep you updated with case as we hear more about it.
Interesting news from Great Britain this week. To our knowledge, this is the first initiative of its kind. Filesharing is a common way of getting free music downloads in Great Britain, but this new plan may deter a few people. Although legal action won’t be taken in this particular case, subscribers to Virgin Media’s broadband service might soon have a letter turn up in their mailbox warning them of the dangers of filesharing and illegal music downloads.
The move comes after Virgin Media joins forces with the British Phonographic Institute (BPI). Although personal information will not be shared, the BPI and Virgin Media will send letters to the addresses of people who have been using filesharing websites to download copyrighted material.
No further action will be taken because the BPI thinks that a lot of the people may have had their accounts used for filesharing without their knowledge. We’re dubious about this line of thought, but it is interesting to see an ISP taking action in this way.
We’d all but forgotten about the free music downloads you can get from Spiral Frog. Despite having the coolest name of any website offering free music downloads, we never really gave Spiral Frog much of a chance. Well, the website is back in the news this week after announcing that Spiral Frog has teamed up with EMI to offer yet more free music downloads.
This comes at the same time as QTrax announced that it is joining forces with EMI. Spiral Frog is another ad-supported website for free music downloads. With EMI now in the mix, the service becomes a lot stronger and will likely garner a lot more attention from music fans.
The only snag is that the free music downloads are only available to people living in Northern America, which rules out a large proportion of the world.
Spiral Frog has only been around for six months, but already it lays claim to being the third-biggest website for legal free music downloads.
UK retailer Tesco recently launched a new service for music downloads. Starting next month, Tesco Digital will give users access to music downloads for iPods and other MP3 players with a selection of more than 3.3 millions tracks available for download.
Less importantly, there will also be about 100 flash games available for free download.
The service will be available from the Tesco Extra store in Portman Road, Wokingham. We’re sure this isn’t the only store the service will be available from, but we found this news on a local website.
Although Tesco is only beginning with legal music downloads, it’s expected that in the future, there will be movies and TV shows available for legal download. With the sort of sway that Tesco has over UK consumers, you can expect that this will be a big thing. Tesco, however, has never been a champion in terms of selling music to consumers. Retailers such as Asda have always done a much better job at bringing cheap music to the general public.
Maybe I’m cynical, but it always seems that those guys in the sharp suits and flashy cars that are telling me that home business opportunities like Wealth Masters International have an ulterior motive. They tell me they’re giving me good accurate information about the company, but it all sounds like salesmanship at it’s glorious best.
The nature of the Internet means that everyone and his monkey can start to tell us all manner of truths, half-truths and outright lies about Wealth Masters International. While I’m sure it’s a good company with a lot going for it, I just find it difficult to trust the trumped up opinion of a skinny guy who likes to show off his car and good fortune . There are good, unbiased reviews and reports on Wealth Masters International around the Internet it would be to one’s advantage to look for them.
The key things to look out for when assessing Wealth Masters International: I would most likely trust the ones that don’t appear to be selling the home businesses they are reviewing or have any affiliate incentive or special interest in them.
