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We7 today officially launched its ads-supported music service, offering UK music lovers the chance to listen to whatever music they choose for free, and offering a chance to buy their favourite music.

The service’s extensive catalogue includes music from a three million strong catalogue of artists including Kings of Leon, Pink, Nickelback, and Estelle.

We7 is adding up to 30,000 tracks a day to its collection of over 3 million licensed tracks, including many new releases as they become available.
 
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The much-publicised cosy deal between the BPI, Ofcom and the ISPs has raised howls from civil rights campaigners - who quite rightly protest that music consumers have had no voice in these discussions.

The Open Rights Group (ORG) has submitted its response to the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform’s consultation into legislative options to tackle illicit peer to peer file-sharing, warning of muddy thinking throughout the proposals made so far.

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Legitimate music consumers are once again at the receiving end of the bad half of the deal on news that giant US retailer, Wal-Mart, plans to close its DRM-server on October 9, meaning previous purchasers of music through its previous music service will lose their collections.

This move follows similar steps by Microsoft and Yahoo this year. All three companies elected to end support for the DRM keys required to transfer music between computers, which need to be authorised in order to play the tracks. Lack of a DRM server means this authorisation doesn’t take place, effectively depriving music buyers of access to their collections.

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Apple’s insistence that bands must make all their albums available on a trac-by-track basis continues to splinter support within the music industry, with legendary rock band, AC/DC, explaining their long-standing boycott of the service is all about the album format.

AC/DC frontman Angus Young, whose band refuse to make their songs available on iTunes, said the move is simply because they don’t want fans simply downloading a few tracks from albums.

“We don’t make singles, we make albums,” he told the Telegraph. Read the rest of this entry »

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UK musician Billy Bragg is furious at attempts by major labels and the music industry groups they dominate to prevent file-sharing, saying they don’t understand musicians, don’t understand fans, and don’t get the new age.

On suing file-sharers, he was incensed, “You know who the pirates are?” he thundered during the closing moments of EconMusic yesterday. “The pirates are our fans, when you sue our fans, you drive our fans away,” he yelled, arguing that the industry must change if it has any chance of survival.

What really annoys Bragg is that music labels demand the lion’s share of income from new start-ups and music services, “That’s my income stream you’re pissing with,” he exclaimed, urging labels to pay a higher percentage to artists in the digital age.
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Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger today called on ISPs to ban people who illegally download content.

Disney owns US network ABC and produces a range of hit shows including Desperate Housewives and Lost. Iger was speaking in London.

Iger was referring to the recently-announced deal under which six of the UK’s biggest ISPs will begin sending warning letters to customers that copyright bodies claim have downloaded content.
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Strangely unsure about this - can’t help but see funding for actual instruments being cut at the same time as a one-way dogma on file-sharing gets injected into children, but here’s the deal (from the Telegraph).

“For the first time, pupils will learn about intellectual property rights in the music industry - and how it relates to downloads.

Music classes this term will also cover the use of technology in music as part of new-style syllabuses introduced in all secondary schools
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Anti-piracy initiatives continue to unfurl on a global basis, as industry lobbyists encourage government and local trade bodies to take action.

The three strikes rule seems a basic tenet of the new online world order, and while it’s a flexible arrangement, it seems music industry heavies are seeing some success in pushing for that.
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The recent music industry deal with ISP’s could put power over music retail into the hands of the networks, undermining the good work done by the likes of iTunes, Napster and eMusic, eMusic CEO David Pakman warns.

As part of the deal between labels and ISPs to combat file-sharing in the UK, the music industry has made a commitment to license catalogue to ISPs in order that the latter are enabled to launch their own download services for customers.

And with the debate on net neutrality still actively ongoing, Pakman is concerned ISPs may eventually throttle bandwidth in order to favour their own services over those that pioneered legitimate download sales.
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The BPI is the record label industry group, its chief executive, Geoff Taylor, today offered his notion of what online music would look like in an “ideal” world through a blog item in the Daily Telegraph.

Taylor’s comments were also distributed as a press release by the BPI this morning, and have been reproduced here.

“Like most music fans of my age, I spent my teens and early twenties building a massive music collection, because the ownership of records, and later CDs, was important to me. I wanted to enjoy my music whenever I felt like it.
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