meta-roj

just a quick tip on jetgroove.com – launched with some fanfare a while ago, it now seems that the stink of scam has come to jetgroove. i haven’t had a chance to verify any of the ground-level situation, but apparently, material is showing up on jetgroove quite to the surprise of some of the creators.

it’s a globe-spanning operation (registration in the united kingdom, operations in russia, servers in canada, music from around the world), so pretty much anyone with material available in digital format is at risk.

so, before you go too much further into your musical career, it may be worth checking out jetgroove and see if your material is hiding in there somewhere. unfortunately, it looks like it’s an opt-out sorta situation:

October 10th, London – JetGroove issues official statement regarding it’s website selling mp3 tracks.

JetGroove officially states that if any record label or any artist is not interested to have one’s tracks on www.jetgroove.com, one should inform JetGroove immediately and all the information JetGroove has about one’s tracks will be taken off the website ASAP.

not so much a case of buyer beware, but creator beware.

it’s a subject i’ve hashed here on the meta-roj blog pretty much since inception, and today i ran into a little blurb about it…

Legal downloading is no threat to CD sales says report [revolution magazine, september 16, 2004]

Contrary to opinion that the increasing popularity of music downloading will eventually make CD album and single sales obsolete, people still want to own hard-copy music and 92% of people said that CDs are their preferred music format.

to follow up a previous quickie on the subject, it seems that, still… nobody’s taken up the bet against the cd – at least through 2015.

two brief bits of business that converge on bjork…

the first, from an interview

Waving a pirate flag [bjork.com]

So Björk is not superstitious then?
“You know, its ironic that just at the point the lawyers and the businessmen had calculated how to control music, the internet comes along and fucks everything up.” Björk gives the finger again, this time waving it into the air. “God bless the internet,” she adds.

while, nearly simultaneously entering my realm of attention, this observation on the bjork concert camera policy:

Editorial: On Camera Policies in Privately Owned Public Spaces [thomashawk.com]

These are the Bad Guys

…

Bjork (Artist): Observe that there usually is a NO camera policy at these concerts.

deep down, i believe bjork is a pirate spirit.

sunncomm’s been a post-child for drm discussions here at the meta-roj blog since they were defeated by a shift key. now, we learn that the latest creation from sunncomm claims to avoid the shift-key problem, and even better, sunncomm’s reaching out to apple (the company that can’t get into the music business according to a 1991 agreement with apple corps, ltd.).

SunnComm announces CD protection software update [the business journal, phoenix, july 30, 2004]

According to an announcement from SunnComm, protection components embedded on the optical medium will now make it impossible for the user to play the disc without installing the MediaMax software.

i just have to observe that “protection components embedded in the optical medium” pretty much guarantee that it’s not a cd anymore – at least not according to the rainbow of books that define what a cd is.

i think the lesson here is that the itunes userbase has become problematic enough to force a shift in the drm technology. “Most of those questions are related to getting the songs onto an iPod.” – that was enough to cause change at sunncomm. the new wrapper is just going to annoy a different chunk of the audience, and they may not be as “active” as ipod users, so annoying them may not be as costly – except to the artist.

Macrovision and SunnComm court Apple for a seachange in CDs [the register, july 19, 2004]

In the end what is required is a piece of software that will support handoff from the CD to any of Microsoft, Apple’s or Sony’s DRM but not to a system with no DRM.

i would disagree. what’s needed is a new business model… one that respects the relationship between artist and audience, rather than trying to impose on it.

a little birdie told me that the keynote speaker at jupiter plugin thinks the cd will be around for a while. something like “it is far too early to write off the cd.”

i can’t find any good sources to link, so we’ll just have to take the birdie’s word for it for now.

normally, i’d expect to disagree with pretty much everything coming from the coo of a major label, but because i’m an honorable kinda guy, i’ll give credit where it’s due… charles goldstuck seems to be the one to come out and say it.

while we’re on the business of music, a couple weeks ago, reuters reported that online music sales topped 2.6 million songs in the last week of june.

Label executives and digital service operators say that, barring significant new developments in pricing, packaging or content portability, digital sales growth will be slow and steady for the foreseeable future.

content portability, eh? hmmm….

But Sean Ryan, VP of music services at RealNetworks, says momentum for a la carte services will be tempered by such factors as a lack of interoperability among competing digital music services and devices, a dearth of simple ways to move digital music into living rooms and cars and the slow process of expanding major-label content to include live music and unreleased material.

drm crops up between the lines, and as a barrier. imagine that.

doing something for the local music scene, if a bit far from me (london), bob stuart has assembled underexposed, with hundreds of photos of working bands.

this is the other end of the spectrum.

Unfinished Copy of U2’s New CD Disappears [ap via abc news]

An unfinished copy of U2’s upcoming CD disappeared from a photo shoot the Irish rock band was attending in the south of France, police said Thursday.

The CD, not scheduled for release until this Fall, vanished Tuesday while the band was in a studio outside the Riviera city of Nice having pictures taken for the album cover.

it’ll be interesting to see how this is handled.

according to billboard…. tour grosses for the first half of the year:

David Bowie $45.4 million
Bette Midler $40 million
Simon & Garfunkel $36 million
Shania Twain $34 million
Prince $26 million
Rod Stewart $25 million
Metallica $22 million
Beyonce/Alicia Keys/Missy Elliott $19 million
Britney Spears $19 million
George Strait $16 million

that makes the top-10 tours worth $242.4 million.

in stark contrast to the meta-roj music store which is still entirely vapor (although investors are welcome), they might be giants have a real music store. real, as in, up and running and taking your money and producing bits.

what’s interesting is that tmbg seems to have realized the value of distribution on the net without drm. of course, the industry will tell you that they’ll be out of business in weeks as everything they put up gets scooped up into pirate networks and sucks all the listeners away from their own (costly) option.

i’ll tell you that loyal tmbg fans will be back for more.

and i’ll also tell you that the revenue-split on the 99-cent tracks and $9.99 albums is much better in this store than it is on, for example, itunes. at least as far as the musicians are concerned.