Why Oink Was So Great
Musician, DJ, and writer Jace Clayton (aka “DJ /rupture”) posts the most insightful commentary to date on the demise of bit torrent file-sharing hub, Oink: Oink was anal, Oink was comprehensive. The...
View ArticleMajor Label Execs Are Willfully Clueless
Universal Music Group’s CEO Doug Morris talks to Wired and admits he doesn’t know anything (or care) about technology. Morris insists there wasn’t a thing he or anyone else could have done differently....
View ArticleInsound Bought by Warner
ADA (the Alternative Distribution Alliance), which distributes lots of indie labels (such as Merge, Sub Pop, Saddle Creek…) and is owned by the Warner Music Group, has acquired Insound.com: While it...
View ArticleIan Rogers Talks to the Music Biz
Ian Rogers, who helped found Nullsoft, creators of Winamp, and moved on to Grand Royal, where he shepherded the Beastie Boys onto the internet, is now General Manager of Yahoo Music. He was invited to...
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Post Admits It Fucked Up RIAA Story
The Washington Post admits it missed the fundamental premise of the widely reported copyright infringement lawsuit, Atlantic vs. Howell. Read more at Glorious Noise...
View ArticleAttempted Distribution?
Last week, we talked about how the Washington Post fucked up its RIAA story about a case where a dude ripped his CD into his Shared Folder for Kazaa. The RIAA says that just making the files available...
View ArticleOregon Challenges RIAA Tactics
The Oregon state Attorney General’s office has submitted a brief questioning the data mining tactics and subpoena practices employed by the RIAA. The gist is that the AG is asking how the RIAA...
View ArticleSimon Napier-Bell on the music industry
The former manager of the Yardbirds and Wham, Simon Napier-Bell, writes 5,000 words about the music industry for Observer Music Monthly: In 1966 I came into a business that was alive with excitement...
View ArticleUMG Says Throwing Away Promo CDs is Illegal
They say everybody’s a critic nowadays, so I’m guessing we all get our fair share of crummy promo CDs from desperate labels. Well, you better not dump them just yet, because it might be illegal to get...
View ArticleWinning the War Against the RIAA
Business Week looks into a single mom’s private war with the recording industry: Does She Look Like a Music Pirate? After being sued by the music industry for stealing songs and winning the case’s...
View ArticleRIAA Loses "Making Available" Case
So remember that court case we talked about a couple months ago, the one where the RIAA was saying that just making the files available equals infringement even if nobody downloaded them from you?...
View ArticleRIAA Loses Another Filesharing Trial
Well, the RIAA didn’t technically lose the trial, but a federal judge declared a mistrial and threw out the verdict against a Kazaa user who had been ordered to pay the recording industry $222,000 for...
View ArticleRIAA Suing Fans: Five Years Later
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an in-depth report on the first five years of the RIAA’s lawsuits against file sharers: On September 8, 2003, the recording industry sued 261 American music fans...
View ArticleDid Obama Violate Copyright?
By now, you’ve all heard that President Obama gave the Queen of England an iPod. Turns out there were 40 songs pre-loaded on it. Showtunes to accompany a coffee table book he also gave her. When I...
View ArticleHilary Rosen, 10 Years after Napster
Remember Hilary Rosen? She was the CEO of the RIAA back when Napster help peer-to-peer filesharing go mainstream. Rosen was the public face of the most hated organization on the planet, at least as far...
View ArticleYou think CDs are overpriced?
How would you like to be charged $1.92 million for 24 songs? That’s a lot of money. Uggh. More. Via Techdirt. The songs: 1. Bryan Adams “Somebody” 2. Aerosmith “Cryin'” 3. Sheryl Crow “Run Baby Run” 4....
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“Uptown Funk” is certified Diamond with 11 million units
You might have seen the news that “Uptown Funk” has been certified Diamond by the RIAA, which means that it achieved 10 million sales. Billboard says that “Uptown Funk” has sold over 12,422,016 in...
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Recorded music revenue settling back into pre-90s levels
It certainly seems like the recorded music industry has been in decline. And compared to the peak in 1999 it has been. But if you take a longer view of history you can see that the 1990s were a weird...
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The End of Ownership: Material Gives Way to the Ephemeral
Here we are living through social distancing. Living through a period when we interact with people, primarily, unless those people are part of a small group we are confident of, via Zoom or Teams or...
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Philosophy and The Recording Academy
The Recording Academy—which, if you think about it, is a rather unusual name for the organization in that Merriam-Webster has it that academy, when used in a capitalized manner as it is here, is “(a)...
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