NewsDid You Hear that MP3 Players May Damage Your Eardrums?
Posted 10/13/08 at 12:13:39 PM by Paul Lilly
When you find a groovy tune, it's a tough task to turn the dial down below ear shattering levels, and if that statement needed any quantifiable proof, it now has it. According to a study for the European Union, personal music players are threatening permanent hearing loss for as many as 10 million Europeans.
A team of nine experts on the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks conducted the study and warned that most young people aren't aware of the damage until years after it's already done.
"Regularly listening to personal music players at high-volume settings when young often has no immediate effect on hearing but is likely to result in hearing loss later in life," the report said.
Listening to music for just five hours a week at high-volume settings can expose your ears to more noise than permitted in the loudest factory or workplace, and if you have a particularly good set of headphones, cranking up the volume to its highest setting can punish your hears as much as the sound of an airplane taking off.
The new study is one of just several to warn of long-term hearing loss among today's youth, but the older generation might be just as susceptible. Some estimates put the total number of EU residents listening to portable music players at anywhere from 50 million to 100 million out of a total population of 500 million.
If you can't avoid the temptation to avoid cranking up the volume, you might consider investing in crappier music.
NewsFirst Royalty Rates Set for Digital Music, iTunes Won't Shut Down
Posted 10/03/08 at 05:55:39 PM by Andy Salisbury
A collective sigh of relief was let out Thursday, as a panel of federal judges who determine royalty rates for recordings ruled to renew the current royalty rate until 2012. The ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board, a panel of three judges appointed by the Librarian of Congress, applied directly to mechanical royalties (which as we mentioned before, are the fees paid directly to songwriters and publishers of music, not the performers).
The currently royalty rate of 9.1 cents was lobbied to receive a 66 percent increase by music publishers, concerned about losing income as music sales decline. Labels and retailers pushed to judges to adopt a new model that would determine royalty payments as a percentage of wholesale revenue, however neither of these suggestions made the ruling.
One document in the hearing, submitted by an Apple executive, had threatened that a significant inflation in royalty rates could potentially force them to shut down the massively popular iTunes music store, which has sold over 5 billion songs to date. While Apple sees substantial sales, they operate with very thin margins.
There are still some in the music industry that have claimed that new rulings such as these might not be enough to satisfy the insatiable rise of illegal file sharing. “Whether these developments will be sufficient to return the music industry to health is not clear,” said Jonathan Feinstien, a music lawyer at the Krasilovsky & Gross firm in New York.
NewsEco Media Revolution MP3 Player Will Wear You Out
Posted 09/25/08 at 09:56:33 AM by Paul Lilly
If you've ever owned a Jack-in-the-Box, then you're already trained on how to use Trevor Baylis' Eco Media Player Revolution. But rather than being traumatized by some creepy crown, you'll instead be rewarded with about 45 minutes of music in return for one minute of cranking on the integrated handle.
This second generation media player comes ready to handle just about any media format you can toss at it, including MP3, AAC, WMA, WAV, and OGG, along with AVI, MP4, and WMV video formats. The company says the 4GB of internal flash memory will store up to 2,000 songs, and an SD card slot gives users the ability to double up the storage ante.
Getting back the hand-crank, not only does it power the Revolution, but it can give your cell phone a quick boost too. A minute of cranking earns you about 5 minutes of talk time, provided one of the five included adapters fits your brand of phone.
What are your thoughts on this thing? Hit the jump and let us know.
NewsSome Progress Made in Internet Radio Royalty Dispute, Though it's Not Enough
Posted 09/24/08 at 06:15:37 PM by Andy Salisbury
The online music industry has always been a touchy one, but today the world came a step closer to ending online royalty disputes. An agreement that’s being called a “breakthrough that will facilitate new ways to offer music to consumers online,” songwriters, music publishers, record labels and digital music websites have concluded a seven year dispute over mechanical royalties and limited music downloads.
Mechanical royalties are the fees paid to songwriters, composers and publishers of music, not the person that only preformed it or the record company that produced the recording. Limited music downloads are downloads with restrictions attached, such as the model used by Napster To Go. iTunes, however isn’t considered limited use because you can listen to your songs as often as you want, without a monthly fee.
As landmark as this settlement is, it still leaves a big hole on the controversial topic of Internet radio. Sites such as Pandora and Live365 remain in a high-stakes standoff with SoundExchange, the company in charge of collecting the fees for artists and record companies. The reason that sites such as these were left out from the normal Internet radio agreement is because they allow users to select the music that they want to listen to, as opposed to simply listening to a pre-determined stream of songs.
NewsBest Buy Snaps Up Napster for a Cool $121 Million
Posted 09/15/08 at 12:02:57 PM by Paul Lilly
And so the Napster saga continues (or, depending on your perspective, it comes to an end). The former peer-to-peer pioneer gone legit music service managed to avoid being gobbled up by an ice cream store owner, but the temptation to sell ultimately proved too strong for investors eager to cash in rather than continue to face stiff competition.
According to The Wall Street Journal, electronics retailer Best Buy has agreed to buy Napster for $121 million, which includes $67 million of cash and short-term investments on Napster's books. The acquisition values the digital music service at $2.65 per share, or almost double the closing price on Friday, which sat at $1.36.
"Best Buy intends to use Napster's capabilities and digital subscriber base to reach new customers with an enhanced experience for exploring and selecting music and otehr digital entertainment products over an increasing array of devices," said Best Buy president and COO Brian Dunn.
Napster's chief executive Chris Gorog is expected to remain in his post, along with the company's other senior executives. Best Buy also said it currently has no plans to relocate the music service's Los Angeles headquarters.
Was this a good move for Best Buy? Hit the jump and let us know your thoughts.
NewsNapster Still Alive But Struggling Against Stiff Competition
Posted 09/08/08 at 10:36:35 AM by Paul Lilly
At a glance, the previously struggling Napster appears to have bounced back and is now doing well. As outlined in the company's fiscal first quarter financial report, the music service can boast a positive cash flow for the fifth straight quarter with revenue holding steady at about $30 million. According to Napster's brass, the company is making the right move and is in a good position moving forward. But convincing investors of that is another story altogether.
Despite the positive quarterly financial reports, Napster's stock hit an all-time low in mid-July and today is trading at less than half of what it went for one year ago. Subscribers are down 7 percent from last quarter, and a group of impatient investors have initiated a proxy battle to win seats on the board.
"It's kind of damned if you and damned if you don't," Napster chairman and CEO Chris Gorog laments. "The bottom line is, five years ago we were number 2 or 3 in the this industry, and five years later we're still number 2 or 3 in this industry."
Hit the jump to learn why Napster remains stagnant.
NewsRIAA Wins P2P Case Because Defendant Used a File Shredder 
Posted 08/30/08 at 06:23:25 PM by Justin Kerr
In a shocking turn of events in the Atlantic v. Howell case, the RIAA has scored a major victory and set a stern precedent against those accused of P2P copyright violations. Jeffrey Howell now finds himself on the hook for damages as a result of evidence proving that he wiped his hard drive after learning of the impending legal action against him. RIAA examiners were able to demonstrate that not only did Howell delete his shared folder, but he then formatted his drive and used a file-wiping program to destroy every last trace of the evidence .Evidence, which according to the RIAA, could have backed up his claims that he was innocent. According to the judge “Howell’s brazen destruction of evidence has wholly undermined the integrity of these judicial proceedings. The evidence that Howell destroyed could have been used to determine the origin of the music files, their locations on the hard drive, the settings and integrity of the KaZaA software, and many other relevant facts.” The guilty ruling comes in sharp contrast to the victory Howell scored this past April when a judge rejected the RIAA’s cornerstone legal theory that simply sharing a file on a P2P network was an act of copyright infringement. The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has suggested that Howell may have fared better had he been able to secure legal counsel which Howell claims was priced out of reach. The damages at this point are still unknown but one would imagine the RIAA isn’t going to get rich off a man who can’t even afford to hire a lawyer.
So is another victory for the RIAA enough to send the pirates running for iTunes? Hit the jump and let us know.
NewsOnce Mighty Napster Facing Takeover by Ice Cream Store Owner
Posted 08/02/08 at 01:15:39 PM by Paul Lilly
Yahoo isn't the only one facing the threat of a proxy battle. Kavan Singh, a 26-year-old entrepreneur who owns a chain of Cold Stone Creamery ice cream stores, wants to freeze Chris Gorog out of his position as Napster 2.0's CEO, which would end his uninspired reign.
Gorog, the former CEO of Roxio, struck a deal to scoop up the once renowned P2P service for just $5 million in 2002, turned it into a legit paid music subscription service, and promised investors an influx of millions of customers. But instead of music listeners turning out in droves, today only about 760,000 subscribers pay a monthly fee to listen to its library of 6 million songs. Since the relaunch 3.5 years ago, stock has plummeted 69 percent, and the company noted a $16 million loss for this fiscal year. Now Singh wants Gorog to step aside.
Along with two other investors, Singh will fight for a board seat at the company's September 18 annual meeting. All three of them blame Gorog and mismanaged marketing for the company's failure to compete, noting that people still associate Napster with illegal activities. "When you tell people they should get Napster, they say, 'What are you trying to do? Get me arrested?'", complains Thomas Sailors, one of the investors running for a board seat.
Whether the ice cream man and his entourage prove successful remains to be seen, but will it even matter, or does Napster have a shot at turning its fortunes around?
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