An anonymous reader writes "Eminem, Madonna and Kylie Minogue are just some of the popular artists whose songs are to be blocked from being illegally distributed on the peer-to-peer network Kazaa following Federal Court orders in Australia yesterday. Sharman Networks, the owner of Kazaa, was ordered by the courts to modify the file-sharing software to block a list of search terms -- primarily artist and song names. The search terms are also to be supplied by record companies. The directive follows the record companies' court victory in September against individuals and organizations associated with Kazaa."

CryptoKnight writes "The Barenaked Ladies are releasing their next album via a reusable 128 MB USB flash drive. From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer article: 'Rather than distribute via CD, DVD or download, the Barenaked Ladies are making their newest selection of songs, videos and exclusive material available on a USB flash drive. Nettwerk Music Group is releasing Barenaked on a Stick beginning today, says the Hollywood Reporter. It plays on PCs, Macs and any other audio product with a USB port -- like some car stereos -- and costs $30.'"

Carl Bialik writes "Sprint's music store, the first major legal music-download service accessible from cellphones, is charging $2.49 per song because the recording industry and the wireless carriers are engaging in 'a dangerous fantasy,' according to the Wall Street Journal. From the article: 'Since people will pay $2.49 to download a snippet of a song, there's no reason they won't pay that much to download the whole thing. It's an enticing prospect, but one based on the idea that ringtones and downloads are similar. They're not; customers don't see them the same way and won't pay the same price for them, and no amount of wishful thinking will make them change their minds.' Last week, Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg also criticized the pricing: 'For that kind of money, you'd better really, really, really want to download that new Kenny Chesney song, RIGHT NOW, before you can get to a computer.'"

Raindance writes "Joel on Software has an interesting piece on why Big Content is making loud noises about moving from 'flat fee' to 'tiered' pricing models on the iTMS. According to Joel, it's not about pricing songs commensurate with their economic value; rather, it's about allowing the labels to manipulate public perception of value through pricing." From the article: "And now when a musician gets uppity, all the recording industry has to do is threaten to release their next single straight into the $0.99 category, which will kill it dead no matter how good it is. And suddenly the music industry has a lot more leverage over their artists in negotiations: the kind of leverage they are used to having. Their favorite kind of leverage. The "we won't promote your music if you don't let us put rootkits on your CDs" kind of leverage."

MdntToker writes "According the Forbes, EMI has an understanding with Apple that flat fee pricing will end within the next 12 months, and more popular songs will be priced higher than 99c, while lesser known acts will be priced lower than 99c." From the article: "Label executives have made multiple arguments for flexible pricing. They argue, for instance, that almost all retail businesses have different price points for different products. But they are particularly interested in boosting their revenue from digital music sales, which aided by the sale of mobile phone ringtones, are increasing but not quickly enough to replace the continuing drops in compact disc sales. EMI said today that digital sales, made up 4.9% of the company's sales in the last six months, up from 2.1% a year ago." We've previously reported on this story.

Mika24 writes "Red Herring is reporting that Cingular Wireless will launch a new over-the-air-radio service in conjunction with the TV service they will offer with MobiTV." The music programming will be done by Music Choice and will include rock, urban, country, reggae, jazz, electronica, and classical. From the article: "MobiRadio uses the improving screen capabilities on cell phones to offer album art and information about songs and artists during playback. Cingular said it will expand that capability to let subscribers purchase related ringtones and other content while the music is playing--a set of features made popular by satellite radio providers."

J. Charles Holt writes "Electronic Arts has announced that they're going to start releasing themes to popular computer games on online sources such as iTunes." From the article: "Those who doubt the hit potential of video game theme songs probably haven't seen Billboard's Hot Ringtones chart lately, where Koji Kondo has sat right near the top for 55 weeks. Who's Koji Kondo? He composed the theme for 'Super Mario Bros.,' which ranks this week right between the Black Eyed Peas and Bow Wow featuring Ciara."

Shirlockc writes "The Public Library of Science has a research article on how male mice actually sing in the presence of females. They actually posted some of the audios adjusted for human ears as these songs are ultrasonic. The authors are comparing these warbles to bird songs. The songs are quite complex so do the mice learn them and/or improve on them? This can be a potential model for investigating how brain chemistry works during learning."

* * Beatles-Beatles writes to tell us that Sprint Nextel is looking to take a bite out of Apple's iTunes pie with the upcoming release of the first music download service direct to mobile phones. The service offers the ability to get the song directly to your phone in addition to a high quality version that you can download to your PC. From the article: "The Sprint Music Store will enable subscribers of the third-largest mobile carrier to choose from 250,000 songs from all four major music labels and download them for $2.50 each using phones from either Samsung Electronics or Sanyo Electric."

praps writes "When Sweden's Data board gave the film and games industry organisation Antipiratbyrån an exemption from data protection laws last week it seemed that file sharers were on the ropes. Then the music industry joined in with some punches of its own, saying it too will hunt those who share songs online. Suddenly, file sharers have the support of their ISPs, who are refusing to cooperate with the big industries - and it's game on." From the article: "Only the file sharer's ISP can link the IP address to the person. If the ISP receives a request for such information from the police, they cannot refuse it, but a few calls from TT revealed that requests from APB would be ignored." We've previously reported on Swedish anti-downloading laws before.

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "The company Pandora Media takes a different tack for its online music-recommendation service. When you tell Pandora a song you like or have bought, it doesn't mine its sales database for records of other purchases by those who have bought the song. Instead, it looks for songs with a similar musical profile, based on a database of 300,000 songs rated on up to 400 characteristics like rhythmic syncopation, vamping and vocal harmonies. To analyze the songs, Pandora has hired Bay Area musicians like San Francisco jazz guitarist Bob Coons. 'When Mr. Coons describes a particular song, he uses phrases like the "complexity of the chromaticism" and "richness of the harmonic structure." He has studied the chord structure in Britney Spears' "Oops I Did It Again," and reports that it is "actually fairly complex," ' the Wall Street Journal Online reports."

An anonymous reader writes "The Globe and Mail reports that Canadian law professors have countered the Canadian recording industry's misinformation campaign in a new 600-page book that is being made freely available under a creative commons license. Led by Professor Michael Geist, the book provides full coverage of the possibility of Canada adopting DMCA-like copyright laws." From the article: "The 19 copyright law professors, in a peer-reviewed discussion edited by Ottawa lawyer and Internet columnist Michael Geist, note that revisions to copyright law in the past were largely the result of negotiations among copyright stakeholders; today, however, the broader public is also demanding a seat at the table. 'The public's interest in copyright something inconceivable even a few years ago is the result of the remarkable confluence of computing power, the Internet, and a plethora of new software programs, all of which has not only enabled millions to create their own songs, movies, photos, art, and software but has also allowed them to efficiently distribute their creations electronically without the need for traditional distribution systems,' the book says."

Katamari. Since the launch of the original title, it's been a hat, a cake, and now it's another game. Even then, saying it is another game is a stretch. For the most part the aptly titled We Love Katamari is a mission pack for the original game with an expanded multiplayer component. I don't really care, and anyone who has had the chance to play the original isn't likely to care either. The game is pure PS2 gold, just as much fun as the first foray into star-making. We Love Katamari is pure fan service from the man who doesn't even like games that much anyway. Read on for my impressions of the sequel to the original star-creation-through-rolling simulator.

geniusj writes "Warner Music Group CEO, Edgar Bronfman Jr., has fired back at Steve Jobs in response to the Apple CEO's claim that having variable pricing for iTunes music would be 'greedy.' From the article: 'To have only one price point is not fair to our artists, and I dare say not appropriate to consumers. The market should decide, not a single retailer ... Some songs should be $0.99 and some songs should be more. I don't want to give anyone the impression that $0.99 is a thing of the past ... We are selling our songs through iPod, but we don't have a share of iPod's revenue ... We want to share in those revenue streams. We have to get out of the mindset that our content has promotional value only.' Perhaps iPods combined with iPods are selling music as well, and it's not just a one-way street?"

chengee writes "Music giants Universal, EMI, Warner, Sony BMG and their local subsidiaries are suing Chinese search engine Baidu for allegedly infringing the copyright of hundreds of songs, a press report said Friday. Looks like the party is going to be over for Chinese downloaders. But more importantly how will this lawsuit turn out in a place known for its lax copyright laws?"

fanboyslayer writes "Switchfoot's new album Nothing Is Sound shipped from Sony with copy protection software on the CD, much to the dismay of thousands of iPod-wielding fans. The band posted a response on their official forum apologizing for the protection and detailing ways to circumvent the protection and rip their songs to PC. Switchfoot linked to open-source program CDex's download page with instructions on disabling the autorunning protection and ripping the files to MP3. Many of Switchfoot's fans have been upset by the copy protection measures, and it's nice to know the artists seem to care about the issue."

markmcb writes "OmniNerd has posted an interesting article about the statistical math behind iTunes. The author makes some interesting observations concerning the same song playing twice in a row during party shuffle play, the impact that star ratings have on playback, and comparisons with plain old random play (star ratings not considered)." From the article: "To test the option's preference for 5-stars, I created a short playlist of six songs: one from each different star rating and a song left un-rated. The songs were from the same genre and artist and were changed to be only one second in duration. After resetting the play count to zero, I hit play and left my desk for the weekend. To satisfy a little more curiosity, I ran the same songs once more on a different weekend without selecting the option to play higher rated songs more often. Monday morning the play counts were as shown in Table 1."

Dreamwalkerofyore writes "According to the New York Times, the iTunes music store might have to change its 99 cents per song policy or risk losing a huge amount of songs due to recent disputes with record companies, who demand an increase in the cost. From the article: 'If [Mr. Jobs] loses, the one-price model that iTunes has adopted 99 cents to download any song could be replaced with a more complex structure that prices songs by popularity. A hot new single, for example, could sell for $1.49, while a golden oldie could go for substantially less than 99 cents.'"

Matilda the Hun writes "The Register is reporting on the RIAA claims that recordable media is more of a source of piracy than P2P networks. From the article: 'The RIAA's chief executive, Mitch Bainwol, last week said music fans acquire almost twice as many songs from illegally duplicated CDs as from unauthorized downloads, Associated Press reports. According to Bainwol, in turn citing figures from market watcher NPD, 29 per cent of the recorded music obtained by listeners last year came from content copied onto recordable media. Only 16 per cent came from illegal downloads.'"

Homework Help writes "Japanese musicians under contract by Sony are defying their contracts by using Apple's iTunes service to deliver songs. Rock Musician Hotoharu Sano points out: 'It is an individual's freedom where that person chooses to listen to music. I want to deliver my music wherever my listeners are.' Sony Music Entertainment and Apple are still locked in talks and no agreement has been reached so far. Apple's offering of its iTunes service at lower cost in Japan is greatly attributed to their success." From the article: " Before iTunes' arrival, Japan's top music download service, which is backed by Sony and includes Sony recording artists, averaged about 450,000 downloads a month. By offering its service for lower prices, Apple is undercutting such online music services. Japanese are accustomed to paying twice as much as Apple is charging in Japan, which are still higher than the 99 cents charged in the U.S."