Posts Tagged with ‘RIAA’

Bad news for multiple fans of the music mixtape startup Muxtape - RIAA has shut the service and no one even seems to have any details. What probably happened is that RIAA has realized that users uploaded and shared tons of music and invited their friends to stream it while online radio sites are supposed to pay huge licensing fees for a very similar type of activity.
The site itself is down and shows only the text “Muxtape will be unavailable [...]

It should be unstated by now that websites and media groups will never be free of torment from record labels and music protection groups.  In fact, I hardly give a moment's notice to "news" about some website or college student coming under prosecution from the RIAA or one of its many cronies. 
I am, however, keenly interested when a social network or media site comes under fire for user-created content.   Today I read that popular social network Hi5 is [...]

There's been an alarming trend in music services launching recently. In an era in which the recording industry fears just about everything electronic, most music services have a lot to worry about besides just getting users and making money. Muxtape search engine Muxfind had even removed the ability to search by artist for a while because of fear of legal repercussions. (After all, if Torrent indexers can be sued, why not a search engine for a site that potentially infringes [...]

By now everyone is familiar with the RIAA and their collective belief that everyone online is a thief, stealing music every which way we can. The recording industry has been fighting to prove that even the premise of “making available,” putting music out there to share with no proof it's ever been downloaded, is still a violation of copyright laws, and that all the digital sharing results in nothing but losses for the music industry.
The Web 2.0 music sites beg [...]

Just little more than a month ago I reported on how Apple's iTunes music service has passed up Best Buy to become the number two music retailer just under Wal-Mart.
Not surprisingly, Ars Technica has reported today that the latest NPD MusicWatch Survey for the month of January has shown Apple making a significant stride in passing Wal-Mart to now become the top music retailer in the nation.
The stats from the NPD Group show that the iTunes music [...]

Taking a new tack in the continuing war on music listeners, Warner wants to break from the current thug tactics of the RIAA and go with a fee schedule instead. This fee schedule would operate very much like a consumption tax on music, being added to your internet bill each month. What Warner isn’t taking into account is whether that is something music lovers want.
What music lovers are looking for, and what many companies are already building for them, is [...]

Since last November, Comcast's efforts to free up valuable bandwidth among its users by banning and preventing access to BitTorrent traffic has proved about as successful as the RIAA reign of terror on the realm of P2P sharing.
BitTorrent is here to stay and, judging from the outcome of the Napster drama from as far back as 1999, fighting the progression of such a popular protocol will only result in wasted dollars and an eventual service allowing legal file sharing for [...]

Qtrax had some “big” news today; they renewed their existing licenses with EMI Music Publishing and Sony/ATV. When I read the news, I went looking for a press release on their site and couldn't find a thing. I'm guessing at this point, Qtrax just wants to launch, and any intermediate steps between their current status and launch are just reminders of how badly their one botched attempt went.
The new-”ish” deal doesn't really help Qtrax in their quest to get up [...]

A major tide is shifting in the music industry as the digital age slowly eats away at the number of CD sales in favor of downloadable MP3s. Today, Apple has announced that the sales figures for 2007 are in from the NPD Group, and iTunes has come in as the #2 music retailer, trailing only behind Wal-Mart.
In today's press release, Apple has revealed that more than 50 million people are now using the iTunes store of more than 6 [...]