by Vijith

The biggest waves for the internet music world today are definitely being made by the news that the unlucky dudes behind Sweden's most scrumptiously flippant piracy portal have decided to sell off the site after years of shockingly flagrant abuse of copyright law.

In April, judge Tomas Norström ruled against the site and its primary interests in a suit brought by the IFPI, a sort of global RIAA, bringing to an end their long tradition of shrugging off legal threats from primarily US-based intellectual property owners with replies like "It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are morons, and that you should please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons." Oh, and then there was their highly publicized plan to purchase the incomparably stupid micronation of Sealand in order to give their servers a home that was quite literally on the high seas.

But then Norström's history of highly sympathetic pro-copyright political affiliations came to light, and for a moment it seemed like there might be some merit to the buccaneers' gleeful proclamations that appealing would buy them at least another few years. Not so now, since Norström has just been found perfectly sound in an investigation conducted by the Swedish courts. The verdict is going to stick.

Now, faced with the fine, the owners have quickly raised a few million dollars by selling to Global Gaming Factory, a company which operates a series of internet cafes aimed at gamer geeks -- this is all that's left of the once-glorious video arcade, it seems. In a totally wacky twist, GGF is apparently planning to revamp the client application so they can sell idle bandwidth from connected users to media and telecom companies, hopefully providing a much-needed resource through the looming online on-demand video gold rush.

But if the various preceding attempts to shut down figurehead file sharing outlets have shown us anything, it's that almost killing the platform just causes it to mutate and come back ever than ever. In other words, BitTorrent isn't going anywhere, even if it's highest-profile tracker is -- remember, the legendary invite-only private club OiNK was shut down in 2007 to much hand-wringing and even the official client has sold out at this point. Waiting in the wings for an immediate call to arms are the multi-site torrent meta-searchers like Mininova and Torrentini which aggregate all the content on the smaller trackers without ever actually touching any of it.

GGF's plan is a stretch, but if it works, we may also see legitimate uses for BitTorrent. increase in number, depth, and profile. There was some talk about integrated BitTorrent capabilities in OS X which could be used for distributing software updates, for example, and then of course there's also the multimedia angle. Integrating BitTorrent as a sort of backbone for ruthlessly efficient delivery of large multimedia files could make the next generation of audio software very cool indeed.

Wynton Marsalis Signs With The Orchard - by Vijith

Last week, we briefly discussed concert promotion behemoth Live Nation's ongoing moves toward signing suspiciously record-label-like deals with artists like Jay-Z and Nickelback. This, of course, is largely because traditional ways of generating revenue using copyrighted recordings aren't working so well anymore, and regular record labels had been hemorrhaging money for a solid decade or so before the rest of corporate America decided to join the party last fall.

It's also why other companies are also considering stepping in to add their own twist to the formula. Around this time last year, UK electronica and trip hop duo Groove Armada unveiled a deal in which they'd be distributing their new recordings through (seriously) Bacardi, for example, and as of this week we have another considerably less ridiculous, perhaps even culturally noteworthy addition to that list: jazz trumpeter and all-around living legend Wynton Marsalis has signed a similar deal with The Orchard.

"Who?", you're probably asking. If you're referring to Marsalis with that, we'll start laughing at you and throwing CDs at your head, but if it's the Orchard you're curious about, that's OK.

During the earliest days of the iTunes Music Store, Apple decided to sidestep the hassle of dealing with musicians directly (admit it, we are tremendous pains) and instead would only work with record labels to procure the songs. There was once some suspicion that this hesitance was due to their standoffish relationship with Apple Corps, the Beatles' record label, which took Apple (Computer) to court several times starting in 1978 for trademark infringement. That built to the mutually tense understanding that both companies could use the same darn fruit as long as they stuck to their respective fields: Corps to music, and Computer to, well, computers. The iPod and certainly the iTunes Music Store blurred that line a bit, and direct dealings with the musicians could have been construed by a judge as an invasion of the Corps space.

Unfortunately, this meant that independent musicians were screwed.

That changed in August 2003, however, when hard-copy indie music retailer CDBaby convinced Apple they'd be able to perform all the duties of a traditional label and broker otherwise independent music for use in the store. CDBaby isn't selective about the music they stock and sell -- they will even accept homebrew CD-Rs -- and their services are pretty affordable, so all of a sudden, even the least business-savvy of broke-ass independent artists could sell their songs through the iTunes Music Store and pocket the majority of the proceeds. CDBaby had this niche locked up quite nicely for a few years, but around 2005 or 2006, alternatives like Tunecore and The Orchard popped up and started providing the same services, but using slightly different pricing models and dispensing entirely with the physical sales.

So now Marsalis has signed with the latter, also sidestepping the more traditional labels; he's worked with Sony and Columbia extensively, and his most recent records came out on revered jazz imprint Blue Note, which is a subsidiary of EMI. All are heavyweights.

There are three things that are interesting about this development.

First, the company he's working with is in many ways far better aligned with his new digital trajectory than, say, the profiteers of sin at Bacardi. Even Live Nation, which doubtless has a promotional budget that could unknowingly blow The Orchard's away with a sneeze, isn't positioned quite as well ideologically. That is, The Orchard is fundamentally in the business of making money by distributing audio recordings sans physical media. That would bode well, it would seem, for Marsalis' ability to do so himself.

The second point -- and this is not going anywhere, since it's just me indulging my inner space-cadet -- is that Marsalis is pointedly traditionalist when it comes to his music. That's another post entirely, but the short version is that he preaches the importance of studying proper jazz forms and learning a canon, while his detractors say his retrospective emphasis runs counter to the genre's improvisatory spirit of evolution. And while we shouldn't run around confusing the art and the technology willy-nilly, it's still a little amusing to see him break with tradition in such a pronounced fashion.

Third, if he was using Indaba, it'd be possible for him to both create and distribute his tunes without any of the physical infrastructure once required by either. Cool, huh?

No Doubt Freebies - by Vijith

New business models have been flying around the music industry with such ridiculous frequency these days that it's hard to continue caring, but last week's entry by late 90's ska revivalists cum mainstream pop band No Doubt was enough to attract my attention. Fans who ante up for the more expensive tickets to this summer's tour, which kicked off last weekend -- remarkably, they top out at just $42.50 -- will be given free digital copies of the band's entire discography.

This would have been unthinkable a few years ago, but as music sales continue to tank, record labels are increasingly moving to 360 deals which give them a stake in all the band's potential income streams, including ticket and merchandise sales; this is one side effect of that integration. Similarly, concert promotion megacorp Live Nation has been making headlines over the last couple years by signing contracts with artists like Jay-Z, Shakira, Nickelback, and Madonna in which it takes over many of the responsibilities traditionally associated with record labels. They're in a particularly good position to pursue and benefit from similar promotions.

The biggest sting, to No Doubt fans and pop culture hounds alike, is that this move rather directly acknowledges the short shelf-life of successful music. No Doubt's 2003 record was a greatest hits compilation, prior to which their last real album was 2001's hella mediocre Rock Steady. It's mildly tempting to start asking questions about how the label financially reconciles giving away 65 songs which go for a buck apiece at the iTunes Music Store bundled with a $45 ticket; I think the answer, even more than the low cost of digital distribution, is the short lifespan of pop. Nobody is buying Tragic Kingdom in 2009, because it's effectively free, and anybody who still cares has already had 15 years to do so, and anybody who doesn't care yet is unlikely to start what with The Killers running around and all. In some ways, this is just a more dramatic restatement of the recent pricing changes for music download sales which allowed some retailers to sell older tracks at cheaper prices; we're just surfing a bit farther down the long-tail curve this time.

Leaving the changing industry landscape aside for a moment, though, this also resonates with me on a personal level because it reconciles quite nicely with my obsessive-compulsive listening habits. Ever since I started downloading mp3s a decade or so ago, I've tended to forge much stronger connections with the bands I see in concert because I usually download the entire back catalog in the weeks beforehand. (This hit a critical mass when I went to the reincarnated Lollapalooza in 2003 and realized that I'd heard every song ever recorded by every band I'd be seeing there.) I've toned it down somewhat in recent years, in part out of the shame of that experience and also because I have since transitioned into being a music writer and go to so many more concerts now. On the other hand, I still try to do exhaustive research before writing a feature or preparing interview questions.

What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that I do this sort of thing anyway, with or without the legal downloads, but it's wonderful that No Doubt has taken notice of guys like me. And, according to conventional logic, a little B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

Stealing MP3's is practically a national past time at this point.  It seems like every single day we hear about some new music pirating-related story: RIAA sues a college student, a music retailer adds or drops DRM protection, a band leaks an album full of fake tracks to trick downloaders, a filesharing service in Sweden is shut down by the feds, etc.  Of course, many people still get their music the old-fashioned way: by buying it with money.  But do you really need to? 

Download Squad , an AOL blog about - you guessed it! - downloading things, has posted a helpful list of 35 places to download free MP3's without breaking the law.  Not that anyone is wringing their hands, confessing their downloading sins to their priest, but it's nice to know that in between stealing songs illegally, you can wipe your conscience clean with some free, legal downloads as well. 

Check it out, and maybe - just maybe - this might stop a few of you from taking the food off of Lars Ulrich's table.