Friday, April 10, 2009

Happy Easter Weekend!!

To all the folks who celebrate this holiday I wish you all a very happy Easter Weekend. Its a very meaningful holiday for many of us and for the rest well its an excuse to scarf down jelly beans, marshmellow peeps and chocolate bunnies :)

Amazon joins ITunes with Variable Pricing for MP3s

It appears that Amazon.com, Walmart.com and other online retailers are also being pushed into variable MP3 pricing by the record labels. Some songs are at 0.69, many more at 0.99 and some of the bigger hits are 1.29 . Its funny now that the labels finally see the eventual demise of record stores and physical CDs they are starting to jack up the price. I know I said this before but come on I should be able to buy 10 good songs for $10...there are no manufacturing or inventory costs for them so the profit they make from each sale is increased. In fact if the record labels had jumped on the digital band wagon long ago like they should have then they could have had their own digital online store eliminating the middle man costs of Itunes/Amazon and letting us pay even less.

No More Digital Rights Management for MP3s

The only good thing the labels have done with the variable pricing move is finally eliminate the DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection the MP3's sold...now we can freely move our purchased songs from computer to computer to Ipod to anywhere without having to worry about losing our rights. This move was long over due and of course will give the labels a chance to blame piracy once again for their own misguided business decisions. Since the labels in large part no longer discover and nurture new talent, new and even existing artists no longer have to be tied to major labels to get their music out to the masses. I can write a song this morning, record it this afternoon and have it available for listening and for sale by this evening all over the world. What an incredible shift in power this is for artists folks. Of course with this power comes the responsiblity to create the best art we can and not litter the internet landscape with piles of sub-par art that we all have to wade through just to find something decent. More on this topic later...

Please all have a great weekend and we'll see ya on Monday with another update. AI is down to seven contestants and we'll see whose star is rising and whose star is beginning to fade.

~Vincent James @ LoveSongs.com

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