They have taken away that feeling of having a song that is "yours," which is part of the charm of owning a music collection. With Pressplay, you never actually own the music; it's like the service is subletting the music to you: As long as you keep paying the rent, you have access to the media that the service makes available.
Ipecac has MP3s of the new FantomasMelvins live album "Millennium Monsterworks" (recorded 1st Jan 2001) coming out 2nd April.
Four Bjork live DVDs are either out or on their way out, depending where you are. The last DVD is yet to be released or her more recent tour. The other three DVDs are out in the US but I can't find any mention of a Region 4 (australian) release. Damn it. Dicky flash preview thing. Quick search sees the DVDs are out in the US and the UK. No aus release yet or are our online shops just slow? No info at michaeldvd.
Update : Ahh... keep my eyes open for ten seconds, it seems all the DVDs are Region 0, thus playable in all countries. So now my complaint turns to slow Australian distributors. Are we going to get it here or do I have to import it?
Update 2 : OK, maybe not. Amazon UK says R0, Blackstar UK says R2, Amazon US says R1. Stupid idiots.
I look forward to the day when you pay for "cable" and it carries your TV, phone and internet. Of course, I don't want to abolish free to air. Hell no. Optus and Foxtel merge. Kinda.
The PC Industry (massive) vs. the movie industry (tiny). It's on!. Looks like at least Apple has it's heart in the right place.
The Age photo gallery is offline. I want to link to the monkey!
Universal and Warner music fined for anticompetitive behaviour in Australia. $500k each. It was supposed to be $8 million each. Warner no comment. Universal to appeal. Sony settled out of court. All the labels in the case had "used their power to stop local retailers accessing cheaper imported CDs".
I wonder how many of those extra 15% of CD sales were "cheaper imported" CDs.
The most important comment I've heard from the labels in the case (which was in The Age article but I can't link to their archives without paying it seems, I hope this isn't the norm from now on) is that the label claimed it needed the money from the distribution to pay for developing new artists.
Call me stupid but shouldn't they be getting money from the royalties of selling CDs, no matter who sells it? Different labels distribute the same artist in different countries. The labels really don't want you to be able to import CDs easily because it completely screws their entire marketing system, cutting up the world into completely separate markets cut off from each other (see DVD regioning). But even so, even in Sony distributes a band in the US, shouldn't the band (and it's original label) be getting royalties on those sales? Apparently not. I see large fingers pointing at big red problems...
