Music News

Much has been said about Phil Schiller's keynote address at Macworld on Tuesday, where he announced that Apple has finally struck deals with all the major music labels, making songs sold via the iTunes Store free of digital rights management.

The crowd in attendance cheered joyfully when it heard the news, and millions of people across the globe were excited to finally know that all that crazy Apple copyright protection was finally behind them. Even Apple was excited to announce it, and the new pricing model--$0.69 and $1.29, depending on the song--seems to suit its fancy.

For years, we've been hearing about Apple's desire to make iTunes DRM-free. Steve Jobs even wrote a letter detailing his belief that DRM is bad for all of us--record labels included. And now, after years of waiting, Jobs and his minions have finally achieved their goal of eliminating it.

Does that necessarily mean that it's good for Apple, though? I don't think there's a simple answer.… Read more

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama won applause from legal adversaries of the recording industry. Stanford law professor Larry Lessig, the doyen of the "free culture" movement, endorsed the Illinois senator, as did Google CEO Eric Schmidt and even the Pirate Party.

That was then. As president-elect, one of Obama's first tech-related decisions has been to select the Recording Industry Association of America's favorite lawyer to be the third in command at the Justice Department. And Obama's pick as deputy attorney general, the second most senior position, is the lawyer who oversaw the defense of … Read more

CNET News' Greg Sandoval is already covering the story, so I won't belabor it, but kudos to Apple and the three holdout record labels--Sony, Universal, and Warner--for reaching an agreement that will result in more than 8 million songs being available on iTunes with no digital rights management (DRM) restrictions. (EMI has made DRM-free songs available on iTunes since last spring, but only 10 percent of the music sold in the U.S. comes from EMI.) As Greg reports, Apple will also let users with existing DRM-encrusted downloads upgrade to a DRM-free version at a higher bitrate--256kbps--for an extra … Read more

Updated at 4:30 p.m. PST with details on the file formats Apple is using.

Apple and the three largest music labels didn't take any half steps in walking away from copy-protection software at Macworld 2009 Tuesday.

Apple could have announced, as expected, simply that the iTunes Store would begin offering songs stripped of digital rights management from now on. Instead, the country's largest music retailer secured licenses that will enable users to upgrade their existing DRM-wrapped music and strip it of the controversial software--but it's going to cost them.

An Apple spokesman offered more details: … Read more

Macworld--the last Macworld with Apple as a participant--got under way in San Francisco on Tuesday, with Apple unveiling plans to expand DRM-free tunes. CNET News' Greg Sandoval, who broke that story Monday, also talks about Apple's plans to roll out a flexible pricing strategy for selling music.

Today's stories:

Sources: Apple to expand DRM-free music, new pricing

New HP ultraportable first to use AMD Neo chip

Green-tech VC jumps nearly 40 percent in 2008

Cisco's home-networking push

Logitech to slash 15 percent of workforce

Editor's note: This article was written Monday, before Apple made any announcements about changes to iTunes. You can read the story that followed the company's formal announcement at Macworld 2009 here.

Apple has cut deals that will finally enable iTunes to offer songs free of copy protection software from the three largest music labels, according to two sources close to the negotiations. In exchange, Apple has agreed to become more flexible on pricing, the sources said.

Under the terms of the deal, song prices will be broken down into three categories--older songs from the catalog, midline songs (newer … Read more

As I said in my 2008 sum-up, people tend to overestimate the amount of change that will happen in one year--which means my best bet for 2009 would be to simply reiterate my almost-there predictions from 2008, like the death of DRM and the decline of the concert industry.

But that would be boring. Thus, behold my all-new-and-improved predictions for music and technology in 2009:

Zune phone--sort of. 2009 will finally be the year that Microsoft takes the wraps off its mobile-entertainment strategy, and the Zune brand will be prominently featured. Perhaps as early as next week at CES, Microsoft … Read more

Yesterday, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote a post suggesting that president-elect Obama needs to do more than throw money at ailing industries, but actually needs to "reboot" America by investing in infrastructure and education. In Newsweek, law professor and intellectual property thinker Lawrence Lessig argued for a more narrowly focused reboot of the FCC, which should be encouraging technical innovation but instead tends to favor big incumbents.

But what about the music industry? Yes, the big labels have earned a lot of scorn for their technophobia and suing their customers--a practice which finally ended last week… Read more

In the small hours of a summer night when I was in college, I heard a song play on San Francisco's famous Live 105 that seemed, at the time, one of the most profound, melodic, and catchy tunes I'd ever come across.

It was called Dancing on the Planet, and even back then--in the late 80s or early 90s--a rare track I never again heard on the radio.

For years, it was jammed in the back of my memory, always there as this incredible song that I just had to find.

Some time after the Google era kicked … Read more