CRB Freezes Royalty Rate — iTunes Store Safe!
The Copyright Royalties Board have decided to keep the royalty rate for music downloads at 9 cents. An spokesman for Apple said, “we’re pleased with the CRB’s decision to keep royalty rates stable.”
The three-member board that sets statutory copyright licenses e-mailed the Digital Media Association (DiMA), the National Music Publishers’ Association, Apple, and other download stores with its decision to keep the royalty rate 9.1 cents. The board also set the same rate for CDs and mandated established a 24-cents rate for ringtones. The decision is the first time the Board has established mechanical royalty rates for digital downloads.
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Increased Royalty Rate Could Kill Apple iTunes
Later today the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) meet to discuss and decide whether royalty rates for digital downloads should increase from 9 cents to 15 cents per track — a rise requested by National Music Publishers’ Association.
Your Music Anywhere Via The Web With blueTunes
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A new web service for listening to your own music, not sharing it, has been launched today. Called, blueTunes, it allows users to upload their music collection and listen to it via the web. Going on holiday? Take a laptop and your music will follow. At a party that lacks decent music? (We’ve all been in that situation I’m sure!) Login and blast a few of your favorites favourites!
How Apple Could Improve iTunes Genius
Genius was introduced in Apple iTunes 8. It is a feature that enables users to created playlists of music that ‘go together well’.
Since its introduction iTunes Genius has had an unfair amount of criticism. While it is not perfect, Genius is a useful tool which will improved upon given time.
While Genius relies on mass user input to work perhaps Apple should consider joining forces with some software and web-based services that already exist to greatly improve the feature.
Firstly, when I first read about Genius (before the official launch) I thought it would actually analyse the music itself rather than just data about user music collections and playing habits.
iTunes Becomes a Genius
Forget HD television programmes being available to download, forget the new iPhoto-like album display (although a welcome addition), forget the new ‘Visualizer’, Genius is the best new feature to be introduced.
Genius is a neat feature that allow automatic creation of playlists based on the track that is currently selected. These playlists can be refreshed in an instant and saved for later.
Steve Jobs has assured that the information that is collected weekly via the Internet is totally anonymous. Without this assurance I doubt many people would partake in the use of Genius. The information that is used by Apple includes your playlists, track names, ratings and play counts. All of this is combined with other iTunes users’ info to form a massive database of information makes Genius work.
