The Digital Music Weblog

• Goodnight from The Digital Music Weblog
  

  Filed under: News, General

  
  
  The Digital Music Weblog is retiring from active duty as of today. I'd like to say a huge note of thanks to everyone who has helped or contributed to this fantastic blog since its launch in 2004. TDMW has seen some brilliant bloggers and has been a launching pad for many among the ranks of Weblogs, Inc; I will always be proud to say I'm one of them.
  
  TDMW may be retiring but, I will continue to write for other Weblogs,...
  



• Labels tighten purse strings, divas beware
  

  Filed under: News

  Watch out Mariah Carey, the diva days are coming to an end. According to an article in The Daily Express, cost conscious labels are starting to cut the cord on bratty divas and their expensive entourages. No surprise given the overall tightening of the purse strings, and its certainly encouraging to see labels wising up to the idea of running like a real business.
  
  Glenn Coolfer points out the funniest bit or, if you're a shareholder, perhaps the saddest, "One of...
  



• Fan financing strikes another victory
  

  Filed under: News, New Artists

  Sellaband, a unique crowd sourcing site which allows emerging independent artists to take seed money from fans until they amass enough capital to record a full professional studio album, has announced its second fan funded breakthrough.
  
  Less than four months ago Jacob Kongaika, performing under the artist name Cubworld, decided to take a chance and upload his music on SellaBand. "I saw this as a long term plan, I was thinking more in the lines of 5 or 10 years,...
  



• Mixtape DJs raided by RIAA jacketed agents in Atlanta
  

  Filed under: News, RIAA

  Two well known mixtape producers have been raided in Atlanta by police accompanied by RIAA jacketed quasi-agents. The agents confiscated boxes of CDs, production equipment and cars from the location, and scored a lead story on local news for themselves where they were quick to remind the public that raids on pirate mixtape producers often yield drug and gun arrests in addition to stopping piracy, just not this raid.
  
  DJ produced mixtapes are a strange animal. Record companies often welcome and...
  



• Your ISP is the IFPI's next target
  

  Filed under: News, RIAA, IFPI

  According to the IFPI's "Digital Music Report 2007", your residential ISP is the their next front in the war on piracy.
  
  The report spells out in pretty stark language exactly what the IFPI expects from the ISP who's services you pay for, "We should not be doing this job alone. With cooperation from ISPs we could make huge strides in tackling internet piracy globally. It is very unfortunate that it seems to need pressure from governments or...
  



• AP looks at our favorite major label bully
  

  Filed under: News, Apple, Microsoft, RIAA

  Ah Doug Morris, unibrow baby to the digital music revolution. His hard-ball approach with Microsoft, fighting hard for a $1 cut of each Zune sold in exchange for allowing Microsoft to license Universal Music's stable of artists, won him a place on the enemies list of every music blogger from Anaheim to Zurich.
  
  The AP takes a softer look at the man who's mission is to change music licensing forever, and not for...
  



• Timbaland's mounting music troubles
  

  Filed under: News

  Hip-hop producer Timbaland is finding himself embroiled in a controversy that spreads from the shores of North American pop music to the unlikely locale of Finland.
  
  Belgian web magazine Side Line writes, "Part of that Furtado track ["Do It"] (both the intro and the melody) holds an astonishing resemblance with the Amiga .MOD which was originally entered into a music-competition at 'Assembly 2000', a multimedia-party held in Helsinki, Finland in the year 2000. The entry titled "Acid Jazzed Evening" won the competition and now seems to be ripped to feature in the Timbaland...
  



• RIAA as 17th Century French button maker
  

  Filed under: News, DRM, RIAA

  Ever think that there's never been an industry group in the history of man with the sort of bulldog spirited anti-competitive mindset of the RIAA? Think again. Techdirt draws an interesting parallel between the RIAA of today, and French button makers of the 1700's. It seems tailors began making buttons out of dense cloth, which outraged the established button making industry, leading to the government imposition of strict fines on the cloth button makers, and some rather-paranoid tactics to...
  



• More on AOL's new portable media player
  

  Filed under: News

  Remember that new wi-fi enabled media player from AOL and Haier we told you about? Anything But iPod likes it, and in fact, after spending some quality time with the upcoming device, call it their favorite player at CES this year.
  
  Considering the wide selection at CES, that's a pretty strong compliment. What did they like so much? Grahm Skee writes, "The interface is simple, yet has enough buttons to do what you need to do quickly- including dedicated volume buttons. I am...
  



• Another DRM failure ; HD-DVD rip hits torrent trackers
  

  Filed under: News, DRM

  It isn't digital music but, it's a perfect example of how DRM isn't an effective method of keeping your content from the hands of pirates. The first HD-DVD rip is available via Bittorrent, ending any and all speculation about whether the HD-DVD's DRM format has been successfully cracked.
  
  Brad Linder of Download Squad writes, "The breakthrough came when members of the Doom9 Forum tracked down several unique memory keys that BackupHDDVD needs in order to decrypt HD-DVDs. Apparently the...