The UK’s Mail On Sunday has given away about three million copies of Prince’s new album, Planet Earth. The promotion has generated heated debate in the UK, because some consider the giveaway an insult to the music industry.

The giveaway is a high-profile example of an established musician experimenting with new ways of getting their music into new hands. With the giveaway, Prince is working around traditional promoters, record stations and retailers, cutting a deal that gets millions of his CDs on the street in one day. That means the CD’s reach will be many times his previous release, 3121, which sold about 80,000 copies in the UK.

“It’s direct marketing and I don’t have to be in the speculation business of the record industry which is going through a lot of tumultuous times right now,” said the Minneapolis musician when asked why he was giving the CD away.

“Prince has done this because he makes most of his money these days as a performing artist,” said the Mail on Sunday’s editor, Peter Wright. “He’s got a fantastic series of concerts coming up at the O2 Dome and this is a way of telling people what he’s doing.”

Music Industry Threatens Retaliation Over Free Music

The deal has sent shockwaves through the record industry.

The Entertainment Retailers Association has gone so far as suggesting that Prince, and others that, like him, experiment with alternate ways of promoting their music, will be banned from the industry.“The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores,” said Entertainment Retailers Association co-chairman Paul Quirk recently. “And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday.”

Podcasts are available for presentations at iPhoneDevCamp, a BarCamp-style event focusing on iPhone development held this weekend in San Francisco.

You can subscribe to the podcast using this feed URL:

http://kh7wg.podomatic.com/rss2.xml

The event featured a iPhone hackathon, and the resulting applications are available to try out. Apps include an iPhone Jabber client, games, iPhone-friendly websites and even Mac remote access.

Science & Sons has created a bizarre old-school style iPod dock that offers to replace the typical cheesy iPod speakers with a souped-up gramophone.

The Phonophonics II delivers 55db directly from your iPod, acoustically amplifying the output of your portable media player’s earbuds.

Here’s their info on the strange device:

Through passive amplification alone, These unique pieces instantly transform any personal music player + earbuds into a sculptural audio console.

Without the use of external power or batteries, the Phonofone inventively exploits the virtues of horn acoustics to boost the audio output of standard earphones to up to 55 decibles* (or roughly the maximum volume of laptop speakers).

Upon connecting active earphones to the Phonofone their trebly buzzing is instantly and profoundly transformed into a warm, rich and resonant sound.  

 

Zoom has introduced a new portable recorder, the H2 Handy Recorder, designed for capturing interviews, musical performances, seminars and conferences. According to Zoom, the H2 provides studio-quality stereo recording in an easy-to-use, ultra-portable device.

Description:

The H2 is the only portable recorder with 4 mic capsules onboard in an W-X/Y configuration, for recording from the front at 90° and the rear at 120°, or use all four mics for 360° recording in 2 or 4 channel mode. The H2 features one button recording, gain controls on the side and an intuitive user interface.

For maximum flexibility, the H2 can record in up to 96 kHz/24-bit WAV format, or as MP3 up to 320 kbps. Additionally, it can record 360° in 48kHz/24-bit format which can then be converted to Surround 5.1.

The H2 has a street price of $199.99.

Sweden’s The Local, an English-language news source, reports that Sigbritt L√∂thberg, a 75-year old woman from Karlstad in central Sweden, now has the fastest home Internet connection in the world. L√∂thberg’s home has been supplied with a 40 Gigabits per second connection, thousands of times faster than the average residential link.

According to the report, the connection could let Sigbritt enjoy 1,500 high definition HDTV channels simultaneously, or download a full high definition DVD in just two seconds.

The connection was a demonstration project by¬†Cisco’s¬†Peter L√∂thberg.

“Peter L√∂thberg wanted to show how you can build a low price, high capacity line over long distances,” said network boss Hafsteinn Jonsson.

Cambridge University PhD candidate Rufus Pollock has published a paper that takes a look at the economics of copyrights, and concludes that the optimum length of copyrights is 14 years, a fraction of their current length.

Pollock’s research (pdf) looks at the economic benefits of both copyrighted work and work that has entered the public domain, and¬†the falling costs of creating new works.

Technological change has substantially reduced the costs of production and distribution of most copyrightable goods. On this basis our first theoretical result would imply that the level of optimal copyright is dropping. Similarly, given that several types of copyrightable work, for example films and recordings, are now well over fifty years old, the second theoretical result similarly implies that optimal term is falling.

Our estimate of optimal term (14 years) is far below the length copyright in almost all jurisdictions. This implies that there is a significant role for policymakers to improve social welfare by reducing copyright term as well as implying that existing terms should not be extended. Such a result is particularly importance given the degree of recent debate on this precise topic.

It looks like the high-profile negotiations between the music industry and commercial Internet broadcasters over royalty rates for netcasting traditionally licensed music is moving from the court system to the backroom.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has denied motions to stay any aspect of the ruling by the Copyright Royalty Judges (CRJs) on the new rates webcasters are required to pay recording artists and record labels. The new¬†rates, which are scheduled to go into effect Sunday, effectively force netcasters to shut down or negotiate more favorable deals from SoundExchange, the music industry’s enforcement/collection agency for digital performing rights.

Netcasters like Yahoo!, Live365, Rhapsody and MTV have dramatically portrayed the negotiations as a fight to save Net radio, though the rates only apply to mainstream music industry netcasters. The SoundExchange royalty rates do not apply to netcasters or podcasters that create talk shows or play indie music from artists that license their music for free sharing over the Internet. 

While some are reporting that Online Radio is Saved, it appears that industry negotiations are just moving out of the public eye, putting SoundExchange into a good position to promote the music industry’s interests and influence the future of mainstream Net radio.

Social media network imeem and Warner Music Group today announced a strategic partnership that will make Warner’s library of music available to imeem users in North America for on-demand streaming using imeem‚Äôs free, ad-supported service.

imeem’s Web site lets users create, share and discover user-generated custom playlists, video channels, photo slideshows, and blogs with other members who share similar tastes in music, video, art and pop culture. With this partnership with Warner Music Group, imeem users can discover new music from WMG artists.

“This deal provides an opportunity to unleash the value of music on one of the world‚Äôs leading social networks by giving fans an environment where they can discover and share new music. It also opens the door for imeem and WMG to develop new strategies and products that will help introduce a more vibrant media marketplace to the social networking environment,” says WMG’s Alex Zubillaga.¬†¬†

The New England Journal of Medicine has published an article that highlights a rare risk of using iPods and other portable electronic devices in bad weather.

A 37-year-old man was brought to the emergency department at our hospital. He had been jogging in a thunderstorm, listening to his iPod, when an adjacent tree was struck by lightning. Witnesses reported that he was thrown approximately 8 ft (2.4 m) from the tree.

The patient had second-degree burns on his chest and left leg. In addition, two linear burns extended along his anterior chest and neck to the sides of his face, terminating in substantial burns in the external auditory meatus bilaterally, corresponding to the positions of his earphones at the time of the lightning strike. Both of his tympanic membranes were ruptured, and he had a severe conductive hearing deficit.

Although the use of a device such as an iPod may not increase the chances of being struck by lightning, in this case, the combination of sweat and metal earphones directed the current to, and through, the patient’s head.

Computed tomographic scans and more gory details are available at the NEJM site.

Casio has released a new line of YouTube-friendly digital cameras. The EXILIM EX-Z77 digital camera line features a YouTube Capture mode and bundles software to provide optimized settings for recording, storing and uploading video.

“We recognized that there was a demand for an easier way to upload high-quality video and are thrilled to be the first digital camera company to be able to offer a solution for consumers,” said John Homlish, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Casio.

Casio’s YouTube Capture mode records in MPEG-4 H.264 high quality video format; this allows users to record longer, while providing 640 x 480 resolution and a frame rate of up to 30 frames per second. Casio has also included a software application that makes it seamless to upload movies to YouTube. This technology will also allow users to upload multiple videos at once, making it easier to share original content online.

“The YouTube Capture mode featured on these Casio EXILIM cameras is remarkably innovative and easy to use, and will further expand and diversify the incredible range of originally-created content for which YouTube is known,” said Hunter Walk, YouTube product management.