Apple today launched iTunes Plus, offering DRM-free music tracks with 256 kbps AAC encoding, for audio quality almost as good as the original recordings, for just $1.29 per song.

iTunes Plus is launching with EMI’s digital catalog of recordings, including singles and albums from Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Frank Sinatra, Joss Stone, Pink Floyd, John Coltrane and more than a dozen of Paul McCartney’s classic albums available on iTunes for the first time.

iTunes will continue to offer its entire catalog, currently over five million songs, in the same versions as today 128 kbps AAC encoding with DRM at the same price of 99 cents per song, alongside the higher quality iTunes Plus versions when available. In addition, iTunes customers can now easily upgrade their library of previously purchased EMI content to iTunes Plus tracks for just 30 cents a song and $3.00 for most albums.

“Our customers are very excited about the freedom and amazing sound quality of iTunes Plus,”said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We expect more than half of the songs on iTunes will be offered in iTunes Plus versions by the end of this year.”

PayPlay.FM announced today that it is offering its 1,300,000-track catalog in unprotected MP3 format at the price of 88 cents per song. The tracks are 192kpbs VBR encoded, offering higher quality sound reproduction.

The move continues PayPlay’s strategy for uniform support of Mac and UNIX platforms, iPod, Zune and other portable players incompatible with Windows Media DRM.

“On the Day Against DRM last year we committed to provide our customers with the music download freedom of choice. Today we live up to that promise, delivering more than twice the number of tracks pledged in October in DRM-free format,” said Elliot Goykhman, PayPlay CEO. “We are proud to be the world’s largest MP3 download store.”

While Apple’s 1st generation iPhones won’t ship until next month, the company appears to be making plans for a 2nd generation of iPhones that will ship sometime in September.

Quanta, which already builds iPods and MacBooks for Apple, commented today on reports that it will be building the updated iPhones:

Quanta and Apple are building a tighter than ever relationships. Quanta not only manufactures NB and iPod for Apple, but also may have received the order to make the second generation of the Apple iPhone. iPhone is a smartphone based mobile, and the second generation model shipment is expected in September 2007 with forecast of 5 million units in 2008.

While neither Apple nor Quanta is commenting on the next-gen iPhones, there is speculation that the new iPhones either be for European markets, or will have larger Flash memory capacity.

Turner Broadcasting System’s TNT and TBS plan to stream all of their original summer series to the Web the morning after they premiere on TV. They will be available on the networks’ Websites, TNT.tv and TBS.com, the next day and remain online for about a month.

“We want new viewers to come in, and, while we certainly want them to watch shows when we air them live, we want them to watch during encores and on-demand when and where appropriate,” said Jeff Gregor, chief marketing officer for TBS/TNT/TCM.

Time Warner’s Turner networks are the first major entertainment cable networks to stream full series runs of new originals. The announcement highlights the growing importance of streaming video and podcasts for major networks. As advertisers are moving their money to the Internet, networks have to follow or lose revenue.

“Television is under severe pressure at the moment from the Internet. There has been a fundamental shift and the pace will quicken,” according to Sir Martin Sorrell, head of WPP, the world‚Äôs second-biggest advertising company. “Television advertising is not going to disappear. It still has pulling power, but the balance will switch.‚Äù

If appliance maker LG has its way, your next MP3 player may be a washing machine.

LG has filed for a patent for a Home appliance with MP3 player.

Here’s how LG describes their invention:

The washing device comprises: an input/output terminal for physically connecting the washing device with the MP3 player for data communication with the MP3 player; a connector for physically connecting the washing device with the MP3 player to receive an audio signal outputted from the MP3 player; a key input unit for inputting washing or drying mode conditions and a control command for the MP3 player from a user; a display unit for displaying information regarding an operation of a washing or drying mode and information regarding an operation of the MP3 player; an audio output unit for outputting a mode state in the form of an audio signal and the audio signal from the MP3 player received through the connector; and a controller for, in response to a control of the user through the key input unit, controlling the operation of the washing or drying mode, and controlling the operation of the MP3 player by performing the data communication with the MP3 player through the input/output terminal.

The idea of trying to listen to MP3s on your washing machine seems a bit stupidtastic….but we have to admit we’re wondering if it could play podcasts!

RadioDaddy, an Internet exchange for free voiceovers for radio stations, television, podcasters and movies, has found itself in the dog house with many podcasters over the strange way it announced a new site, VoiceDaddy.

Podcaster Rob Walch took issue when he received this email from RadioDaddy:

From: “RadioDaddy”
Date: May 27, 2007 2:30:02 PM CDT
To: rob@podcast411.com
Subject: Voicedaddy – Licensed Traditional Broadcasters Only ( RadioDaddy )
.
podcast411,
.
For years the licensed broadcasters on RadioDaddy have complained about the kids and unprofessional people that run podcasts and internet stations. While there are many exceptions to this, for the most part they were right. So before a flame war begins, let me just say that I have a lot of internet stations on some podcasters whom are friends and they produce highly professional products and services. Unfortunatly with the ease of producing low quality podcasts and internet stations, children and the feable minded have become the majority operators of these. Thus, we have created VoiceDaddy.com as a haven for traditional broadcasters to come and hang out and share their work together. There will be a few exceptiong to the traditional broadcaster rule, on a case by case basis, but for the most part, podcasters, internet stations and pirates will not be allowed to post on Voicedaddy.

The barriers to entry in podcasting are so low that even the feeble-minded and children can create podcasts. Podcasting’s ease of entry, though, has led to an incredible variety of good free content.

By dismissing the ranks of podcasters, whose audience is growing explosively, to court traditional radio broadcasters, whose audience is in decline, RadioDaddy seems to be chasing after the past, rather than facing the future.

Microsoft’s Zune group headquarters now sports an iPod Amnesty Bin at the entrance to their Zune HQ into which employees are supposed to dump their iPods. The company is apparently offering amnesty to employees at Zune HQ who give up their iPods in favor of using the Zune MP3 player.

Rex Sorgatz, an MSNBC.com employee, said he thought the bin was someone’s idea of a joke, nothing more. Sorgatz said he is an iPod user, but could be convinced to switch if he found a superior product.

via Blorge

The New York Times has published an article that looks at costs of running contests for user-generated advertising, suggesting that it’s actually more costly than traditional advertising, and that most amateur ads are terrible.

“That‚Äôs kind of a popular misnomer that, somehow, it‚Äôs cheaper to do this,” said David Ciesinski, vice president for Heinz Ketchup. “On the contrary, it‚Äôs at least as expensive, if not more.”

Heinz has hired an outside promotions firm to watch all the videos and forward questionable ones to Heinz employees in its Pittsburgh headquarters. So far, they have rejected more than 370 submissions (at least 320 remain posted on YouTube). The gross-out factor is not among their screening criteria — rather, most of the failed entries were longer than the 30-second time limit, entirely irrelevant to the contest or included songs protected by copyright. Some of the videos displayed brands other than Heinz (a big no-no) or were rejected because “they wouldn’t be appropriate to show mom,” Mr. Ciesinski said.

Advertising executives who have seen some of the entries say that Heinz may be hard pressed to find any that it is proud to run on television in September.

They Are Just So Bad!

“These are just so bad,” said Linda Kaplan Thaler, chief executive of the Kaplan Thaler Group, an advertising agency in New York that is not involved with Heinz‚Äôs contest.

One of the most viewed Heinz videos ‚Äî seen, at last count, more than 12,800 times ‚Äî ends with a close-up of a mouth with crooked, yellowed teeth. When Ms. Kaplan Thaler saw it, she wondered, “Were his teeth the result of, maybe, too much Heinz?”

Google has introduced a variety of new formats for video ads.

The three new formats include:

• 728×90 Leaderboard
• 120×600 Skyscraper
• 160×600 Wide Skyscraper.

Previously, video ads were only enabled for the 300×250 Medium Rectangle, the 336×280 Large Rectangle, the 200×200 Small Square, and the 250×250 Square.

Advertisers can chose a cost-per-thousand model for displaying ads, or a cost-per-click ad.

For advertisers, this change provides additional options and inventory for creating click-to-play video ads. Publishers may benefit from the increased competition among text, image, and video ads in these three formats; if a click-to-play video ad appears in one of your ad units, this means that it has won the auction against other ads and will generate the maximum earnings for you.

An unusual ruling in Finnish courts appears to have declared that it’s open season for hacking DRM’d media.

In an unanimous decision, the Helsinki District Court ruled that Content Scrambling System (CSS) used in DVD movies is “ineffective”. The decision is the first in Europe to interpret new copyright law amendments that ban the circumvention of ‚Äúeffective technological measures‚Äù. The legislation is based on EU Copyright Directive from 2001. According to both Finnish copyright law and the underlying directive, only such protection measure is effective, “which achieves the protection objective.”

If the ruling is upheld, it could have long-term implications for copy-protection technology in European.

EU member nations were required to implement the EU’s copyright directive, which says a technology is effective “where the use of a protected work or other subject-matter is controlled by the rights-holders through application of an access control or protection process, such as encryption, scrambling or other transformation of the work or other subject-matter or a copy control mechanism, which achieves the protection objective.”

In other words, if you can hack it, the DRM isn’t effective and isn’t covered by EU restrictions.