This video captures Michael Masnick’s Learning From What’s Working: Success Stories From The Music Commerce Frontier.

Masnick is the founder of TechDirt – a technology blog that has been a vocal critic of the music industry’s approach to technology, especially DRM and its opposition to P2P file sharing.

You can safely skip the first 2 1/2 minutes – but the rest is must-view material for musicians.

Masnick relies way too much on the example of Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and other musicians that were established by the traditional music industry.

More interesting are Masnick’s examples of the creative and bizarre ways musicians are connecting with fan.

Give it a view and leave a comment with your thoughts!

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.”

“This is a tremendous milestone for digital music,” said Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group. “Consumers are going to love listening to higher quality iTunes Plus tracks from their favorite EMI artists with no usage restrictions.”

With the release of iTunes Plus, customers can now download tracks from their favorite EMI artists without limitations on the type of music player or number of computers that purchased songs can be played on. iTunes is also offering customers a simple, one-click option to easily upgrade their library of previously purchased EMI content to the iTunes Plus versions.

EMI music videos are now also available in iTunes Plus versions with no change in price. iTunes Plus songs purchased from the iTunes Store will play on all iPods, Mac or Windows computers, widescreen TVs with Apple TV and soon iPhones, as well as many other digital music players.

Source:  Apple Launches iTunes Plus

Amazon’s DRM-free MP3s will let customers play their music on PCs, Macs, iPods, Zunes, Zens and burn songs to CDs for personal use.

“Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO. “We’re excited to have EMI joining us in this effort and look forward to offering our customers MP3s from amazing artists like Coldplay, Norah Jones and Joss Stone.”

via Podcasting News

It’s the first EMI album to be offered for legal download in mp3 format, free of copy protection.

For the first time, downloads by EMI artists purchased from any online music store will be playable on any digital music player, including iPods, with no technical restrictions on their use.

Green Fields, the latest single, and the full album, priced £7.99, are now available to download direct from the www.thegoodthebadandthequeen.com.

via Guardian Unlimited Business

• Continue as is it is now, with each manufacturer competing freely with their own “top to bottom” proprietary systems for selling, playing and protecting music.
• Apple could license its FairPlay DRM technology to current and future competitors with the goal of achieving interoperability between different company’s players and music stores.
• Abolish DRMs entirely – according to Jobs, this is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Jobs concludes by asking that people concerned with DRM convince the record labels to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free, saying that “Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.”

Jobs’ statement is clearly self-serving; the company has faced criticism and legal battles from several European nations over its monopolization of digital music formats.

Nevertheless, Jobs move demonstrates his intuitive mastery of public relations, redirecting criticism of Apple’s monopolization of digital music to the record labels and their licensing restrictions.

Job’s statement has resulted in an outburst of discussion around the Internet.

via Podcasting News

Claire Chanel and Scary Sherman have been keeping busy. First they put together the Jay-Z Construction Set, a complete, downloadable kit for making your own remixes of the latest tripe from Jay-Z. Now they’ve put together a hot collection of noise-filled hits from today’s hottest stars.

Have Sherman & Chanel finally cracked the code and figured out the RIAA’s angle? You be the judge. They’ve collected 10, count ‘em 10 tracks from artists like Aerosmith, Alicia Keys, and the newly single Britney Spears. Oh yeah!

But wait! There’s more!

If you download these RIAA-approved remixes now, you’ll get eleven (11!) more web-only bonus tracks. Each track is the official RIAA Mix! Download them all at RIAAMix.com!

It’s hip, funny, and effective in the way it explains how the major labels work, how artists get screwed, and how there is an alternative.

The site has a great photo essay about printing & distributing major label warning stickers. It documents distributing 2,000 anti-RIAA stickers…at Wal-Mart. It’s funny and effective.

The site also provides news on RIAA suing grandmas and kids, artists that have spoken out against the RIAA, and commercial and non-commercial alternatives.