I got something in the mail last week I'd been wanting for years: a Too Much Joy royalty statement from Warner Brothers that finally included our digital earnings. Though our catalog has been out of print physically since the late-1990s, the three albums we released on Giant/WB have been available digitally for about five years. Yet the royalty statements I received every six months kept insisting we had zero income, and our unrecouped balance ($395,277.18!)* stubbornly remained the same.

Now, I don't ever expect that unrecouped balance to turn into a positive number, but since the band had been seeing thousands of dollars in digital royalties each year from IODA for the four indie albums we control ourselves, I figured five years' worth of digital income from our far more popular major label albums would at least make a small dent in the figure. Our IODA royalties during that time had totaled about $12,000 – not a princely sum, but enough to suggest that the total haul over the same period from our major label material should be at least that much, if not two to five times more. Even with the band receiving only a percentage of the major label take, getting our unrecouped balance below $375,000 seemed reasonable, and knocking it closer to -$350,000 wasn't out of the question.

So I was naively excited when I opened the envelope. And my answer was right there on the first page. In five years, our three albums earned us a grand total of… $62.47.

What the fuck?

I mean, we all know that major labels are supposed to be venal masters of hiding money from artists, but they're also supposed to be good at it, right? This figure wasn't insulting because it was so small, it was insulting because it was so stupid.

Why It Was So Stupid

Here's the thing: I work at Rhapsody. I know what we pay Warner Bros. for every stream and download, and I can look up exactly how many plays and downloads we've paid them for each TMJ tune that Warner controls. Moreover, Warner Bros. knows this, as my gig at Rhapsody is the only reason I was able to get them to add my digital royalties to my statement in the first place. For years I'd been pestering the label, but I hadn't gotten anywhere till I was on a panel with a reasonably big wig in Warner Music Group's business affairs team about a year ago

The panel took place at a legal conference, and focused on digital music and the crisis facing the record industry**. As you do at these things, the other panelists and I gathered for breakfast a couple hours before our session began, to discuss what topics we should address. Peter Jenner, who manages Billy Bragg and has been a needed gadfly for many years at events like these, wanted to discuss the little-understood fact that digital music services frequently pay labels advances in the tens of millions of dollars for access to their catalogs, and it's unclear how (or if) that money is ever shared with artists.

I agreed that was a big issue, but said I had more immediate and mundane concerns, such as the fact that Warner wouldn't even report my band's iTunes sales to me.

The business affairs guy (who I am calling "the business affairs guy" rather than naming because he did me a favor by finally getting the digital royalties added to my statement, and I am grateful for that and don't want this to sound like I'm attacking him personally, even though it's about to seem like I am) said that it was complicated connecting Warner's digital royalty payments to their existing accounting mechanisms, and that since my band was unrecouped they had "to take care of R.E.M. and the Red Hot Chili Peppers first."

That kind of pissed me off. On the one hand, yeah, my band's unrecouped and is unlikely ever to reach the point where Warner actually has to cut us a royalty check. On the other hand, though, they are contractually obligated to report what revenue they receive in our name, and, having helped build a database that tracks how much Rhapsody owes whom for what music gets played, I'm well aware of what is and isn't complicated about doing so. It's not something you have to build over and over again for each artist. It's something you build once. It takes a while, and it can be expensive, and sometimes you make honest mistakes, but it's not rocket science. Hell, it's not even algebra! It's just simple math.

I knew that each online service was reporting every download, and every play, for every track, to thousands of labels (more labels, I'm guessing, than Warner has artists to report to). And I also knew that IODA was able to tell me exactly how much money my band earned the previous month from Amazon ($11.05), Verizon (74 cents), Nokia (11 cents), MySpace (4 sad cents) and many more. I didn't understand why Warner wasn't reporting similar information back to my band – and if they weren't doing it for Too Much Joy, I assumed they weren't doing it for other artists.

To his credit, the business affairs guy told me he understood my point, and promised he'd pursue the matter internally on my behalf – which he did. It just took 13 months to get the results, which were (predictably, perhaps) ridiculous.

The sad thing is I don't even think Warner is deliberately trying to screw TMJ and the hundreds of other also-rans and almost-weres they've signed over the years. The reality is more boring, but also more depressing. Like I said, they don't actually owe us any money. But that's what's so weird about this, to me: they have the ability to tell the truth, and doing so won't cost them anything.

They just can't be bothered. They don't care, because they don't have to.

"$10,000 Is Nothing"

An interlude, here. Back in 1992, when TMJ was still a going concern and even the label thought maybe we'd join the hallowed company of recouped bands one day, Warner made a $10,000 accounting error on our statement (in their favor, naturally). When I caught this mistake, and brought it to the attention of someone with the power to correct it, he wasn't just befuddled by my anger – he laughed at it. "$10,000 is nothing!" he chuckled.

If you're like most people – especially people in unrecouped bands – "nothing" is not a word you ever use in conjunction with a figure like "$10,000," but he seemed oblivious to that. "It's a rounding error. It happens all the time. Why are you so worked up?"

These days I work for a reasonably large corporation myself, and, sadly, I understand exactly what the guy meant. When your revenues (and your expenses) are in the hundreds of millions of dollars, $10,000 mistakes are common, if undesirable.

I still think he was a jackass, though, and that sentence continues to haunt me. Because $10,000 might have been nothing to him, but it was clearly something to me. And his inability to take it seriously – to put himself in my place, just for the length of our phone call – suggested that people who care about $10,000 mistakes, and the principles of things, like, say, honoring contracts even when you don't have to, are the real idiots.

As you may have divined by this point, I am conflicted about whether I am actually being a petty jerk by pursuing this, or whether labels just thrive on making fools like me feel like petty jerks. People in the record industry are very good at making bands believe they deserve the hundreds of thousands (or sometimes millions) of dollars labels advance the musicians when they're first signed, and even better at convincing those same musicians it's the bands' fault when those advances aren't recouped (the last thing $10,000-Is-Nothing-Man yelled at me before he hung up was, "Too Much Joy never earned us shit!"*** as though that fact somehow negated their obligation to account honestly).

I don't want to live in $10,000-Is-Nothing-Man's world. But I do. We all do. We have no choice.

The Boring Reality

Back to my ridiculous Warner Bros. statement. As I flipped through its ten pages (seriously, it took ten pages to detail the $62.47 of income), I realized that Warner wasn't being evil, just careless and unconcerned – an impression I confirmed a few days later when I spoke to a guy in their Royalties and Licensing department I am going to call Danny.****

I asked Danny why there were no royalties at all listed from iTunes, and he said, "Huh. There are no domestic downloads on here at all. Only streams. And it has international downloads, but no international streams. I have no idea why." I asked Danny why the statement only seemed to list tracks from two of the three albums Warner had released – an entire album was missing. He said they could only report back what the digital services had provided to them, and the services must not have reported any activity for those other songs. When I suggested that seemed unlikely – that having every track from two albums listed by over a dozen different services, but zero tracks from a third album listed by any seemed more like an error on Warner's side, he said he'd look into it. As I asked more questions (Why do we get paid 50% of the income from all the tracks on one album, but only 35.7143% of the income from all the tracks on another? Why did 29 plays of a track on the late, lamented MusicMatch earn a total of 63 cents when 1,016 plays of the exact same track on MySpace earned only 23 cents?) he eventually got to the heart of the matter: "We don't normally do this for unrecouped bands," he said. "But, I was told you'd asked."

It's possible I'm projecting my own insecurities onto calm, patient Danny, but I'm pretty sure the subtext of that comment was the same thing I'd heard from $10,000-Is-Nothing-Man: all these figures were pointless, and I was kind of being a jerk by wasting their time asking about them. After all, they have the Red Hot Chili Peppers to deal with, and the label actually owes those guys money.

Danny may even be right. But there's another possibility – one I don't necessarily subscribe to, but one that could be avoided entirely by humoring pests like me. There's a theory that labels and publishers deliberately avoid creating the transparent accounting systems today's technology enables. Because accurately accounting to my silly little band would mean accurately accounting to the less silly bands that are recouped, and paying them more money as a result.

If that's true (and I emphasize the if, because it's equally possible that people everywhere, including major label accounting departments, are just dumb and lazy)*****, then there's more than my pride and principles on the line when I ask Danny in Royalties and Licensing to answer my many questions. I don't feel a burning need to make the Red Hot Chili Peppers any more money, but I wouldn't mind doing my small part to get us all out of the sad world $10,000-Is-Nothing-Man inhabits.

So I will keep asking, even though I sometimes feel like a petty jerk for doing so.

I do not share this information out of a Steve Albini-esque desire to rail against the major label system (he already wrote the definitive rant, which you can find here if you want even more figures, and enjoy having those figures bracketed with cursing and insults). I'm simply explaining why I'm not embarrassed that I "owe" Warner Bros. almost $400,000. They didn't make a lot of money off of Too Much Joy. But they didn't lose any, either. So whenever you hear some label flak claiming 98% of the bands they sign lose money for the company, substitute the phrase "just don't earn enough" for the word "lose."

** The whole conference took place at a semi-swank hotel on the island of St. Thomas, which is a funny place to gather to talk about how to save the music business, but that would be a whole different diatribe.

*** This same dynamic works in reverse – I interviewed the Butthole Surfers for Raygun magazine back in the 1990s, and Gibby Haynes described the odd feeling of visiting Capitol records' offices and hearing, "a bunch of people go, ‘Hey, man, be cool to these guys, they're a recouped band.' I heard that a bunch of times."

**** Again, I am avoiding using his real name because he returned my call promptly, and patiently answered my many questions, which is behavior I want to encourage, so I have no desire to lambaste him publicly.

***** Of course, these two possibilities are not mutually exclusive – it is also possible that labels are evil and avaricious AND dumb and lazy, at the same time.

Reprinted with permission from Too Much Joy.

Mos Def has partnered with clothing company LnA to develop a line of shirts to promote his new album The Ecstatic. Each shirt features an album cover on the front and a track list with a special download code on the back. If you buy the shirt, you get the album for free. SoundScan has even agreed to count the shirt as an album sale. Not a bad deal for a twofer (as long as the shirt is reasonably priced that is). Although, for the record, I prefer Trent Reznor's free model. [Woooha]

Album art used to be a serious pursuit, as if it was equally important to catch both the eyes and the ears of the music shopper. Perhaps, we don't need the allure of album art anymore, since we can instantly gratify our need to hear the music we want to buy or steal. But when I was growing up, it was vital.

Vinyl albums - The mama pajama of album art came from the cardboard, paper and sometimes tissue wrapping around and within 33rpm records. A favorite of mine was Prince's Purple Rain, because the lyrics were printed on the outside for easy sing-along access. ("Ain't gonna let the elevator break us down, oh no, let's go!") More often, lyrics would be found on that easily torn inner sleeve. The best album covers were the ones that opened, with a booklet of photos and lyrics inside. That was the jackpot.

45s, which I actually bought quite a few of in the early to mid 1980s (cuz they were cheap and I was a kid), they usually came in almost no protection at all, just a thin paper wrapper with a hole in the middle to see what was what. The way you could tell the best 45s was, a full-color photograph covered the whole glossy envelope—and there was no hole.

Memorable records:
• Queen - Flash Gordon Original Soundtrack
• Weird Al Yankovic - In 3D
• Pat Benatar "Love Is a Battlefield" 45

Cassettes - This was a dark time for album art and music packaging. Cassettes were frickin' ugly, especially those standardized ones released by Columbia Records, with the red block lettering on the side, and like zero information within. Sealed tight with cellophane, we were first introduced to the concept of needing tools to open our own music. (Though the really cool record collectors sliced open the easily torn plastic wrap, to protect the art within, I always thought of that as the equivalent of Granny covering her couch with plastic.)

As cassettes dominated vinyl, labels put more info into the packs, so that you'd get a piece of paper folded 97 times, out into this long thing. That was it for tape evolution, though—a frickin' long long piece of paper with tiny photos and even tinier lyrics. Folding it back in took origami ninja skill that I didn't have.

I enjoyed cassette singles (or "cassingles") because they were cheap, and only had the songs I cared about. Still, they came in a sleeve that was open at both ends, so the damn tape would always fall out.

Memorable cassettes:
• Steve Winwood - Roll With It
• Hall and Oates - H2O
• Prince - "Alphabet Street" cassette single

CDs - They actually started shipping in long rectangular boxes, so they'd take up exactly 50% of the rack space of a vinyl album. I think this was on purpose, so record stores didn't have to retool their shelving. The upside was lots of surface area for cover art, and the early days of the CD were like a return of album art. These long skinny boxes had huge busts of Jim Morrison, huge prints of the famed Zeppelin explosion that launched a band into stardom. The boxes were also wrapped in easy-to-tear plastic, so getting into your CD, though it took a few steps, was pretty easy.

But then the green freaks got their way, and the cardboard boxes were discontinued. Jewel boxes—and their never-too-popular "eco pac" brethren—just got thicker and thicker booklets, and more and more digital features. Worse, they came increasingly hard to open, to the point where record stores literally started selling specialized tools to open CDs. That's just wrong, but nothing is more wrong than the mercifully short-lived "dogbone" security wrapper, that scarred your jewel box for life.

Memorable CDs:
• Don Dorsey - Beethoven or Bust
• Paul Simon - Graceland
• Dire Straits - Communique

Digital downloads - And so we reach nothing. Not totally nothing, as it seems like every album still requires a 6-inch square illustration to validate its existence. But there's no series of photos, long lists of musicians and instruments and lyrics and writing credits. We're doing with less and less in the way of local information about our recordings—those booklets that told us who played sax on tracks 2, 3 and 7, they're disappearing. We can use the web to gather specifics when really necessary, but label-controlled artist websites really don't help. Some bands put out those digital booklets, but not many. And as far as track metadata, the details are scant. And the gratification is so quick, I almost yearn for the days when I needed a special knife to cut into my new CD.

Memorable downloads:
• Jack Johnson - On and On (first time I skipped the CD)
• David Gray - Life in Slow Motion (first "digital booklet")

I came across this excellent site, the Album Art Exchange, when thinking about this subject. If you want to get a sense of the history and the elaborate nature of album art dating back to the 1960s, I suggest you hop on over.

Listening Test: It's music tech week at Gizmodo.

Let me backtrack for a moment. Someone I know has a birthday coming up, and one item I'd really like to get them is an XBLA (Xbox Live) title. Since the game isn't available in stores, that means I have two solutions. One, I can sneak onto their Xbox like a ninja, enter my credit card info and make the purchase for them (which is just sort of creepy), or two, I can give them an Xbox gift card for the sum of the game.

I'm not really happy with either option.

My sincere gesture, giving a friend a game they'd enjoy because I've accounted for their tastes, is diluted to an exchange of capital. It's really just giving them cash in a nicer form. Sure, you can buy someone a gift card, but you can't actually buy them a gift.

This is a problem.

Today, the limitation is probably only bugging me and a handful of other uber nerds. But what about in four or five years? We're a society that's only moving more and more digital. Soon, even giving someone a CD may very well seem like a dated gesture—one that may inconvenience the recipient since, hell, they don't have a CD drive anymore!

I just don't want to be condemned to a life of gift cards with a little note written in Sharpie "for the new Batman."

Luckily, implementing gift giving on a service like Xbox Live would be incredibly easy. They already have the infrastructure to manage various payment accounts and allow users to communicate to one another and a central server. So imagining a system in which you receive a message informing you that Sk8rB0y has sent you a game is by no means a far stretch. (The feature would probably take Microsoft all of a week to complete, if they put their mind to it.)

But what about an iTunes? UPDATE: They actually offer gifting through email. That's something I didn't realize and I'm guessing a lot of people don't realize. Including even custom playlists, I'll admit, it's a good start. My question to you is, do you consider an email link enough? Does that feel like a gift?

Maybe it's just my perspective that will be forced to change as I bow to the next level of consumerism. But for the moment, the gift card approach feels like a one size fits some philosophy being squeezed over nearly the entire modern home entertainment industry—and I can't imagine it's adding a lot of humanity to the already cold digital realm.

Amazon Game Downloads, still technically in beta (though open to the public), currently offers 600 titles priced at $10 and less. For any title in the store, you can download the full version and play it for 30 minutes before deciding whether or not it's worth a purchase.

As of now, it's definitely intended to be a service for casual games, but obviously Amazon will expand their reach as the market dictates in the future.

Oh, and for those of you who like freebies, Jewel Quest II, The Scruffs, and Built-A-Lot are all available for free download this week only. Live it up. [Amazon via Kotaku]

AppleInsider cites a Dec. 3 story from the French publication Electron Libre that says iTunes will remove DRM from Sony BMG, Universal and Warner tracks on December 9th, like it already does with EMI and indie content. The story doesn't say what percentage of tracks from the major labels, or what the cost bump for the new tracks might be, if any, though it seems to say the thing might cover every single album and track on iTunes. In fact, check out this rather ungraceful machine translation of the French story for yourself:

...The signals are clear today. iTunes should offer catalogs of three majors Universal Music, SonyBMG Music and Waner [sic] rid of technological protection measures next Tuesday, Dec. 9. The transition to DRM Free should be at a global level...

With that opener, it almost reads like a fortune. I for one hope this fortune comes true. [Electron Libre via AppleInsider]

The obvious fear for most users buying ESD products is not having the software on physical media to re-install the product at a later time. Microsoft Store solves this by letting you re-download the product until mainstream support for the product ends. Typically this is 5 years after the product is released. You always have the option of copying the downloaded products to physical media if you want to have it available longer than the mainstream support lifetime.

When I buy a copy of Windows (or anything else), I expect to keep it forever—what if my older PC borks out and my cheap burned disc has degraded? Essentially taking away something I bought is no good, after five years or hell, ten years. On Steam, stuff is there to download forever, like a digital vault, which would make people feel safer about going all-digital. Also, when it comes to your whole OS, it just feels safer to have a hard copy in that lovely swinging plastic box. Updated post for clarity. [Microsoft Store via Trevin Chow via ZDNet]

In addition, those who purchase a Vudu VBX100 Internet Movie player from Best Buy ($300) will receive a $200 voucher for downloadable content, effectively lowering the price to $100. To see their full list of new HD and HDX downloads of the week, read on.

HDX (35):

The Punisher

King of New York

Top Gun

Distant Voices, Still Lives

Happy Endings

House of D

The Job

Undiscovered

Wooly Boys

The Running Man

Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home

Silent Hill

Platoon

To Live and Die in L.A.

Mission: Impossible 2

The Rock

The Matrix Revolutions

The Rookie

Finding Amanda

Shutter

Nim's Island

Street Kings

What Happens in Vegas (Unrated)

Day Watch [Dnevnoy Dozor]

Alien vs. Predator

The Day After Tomorrow

Fight Club

Ice Age

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Little Miss Sunshine

Men of Honor

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Unrated)

Speed

Super Troopers

Transporter 2

HD (389):

Bull Durham

Mad Max

Crimes and Misdemeanors

Robocop 2

Mississippi Burning

The Punisher

Hoosiers

Platoon

The Return of the Pink Panther

King of New York

Shanghai Surprise

The Resurrected

Barfly

The Right Stuff

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous

Unforgiven

Body Heat

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Grave of the Vampire

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Last Tango in Paris

The Magnificent Seven

Midnight Cowboy

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

Hang 'em High

Thelma and Louise

Red Dawn

Fiddler on the Roof

Hoodlum

Much Ado About Nothing

Leviathan

The Secret of NIMH

Jason's Lyric

Posse

The Thomas Crown Affair

The Train

The Pink Panther Strikes Again

At First Sight

Pork Chop Hill

Dirty Work

The Dark Half

Cooley High

Diggstown

The Package

Storefront Hitchcock

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

Force 10 from Navarone

How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying

Mr. Mom

F/X 2

F/X

Desperately Seeking Susan

Miss Julie

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask

Interiors

Manhattan

Easy Money

Pumpkinhead

The Amityville Horror

Pajama Party

Tales of Terror

Ghoulies 2

The Playboys

Code of Silence

Rancho Deluxe

House of Games

Breaker! Breaker!

The Conversation

Mystic Pizza

The Organization

Coffy

Baby Boom

Moonlight and Valentino

City of Industry

The Mighty Quinn

Mermaids

Dr. Phibes Rises Again

Die, Monster, Die!

Alfie

Yours, Mine and Ours

Napoleon

Support Your Local Sheriff

12 Angry Men

Fluke

The Greatest Story Ever Told

King of Hearts

Tank Girl

Youngblood

Semi-Tough

Return of the Magnificent Seven

Shadows and Fog

Throw Momma From the Train

The Pope of Greenwich Village

Pit and the Pendulum

Moby Dick

Sweet Smell of Success

The Barefoot Contessa

Cutter's Way

The Hotel New Hampshire

Reptilicus

Count Yorga, Vampire

Planet of the Vampires

Quigley Down Under

The Return of a Man Called Horse

Valdez Is Coming

A Hole in the Head

Irma La Douce

Little Man Tate

Lawman

Clambake

American Ninja

Bucktown

Colors

Running Scared

Radio Days

The Dogs of War

A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy

Lone Wolf McQuade

The People That Time Forgot

The Purple Rose of Cairo

The Lover

Witness for the Prosecution

Topkapi

Inherit the Wind

The Defiant Ones

Mademoiselle

Romeo Is Bleeding

Lenny

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Khartoum

The Pride and the Passion

UHF

Caveman

Unforgettable

L.A. Streetfighters

A Rumor of Angels

The Return of the Living Dead

The Knack, and How to Get It

The Long Goodbye

Urban Cowboy

CQ

How to Murder Your Wife

Exodus

Border Cop [aka The Border]

Windtalkers

A Kiss Before Dying

A Great Wall

Legend of the Lost

Company Business

Making Mr. Right

Music from Another Room

Mr. Majestyk

Road House

Life Stinks

How to Beat the High Cost of Living

The Couch Trip

Memories of Me

Popi

Personal Velocity

Terror in a Texas Town

My Beautiful Laundrette

Dark Blue

Prisoner of the Mountains

Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins

Avanti!

One, Two, Three

Raw Meat

Thrashin'

Hot Dog... The Movie

Johnny Be Good

Article 99

The Hospital

Bulletproof Monk

Straight Out of Brooklyn

It Runs in the Family

Livin' Large!

Cops and Robbers

To Live and Die in L.A.

Real Men

Flesh and Blood

Follow That Dream

Stay Hungry

Crisscross

Little Monsters

The Magnificent Seven Ride!

Osama

Moulin Rouge

Sleepover

Species 3

Nobody's Fool

Confessions of an American Girl

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Electra Glide in Blue

Mac and Me

Ambush Bay

A Midsummer Night's Dream

The Scalphunters

Dance with Me, Henry

Undertow

What's New Pussycat?

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie

Lady Chatterley's Lover

I Love You, Don't Touch Me!

Inserts

A Dry White Season

Hard Promises

Kid Galahad

F.I.S.T.

21 Hours at Munich

Trail of the Pink Panther

Curse of the Pink Panther

Inspector Clouseau

Farewell to the King

Yellowbeard

Art School Confidential

The Chocolate War

China Doll

Play Dirty

Gun the Man Down

Sabata

Return of Sabata

Adios Sabata

The Battle of El Alamein

The Charge of the Model-T's

Cool Blue

Crusoe

The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission

Double Trouble

Enter the Ninja

Erik the Viking

The Food of the Gods

From Noon Till Three

Futureworld

The Gallant Hours

Ghost Warrior

Ghoulies

The Group

High Tide

The Honey Pot

The Horror Show

Huckleberry Finn

If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium

The In Crowd

Kid Colter

The King and Four Queens

L.A. Bounty

Lupo

Madhouse

The Masque of the Red Death

My American Cousin

Navajo Joe

Octavia

Paper Lion

The Peacekillers

Poltergeist 2: The Other Side

Pursuit

Queen of Hearts

Revolution

Rich Kids

Rolling Thunder

Scandalous

Scream and Scream Again

Some Girls

Teachers

Troll

The White Buffalo

Yentl

For Us, the Living: The Story of Medgar Evers

Iphigenia

Number One

Angel Unchained

Black Girl

The Return of Dracula

Davy Crockett, Indian Scout

The Delinquents

A Fistful of Dynamite

For Those Who Think Young

The Gunfight at Dodge City

The Hawaiians

I Escaped from Devil's Island

Kings of the Sun

Man of the East

Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country

Braveheart

Clue

Escape from Alcatraz

Pootie Tang

Posse

Soapdish

The Presidio

The Virgin Suicides

Days of Thunder

Friday the 13th: Part 2

The Running Man

Parents

Beverly Hills Cop 2

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Director's Cut)

Gattaca

Silent Hill

Distant Voices, Still Lives

Happy Endings

House of D

The Job

Undiscovered

Wooly Boys

The Foot Fist Way

Beverly Hills Cop 3

Avalanche

The Bed Sitting Room

Blue State

The Neanderthal Man

Phaedra

Child's Play

Pussycat, Pussycat, I Love You

Rebel in Town

Revolt at Fort Laramie

The Revolt of the Slaves

Robbers' Roost

Salt and Pepper

Scarecrows

The Secret of Santa Vittoria

He Who Must Die

Hurricane Streets

Species: The Awakening

This World, Then the Fireworks

Convoy

Death Rides a Horse

Hercules Against the Barbarians

The Last Man on Earth

Welcome to Woop Woop

The Wonderful Country

Young Billy Young

The Young Savages

The Relentless Four

To Kill For

The Rock

The Maltese Falcon

Ben-Hur

Blade Runner (Director's Cut)

Murder at 1600

Once Upon a Time in America

Scooby-Doo in Where's My Mummy?

Swing Shift

Three Kings

The Baby-Sitters Club

The Rookie

Cyborg Soldier

Reprise

For Your Consideration

Cinderella Man

The Juror

The Counterfeiters

Brian's Song

If Lucy Fell

A Slipping Down Life

The Hard Word

Shutter

Nim's Island

Street Kings

What Happens in Vegas (Unrated)

In the Name of the King

Day Watch [Dnevnoy Dozor]

Alien vs. Predator

Behind Enemy Lines

Courage Under Fire

The Day After Tomorrow

Die Hard With a Vengeance

Fantastic Four

Fight Club

I, Robot

Ice Age

Ice Age: The Meltdown

The Jewel of the Nile

Kingdom of Heaven

Little Miss Sunshine

The Longest Day

Man on Fire

Me, Myself and Irene

Men of Honor

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Unrated)

Phone Booth

The Sentinel

Super Troopers

Transporter 2

X2: X-Men United

X-Men: The Last Stand

Fay Grim

The Omen

[Vudu]

So how do they get away with it? Well, Lala assumes that you're doing most of your listening over the web—as a result, the songs that cost a dime are only playable through a browser, like Rhapsody in the olden days. If you want the DRM-free MP3 for your portable player (or whatever), you're looking at a more typical 89 to 99-cent sticker price. All songs in the 6 million+ track catalog can be sampled once for free before you commit to purchasing them, and the 10 cents for a web purchase can be credited toward your MP3 purchase, so it's not money lost.

If you listen to most of your music sitting at the computer, and have qualms about stealing it, Lala may very well be a good way to go. It's like a soup made up of the best components of other online music services such as iTunes, Rhapsody, Pandora, and Last.fm. The site is appealing, the music recommendation engine is good, and there's some value in there. If you're the type of person who would add just one or two new songs per day to your personal playlist, this kind of a la carte pay system is a lot cheaper and more practical than Rhapsody. You can build up a nice collection for a few dollars a month, and you don't keep paying after you've amassed all the music you need.

Finally, web browsers and internet connectivity is becoming, if not already, the norm in smartphones, I mean "coms", and Lala plans to expand to meet this market. They already have an iPhone app in the approval process, which will play recommended songs and hopefully soon, your web library too. An app that acts like Simplify and Pandora together? It could be a real winner, but we'll reserve judgment till we see it in action. [Lala]

PALO ALTO, Calif., October 21, 2008 – Lala is unveiling the first and only free service to instantly provide anywhere Web access to an existing MP3 music library such as iTunes. Replacing the outdated approach of uploading MP3 files from a PC, Lala introduces a licensed technology to instantly match songs from consumers’ personal music library with the Web-based catalog on lala.com.

Adding new music to a collection is easier and less expensive than ever. Sample any full song or complete album for free. Add songs to a Web collection for only 10 cents, and buy DRM-free MP3 downloads for as low as an additional 79 cents.

“We live our lives in a browser, whether it’s emailing, watching television shows or using Facebook” said Geoff Ralston, CEO of Lala. “When I launched Yahoo! Mail few thought hundreds of millions would depend on Web email. My music belongs online in the same way. Will there be anything without a browser in 5 years?”

Microsoft Explorer, FireFox, and Safari browsers on both Windows and Mac OS are supported.

Major and Independent Labels Support
All four major labels including EMI Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group and publishers have licensed Lala with partnership agreements to stream and sell music online.

And unlike ad-supported music sites, Lala has garnered support from over 170,000 independent labels and distributors.

"We thank Lala for their support of A2IM and the independent music community and congratulate them on the launch of their new service which includes tens of thousands of independent artists, labels, aggregators and distributors," said Rich Bengloff, President of The American Association For Independent Music (A2IM). "As the primary advocacy group for the independent music community, we also applaud Lala for recognizing the value of independent labels and artists to their business and providing inclusion to the independent community in their launch."

The Most Affordable Music on the Web
Lala offers consumers the easiest, most affordable way to buy music on the Web. Lala’s catalog includes over 6 million songs which users can play once for free before buying. For as little as 10 cents, users can buy a Websong, a new product that gives users the ability to play as often as they choose from their web collection. The Websong fee can be applied towards the purchase of the DRM-free MP3 version of the same track. MP3s are priced from 89 cents or 79 cents with a prior web song purchase.

Unique Features of lala.com
· Completely advertising free service
· First and only fully licensed service for free Web hosting of a personal music library
· Instant matching of MP3s and iTunes Fairplay songs to the Web without uploading
· Fully featured web-application in a browser with speedy look-ahead search, drag and drop playlist creation, and instant, continuous music streaming
· 6 million and growing song catalog
· Free sampling of the entire catalog as songs or albums
· Websongs available for purchase at 10 cents or less
· DRM-free MP3s for additional price of 79 cents
· Support of popular Web browsers including Windows Explorer, Firefox, and Safari
· Support for both Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS
· Catalog of all four major labels and publishers
· Catalog of 170,000 independent labels

The move is part of a broader Dell initiative that will soon offer more movie preloads and eventually a whole Dell iTunes-like digital download store. But we can't help but to think it's a little strange all the same.

Then again, I, for one, would pay big bucks for an Iron Man co-branded antivirus software package. How great would it be to watch Iron Man beat the crap out of malicious files? Pew pew! Kapowee!! [Dell]

Since Blu-ray was announced, there's been a lot of talk about its impending obsolescence in the face of digital downloads. Just last week, Samsung took a low blow at the format, predicting its lifespan to be only five years. Sony fired back, claiming that the "Blu-ray format will not only coexist with the networked era, but will actually enhance it for many years to come."

I'm here to say, I don't give a crap that Blu-ray is living with an incurable disease, wasting away on intravenous feeding tubes stuffed with the cash of early adopters. It's, sadly, still the best option for me to watch hi def movies. Why?

Digital downloads take too damn long to acquire
You've been there. It's a Wednesday night, your butt is planted on the couch and you feet are on the coffee table. You splurge on some delivery and plan an impromptu movie night with your sweetie. "Let's download something." You pick out a film. And then you wait. Your dinner comes. And you eat in silence, watching a status bar trickle to a buffer point capable of playing the film without interruption. Want to download an HD clip? You'd better order it at lunchtime. The convenience of download, in terms of speed, is an illusion.

There's limited content in HD
If you are using a service that supports HD (which excludes popular download spots like Unbox right off the bat), chances are that the content you want to watch isn't in HD anyway. I know it's just a documentary, but I want to flex the muscles of my HDTV a bit. Don't make me pick through old, rotting produce. Chances are if I have the tech to download your movie, I have the tech to watch it in HD.

The content in HD costs extra
I'm still at a loss here. Why should I pay more to download a movie in HD? You can point to film remasterings, or argue that Blu-ray is priced at a premium too. But the simple fact is that Blu-ray will eventually be as price-friendly as DVD (pending its adoption) while downloading services will ALWAYS have the bandwidth excuse to charge you extra. And that HD download isn't coming with anything special other than the resolution that you can get free on freaking antenna broadcasts.

That HD content might be compressed (not really HD)
So you say you've found a service that gives you instant HD streaming? You didn't. They may call it 720P, but it's got more compression artifacts than Blu-ray any day.

DRM restrictions are absurd
I rented a movie the other day on my PS3. Lars and the Real Girl. But I made the mistake of previewing the content, just for 10 seconds or so, as it downloaded. Then I walked away. But when I returned the next night to watch the movie, oopsies, my 24 viewing window was up. The DRM was smart enough to know when I first loaded the movie, but didn't care as to whether or not I'd had a chance to actually watch it. Netflix and Blockbuster understand that plans change, and that's why they offer consumers a way to watch movies at their own pace.

I don't trust digital formats to be less obsolete in the future than Blu-ray
MPEG4, the codec that both Blu-ray and download services use, isn't going anywhere soon. But there's enough DRM on most downloads that not only links you to a specific platform (PS3/AppleTV), but a specific download service (iTunes, Unbox, etc) as well. Do I really believe that my Unbox purchases will be there 5, 10, or even 20 years from now? No. And if they are, will it be easy to access old hardware to bring up the service? Probably not. But VHS, DVD and Blu-ray will all plug into my TV for a long time to come. Unlike services that don't allow unlimited redownloads, I won't have to worry about swapping hard drives only to find SATA connections are dead for a better (read: incompatible) format with my PC.

And Piracy Doesn't Make it Any Better
Look, I'm not an 8-year-old living off some minuscule allowance. I don't have to make sure I have cash left for the movies after splurging one day at the comic book store. I want things to be simple, even if that means I have to pay for it. Bittorrent isn't all that easy. Unless you're downloading the latest, most popular content, good luck finding enough seeders to get a decent download speed...if you're lucky enough to find what you're looking for at all.

I know what I'm saying isn't cool. I know that Blu-ray sits on a temporal fissure in the way media is delivered to us, probably teetering before it falls into an abyss beside its friend VHS.

But at least I know where my Blu-ray is going—on my shelf, ready to watch whenever I choose at a quality I can appreciate with extras still not found in downloads. (Plus, if I insist on watching the movie on my computer, many Blu-rays are accommodating that anyway.) If that makes me old fashioned, then so be it. They don't make media like they used to.

Massachusetts, Wyoming, and Washington are gearing up for their bills, just to name a few. It's actually kinda surprising it took this long for the taxes to start piling on. Most of the initial considerations about squashing a nascent market are nearly moot this point, in any case, with the digital market booming. I mean, when 30 percent of music revenues in the U.S. are digital, and the biggest music retailer in the world deals exclusively in digital content, you know the tax collector is going to be slinking close behind.

The one thing that might save us from being taxed is geography. States can only tax businesses that have a physical presence within their borders. Congress could change the law (and they probably will at some point), but in an election year, it's unlikely (one reason to be glad the circus is in town until November). It'll be interesting to see how this plays out—digital taxes seem like an inevitability, however. CNet points to NY as a bastion of tax-free sanity, but they're trying to squeeze Amazon right now, so it seems like a safe bet the money they could bring from taxing downloads will look pretty damn tangible. [Cnet]

"It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do," Yorke told the Hollywood Reporter." I don't think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time."

Yorke and Co. have remained tight-lipped about whether they think the move was a success or not, but the freebie method has been adopted by other artists, notably Nine Inch Nails. The latest group to jump on the freebie bandwagon is Coldplay, aka Radiohead Lite, who announced on Monday that their new single, Violet Hill, would be available for free, and promptly b0rked the interweb* with their selfless gesture. [Reuters]

*The band's official website crashed.

"If you look at studies about MP3 players, especially leading MP3 players and what portion of that content is pirated, and think about how that content gets onto that device, it has to go through a gatekeeping piece of software, which would be a convenient place to put some antipiracy measures. We are financially harmed every day by piracy. It results in us not being able to invest as much money in the next generation of film and TV products."

After all, since then, iTunes has passed even Wal-Mart's massive moving power in its B&M stores to become the US's biggest music retailer. Plus, all Big Four have already signed on with Amazon for DRM-free music, making it the no. 2 digital retailer. At this point, they've either gotta step up or step aside. [Listening Post]

[LimeWire Music Blog]