Culture and Society

Nice review of portable digital audio players from TechTV, including a handy comparison charts: Other than the third-generation iPod, we’ve spent most of 2003 waiting for an innovative new MP3 player. We can finally welcome a whole new crop of players. They sport vast hard drives, innovative form factors, extra …

Wal-Mart doesn’t want to lose its clout in the “music software” arena. It seems to me they have the kind of leverage that could really drive the price of a digital song down, or maybe they don’t really care: Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer and the top seller …

There is good and bad about the Penn State-Napster deal: good that someone worked out a blanket deal with a provider of digital music, bad that there so many restrictions on usage, and especially the $.99 per-song price to keep permanently or to burn to CD. This will not solve …

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Creem to crush trees once again: When Creem relaunches on newsstands next year, the rock magazine hopes to bring back the sarcastic wit and intelligent, observant voice that Creem CEO/publisher Robert Matheu says has been lost in much of today’s national consumer music magazines. In an exclusive interview with Billboard.com, …

Napster is wasting no time jumping into high profile marketing maneuvers, taking on iTunes and the seven dwarfs with confidence and aplomb: Penn State University announced today it is going to revolutionize the music world with a ground-breaking agreement with the online music service Napster, a division of Roxio. ….Penn …

This is an odd news report: More than a million households deleted all the digital music files they had saved on their PCs in August – a sign that the record industry’s anti-piracy tactics are hitting home, said research company NPD Group on Wednesday. NPD credited the ongoing anti-piracy campaign …

These young whippersnappers just keep coming up with ways to bug people with their mobile phones: Phone owners now have something else to do with their handset: bluejacking. This involves sending anonymous text messages to other phone users via Bluetooth short-range radio. Bluetooth works over a range of about 10 …

Good news for the industry, although there aren’t all that many songs even available in physical form, but that’s another story. Digital tracks are outselling physical singles by a growing margin, a sign that consumers increasingly are embracing the brave new world of Internet downloading. Digital download sales outpaced physical …

I like Taking Back Sunday quite a bit – great screaming melodic punky emo – in a good way. They are on tour with Saves the Day! through November and have some very cool news for fans: Taking Back Sunday and Nokia have teamed up to provide fans direct contact …