At the Dive Into Media conference today, Neil Young spoke on music piracy and music quality. He detailed his solution to audio quality and his relationship with Steve Jobs.

Speaking first on the MP3 format, Young said that digital formats are convenient, but they sound lousy. He said that his goal is to “rescue the art form that I’ve been practicing for the past 50 years.” He blames the digital age for the degradation of music quality.

Modern digital formats sound great on my phone and I have no problem with it. Young, however, rightly points out that the digital encoding only captures a small percent of the musical data in a master recording.

Young doesn’t hate digital formats, far from it. He just feels that the “digital age” has caused people to choose between quality and convenience. “They shouldn’t have to make that choice,” Young said.

The solution is hardware that can play audio files that preserve more of the data present in the original recordings according to Young. He isn’t making that solution though. He’s leaving the heavy lifting to “some rich guy” like Steve Jobs.

Speaking of Jobs, Young says that he was a “pioneer of digital music, and his legacy is tremendous.” He says that Jobs listened to vinyl at home after a day’s work. If Jobs were to live long enough as Young has, he’s sure that Jobs would have found a solution.

He then moved onto record companies and whether or not they’re obsolete:

“What I like about record companies is that they present and nurture artists. That doesn’t exist on iTunes, it doesn’t exist on Amazon. That’s what a record company does, and that’s why I like my record company. People look at record companies like they’re obsolete, but there’s a lot of soul in there — a lot of people who care about music, and that’s very important.”

He then said that artists that complain about record companies should go it alone and become indie artists.

At the end of the talk, he tackled the sensitive issue of piracy:

“Piracy is new radio. That’s how music gets around.”

Starting yesterday, Napster officially began merging with Rhapsody, the largest on-demand music service in the United States. Back in October, Best Buy, the parent company of Napster, agreed to sale to Rhapsody for an undisclosed amount of money.

“This deal will further extend Rhapsody’s lead over our competitors in the growing on-demand music market,” said Jon Irwin, president, Rhapsody. “There’s substantial value in bringing Napster’s subscribers and robust IP portfolio to Rhapsody as we execute on our strategy to expand our business via direct acquisition of members and distribution deals.”

Combining the subscriber bases of the two largest on-demand music services will allow Rhapsody to further enhance it’s offerings, and try their damnedest to stay ahead of Spotify (where Napster co-founder, Sean Parker, is a major investor). According to Adam Parness, the senior director of music licensing for Rhapsody, they’ve seen an increase in subscriptions for the service since Spotify came state side. “We have seen tremendous growth since spotify came onto U.S. soil,” he said. “It validates our model.”

It’s unclear how many subscribers Rhapsody gained, seeing how the merger is now complete.

What are some of your memories of Napster? Will it be remembered fondly? Let us know your thoughts in the comment area below.

That’s right, Gaga’ new release is once again available on Amazon for 99 cents. Granted, the format is digital, but in this day and age of mobile device dominance, does that even matter? The promotion is humorously called “This Time We’re Ready,” although, the proof of that will obviously be in the way Amazon performs.

Of course, most Gaga fanatics already have the “Born This Way,” so the rush shouldn’t be as taxing as it was on May 23rd. Craig Pape, director of music for Amazon, had this to say about the re-release, er, release at the special price deal:

“Clearly customers are really excited for Lady Gaga’s new album – we saw extraordinary response to Monday’s promotion – far above what we expected – she definitely melted some servers. So we’re doing it again, and this time we’re ready. We’re pleased to offer ‘Born This Way’ – the whole album – for $0.99 today only. Along with this purchase, customers get 20 GB of free Amazon Cloud Drive storage so they can store and play their music anywhere. If you missed it the first time, don’t miss it today.”

Upon its release, “Born This Way” went directly to the top of Amazon’s top-selling MP3s list, and it hasn’t changed since. Undoubtedly, the “This Time We’re Ready” promotion will solidify Gaga’s standing as ruler of Amazon’s MP3 department. What are your thoughts on the Gaga’s newest release? Love it? Hate it? Let us know what you think.

The Commission pointed to a study that found listening to personal music players at a high volume over a long period can lead to permanent hearing damage and 5 to 10 percent of listeners risk permanent hearing loss. It’s estimated that up to 10 million people in the EU may be at risk.

Meglena Kuneva,
EU Commissioner

"It’s easy to push up the sound levels on your MP3 player to damagingly loud levels, especially on busy streets or public transport. And the evidence is that particularly young people – who are listening to music at high volumes sometimes for hours each week- have no idea they can be putting their hearing at risk. It can take years for the hearing damage to show, and then it is simply too late," said Meglena Kuneva, EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner.

"These standards make small technical changes to players so that by default, normal use is safe. If consumers chose to override the default settings they can, but there will be clear warnings so they know the risks they are taking."

The EU plans to implement the new MP3 volume standards after a 24-month process involving scientists, industry and consumer groups as well as other stakeholders.
 

Recent by comments by Microsoft executives have led to speculation that Microsoft may abandon the Zune.

Microsoft CEO Ballmer declared at CES that consumers increasingly were moving away from one task devices like the Zune towards smart phones while at the same time stating flatly that no Zune phone was in the works.

Microsoft president of the Entertainment and Devices Division Robbie Bach told the press, "We have already started to see some flattening and even declining in the stand-alone MP3 player market. I think you’ll see that continue. As phones get more capable, as battery life gets better, people’s desire to have their music with them along with their phone is certainly going to go up."

A Look Inside A Very Controversial Startup

You paid for that mp3 and you don’t want it anymore. Why not sell it? Despite a a legal quagmire that suggests that you shouldn’t, startup bopaboo.com says you can and they’ll help you. 

Still in private beta, bopaboo provides a simple marketplace to buy and sell mp3′s and potentially other digital content. In a test, I was able to upload a random mp3 and have it on sale for 45 cents (a typical price) in seconds. Using a bopaboo provided $1 credit, I bought another mp3 and downloaded it easily.  Seconds later, since it was still in my online locker (bopabox) as well as on my computer, I had the same track back up for sale.

Therein lies the legal rub for the music industry and for bopaboo, the ease with which digital music can be copied.  Music attorney John Strohm looked at the issue…

and concluded that the most obvious illegal act happened when the track was copied and bopaboo did not do the copying. But "is there a way to confirm that the files being sold are obtained legally and that the seller is not retaining copies?," he wrote on Idolator. "If not, is a company truly able to insulate itself from liability through its terms of use, and are consumers willing to take the risk?"

In other words, just like a pawn shop can be prosecuted for selling goods it could reasonably have suspected were stolen, bopaboo might be proven to be facilitate and even encourage the sale of illegally copied tracks and the buyer to have purchased stolen or copied goods.

Bopaboo is not unaware of the legal challenges it is certain to face. "When we began Bopaboo, we set for ourselves not a modest challenge: can we provide consumers a legal method and marketplace to buy and sell digital music?," executive Alex Meshkin wrote on the company’s official blog. The next chapter’s should be interesting.

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A new study by JupiterResearch, a Forrester Research company, predicts that digital music will grow from the current 18% to 41% of total sales in 5 years. Researchers credited stores like Amazon and the transition to mp3′s which make downloads portable for some of the increase.

The "U.S. Music Forecast 2008 to 2013" predicts that growth in digital music sales will not compensate for declining CD sales, with the U.S. music market shrinking over the next five years from $10.2 billion to $9.8 billion.

64% of subscribers to digital music services and 57% of those who download music also bought a CD in a store within the last year. Regular digital music consumers have shifted 60% of their music spending to digital. The study predicts that music on cell phones will only contribute 3% to overall sales or $300 million by 2013.

ANALYSIS: While the CD will continue to hang on, most..

There had to be a better way. It’s no surprise that Yahoo! Music is shutting down its download store and pointing customers to Rhapsody.  But did they have to pull a Microsoft and stop supporting the retrieval of license keys or authorize playback on additional computers? Here’s the email that came last night:

 

Greetings,

The Yahoo! Music Store, along with the ability to purchase and download single songs and albums, will no longer be available as of September 30, 2008.

Songs and albums that were purchased through the Yahoo! Music Unlimited Store…

For me, (RED) is a powerful brand that offer lots of sustainable opportunities, and it’s great to see the fund looking towards new media as one of its strategies. Personally, I think that (RED) should look more actively into using the power of social media and networks to encourage word of mouth. There are lots of ways in which the Web could be used more actively to promote the fund, the product line, and to ultimately penetrate the heart and minds of brand ambassadors and supporters (and their communities) who – because of the very emotive nature of the cause – could become viral agents.

Bono, give me a call when next you’re in town

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