Of course, it's highly-compressed digital audio, and therefore pretty crappy. But I have to admit, the offerings go well beyond the pop selected for the Jonas Brothers' playlist — while I'm sure the cashiers at Amoeba Records might still sneer at the selection's depth, my searches for everything from Os Mutantes to Gas Huffer, Blind Willie McTell to Mongo Santamaria came up with multiple tracks to choose from. Eventually. The site is currently running incredibly slow, which may be a good sign of interest or a critical fumble of the launch. Users frustrated in the process of creating playlists might just go back to Last.fm, Imeem, iTunes or any of a number of other places to preview and purchase tracks.

(Photos by Walter Kitundu)

It has every media component you could want, and they're all married together in a platform. That means other artists could use it, other record companies could use it and gain the knowledge of our 15-year development curve.

If you doubt the man's seriousness about screwing around with technology, check out this live 1982 performance of the vocoder-driven "Sample and Hold." See? Those old analog vocoders beat the pants off T-Pain's digital auto-tuner. At the JavaOne conference, Young eagerly extolled the virtues of the entertainment industry's production standard of 96kHz, 24-bit digital audio.

Why do golden-ear types like Young hate MP3s? The format results in lower dynamic range, lossy compression artifacts and is thin in the upper frequencies. Digital audio also produces harsh even-order harmonics and not the odd-order harmonics which add textural timbre to chords, and integrated circuit amplifiers have a high noise floor because of radio-frequency interference. Even young consumers prefer the sound of analog hi-fi systems like Jackson Pollock's. (Photo by Andrea Barsanti)

An auto-refresh page which loads the video over and over.

Every 15 seconds this page will automatically refresh adding 1 view to Girlfriend's YouTube total each time it does. Keep this page open while you browse the internet, study for exams, or even sleep. For extra viewing power, open up two or more browser windows at this page!

It's the kind of view-gaming that advertisers would normally consider fraud — that is, if what fans were doing wasn't better the best advertising Lavigne and her label RCA could buy.

Of course, it was mere allegations of view-gaming that eventually caused YouTube to pull the previous pretender to the "Most viewed" throne, Clarus Bartel's Cansei der Sexy (Music is my hot, hot sex). But I have a feeling YouTube won't be pulling Lavigne's video any time soon. Once at the top, the views will simply snowball from there. And YouTube will be in the happy position of selling advertising against a pop star's music video that is, itself, advertising.

While the view gaming of the Girlfriend video might have juiced the stats, what's amazing is that it achieved its place with off-site embedding turned off. YouTube, a cross-site video pioneer that has now become a black hole where embeds go to die thanks to the DMCA and copy-protection filters, can't mind — because rather than running against ads on a third-party site, every Lavigne view is in on the company's site and in the company's salable partner program inventory.

Lavigne is still officially in second place, less than a million views off the leader's pace. In Laipply's video, the use of licensed music falls under fair use territory, but it's enough of a gray area that he isn't even in the partner program, and therefore can't generate a single advertising impression. Still, considering the controversy over retaking the top spot stirred by a lone Italian with video editing software and possibly some scripting tricks, I wouldn't be surprised if the situation wasn't being monitored manually with YouTube admins freezing view counts until the company can come to some agreement with RCA. It's the music business, after all, where a little extortion between friends is standard operating procedure.

Handily for the PM, U2's music is available on the Japanese iTunes store. In November 2006, Bono gave then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe a pair of his Armani Red campaign sunglasses for the same cause. (Photo by AP/Peter Dejong)

In an attempt to counter Live Nation's concert/album/merchandise bid, Warner got Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp involved. IAC owns Ticketmaster, whose ticketing deal with Live Nation expired in August. Even so, the money was too much for Madonna to refuse. Under the new deal, Madonna will collect $120 million over 10 years plus 90 percent of tour revenue.

Madonna's albums will still be distributed through normal retail channels. Live Nation doesn't have a distribution arm, so it will contract, instead, with another label. Also unusual for the industry is a term under which ownership of the three albums to be recorded will revert to Madonna after a certain period of time.

Other big groups will be watching Madonna, Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead to see how their ventures work out. The fact that players like Live Nation are getting in the business tells us that middlemen will continue to play a role in connecting musicians with listeners. It just won't be the same middlemen as before.

(AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

The company's top lawyer said, "Most content owners understand that we respect copyrights, we work every day to help them manage their content, and we are developing state-of-the-art tools to let them do that even better." This bullshit started to smell months ago, and Prince has long been a caller-out of bull. (Remember that the "my name is now a symbol" stunt was his way of avoiding an unfair label contract.) On the other hand, YouTube knows that it's easier for most labels and artists to give in and take a cut of ad revenue from these illegal clips, than to constantly delete the clips that users will submit over and over like the Persian horde.

Prince is also suing eBay for allowing the sale of knockoff merch, and file-sharing site Pirate Bay for helping users find illegal copies of his music. There goes the support he earned from free-the-music wonks this summer when he gave his latest album away in newspapers.

Whatever, the labels are just jealous of AllofMP3's huge growth potential.

AllOfMP3.com Will Not Die, No Matter How Many Angry Companies Sue It [Idolator]
Weak iTunes Sales a Blow to Record Labels [NPR]

CD-swapping site LaLa used some of its nine million bucks to buy an resurrect a dead Internet radio station, WOXY. Just when you thought a site already made obsolete by Amazon, eBay, and iTunes couldn't get any more irrelevant, ya know?

So maybe this will pit LaLa against popular customized Internet radio sites like Pandora and Last.fm. Hahahahahanope. Those services actually play the music someone wants. Because it's meant for wide broadcast ("wide" here meaning "less than the local country station"), WOXY will run crippled playlists under heinous laws for Internet radio. A CNET writer reports:

LaLa has been very careful about following the letter of the law, which includes obtaining the proper licenses and imposing certain rules on the DJs. The stations must be at least three hours long, you can only use two songs per artist, and you cannot listen to your own station (bummer). But, hey, it is free, so I'm not gonna complain too much.

"But, hey, it is free, so I'm not gonna complain." Not quite the perfect tagline.

LaLa.com revives WOXY [CNET]

New Friend Request by Gym Class Heroes [YouTube]

"There is this song I keep hearing on the radio in Atlanta called 'MySpace Freak' by some lowly rap group," says reader Paul Stamatiou. Any song that begins with "Chillin' at the crib" is guaranteed awesome, and C-Side's "MySpace Freak" delivers.

Listen to the mp3 here.

Does this officially mean MySpace is no longer white and nerdy?

C-Side "MySpace Freak" [XXL Mag]
C-Side on MySpace [MySpace]

• Tonight through tomorrow, go to Yahoo's campus for Yahoo Hack Day to hang with coders. Oh, and Beck. [Upcoming]
• Beck and people who sound like Beck play at the Download Music Festival tomorrow in San Fran. [Download Festival]
• Our Silicon Alley brothers can hit up the Wired NextFest in New York City. Picture the Chicago World's Fair plus Bruce Sterling. [NextFest]

Thing is, no one was on user's backs about soundtrack music before this. There was the occasional takedown, but nothing on a scale this massive. Most users assume that if they bought the song, they can dance to it on a webcam and slap the video on the Internet. But that's not a right users can buy off the rack.

So why not sell it?

Practically every online downloading system already comes with a Digital Rights Management lock that limits its use. That same technology could mark music as "pre-approved for performance" — a song that users can play with, dance to, re-record, and post to the Internet with impunity. YouTube could check for a simple key, much easier than whatever magic copyrighted-music-recognizer YouTube has up its sleeve.

It's just a hard-coded version of the Creative Commons license — a license that seemed too niche just three years ago, when the process to make a music video was too daunting for the average teen. But everyone's an artist now — and they "steal" songs because they love them, not to stick it to the man as an earlier generation did.

CC is not just a license to steal. A license holder can ask that all derivative works include attribution for the works used. And what crazy-dancing fan of the Numa Numa song would object to adding an iTunes link to "Dragostea din Tei by O-Zone" to their video liner notes?

Earlier: Feature: Why YouTube's best deal will be its death [Valleywag]

Today, YouTube announces that Warner Music will publish music videos (and some other video) through the popular video site, with both companies profiting from ads. Also, YouTube says it invented a copyrighted-material-finding machine (?) that will scour through the site's many amateur vids and give Warner Music the option to nix them or license the music.

What does this mean for YouTube? Well, the ad revenue is just what it needs, and it's a lot better than the Paris Hilton video deal. But no one cares about that right now. It's all about this magical copyright finder.

While the casual reader (say Marshall Kirkpatrick, Web 2.0 consultant turned blogger) may think this is a good sign, the more experienced Mark Cuban says this is doom for YouTube. Cuban compares YouTube's current situation to Napster in 1999 pretending its business was legal. (At that time, Cuban was pretending that his startup Broadcast.com was worth the over $5 billion Yahoo paid for it. The dude knows his dot-com booms.) Cuban says users will give YouTube the finger once it starts cracking down on their casual soundtracking. (How many YouTube videos are just a kid dancing to a song?)

Dead 2.0, an anonyblogger who may or may not know what the hell he's talking about, adds that this deal doesn't mean Warner Brothers will pump movies through YouTube any time soon. "If you haven't actually worked with content companies before," he says, "you are generally less aware of the fact that the various departments almost never interact with each other, and consent from the group doing videos does not imply any bigger deals." Plus, Time Warner sold Warner Music two years ago.

In short, this deal is part of YouTube's shift from "we love our users" to "oh shit we need to profit." It's an archetypal path for startups — Napster had to escape the lawyers, the New York Times needs that subscription charge, and Yahoo needed that China market share more than it needed to protect some political dissidents. The rare company that stays in love with its users — Craigslist, for example — does so by sacrificing millions of ad and fee dollars.

Warner distribute videos through YouTube [AP on Yahoo]

Rev up the awkward "new baby" metaphors, Gawker launched a new title today. Idolator is the music blog too hip for music blogs, complete with manifesto, glitzy logo (Is that a heart or is it the RIAA's bag of souls?), and a new spin on the Gawker cynicism you know and love.

"When the internet came, we overthrew the pasty white tastemakers," sez they. (Don't tell the poor souls the truth.) "And then they all came back. This is Idolator. We're so disappointed."

And so tech-savvy. On Day 1, Idolator blogs about Bill Gates rocking the Zune, MySpace hook-up hip-hop, and the Pandora online music service. Even the hipsters are geeks now.

Idolator [Front Page]

Thanks to TED's Creative Commons License, you can remix the original video.

David Pogue on TED Talks [TED]

Yes, Computer Manufacturer for White People #2 might actively court the "urban" market with cheap computers. Does this mean laptops selling at the same price as current iPods? Will Steve Jobs prevent a rush by requiring food stamps for the purchase? Is this as close as the Apple-owning miser gets to charity?

And, most importantly, will the cheap PC come in black?

50 Cent in Negotiations With Apple [Vibe]

• Dodgeball: Blogger "Assimilated Negro"'s ode to a which-bar-you-at site.
• Message No. 419: Nigerian spam song by MC Frontalot
• Hail to the IBM: An official anthem from the IBM songbook
• Technologic: The Daft Punk hit from the classic iPod ads. Buy it, use it, surf it, scroll it!

And mix it, burn it, mash it, change it — original submissions, lyrics for someone to record, and offers to record someone's lyrics are welcome too. That's tips@valleywag.com, everyone!

• Today's "Reason that San Francisco is cooler than San Jose" is a warning to vegetarians: In Silicon Valley, waiters forcibly stuff meat down your throat. [Metroactive]
• Apparently everyone who didn't know about the Adobe/Microsoft fight over the PDF format has their heads in the sand. Yeah, they're all probably worrying about obscure news this week, like the US killing the world's leading terrorist. [Planet PDF]
• Thanks again, SloshCon sponsors! To everyone else: If you want to give people money to drink, please sponsor the Gnomedex parties coming up in July. [Ponzarelli]
• Is the Glam.com blog network scamming its writers? (Ha, name a blog network that isn't.) A tipster says, "Apparently their $11m in funding doesn't cover paying out a few cents to their partners." [Celebitchy]
• Songwriter Billy Bragg takes his music off Myspace, saying the site's terms and conditions let Rupert Murdoch's media empire re-use all posted music without paying a cent in royalties. One wonders if News Corp would ever get away with acting on that clause, but either way, YAY FOR LEAVING MYSPACE. [Register]
• Pictured: Best. Caption. Ever. The Register snarks at Dell for throwing Wall Street Journal editor Don Clark...a birthday party. [Register]

powered by ODEO

Look. If any of you make another mix of samples from Mayer's Stanford talk (direct WMV link), I may force us all to vote for the best one. And the winner may have to collaborate with me on a Valleywag rap-ode-to-a-blogger project. Just sayin'.

Earlier: The infectious giggle of Marissa Mayer [Valleywag]

"And we found out, once he'd made his invention, that he'd been going to night school, doing an electronics course."

O! News - Apple v Apple [YouTube]

• Yahoo gets an NYT section cover story for, um, improving its ad program. Thrilling. [NYT]
• Cry baby cry: Apple (the White Album one) loses its case against Apple (the White iPod one). [BBC]
• The New York Times starts its E3 coverage. A week of coy euphemisms for "booth babe" commences. [NYT]
• Tech Memeorandum is now Techmeme. Given that creator Gabe Rivera lives with TechCrunch creator Michael Arrington, this is all kinds of wrong. [Techmeme]
• Big-time graphics firm Silicon Graphics Inc. goes bankrupt, just a couple months after picking a new CEO who cut an eighth of the team. One assumes the government won't be subsidising SGI to protect the economy. [CNET]

Highlights include Steve's curt replies to Tony's rhetoric, Tony's self-comparison of him and Jobs as "fellow entrepreneurs," and the Tony's line about Steve's cancer. Here's the final letter; the rest are after the jump in reverse chronological order.

At least I now know that being the #1 Independent Record Label in the biggest music market in the world has no meaning to Apple.

The majors were not thinking when they gave you their content for free without negotiating a % of each hard drive sold and/or equity in Apple or bonuses on increases in the company's valuation. I have had 4 iPods die on me already (I ripped my 'physical' music collection). Kudos to you though- it was a masterful plan and you preyed upon and capitalized on the major record company's desperation for a new revenue stream.

The Independent sector is where new trends, ideas, thought processes and innovations always originate. Apple's corporate image projects innovation, individuality and being 'ahead of the curve'. My small, 40 person, privately held operation had three albums on my industry's Top 200 last week- two of which were in the Top 50. Not alot changes in the music industry though so Apple seems to be fitting right in.

Your response will save me alot of time and effort moving forward. I appreciate the courtesy of you responding to my attempt to be in business together.

As a human being - congratulations on beating cancer last year. Take Care.

—-—-—-—-—--
From: Steve Jobs
Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2006 7:28 PM
To: Tony Brummel
Subject: Re: The #1 Independent Label in the US

I don't see us doing a major PR campaign around this - we have too much on our plate that's more important to our music efforts right now.

But we can get your music on iTunes. What's holding that up?

Steve

—-—-—-—-—-—
On Apr 12, 2006, at 5:26 PM, Tony Brummel wrote:

I want to work with people that respect and care about our brand beyond being sent a weblink to fill out an "app".

For Victory and iTunes to work together it should be something special.

"The #1 Independent label joins forces with iTunes".... its a great headline/story and business. More importantly, its a great PR campaign if people are prepared to think outside of the box and see the bigger picture here. It would be cutting edge, "anti-corporate" (which fits the Apple image) and revolutionary.

Everyone would win.

I am always looking for new allies and partners where everyone can mutually win.

—-—-—-—-—--
From: Steve Jobs
Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2006 7:11 PM
To: Tony Brummel
Subject: Re: The #1 Independent Label in the US

So what do you want that we are unwilling to agree to?

Steve

—-—-—-—-—-—
On Apr 12, 2006, at 4:28 PM, Tony Brummel wrote:

Steve,

I doubt that this will reach you but I figured I'd give it a shot.

As a fellow entrepreneur I find it quite strange how your "music" people have treated my company. I am not like the guys at the major record labels. I am a self-made entrepreneur. My counterparts are ultimately employees that do not have the flexibility or ability to operate with real creativity in an industry that requires such.

Victory Records is a lifestyle company and a brand that has always marched to the beat of its own drum and operated contrary to industry standards. That is a major reason why we are the #1 Independent label in the country. The entire music industry and many music fans also know that we are not in business with iTunes.

I have tried to engage your folks in proactive discussions regarding how we can work together since April 2004. Unfortunately, they showed no interest, creativity or entrepreneurial thought regarding a relationship between our companies/brands. In fact, the dialogue was extremely disrespectful and typified everything that I thought your company was not. Wal-Mart has shown us more respect. We currently have our second Victory Records only endcap at Best Buy. Why are we the only label that Best Buy has ever worked with in this capacity? Because the Victory consumer is a coveted one.

The majority of the people that buy our albums are 12-24 year old music fanatics that are typically two steps ahead of the next big trend. As the leading independent label in the country we are very in synch with our supporters as they are with us.

From a business standpoint I was always a fan of your work and Apple. Was everything I read false propaganda? I'd prefer to see our companies working together in a proactive and revolutionary way but your "music" people elimated that via their pompous, uneducated and condescending demeanor. That does not help you. It does not help me either.

I believe that there are synergies that could benefit us both. I hate to see collectively wasted opportunity.

Regards,

Tony Brummel

PS: Right now, the Victory Records Podcast is the 9th most popular 'Music' category podcast on iTunes.

Yesterday, Beatles Downloads Seemed So Far Away [Techdirt]
Twist and Shout: Beatles' Songs to Be Released Through Music Services [Gearlog]
Beatles fans get ticket to (digital) ride [USA Today]
Beatles Coming Together Online [E!]
Beatles to Come Together Online [Fox News]
You Say You Want a Revolution [Geek.com]
You Say You Want A Revolution? [ClickZ]
Here comes the sun: Beatles online soon [Mobile Mag]

Could we get a little more original, dig into the better Beatles titles? Such as:

• Got to get you into my pod
• Back in the AAC
• Being for the benefit of Mr. Starr
• Now you can buy me love
• Yoko in the sky with royalties
• (This is worth paying a larger chunk to the) Taxman
• You never give me your money [This one is pre-made]
• While Michael Jackson Gently Weeps
• Everybody's got something on iTunes except for me and my monkey

¬ The judge's name: Justice Edward Mann. How the UK Independent refers to him: Mr. Justice Mann.
¬ Mr. Justice Mann checked before the case that owning an iPod wouldn't disqualify him from presiding.
¬ Apple Computer lawyer Anthony Grabiner: "Even a moron in a hurry" couldn't mistake iTunes for a recording company.
¬ An Apple Corps lawyer chose Chic's "Le Freak" to demonstrate iTunes.

The fierce battle continues. The only hope for peace: if both Apple Computer and Apple Corps agree that Yoko was a mistake.

Apple vs Apple as the Beatles take on computer giant [Independent]
Apple: iTunes doesn't violate agreement [BusinessWeek]

Silicon Valley Dirt Farmer

Verse One:
He's got his Sansabelt slacks and his cell phone on a holster on his hip.
He just wants a million dollars and chance to trade his tractor for a ship.
Just like you and me he's workin' hard so he can send his kids to private school
And take off for Verona in the Springtime with a pocket full of jewels.

Chorus:
He's a Silicon Valley dirt farmer
Tryin' to make a better life.
If you were him and he was me
Then that guy over there would be your wife.

Two more verses after the jump.

Verse Two:
He used to greet the dawn by drinkin' coffee in the carport by the truck
But now he spends each morning a-twitter like a pixie at Starbucks.
He used to watch the sun set like a fire in the fading Coastal Range
But now he's eatin' sushi with the fratboys who all work in marketing.

(Chorus)

Verse Three:
The Emperor's New Clothes are made of such a lovely new material.
Just listen to the doodad as it beeps, announcing you've arrived in Hell.
The Valley is ground zero for the latest mass hysterical delusion.
Squeeze the bulb and twitter you're about to join the ultimate solution.

(Chorus, Chorus, Chorus once more and turn off the karaoke machine)

Major points to anyone who records this, natch.

Regular readers know that Hammer hung out at YouTube recently to rap (metaphorically, thank God) with the video sharing site's team. But will Hammer's name actually draw users to his video- and radio-streaming service, and will it actually have a negative launch-to-flip time? Oh, and is Liquid Generation wrong again?

Word on the street is that MC Hammer has been working on a top secret web start up for the better part of the last 6 months, while some are even speculating that the company might be bought up by Yahoo or Google before the product even hits public beta. Peep this.

MC Hammer's super secret web start up [Suck My Blog]
Photo: On the move: Hammertime [MC Hammer Blog]

In case no one pointed it out yet, the Bay-Area tech-friendly hip-hop star (the one who hung out at YouTube and Google, the one who digs the automated-DJ site Pandora) has been blogging since Thursday.

He "will bridge the gaps through music, video, blogs, melody and dance." He will explain hip-hop slang thusly: "One 'goes dumb' because he can escape the reality of feeling abandoned and left out from a society that isn't addressing his pain and frustration."

He will talk to his commenters. He will link to his own Wikipedia page. He will post camphone pics of the Braves cheerleaders.

Wait for his next album, "Please, Hammer, don't blog 'em!"

MC Hammer Blog [Blogspot]