Ad-supported online music service Spiral Frog suspended operations yesterday, nearly three years after its launch. SpiralFrog launched in Summer 2006 to much media fanfare, painting itself as a free alternative to .99/song iTunes, and as a legal alternative to illegal file-sharing sites. At that time, SpiralFrog CEO Robin Kent said, “Offering young consumers an easy-to-use […]

According to a new survey, the average teenager’s iPod has about $800 of pirated music on it: On average every iPod or digital music player contained 842 illegally copied songs. The proportion of illegally downloaded tracks rises to 61 per cent among 14 to 17-year-olds. In addition, 14 per cent of CDs (one in seven) […]

According to the Guardian’s Tim Anderson, DRM’d music is going to stage a comeback, and Apple’s going to be the one making it happen. The music industry wants to sell new services, like music subscriptions, and DRM’s is central to making these services viable. To succeed, though, subscription music services need to work with iPods […]

Apple’s iTunes has passed Wal-Mart to become the #1 source for music in the US, according to an Apple email obtained by Ars Technica. If this turns out to be accurate, it is a milestone for the digital distribution of music. The news was announced in an e-mail sent this afternoon to some Apple employees, […]

BusinessWeek’s Stephen Wildstrom is asking “Can Doug Merrill Save Music?” Merrill is leaving a cushy CIO job at Google to be the President of Digital Business at EMI, one of the biggest music companies in the world. BusinessWeek wonders: Could the surprising departure of Google Chief Information Officer Douglas Merrill be the salvation of the […]

Sessions from last fall’s Podcast and New Media Expo (PNME) continue to be released via Gigavox Media’s Podcast Academy site. The latest session is of interest to any podcaster who wants or needs to include music in their episodes. “Music Licensing for Podcasts and New Media” covers a lot of ground in under an hour. […]

Amazon.com has announced plans for an international rollout of Amazon MP3, a DRM-free MP3 digital music store, in 2008. Amazon MP3 is currently the only retailer that the four major labels are allowing to offer customers DRM-free MP3s. As a result, it can offer over 3.3 million songs from more than 270,000 artists in DRM-free […]

The IFPI, an organization that represents the mainstream music industry worldwide, has released its take on the state of digital music 2008. According to the report, digital music is booming and the music industry is further along in the transition to digital than other industries. The industry appears to be more focused on P2P file […]

For a long time, people have thought that getting the music industry to switch to DRM-free MP3s for music downloads would open the doors to a consumer-friendly world of digital music competition. Now it’s starting to look like the music industry wil use DRM-free MP3s to enforce their traditional monopoly on what you hear, what […]

CNet has an interesting interview with Nine Inch Nail’s Trent Reznor on his recent experiment with Saul Williams’ debut CD, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust. Reznor and Williams made NiggyTardust available as a free download, but also let you purchase a higher-quality version for a nominal fee. In the interview, Reznor talks about […]