Gladwell on Anderson's "Free"
By Patrick Ross -- There's been a lot of fuss recently about the upcoming book, Free, by Wired editor Chris Anderson ---  Now one of my favorite authors has jumped into the mix, with rebuttals to Anderson's thesis far more eloquent than mine. Malcolm Gladwell of The New Yorker, like any top-notch journalist, finds interesting insights by experts and brings them to a general public. Unlike most journalists, however, Gladwell brings a value-added of his own insight that provides his readers not just new information but new ways of thinking about things.  [Priced to Sell: Is Free the Future? by Malcolm Gladwell.]

Future Business Models For The Pirate Bay and Historical Revenues
By Mark Mulligan -- Yesterday evening I spoke with Hans Pandeya, CEO of Global Gaming Factory, the company that bought Pirate Bay.  I asked him a few specific questions about his plans for the Pirate Bay....  Mr Pandeya stressed his commitment to supporting rights holders' interests and incentivizing users to download legal content.  The direct implication of incentivizing users of course is that they'll get to chose from unlicensed content also, which suggests that the commitment to rights holders will fall far short of what they'll need.

Detica Launches Digital Piracy Prediction Tool
UK tech firm Detica has launched a new tool called Price for Music, together with SoundExchange, which aims to let anyone predict the level of piracy in the future – and what impact new pricing models might have. "Our ‘Price for Music' model allows the music industry to see into the unknown and provides projections of traditional and new revenue streams based on historical performance and a variety of alternative future scenarios."

Pandora 's Westergren Responds To Artist Airplay Submission Controversy
By Bruce Houghton -- Yesterday's story that Pandora was requiring that all music considered for airplay must also be available for sale as a physical CD on Amazon drew some strong comments from Hypebot readers. An online poll showed that for 40%, the practice tainted their view of Pandora and another 14% claimed they would never use the service again. I asked Pandora for a response and founder Tim Westergren replied ...

EMI Publishing Balks at New PRS for Music Streaming Rates
EMI Publishing is refusing to make its catalogue available for streaming under the new 0.085p minima rate proposed by PRS for Music in the UK. The publisher will now administer its own royalty collections with the aim of securing higher rates from streaming services.

Reports: Sony & RED Tapping IODA's Technology
By Bruce Houghton -- Sony Music Entetrainment and its RED indie ARM are about to announce an alliance with digital distributor IODA, according to one report.  RUMORS  If all that I'm hearing is true, the deal allows Sony and RED to tap into IODA's Rightsholder Dashboard which the major label views as a superior delivery and tracking system to its own. Hundreds of distributed labels and even managers are demanding up to the minute digital sales data that IODA already delivers.

Facebook v. Google v. the Techno-Aquarians
Fred Vogelstein's essay in Wired, "Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network's Plan to Dominate the Internet -- and Keep Google Out" describes the intensifying clash between Google and Facebook--a clash that focuses on the ability to target advertising. ... Apart from noting that Facebook directs users to Microsoft's Bing as its default search engine for the Internet at large, the most interesting part of the article is Facebook's "4-Step Plan for Online Domination":

Facebook, Twitter, Online Identity Integration & the Future of Anonymity
By Berin Szoka -- The Wired article ("Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network's Plan to Dominate the Internet -- and Keep Google Out") touched on an issue near & dear to my heart (besides the importance of smarter advertising): the future of online anonymity...

The Science Of Understanding Fans & Music Blogs...
How to navigate the vast sea of music blogs and market effectively?  The approach can easily become scattershot and misdirected, simply because of the shifting nuances of each blog (or site, community, or whatever).  And, then, everything changes. That is a problem currently being approached by the Echo Nest...

WINNIPEG Free Music, Movies for All? Copyright-Fighting Pirate Party Comes to Canada
By Steve Lambert -- After scoring a surprise electoral win in Sweden and getting high-profile support in Germany, The Pirate Party's next port of call may be Canada, where a so-far small band of buccaneers are hoping to send copyright restrictions to Davy Jones's locker.

Music Firm Sues Microsoft, Yahoo, and Real Networks Over Copyright Infringement
Joseph Tartakoff -- MCS Music America, which says it administers almost 45,000 tracks, is suing Yahoo, Microsoft, and RealNetworks, basically saying that they left some seemingly big Ts uncrossed when they obtained the rights to offer some songs to their members. From the lawsuit: "In order to transmit, perform, reproduce and deliver any sound recording of any musical work via ‘on-demand streams' or ‘limited downloads' defendants must first obtain not only the rights for the sound recording itself but also the rights for the underlying musical composition which is embodied on said sound recording."

Joost Bows To YouTube, Gives Up Consumer Video
By Greg Sandoval -- The peer-to-peer magic that helped Kazaa and Skype dazzle consumers and disrupt the music and telecom industries has failed to produce the same kind of success with Web video.

What Went Wrong With Joost?

Click-Bait-And-Switch: Online Electronics Stores Caught in Fraud
By David Katzmaier -- The office of the New York State Attorney General announced that seven online merchants operating more than 40 web sites agreed to pay a $765,000 settlement after an investigation by the AG's office. "These companies engaged in the worst kinds of consumer fraud, from classic bait-and-switch schemes to blatant lies and bullying sales tactics," said New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said in the news release.

Michael Jackson, Media Greed
by John W. Whitehead -- It doesn't matter whether you're talking about tabloid news, entertainment news or legitimate news shows--as the Michael Jackson coverage shows, there's little difference between them anymore. They all exist for one purpose, and that is to make money. If what sells is entertainment news, then the Jackson coverage is a good indicator of exactly how dangerous celebrity-driven news has become for our country and our democracy.

Buyer Beware on Michael Jackson Scams

Copyrights in Bankruptcy: When Seven Is Not Your Lucky Number
By Gary Roth -- In these difficult economic times, some of you may find your own financial situation to be so severe that you are considering filing for bankruptcy. ... Although it often is said that a bankruptcy filing gives you a "fresh start" to wipe your debts clean and move forward without that burden, it is important for you, as a composer or copyright owner, to know what happens to all those songs you wrote when you do. You may be surprised.

The ASCAP Daily Brief Provides Valuable News and Information
ASCAP Board member, music publisher and songwriter Dean Kay ("That's Life") began compiling "The Dean's List" a few years ago when he saw a need to keep up on the rapidly changing technological developments in the music and media industries and how they were affecting music creators. His "Dean's List," an aggregate of links to articles, blogs and other sources of information on the Internet, was an immediate hit with many fellow songwriters, publishers and business associates. Late last year Kay offered to provide ASCAP with his daily list so that his valuable efforts could be utilized by ASCAP's membership. So began The ASCAP Daily Brief Powered by the Dean's List, which now goes out to more than 115,000 readers.

July 1: A Television Trifecta
By Randy Alfred -- July 1: It's a triple anniversary, a signal day in television history. The Federal Communications Commission was established this day in 1934. At the FCC's behest, the NTSC television standard went into effect exactly seven years later. And that same day, a New York City station telecast the first legal TV commercial.

There I Fixed It: Gallery of Dangerous, Hilarious Hacks
By Charlie Sorrel -- There isn't much to say about the blog "There I Fixed It", other than that you should add it to your RSS reader immediately. It's a gallery of user submitted hacks, the twist being that these hacks are disastrous, usually dangerously so, and many of them could quite possibly end in death.