– DRM Is Dead, But Watermarks Rise From Its Ashes: Sony (NYSE: SNE) BMG and Universal may be giving up DRM for some music sales but they’re still keeping tabs through digital watermarking. The watermarks don’t link back to individuals but the data gathered could be used by the labels to show how copyrighted material is being shared sans permission — and to lobby for protection from piracy.
– Radiohead finds sales, even after downloads: Who knows how many CDs Radiohead would have sold without its name-your-price download experiment — or the ensuing massive publicity, which surely has been worth more to the band than the lost income? What we do know is the CD version of In Rainbows debuted as the top-selling U.S. album with 122,000 copies the first week. That’s down considerably from the 300,000 sold for their 2003 last release, Hail to the Thief, but as the NYT puts it, “far from a flop, considering the steep decline in music sales in the last four years and the typically weak sales in the post-Christmas period.” Some retailers suggest the downloads may have encouraged people to pay for higher quality. Radiohead still tops multiple Billboard charts in the U.S. but has been displaced in the U.K. by Amy Macdonald.
Trent Reznor: Why won’t people pay $5?: Trent Reznor and Saul Williams tried a digital download experiment of their own with The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust. The results: 154,449 downloads of a free version and 28,322 sales of a $5 higher-quality version. For Reznor, the low number — less than 19 percent — willing to pay even a bargain price was frustrating although the number of downloads for Williams far outstripped previous CDs: “I’m not saying that this is a completely accurate test. Yes, there is a possibility that people downloaded it and the same people went back and downloaded it and paid for it and that can throw the numbers off. I get all that.” But he thinks people may not be willing to pay for music. One idea he tossed out — an ISP tax “of some sort” — has garnered most of the attention.
– The no strings deal from Tasmin Little: Classical violinist Tasmin Little is releasing The Naked Violin, a produced-for-online album, at no charge. The release is her way, she tells The Times, of proving “once and for all that the only reason why people don
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