February 1
-- Sony Music forces record stores to sell CDs that drive consumers
to Sony's online stores, a group representing music retailers
alleged in a lawsuit. The National Association of Recording Merchandisers
(NARM) filed the lawsuit against Sony Music and Sony Corp. of
America, both units of Japan's Sony Corp. in the U.S. District
Court for the District of Columbia.
February 3 -- After testing the copy-locked CDs on 1,000
different players, BMG Germany issued two new rock titles on
24 January. One was from the popular Finnish band Him, whose
CD immediately became the No. 1 seller in Germany. Just as quickly,
the company got the word from frustrated consumers. BMG stopped
the trial late last week and shipped additional orders of the
CDs without copy-protection.
"We wouldn't have done
it if it had been clear to us that we would have problems,"
Immel said. "We don't want consumers to be upset."
July 3 -- The group behind the Secure Digital Music
Initiative (SDMI), are testing a new system of "Fragil Watermarking".
The new system is a more detailed digital watermarking system
for their upcoming Phase II specification. This new system will
be in addition to the standard robust digital watermark, and
will be much more likely to be corrupted by recompression or
other similar operations.
While phase one of the SDMI
standard was a complete failure, SDMI has not lost focus on the
task at hand and is preparing this new technology for main stream
implementation.
July 6 -- Packing in a nice 1.3GB data capacity, Sony
has announced a new "Double Density" CD recording technology,
which doubles the existing 650MB CDR's on the market. The new
technology is utilizes a "few simple modifications to the
CD formats".
July 8 -- Digital Payloads Inc., is reported to be
working on a plan to embed advertising into MP3 files as a solution
to the recording industry's profit lacking distribution model
online. The plan, which involves embedding in "payloads"
which enable promotions to be programmed to display when the
file is accessed and played. These types of "payloads"
could include the label's website, an ad banner, ect.
Or spyware and pop-up pushers.
July 24 -- Adaptec has announced support of Microsoft's
Windows Media Audio, in an effort to create a secure recordable
CD media format. The technology
allows "rights-managed" digital audio content to be
recorded on CD in a secure and trusted system.
August 28 -- As quoted from the web site "Tuneprint
is an audio fingerprinting algorithm. It takes the unique 'fingerprint'
of a sound clip, which can then be compared to a fingerprint
database to get more information about the clip, like title and
artist, lyrics, URLs, related music, copyright status, or almost
anything else."
"The fingerprint doesn't
change even if the sound is compressed, converted to a different
file format, broadcast over the radio, and so on."
August 28 -- AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) by Dolby Laboratories
has been selected as the format of choice by RIAA member companies
Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) and Universal Music Group for future
"legitimate" online music distribution solutions by
the companies. The AAC audio compression standard is reported
to be a better quality then MP3's and 30 percent smaller in file
size format, making more use of less bandwidth in transfer.
Of course BMG and Universal
are quick to point out that the new AAC audio format will be
used in conjunction with Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies
to secure the online distribution of these files.
September 7 -- Today, eTantrum.com has released their noncommercial,
open source version of music identification technology, the Music
ID Service. It is the first system to positively identify a music
file based on its analogue waveform and acoustical characteristics.
So far, the technology supports MP3, Vorbis, WAV, CDs, formats.
"The Music ID Service
allows users to accurately identify exactly what they've got
in their downloaded music files. The technology identifies the
artists, the albums, song titles, and genre, and it labels it
for you. That's a real breakthrough," said Jack Moffitt,
Chief Architect of iCast.
September 14 -- SonicAgent.com has released a new digital
audio identification system entitled SonicPrint. The software
acts much like CDDB for digital audio files, quickly allowing
identification of music being played through the Internet.
The interesting twist with
SonicPrint is that it tracks the unique identifier it utilizes
to identify a specific piece of audio being played, is the audio
signal itself, or the "soundprint" of the audio file
being played.
It seems SonicAgent claims
to have compiled a vast database of copyright protected music,
and stating now that it is finally prepared to offer SonicPrint
as a solid and complete digital audio tracking solution.
September 26 -- We once worried about SDMI, but perhaps it's
just a weak front for something more sinister!
IBM in conjunction with the
RIAA and major labels has been developing it's own covert inconvenience,
EMMS short for Electronic Music Management System. IBM has already
spent $20 million dollars on the trying to make music piracy-proof
under the top-secret code name, The Madison Project. (Heh, sounds
like a spy movie).
Apparently, IBM has been furtively
testing this project on the experimental AlbumDirect.com. The
secure files prevent you from moving them to any other computer
or from downloading them onto a portable mp3 player. Strangely
though you can just convert them to mp3.
The Music available on AlbumDirect
is only in album form, you can't buy singles. What is the price
for this mass-less album downloaded directly to your house? $15.
If you want the extras normally included in a CD you then need
to pay, $2 for the CDR, and $2.30 for the glossy paper to make
an album cover. This adds up to $19 and the inconvenience.
November 2 -- CantaMetrix announced today it's MusicDNA
Technology for the identification and tracking of MP3 files online
that will providing an "exact" accounting system for
copyright holders. CantaMetrix
reports that industry-wide adoption of MusicDNA registry and
tracking method will allow the software to fill the gap in peer
to peer accounting and identify their content usage across any
network, thus allowing for proper payment for that use to copyright
holders.
November 21 -- EMI and Streamwave have partnered up to offer
a subscription based digital music distribution network, via
the online streaming of EMI content on demand through Streamwave.com.
The multi-year non-exclusive license agreement is reported to
be available at the beginning of 2001, and will allow for unlimited
access to streaming music for a yet to be disclosed monthly fee.
The deal is an interesting
new announcement, as speculation has arisen of Bertelsmann potential
interest in either acquiring or partnering with EMI to provide
additional digital music content to the upcoming revision 2,
subscription version of the now cult classic MP3 application,
Napster.
December 21, 2000
BayTSP, has announced a new product, "BaySpider", designed
to pinpoint online piracy 24-hours, 7-days a week. BayTSP stated
that it's patent-pending "Adaptive Search Technology"
will scan the net for piracy, identifying web sites, news groups,
and peer-to-peer group which it finds in infringement of copyright
law.
While exact specifications
on how "BaySpider" works has not been announced, it
has been reported that once "BaySpider" id's a URL
of copyright infringement, a digital snapshot of the URL is collected
and time stamped automatically. A infringement notice is then
sent to the administrator of the URL and the ISP hosting the
URL. This process will be repeated to check if the copyright
material in reference on the URL is present after the notification
and will continue until any reported copyright violations are
removed.
The software most likely works
much like the software utilized by EMusic recently to scan Napster
for copyright infringement, relying on "acoustic fingerprinting"
techniques to identify digital music online. Similar software
has been under development by TunePrint, CantaMetrix, along with
SonicAgent.
