Spotlight On Spotify

This month’s OpenMusicMedia event in London enjoyed perhaps its biggest pre-event buzz since these digital music pow-wows began last year. The reason for this was the planned appearance of guest speaker Daniel Ek, one of the Swedish co-founders of digital music service ‘du jour’ Spotify. Thanks to David Emery via Flickr for image.

The night’s theme [...]

Apple Threatens US iTunes Shutdown (and we care because?)

Yes, you read that right. Apple has today threatened to close US iTunes if the US Copyright Royalty Board (pictured) responds favourably today to a proposal from the National Music Publisher’s Association (NMPA) to increase the music store’s royalty payments by 66% (from 9 cents to 15 cents US).
Apple charges consumer 99 cents per track in the [...]

Happy Days! Amazon Confirms UK Launch

“I’ll never buy a track from iTunes again.”
No doubt this statement, or ones like it, echoed around this music-mad little island more than once this week as Amazon settled the rumours of recent months and confirmed next month’s launch of its Amazon Music MP3 download service in the United Kingdom. This slates it ahead of the MySpace Music UK launch, apparently.
There’s [...]

Norway Takes The Fight To iTunes

Norway. The land of Fjords, illegal whaling, insane alcohol prices and, er, A-ha (ok, and The Kings of Convenience) is poised to add a new moniker: Defenders of Open Music.
Norway’s top consumer advocate,  Bjoern Erik Thon, said today that he is taking Apple Inc. to the government’s market council in a test case that hopes to force the [...]

T-Mobile To Launch First Android Phone

Well, its the type of news we’ve all been waiting for.  A new mobile handset running a new mobile operating system and offering the next generation in mobile music services.
In what’s shaping up to be some kind of Super-Month for mobile music (see recent Nokia and Sony Ericsson announcements), T-Mobile has confirmed the rumours and announced [...]