MCPS Begin Music Downloads

MCPS, the UK's performing rights organising and "one half" of the MCPS-PRS Music Alliance, has it's own "podcast". In a surprise move described by new media commentator Adrian Pegg as "Gamekeeper Turns Poacher" MCPS is running a new monthly series featuring the work of new members, giving out web addresses including bands' MySpace sites.

This represents a major turning point for music in the UK. MCPS-PRS are at the business of administering the rights of recording artists, writers and publishers, and with reciprocal agreements to collect and distribute mechanical (sales of objects, ringtones or downloads) and performance (broadcast time) royalties in most countries worldwide, many individual UK livelihoods and businesses are sustained by their royalty-collecting and payments.

These are audio downloads and not as yet RSS-driven podcasts - there is an RSS icon, but there are no files in the feed - and in an obvious nod towards piracy prevention, they are encoded at very low quality, 56kbps, and at a sample rate of 16khz. Nonetheless they represent a respectable showcase, the listening experience let down only by the lack of audio fidelity. The podcast also repeatedly explains the function of the Music Alliance and promotes the work they do.

More interestingly as far as the music business is concerned, these audio downloads are validated at the outset by both organisations. Presumably these non-DRM files also include permission from the music publishers, who have traditionally been the slowest to agree the release of any music on the internet for free.

The first podcast features music from The Dials, Audiocalm, My Pet Junkie and Mr Fogg, and the second, Chinchwoo, Part Time Heroes, Dumb Instrument and Ripchord.

Husband And Wife Hit Headlines

Report by BRENDAN deROODE WEST, reporter at Philadelphia, USA newspaper the Evening Sun, who writes a good account of English/American husband and wife podcasters Paul and Judy Hutchinson and their popular podcast, Total Podcastrophe.

Awareness of the success of podcasters and podcasting as an enterprise is growing in the old media. Journalists are starting to notice that something highly creative and organised and communicative is going on under their very nose, and reporting on it. We can expect to see more reports like this as the traditional media catch on.

Total Podcastrophe website.

EMI Remove DRM

In a move which changes the landscape for legal digital distribution of music, the world's third biggest record company EMI announced yesterday that it is making non-copy protected, high quality versions of it's music available via many online sites, including the iTunes store. "Premium" tracks encoded at 256kbps will retail at 99p (US $1.29), 20p more than the established 128kbps DRM-locked tracks, and will be freely transferable and playable on multiple devices. iTunes users will be able to upgrade previously purchased music for 20p (30c) per track.

"Consumers tell us they would be prepared to pay a higher price for a piece of music they can play on any player," said EMI boss Eric Nicoli. "We have to trust our consumers," he said. "We have always argued that the best way to combat illegal traffic is to make legal content available at decent value and convenient." Apple supremo Steve Jobs, who on February 6th wrote an "open letter" to the music industry appealing for DRM systems to be discarded, shared the platform with Mr Nicoli and said: "This is the next big step forward in the digital music revolution - the movement to completely interoperable DRM-free music."

He added: "The right thing to do is to tear down walls that precluded interoperability by going DRM-free and that starts here today."