Six British ISPs have agreed to a voluntary code proposed by the British government to curb subscribers' ability to use the internet if they're suspected of sharing copyrighted material without permission.

The government's Memorandum of Understanding between Britain's largest ISPs (Virgin Media, Sky, Carphone Warehouse, BT, Orange and Tiscali) and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), involves sending letters to subscribers suspected of infringing behavior, according to BBC. The memorandum appears to involve throttling the access speeds of suspected infringers, not booting them entirely. At this point, the letters will merely identify accounts as having been suspected of infringement.

Conventional wisdom holds that the ISPs only signed this agreement to prevent the British government making legislation to boot file sharers from their ISPs. However, not every ISP will likely cave to the pressure.

Continue reading "British ISPs Agree To Curb File Sharers' Internet Access" »

Mszunefan, the Microsoft Zune fanatic who had three Zune tattoos emblazoned around his shoulders, has decided to cover up the logo with another tattoo, citing a lack of progress in the device's feature set.

Apparently, E3's XBox Live announcement at E3 didn't include two must-have items on his wish list.

His initial post to ZuneScene on Wednesday reads:

"I am done. I have had the Zune since day 1 and have noticed little improvement. I have tried my best to support them every step of the way but the recent Xbox Live announcement at E3 made me lose it. To not include Zune Marketplace or the ability to load videos from Xbox Live to your Zune made me finally give up. I am in the works of figuring the best way to get a new tattoo to cover the logo on my arm. Thanks for all the harsh comments and you will see very little of me anymore."

Continue reading "Zune Tattoo Guy Wants to Lose the Logo" »

I sat in on a radio show today to discuss the practice of bands associating themselves with brands as a source of funding now that label money for new acts seems to be drying up. That taped segment will air later (we'll post a link), but in the meantime, it has me wondering how strong the concept of "selling out" is these days. Does associating a band with a brand constitute a dangerous loss of credibility on the band's part, or should artists be thankful that at least somebody's paying them, and happily cash the check?

What do you think?

My take so far is that it can be okay for bands to sell parts of themselves to advertisers so long as they write new material for the purpose (witness Jack White's apparently non-reputation-damaging Coca-Cola ad), but that when a band associates music people already love with a brand, it still stings fans who'd already forged a non-commercial relationship with the song.

(If your response doesn't fit into one of the poll answers above, note that all comments will be read as usual.)

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Tracking tour dates online is pretty easy but AOL and American Express are teaming up to offer not just yet-another-portal but early access and discounts to to some events for card holders -- or members, as Amex likes to call them, who have privileges.

AOL TourTracker mashes Jambase (concert listings), Mapquest, Ticketmaster and content from editors and discussion boards to help fans keep abreast of their favorite bands' tour dates and find out quickly who's playing their town on a given night.

The site also gives music executives insight into music fans' behavior, in part using a "heat" indicator that surfaces the most-tracked tours on the site in a number of genres.

Continue reading "AOL Tracks Tours, Offers Ticketing Discount" »

Dorble is like SeeqPod's zany little brother. Both music search engines scour the net for MP3s and serve them up on the web in easy-to-consume web-based formats, but SeeqPod is larger, far more developed, and more respectful to its elders than Dorble, which has fewer songs and features but lets users download MP3s flat-out. (SeeqPod lets users stream songs and save them into playlists but doesn't include a download feature.)

Since SeeqPod's API is open to outside developers, I initially figured Dorble might be using it as the foundation of its service. But Dorble founder Nicholas Sheriff told me earlier this month via e-mail, "We create our own index of mp3 files so far we have around 1.2 million audio files, with 10,000 to 50,000 added daily." Anyone who has MP3s hosted on their server can contact the company to have their music directory added to the index.

So far Dorble's reach isn't nearly as broad as SeeqPod's -- probably due to the latter's search algorithms being better, its longer time in operation, or both. Taking one example, Dorble currently returns one song by The Replacements, while SeeqPod returns 954 results on 40 pages (listen to the first ten below).

Continue reading "Dorble Downloads Ditties" »