Warner Music Videos Back on YouTube

It's been a long 9 months without being able to find some of the greatest bands of all time on YouTube including Metallica, Muse, Nine Inch Nails, Marylin Manson, and so many others. This was all due to disputes between YouTube and Warner Music over money of course.

Early 2009, Warner took off their library of music videos from YouTube, unable to come to an agreement on how they would share income. This had YouTube constantly filtering and removing uploads involving the acts under Warner while leaving a lot of fans upset and out looking for other video alternatives to catch the latest releases and classics from their favorite bands.

Announced September 29th, the two seem to have come to an agreement. The videos from Warner Music's library will be returning to YouTube and Warner will be the one finding and selling advertisment on the videos instead of using Google ads like practially everyone else which is an interesting approach. Personally, I'm curious to see if the other major labels will be following in their footsteps in an attempt at having more control over their videos, and obtaining a larger piece of the pie as Warner is trying to do.

Divine Helps Raise Money for Breast Cancer

Ok, so this blog usually deals with everything music related but I wanted to take a second to share with you a fund raiser that a close friend of mine, Linda, helped put together for the online woman's magazine Divine.ca.

If you have a moment, go check it out, play the free scratch and win game and instantly win a prize!

1 gift certificate at m0851 valued at $1000
2 gift certificates at Roots caled at $500 each
37 gift baskets at Yves Rocher valued at $137
7 gift at Fruit & Passions valued at $73
1 Breville espresso machine valued at $549
1 toaster valued at $149
1 kettle valued at $149
1 Microsoft pack valued at $ 619
12 Boss Orange perfumes $72

or

15% off Yves Rocher
20% m0851
10% Fruit & Passion
15% Roots

Everyone who plays wins something and for every scratch and win play they get, the site will donate $0.05 to the "Look Good Feel Better Foundation"; a national non-profit organization which helps women with the appearance-related effects of cancer treatment.

It doesn't cost you anything, you win an instant prize, a fantastic magazine donates money. What are you waiting for. Go check it out!

Green Day's New Album Not in Wal-Mart Due To Parental Advisory Sticker

So how's about this one. Walmart refuses to put Green Day's new album, 21st Century Breakdown, on their shelves due to the parental advisory sticker. Then you have Green Day sticking to their guns and unlike practically every other music group and artist, refuses to make a special edit for them.

Here's the full scoop:

You Won't Find Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown at Wal-Mart - Full article at MTV.com

Saying no to the biggest retailer of physical CD's in the US requires a hell of a marketing plan to compensate and seeing as this stunt put them in every newspaper, online magazine, and blog (even our music download sites blog), I guess it was actually a marketing genious who thought it up because they are getting press from avenues who would have never taken notice to the fantastic album.

That aside, opening weekend brought them 215,000 sold copies so it will be interesting to see how the numbers increase after all of this attention. Doesn't feel like they even needed an extra push really.

For Walmart, hard to say if this will hurt or help them since you have all the parents now convinced that they are looking out to keep 'filth' off of the shelves, but any real music lover couldn't possibly want to buy an edited version of an album. Music is created as a form of expression. How can you censor what you're really feeling? The message is no longer the real one. I'd hate to feel like every artist and music group out there is forced into modifying their message in any way after so much work is put into a music album just so it can be sold in it's true, original form.

Music downloads are gaining steam and perhaps stunts like this will push some music lovers into ways to download music instead.

This aside, the album is great and one of the upcoming projects of our music blog will be to have album reviews. Until then, the lowest price on the digital album could be found through Amazon MP3. Here's an album sample. Enjoy!

Was The Pirate Bay Trial Judge Bias

Last week, we had a post called File Sharing Service Owners Sentenced to Prison which had 4 men prosecuted and sentenced to 1 year in jail along with a fine totalling roughly $3.6 million for starting and operating a Swedish BitTorrent site, The Pirate Bay, which helped users find pirated software and files leading to illegal downloads, and so a copyright infringement towards the entertainment industry. Why people are not yet making the switch to legal music download services, I don't know. Here's the follow up.

The defence for the case is demanding a retrial saying the judge for the trial was bias as he is a participant in the Swedish Association of Copyright, along with a board member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Copyright, and if that's not enough, a member of .SE which is the Internet Infrastructure Foundation. Talk about a conflict of interest.

Bias or not, illegal music downloads are way out of hand. I understand there needs to be an example made out of someone but it is still the user's fault in my opinion. You don't go suing a sports store because a customer bought a bat and broke into someone's home with it, you should go after the customer who decided to make an illegal action with something the sports store was offering.

In a way I'm hoping someone is made an example of to a certain extent perhaps with a warning to monitor operations and illegal music downloads going on with a file sharing software or BitTorrent site and being obliged to report such users who are taking advantage of these services in an illegal way, but I wouldn't be ready to send these guys to jail as even file sharing sites could have great use in legal ways to transfer free material without any copyright on it. Maybe start up bands look to put out free music for everyone to download. These sites can help them promote their material which they are giving out for free so why take them completely off the net?

It's a touchy subject, always was, but either way, to anyone who wants to download music, forget about file sharing and BitTorrent sites as the actions you are doing to get free copyrighted materials off of these sites is illegal. Find yourself a solid music download services and stick to it.

iTunes Pass Benefits Who Really

iTunes is now offering a new music product - iTunes Pass. Think of it as a fan club membership you would be able to get for your favorite music group.

When they announced it late February, Depeche Mode was the only band available. For $18.99, you would get everything the band puts out on iTunes until June 16, 2009 which includes the new single, some promo materials (ex. remixes, videos, etc ...), and the Sounds of the Universe album when it's made available.

iTunes says the cost of the pass would always be less expensive than what you would get for it, but lately with their new pricing model that increased per-song prices by %30, I find it hard to believe any product they put out is in the best interest of the customer. Someone has done the math on this and you can bet it's going to bring iTunes another great source of revenue. Hopefully they will at least follow through and the pass will be a positive addition for all true fans out there that can't get enough of their favourite music group since, as a concept, I can see it as very attractive to both music groups and fans.

Jack Black Speaks Up on Piracy

This video went up a little while ago and I figured it was fitting to share due to all the recent progress going on in the fight against file sharing and piracy like the File Sharing Service Owners Sentenced to Prison, or the New Law in Sweden Against File Sharing.

Whether you're a fan of Jack Black or not, take a look:

Jack Black Speaks Up on Piracy



I think it's awesome another artist speaks up on piracy. When it comes down to it, though he still delivers it in a funny way, the message is right on. Artists work hard to create movies, music, and other forms of art. You wouldn't steal a CD from a store or movie from the shelves and using a file sharing site or program to pass on copyrighted material without compensating the artist is stealing. How are these artists going to get paid for their work if everyone takes what they want for free?

I read some comments about this that rock stars don't need the extra little bit of money they are loosing out on music downloads. Already, because someone has money doesn't make it any more justifiable to steal from them, but leaving the rich rock stars out of the equation, think of all the bands and artists starting out. They spend all their money to record an album and CD sales have dropped a huge amount due to illegal downloads. How can any new artists start a career if people steel from the little they could be making, and how can you expect these guys to go on and record a second album? How do they even measure if it was worth recording it in the first place? Where's the money come from to start touring, or promoting the album?

Quit stealing, use one of the legal music download sites mentioned on our main page. Read through the reviews and you'll see how reasonable being part of one of these services really is. I'm also speaking as a musician trying to get a career started as well so even if you don't listen to a guy like me, if you are one of those people using illegal means to get copyrighted material like movies and music, check out the video and at least admit to yourself your actions are illegal and you are stealing when you could maybe buy that same song for $0.69 or listen to as much legal music as you want for the cost of an album a month with one of the music subscription services we review.

File Sharing Service Owners Sentenced to Prison

First Sweden passes a new music download law requiring ISP's to turn in user's IP address if they are suspected to download music illegally, now they are shutting down one of the biggest file sharing services. Another point for the good guys.

For those new the topic, file sharing services allow users to share any file they want across the net. This is a huge problem with music downloads as it makes copyrighted material accessible to anyone for free, by-passing compensation to the artist and bands working to record them, and ultimately making it easier to steal music online. Unfortunately, there was little to do against these sites but now Sweden courts have taken a huge step.

One of the biggest file sharing services, The Pirate Bay, went to court. The 4 men who started the site were prosecuted and were sentenced to 1 year in prison and fined a total of roughly $3.6 million in damages that they will have to pay to the entertainment companies. Here's the story:

File-Sharing Site Violated Copyright, Court Says - Article from the NY Times.

It's touchy as the ones who started the site were not really hosting any of the files, but did provide a service making it very easy for users to get their hands on stolen copyrighted material by making links to these files available.

Personally, I'm happy about the ruling as it's a nice wake up call if nothing else to users that what they are doing is wrong and if you want a song or album, you need to go the right way and use one of the legal music download sites out there, but at the same time, I feel it's really the users who should be to blame and not the site owners. As an example, sports stores sell baseball bats. If a customer buys one and smashes a car window, the store shouldn't go to court for selling the bat. The action the customer decided to take using the bat was illegal and is where the problem lies, in the same way if people use a service in an illegal way, then they are to blame.

This will be another one to keep an eye on and see if it changes anything but really, if people were using a file sharing site before, chances are they'll flock to another one but at least there's a chance it'll convert a few along the way to give a try to legal music download services instead.