Reuters regards him as being a powerful advocate of change in the overall distribution of media, in the face of losing ground to free online content. Jobs has been able to leverage the immense success of the iTunes store to keep a tight lid on the price of digital music, TV, and movies.

Some believe that with Jobs temporarily out of the picture, studio negotiations with Apple may become easier. An unnamed studio executive had expressed his feelings about this situation saying, “There may be some more room for advantageous deal-making between Apple and studios. Steve’s a control freak and tough negotiator, and Apple will lose a lot of bench strength, which may work to studios’ favor.”

While this type of optimism may hold elements of truth, others tend to believe differently. Many feel that Apple has a top notch team to take over negotiations and can still use the wild popularity of iTunes as a major bargaining chip, even with Jobs sidelined. USC business professor, Julia Plotts, remains under the impression that, “Hollywood’s always been Steve Jobs’ pet interest…He branched out into Hollywood and provided studios with a new mechanism to make money in the era of digital content delivery.” Adding, “I’m not sure what does to Apple’s foresight and ability in terms of negotiating with content providers and navigating Hollywood.”

While certainly no one can take away the cunning business practices that Steve Jobs has been known for, it is precisely these practices that have set up Apple to remain strong even when he is not around. By making iTunes what it is today, Jobs has successfully secured Apple’s vested interest in the digital entertainment industry for years to come. And lest we forget about Disney and Pixar.

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Beginning today, all four major music labels—Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and EMI, along with thousands of independent labels, are now offering their music in iTunes Plus, Apple’s DRM-free format with higher-quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings. iTunes customers can also choose to download their favorite songs from the world’s largest music catalog directly onto their iPhone™ 3G over their 3G network just as they do with Wi-Fi today, for the same price as downloading to their computer. And beginning in April, based on what the music labels charge Apple, songs on iTunes will be available at one of three price points: 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29, with most albums still priced at $9.99.

“We are thrilled to be able to offer our iTunes customers DRM-free iTunes Plus songs in high quality audio and our iPhone 3G customers the ability to download music from iTunes anytime, anywhere over their 3G network at the same price as downloading to your computer or via Wi-Fi,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “And in April, based on what the music labels charge Apple, songs on iTunes will be available at one of three price points—69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29—with many more songs priced at 69 cents than $1.29.”

See Apple Press Release

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Season 20 can be purchased for $37.99, yet is not available in HD and is only accessible to a U.S. audience. The latest chapter of The Simpson’s dynasty began airing September 28 on Fox and included the infamous (m)Apple mockery episode, satirizing the cult-like phenomenon of Apple and Steve Jobs.

Now tied with Gunsmoke for the longest running American sitcom,The Simpsons have showed no signs of letting up. U.S. iTunes users can purchase season 20 here, yet there is no word of when it will be internationally available.

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Two albums from the German neo-Nazi band, Landser, had recently been discovered on the German iTunes store. The group had been banned by a federal court in 2005 for brazenly racist songs with titles the likes of “Polacken Tango” (Polack Tango) and “Zigeunerpack” (Gypsy Vermin). Despite their mysterious iTunes appearance, the content had been taken down by Apple a mere two hours after being notified of the issue. When questioned about the mishap, an Apple spokesperson stated, “This has never happened on iTunes before,” he said. “I don’t know how it made it into the store. We do not tolerate this kind of content.”

Computerbild maintains that this may be just one of many instances of radical content that is becoming more prevalent online. Social networking giant, Myspace, along with Last.fm, a UK based internet radio and music community, have faced recent bouts with objectionable content matter and publicly state there avid attempts to remove it.

Jugendschutz, a German youth protection agency, is working to combat openly racist content, yet has reported hundreds of instances racial intolerance and propaganda. A Jugendschutz spokesperson revealed to German site, The Local, that “the right-wing extremist scene has long identified with and used music to exercise their influence on young people,” the organization said in a statement. “The internet helps bring right-wing music with racist messages to the world.”

While one can commend Apple for their diligence in the matter, you have to wonder how these two albums were able to make it through the door in the first place. As we have been made painfully aware, Apple has posed a near threat to applications developers by instituting a seemingly mysterious method of approval to be accepted into the App Store. Yet somehow a band notorious for their distasteful (to say the least) content was able to slip through the cracks. At the same time, Apple does explicitly convey their stance on objectionable material, as the third point of the iTunes store Terms of Service states:

You understand that by using the Service, you may encounter content that may be deemed offensive, indecent, or objectionable, which content may or may not be identified as having explicit language. Nevertheless, you agree to use the Service at your sole risk and that Apple shall have no liability to you for content that may be found to be offensive, indecent, or objectionable. Content types (including genres, sub-genres and Podcast categories and sub-categories and the like) and descriptions are provided for convenience, and you acknowledge and agree that Apple does not guarantee their accuracy.

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After two years of development Songbird is finally at an optimal stage of performance and stability, and while they claim there is plenty left to do, they appear to be enthusiastic with the currently integrated features. Built on Mozilla’s Gecko engine, the same that powers Firefox, the UI allows for a familiar tabbed browsing experience. Upon closer examination, you will discover that Songbird has a lot to offer in the way of customization and extendability, making it the media player that many have been in search of. The Songbird team has revealed that as of late 160k users/month have expressed an interest in an alternative player.

First Impressions:

In the past, users had noted Songbird to be a sluggish and buggy application, prone to unexpected crashes. Negative first impressions can pose a hindrance on future usage, so if you are one of the folks that had a bad first experience, I would recommend that you take another crack at it. My initial examination of 1.0 showed the player to be very responsive and stable. Directly following instillation you are met with a prompt to port over your iTunes library, which was as smooth a process as one could conceivably imagine, even importing DRM-protected media with the accompanying metadata. Initial operation of the browser functions as one would expect coming from Mozilla, with little in the way of default interface changes. A casual user may find it to be an awkward transition to browse with an application that looks like the offspring of Firefox and iTunes, yet the initial confusion will wear off after a few minutes.

The Add-ons

Songbird comes with a few add-ons that are already integrated upon installation. The first of which, mashTape, allows you to easily access a wealth of information, including artist bios and info, links, news, discographies, flickr photos and YouTube videos. Other default add-ons that come equipped with Songbird include Last.fm Scrobbling, SHOUTcast Radio and Concert Tickets. From here you can sync tracks to Last.fm’s services, stream music over the web and find local upcoming shows of your favorite bands. If these add-ons aren’t enough to tickle your fancy (when is it ever enough?) then you can choose from a list of over 300 additional add-ons that are currently available across categories such as Appearance, Playback & Management, Content & Discovery, Web Browser and Developer Tools.

The first add-on I chose to install was the Songbird recommended LyricMaster, which displays lyrics from the currently playing song, leading to the inevitable spontaneous karaoke outburst. Surprisingly, LyricMaster was able to display lyrics from every song that I tried out, even a few foreign gems. Ok, so now that my personal dance party is coming to an end, I decided to go ahead and customize the appearance by downloading a darker theme, called YABS, that is a bit easier on my ever degrading eyesight. I could probably go on installing add-ons for hours, but in the interest of saving time, let’s proceed.

Areas in Need of Improvement:

A first impression would not be complete without making mention of Songbird’s weaknesses. The Songbird team openly states that, “there are several features we’re proud of, but we’ll be the first to admit that others need ironing out, are experimental, or are just plain missing. There’s still a lot to do.” Songbird currently lacks CD Ripping, Watch Folders (Automatically importing media from defined folders), and extended Video support, which are all major features one could make use of. Fortunately, all of these are on their current development roadmap and should be made available in the near future. One other area that can be improved is that Songbird is not yet capable of automatically installing album artwork, leaving up to their user to manually add it in.

One question that skeptics may ask is, “does it have iPod support?” and the answer is a problematic, yes and no. There is an iPod Device Support add-on that allows you to play and sync your iPod music with your Songbird library using this Songbird extension, yet does not yet support iPhone and iPod touch devices. Such shortcomings may be enough to off-put the average user, yet hardcore audiophiles may find the ever expanding application to be right up their alley.

Should Apple Be Concerned?

If one were to dwell only on the features that are currently absent from Songbird 1.0, than it would appear as though Apple would have nothing to worry about. But will those folks be saying the same thing a year from now, as updated versions and future add-ons become available? It is difficult to make the assumption that nothing will ever be able to compete with the iTunes in their respective market.

If Songbird continues to add customizable aspects giving users complete control over the application, then iTunes may have a serious battle on its hands. Similar to how Firefox became the open alternative web browser, so to will Songbird be the open alternative media player. While the current iTunes has matured into a cultured piece of software, it’s only fair to allow Songbird the same amount of time to properly develop future versions.

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Bluwiki is a public wiki site that aims at allowing anyone to publish online without censorship. In a nutshell, Apple’s argument relies on the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), which was put in place to criminalize those who try and write code, or offer solutions that bypass copyrighted material. For example, a piece of software that tries to access the iPhone’s media and allow a user to sync the device, would be bypassing iTunes and Apple’s copyrighted solutions.

Slashdot explains: “Apple has sent a DMCA takedown notice to the IpodHash project, claiming it circumvents their FairPlay DRM scheme. Some background: Apple first added a hash to the iTunesDB file in 6th-gen iPods, but it was quickly reverse-engineered. They changed it with the release of iPhone 2.0 and a project was started to reverse the new hash, but wasn’t successful yet. My guess is Apple used the same algorithm as FairPlay for the new hash, so Apple could use the DMCA to prevent competing apps like Songbird and Banshee from talking to iPods/iPhones. BTW, don’t tell Apple, but the project uses a wiki, so the old page versions from before the takedown are still there.”

EFF explains: At the heart of this is the iTunesDB file, the index that the iPod operating system uses to keep track of what playable media is on the device. Unless an application can write new data to this file, it won’t be able to “sync” music or other content to an iPod. The iTunesDB file has never been encrypted and is relatively well understood. In iPods released after September 2007, however, Apple introduced a checksum hash to make it difficult for applications other than iTunes to write new data to the iTunesDB file, thereby hindering an iPod owner’s ability to use alternative software (like gtkpod, Winamp, or Songbird) to manage the files on her iPod.

The original checksum hash was reverse engineered in less than 36 hours. Apple, however, has recently updated the hashing mechanism in the latest versions of the iPhone and iPod Touch. Those interested in using software other than iTunes to sync files to these new iPods will need to reverse engineer the hash again. Discussions about that process were posted to the public bluwiki site. Although it doesn’t appear that the authors had yet figured out the new iTunesDB hashing mechanism, Apple’s lawyers nevertheless sent a nastygram to the wiki administrator, who took down the pages in question.

Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann explains that none of the work he saw on the public wiki pages “would appear to constitute a “technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof.” He explains that it was simply some text, along with some illustrative code.

Interestingly, those responsible for posting the info, hadn’t even succeeded in their efforts. “…the authors had apparently not yet succeeded in their reverse engineering efforts and were simply discussing Apple’s code obfuscation techniques. If Apple is suggesting that the DMCA reaches people merely talking about technical protection measures, then they’ve got a serious First Amendment problem,” Lohmann explains.

Mr. Odio:

We represent Apple Inc. (”Apple”). It has come to our attention that a
website you operate, www.bluwiki.com, is disseminating information
designed to circumvent Apple’s FairPlay digital rights management
system. This information is available at
http://bluwiki.com/go/Ipodhash.

FairPlay is considered anti-circumvention technology under the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA explicitly prohibits the
dissemination of information that can be used to circumvent such
technology.

Apple therefore requests that you immediately disable the thread at
http://bluwiki.com/go/Ipodhash. Please notify me by reply e-mail once
you have done so, and feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Sincerely, /s/ Ian Ramage

Ian Ramage
O’Melveny & Myers LLP
Two Embarcadero Center, 28th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94111
Phone: 415.984.NNNN
Fax: 415.984.NNNN
iramage – at – NNN.com

…and another email.

Per our conversation, the three webpages that I have identified that
violate the DMCA are the following:
http://www.bluwiki.com/go/Itunes_obfuscation
http://bluwiki.com/go/Ipodhash
http://www.bluwiki.com/go/IPodHash_Test_Data_Contribution

If there are others related to circumventing Apple’s FairPlay technology
and/or the iPod/iPhone anti-circumvention measures, those need to come
down as well.

I look forward to your prompt response.

Sincerely,
Ian Ramage

Read – iPodHash/takedown

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Apple Inc, the Beatles holding company Apple Corps’, and record label EMI have not been able to reach an agreement that would bring the entire Beatles catalog to iTunes. The digital music store currently sells solo content from each one of the Beatles (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr). And recently, Harmonix has managed to strike a deal that will allow them to develop a Beatles version of the Rock Band video game. So it’s clear that Apple Corps doesn’t have a particular notion towards disallowing digital music.

“The last word I got back was it’s stalled at the whole moment, the whole process,” McCartney explained. “I really hope it will happen because I think it should.” Attempting to rationalize the seemingly painful process, he continued “It’s between EMI and the Beatles, I think.”

An EMI spokeswoman said: “We have been working hard to secure agreement with Apple Corps. to make the Beatles’ legendary recording catalog available to fans in digital form. Unfortunately the various parties involved have been unable to reach agreement but we really hope everyone can make progress soon.”

A trademark dispute between both Apple branded companies was solved last year. Which leads McCartney himself to believe that the EMI (the record label), and The Beatles (Apple Corps’) aren’t able to come to an agreement. EMI owns the Beatles recordings, but would need Apple Corps permission to be able to release the music in new digital formats. This of course plays out worst of all for Beatles fans that happen to be iTunes users. It’s still unclear whether The Beatles library will be making its way to iTunes anytime soon.

Thanx to Karl for the tip

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iTunes 8.0.2 improves stability and performance and provides a number of important bug fixes, including:
• Addresses a quality issue creating MP3s on some computers.
• Fixes a connectivity issue with the iTunes Store when using some Internet proxies with Mac OS X.
• Improves accessibility with VoiceOver.

As MacRumors points out, this update comes just one day prior to the release of iPhone Firmware 2.2 update.

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This happens a year after Apple began offering music without DRM from music label EMI. The information claims that Apple is talking with the other three “top” recording companies about bringing the music to iTunes. One of Sandoval’s sources explains that the talks are still preliminary, one of the major labels is close to a final agreement. However, at the moment, nothing has been finalized.

A year after iTunes began offering music without copy protection software from EMI, Apple is in discussions with the other three top recording companies about acquiring “open” MP3s, according to two music industry sources, Sandoval explains.

Apple’s music is locked down by Fairplay. It’s built into Quicktime and is used by the iPhone, iPod, iTunes, and iTunes Store and the App Store. Technically, if this information holds true, all the “open” music that would be available in iTunes would not be locked down to Apple’s devices, like they are now with Fairplay.

If iTunes can successfully acquire the rights to sell and distribute unprotected music from Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony BMG, it would undoubtedly forge an even further stronghold in the digital music industry and have rivals struggling to find a way to compete.

Over the past year the top four contenders in the recording industry have been seen making a shift away from DRM protected content. During this period, music resellers such as Amazon, MySpace Music and Napster have begun selling open-MP3s, and Universal Music is believed to be announcing a licensing agreement with Microsoft to distribute MP3s for the Zune.

Update: After some confusion regarding Cnet’s sources describing MP3 as the format of choice. Sandoval has updated his entry via a comment reponse: “I don’t know whether my sources were just throwing out MP3 as a way to describe unprotected music. I also don’t know whether any deal would include transferring older music to non DRM music. I’ll try to find out. GS”

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For those of you interested in picking up a great deal on a Schwarzenegger classic, look no further. The iTunes store has officially started offering weekly specials on movies priced at a cool $4.99. So what’s hot this week? How does a little Total Recall or T2: Judgment Day sound? Not too bad at all. To get your Arnold fix this week click here.

Thanks MacBlogz reader Francisco for the heads up.

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