Greg Sandoval for CNet.com on Google Music:

While Google and Levine have negotiated to obtain licences from the four top labels for over a year, the service will appear first in beta without licensing from the labels.

That’s sure to go down well with record labels, just like Amazon’s cloud service is going down well with them. And by well, I mean ‘well’ in the sense of ‘not well at all, due to them spitting fury and going GRRARRGGHH’. Apple’s trying to get record labels on board for its cloud music service, so will record labels go with unlicensed models just to screw the big evil (Apple), or will they finally recognise that Apple’s domination in the digital music space is also making them money? I wouldn’t bet on the latter, sadly.

It’s also worth noting that these online services appear in part to be relying on fair-use laws. This is why they are rolling out in the US. In the UK, they’ve a much tougher battle, given that the UK essentially lacks even basic fair-use law. For example, it’s not legal in the UK to copy any media, even for personal use. The only exceptions are time-shifting of television content and backing up software, although more recent legislation demands that the second of those things not circumvent copyright protection. That the BPI has in the past been quoted as saying it won’t sue people for ripping CDs to use the music on iPods is irrelevant, because that’s very different from legal precedent.

The CNet.com article also quotes Google exec Zahavah Levine:

While the service is still in beta, users will be able to join by invitation only. Initially, to access the service, users will require a browser that supports Flash — that means no Apple devices — or on any Android device that’s version 2.2 or higher, Levine said. Currently the service will start off in the United States only and will be free.

Sounds great. I can’t wait to get stuttering music playback on a Flash-based browser. Still, luckily for Google, Amazon hasn’t updated its own cloud player so that it works with iOS, or Google’s decision to run with the ‘open’ technology of Flash for the future of music playback outside of Android would look a bit stupid.

*cough*Amazon Cloud Player works on iOS devices all of a sudden (9to5 Mac)*cough*

Oh.

Another day, another bonkers comment by RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis. In a Guardian article, it’s stated that he told reporters:

publishers want to be in control of their destiny, their business, their content. I don’t think they are willing to be hijacked in the way the music industry was before.

This is of course at once a barbed attack at Apple and sucking up to Adobe, whose software can be used to develop apps for the PlayBook, which, at the last count, supported approximately 53 billion SDKs, including “shit created for the VIC-20″.

But let’s back up a bit: Apple “hijacked in the way the music industry was before”. Presumably, Lazaridis is critical in what Apple did to become so dominant in music industry sales. And, presumably, that’s bad for the industry and consumers, right? After all, Apple:

• Created a system that enabled users to buy with ease, convincing some people to part with cash rather than downloading illegally;
• Fought hard for DRM-free audio, and eventually won that particular war, killing dead the ridiculous lock-in digital music files once had;
• Enforced price-points that kept music purchases affordable, but still left room for artists to profit;
• Made it easier for people to cherry-pick single tracks rather than be forced to buy an entire album for a few good bits;
• Ensured that the music industry carried on making money.

THOSE CUPERTINO BASTARDS! How dare they make digital music popular and become dominant by offering a user-friendly solution, also raising the profile of online music in general, to the benefit of the competition and the entire industry as a whole!

Man, sometimes I wish someone would hijack Lazaridis’s mouth. At least then something that makes sense might come out of it.

Those bastards at Spotify are coercing people into paying for music, rather than getting a musical moon on a stick for free, the bastards. In Upcoming changes to Spotify Free/Open, the greedy swines rattle on about setting fire to your free account, and quite literally punching you in the face until you cough up for a subscription.

Spotify CEO Jens Ivantyourmoneysson said:

We’ve got this deal with record labels that involves hiring a combination of ninjas and boxers. The ninjas will sneak into your house at night and let in the boxers, who will punch you in the face until you agree to a subscription.

Sitting in his underground lair, watching his gigantic Spotify ROCKETODOOM being created, stroking a white cat, he then continued:

If you don’t do this, you’ll have a broken nose and we will also curb your listening habits. You’ll now only be able to play a track for free up to five times; on the sixth, it will spray salt into your eyes, your computer will explode and we’ll send round the boxer again. You’ll also be limited to ten hours of free Spotify listening per month, but we will aim to ensure you get unlimited punches to the face.

When asked by a journalist about how Spotify could do such a harrowing thing to users who’ve supported Spotify since the start by launching the app and listening to music, for free, with only the occasional interruption from advertisements, and doing nothing else, but doesn’t this smack of pure greed, and won’t people just go back to piracy now, and, you know, I was going to get a paid account—honest—but I’ve now changed my mind because of your evil plans, Ivantyourmoneysson quite literally exploded on stage.

A subsequent joint statement from all major record label CEOs read:

Hahahahahahaha!

Amazon’s just unveiled its Cloud Drive, including a Cloud Player, enabling you to upload your music and then play audio across PCs, Macs and Android-based smartphones. This is massive and the sort of thing people were hoping Google and Apple would do, but Amazon’s got there first.

This also means Amazon’s the first to test the murky legal situation of back-ups. In the UK, fair-use laws barely exist. The 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act in theory enables you to make a copy of software and games, although it’s in part been superseded by the Copyright And Rights Regulations act, which stamps all over the prior law by making it illegal to exercise your rights should you circumvent copyright protection technology.

In music, things aren’t any clearer. There’s a general misunderstanding in the UK that it’s fine to make copies of music you legally own; in the old days, that meant transferring vinyl to cassette for your Walkman, and now that means ripping CDs to a PC or Mac, or (technically) making copies of digital audio files by placing them on an audio player or smartphone. Interestingly, the BPI (the UK equivalent of the RIAA), while generally taking a typically hardline stance towards filesharers (ZeroPaid), announced in 2006 that it would refrain from suing people making copies of purchased music for their personal use (Macworld). BPI chairman Peter Jamieson said:

Traditionally the recording industry has turned a blind eye to private copying and has used the strength of the law to pursue commercial pirates.

We believe that we now need to make a clear and public distinction between copying for your own use and copying for dissemination to third parties and make it unequivocally clear to the consumer that if they copy their CDs for their own private use in order to move the music from format to format we will not pursue them.

This is an eminently sensible decision, of course, but, importantly, it is at odds with UK law. Therefore, while Jamieson once said this, there’s nothing to stop the BPI changing its mind, being overruled by another party, or from some other organisation (such as a record label) suing you for ripping your CDs.

Naturally, then, this also means Amazon’s in the same position. According to the Guardian, Amazon claims it can circumvent rights legislation by claiming its online storage is the equivalent of an external hard drive. Craig Pape, director of music at Amazon, said:

We don’t need a license to store music. The functionality is the same as an external hard drive.

But note who (or rather what) that quote is referencing: Amazon. In other words, Amazon is indemnifying itself and putting sole responsibility for rights issues on to the user. Now, this is fine, because it’s the same as any other online service, but in this case Amazon is suggesting to users that they use Cloud Player for their music. In effect, Amazon is directly tempting people to break the law, but noting that it won’t be liable for any comeback.

I’m wondering how record companies will react. If they’re smart, they won’t care, since Amazon’s offering is a step up from the likes of Spotify in encouraging you to upload content, which you may have bought legally in some format. Most importantly, I’m also wondering how the law will react, because if Amazon’s service says anything, it’s that the UK desperately needs fair-use (i.e. copying of media—across formats, if necessary—for personal use) utterly enshrined in law.

As we all know, Charlie Brooker Is Right About Everything (YouTube), but he’s especially right about Rebecca Black’s Friday (YouTube) in his Guardian op-ed How to tweet bile without alienating people. Or making 13-year-old girls cry. If you’ve missed the story, a 13-year-old’s parents paid for her to make a vanity pop song and video, which became a YouTube hit and attracted the kind of bile and hatred usually reserved for mass murderers and idiots who don’t indicate on roundabouts. (Seriously, those orange lights aren’t fucking decoration, drivers.)

Having never listened to the track before, I just popped over to YouTube and, once the Flash plug-in deigned to play the video, watched and listened to the whole thing. What I found was a run-of-the-mill pop song with vapid lyrics and pretty horrible auto-tune on the vocals. What I didn’t find, crucially, was:

• Anything that prompted any kind of outpouring of hate;
• A song any worse than plenty of crap that regularly climbs the pop charts;
• Something any worse than the kind of songs I used to write when I was 13, bar the lyrics. (Although, to be fair, it wasn’t written by Black, but by Clarence Jey and Patrice Wilson, who I’m guessing are somewhat older than 13.)

But the online response has been utterly shocking, and shows how idiots use the internet to insult, bully and harass, while hiding behind pseudonyms. (That even happens on this blog, where people regularly leave comments saying what a total arsehole they think I am, and then sign off with a name like lolcakes—how brave!) What’s particularly great about the Rebecca Black incident is that the hate has resulted in press, and the press has resulted in the song being propelled up the charts. Being level-headed, Black has made a pile of cash that she’s subsequently donated to the Japan relief efforts. One wonders how many of the dickheads slagging her off on the internet have donated.

Even if you only have 140 characters to play with on Twitter, the important thing is to be constructive; just telling someone to die in a fire makes you about one step up from a cauliflower in the awareness ladder. Or, as Brooker rather brilliantly puts it in the aforementioned Guardian article:

In summary: bitch all you like. Just don’t be a dick about it. Poise, people. Poise.