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CD Baby reports on Apple's indy music meeting

In this article, CD Baby reports on Apple's indy music meeting which took place yesterday.

There were about 150 people at the meeting, representatives from the best independent record labels and music services, in this invitation-only conference room. Steve Jobs gave a two and a half hour presentation/seminar/Q&A about iTunes and the benefits of independent labels making their music available there.

Among the more interesting points:

• Apple is using a DRM called Fairplay to make sure you can't put these songs on the internet and have them play on another player.
  

  
  

• Songs must be 99 cents each. Full albums are recommended to be $9.99 or lower. Album price must be less than or equal to the sum of their tracks. So if you have a 5-song album, it can't be more than $4.95 to buy the full-length album. Apple strongly recommends going even lower than $9.99. They'd like to see that price drop to make the full-album purchase even more desirable. Only exception: if a song is over 7 minutes long, they won't offer it as a separate download. It will be available as part of the album only.
  

  
  

• There is no cost to put your music on iTunes. and there will be no up-front advance from Apple.
  

  
  

• Apple is reporting all iTunes sales to SoundScan! SoundScan measures per-song not per-album, so if someone buys the whole album, each track on the album is reported as a song sale.
  

  
  

• Apple has hired an editorial staff with backgrounds in music to decide what gets featured. Editorial team makes decisions every day as to what goes where. Big labels don't get preferential treatment. "We pick music we like, and we think everyone else is going to like."
  

  
  

• "We've had a lot of people offer money", but Apple refuses money, and has no plan to ever accept money for placement.
  

• It's up to the partner/label to submit all the metadata (artist name, release date, song tiles, etc.), do the audio encoding, and upload the materials.
  
• Every album needs to have a UPC Barcode!
  
• You have to use their special Music Store Encoder tool for Mac OS X which will be released in 90 days or so.
  
• Independent artists themselves, not with a label, can't use this. You have to go through an iTunes partner.
  

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EFF Deep Links: Reclaim the Public Domain

~ Reclaim the Public Domain!
The Public Domain Enhancement Act needs your support.

~ Evidence? Copyright Holders Don't Need No Stinkin' Evidence!
A U.S. Court in Hawaii thinks that copyright holders should only need
a "good faith" belief that a site is infringing copyright in order to
shut it down.

~ Digital Remix
Wonderful 3-part look at the intersection of music and technology by
News.com's John Borland.

~ Gripe 2 Ed Foster
A former InfoWorld columnist has a wonderful new blog:
http://www.gripe2ed.com/

Deep Links from the Electronic Frontier Foundation

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