The New York Times has reported that the RIAA has acquired nearly 1,000 subpoenas needed to find the identity of users who have presumably downloaded music illegally on 12 different Internet services, including Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and a number of universities, including MIT and Boston College. According to the Times, some of the targets of the RIAA include the parents of a 14-year-old boy who reportedly downloaded 150 songs on Napster years ago. The boy was subsequently punished by his parents with (among other things) loss of his computer privileges for the rest of the summer. The RIAA is very serious about their role as the “bad cop” in the good cop/bad cop relationship they have with the major record labels and this action sets a new standard for how aggressive they are willing to get to prove their point. It is unlikely that the RIAA is going to be able to collect ...

Another music downloading site, BuyMusic.com, has just entered the online music battle. Owned by Buy.com, a website that offers everything from computer products to luggage, BuyMusic.com offers consumers 79 cent downloads and $7.99 complete albums. It sounds like a good deal compared to other pay per download sites. However, after extensively surfing the site we found some significant issues. The largest of which is the fact that this service is only available to PC users. This limits a substantial portion of the market, but is not unlike Apple’s iTunes which is only available to Mac OSX users.

A growing number of SACD’s playback on the nearly 1 billion existing CD players already in the market and the DVD-Audio community badly wants to make their format do the same. SACD’s back wards compatibility comes at a price (the CD layer is easy to rip to a hard drive or CDR) that is considered to be too steep by many high powered record execs who have in the first few years become completely freaked out over illegal file sharing. DVD-Audio’s hybrid disc promises better copy protection, backwards compatibility to both CD and DVD-Video as well as more consumer added values (movies, photo clips etc…) than SACD. The problem is the DVD-Audio hybrid doesn’t work yet.

Nielsen SoundScan, has announced that effective July 2nd it began reporting permanent digital music downloads that are sold through online services including Apple, Pressplay, Listen.com, MusicNet and Liquid Audio. Upon the anticipated re-launch of the Napster service, they will also provide digital download data to Nielsen SoundScan. This data as tracked by Nielsen SoundScan will enable the recording and entertainment industries to measure and monitor sales of digital music. Digital downloads will be reported under the "Non-Traditional" Nielsen SoundScan category that compiles Internet, mail order and concert venue sales. Despite total overall CD sales in 2002 being down 8.7%, the Non-Traditional category segment has shown a dramatic increase in sales increasing from 2.2 million sales in 1997 to more then 22 million in 2002. Additionally, sales of albums via Internet retailers accounted for 79% of all Non-Traditional sales in 2002.

The Eagles just release their first single in over ten years “Hole In The World” available at all Bestbuy stores starting June 10, 2003. But for those who couldn’t wait until the CD single was released in stores, it was available on Apple iTunes days before. The CD includes a bonus DVD with the video of the single and images of their current tour.