When it comes to the online world and music you got to admit the music industry trade groups like RIAA and ASCAP are tenacious, stupid but tenacious.

Recently ASCAP has been trying to convince the courts that streaming or downloading of music from digital music lockers like Yahoo and Rhapsody constituted a “public performance” and as such companies like these needed to pay an extra licencing fee meant to go to the songwriters.

In the first decision by a district court ASCAP came out the winner as the court also came up with an extremely convoluted formula that involved all the revenue from the offending companies. This meant that companies like Yahoo would have had to pay some of its search revenue to ASCAP – explain that one.

Lucky for Yahoo and Rhapsody an appeals court overturned the ruling and in the process noted that a download does not constitute a public performance. Well obviously ASCAP wasn’t overly happy with the decision and appealed to the US Supreme Court.

It was announced today that the Supreme Court will not hear the case which means that the lower appeal court’s decision will stand and ASCAP can go back home with its tail tucked between its legs.

Finally some sense from the courts on what should have been common sense to begin with.

via Techdirt

US Supreme Courts says music downloads are not public performances is a post from: The Inquisitr

In a last ditch attempt to arrest the terminal decline in CD sales, Universal Music has decided to make CD’s cheaper than digital downloads.

According to AllThingsD

The world’s biggest music label is pushing a plan to sell all its CDs at a retail price of $10 or less, Billboard reports. Given that all the big labels are currently selling discs at wholesale prices of $10 to $12, that’s a big price chop

An update notes that Universal hasn’t confirmed the strategy yet, only that the company will begin “looking at such variables as greater selection at sharper pricing on front-line releases. We expect to begin the test in Q2.”

There is some evidence that price cuts do work, but isn’t this a case of too little, too late?

The shift away from physical media to digital distribution hasn’t been about price exclusively, although that’s obviously a factor for some. The main driver is a shift in consumption of music to players that support digital music only. While most people may still be able to play a CD via their computer, fewer and fewer would actually own a dedicated CD player (indeed, do they still make them?) Convenience is the key: a download works straight away vs the need to rip a CD. They’re also more convenient, being available 24/7 on demand, and come at a lower marginal cost to the consumer: you have to travel to a music store to acquire a CD, an exercise that costs money. You might be able to order a CD online, but then you add shipping. A digital music download: press a button, do not pass go.

If the move does see an increase in CD sales, it can only be a short term blip because despite the best efforts of the industry, physical media will soon be dead.

Too Little, Too Late: Universal To Make CD’s Cheaper Than Digital Music is a post from: The Inquisitr

So. Facebook has 400 million members and apparently 175 million daily uniques; which is more than the number of members Facebook had in January 2009. The service already serves up more photos that anyone else in the world. In other words the numbers are huge.

Sounds pretty good doesn’t it, especially if you are company being told that you would have access to all those members as long as you have some social media flack to hold your hand.

I have real problems with numbers like this, just as I have always been suspect of the massive numbers always claimed by software companies as being indicative of the number of people actually using the software.

After all does the millions of downloads claimed by Firefox take into account the different versions that already existing Firefox users will automatically download. Do the numbers take into account people like myself who have downloaded just about every version but end up not using it.

No they don’t take any of that into account. All the numbers across the versions are amalgamated to provide a single number to show the world. It doesn’t matter if people like myself never actually use the software because Firefox has it’s number so it’s happy.

Twitter has the same sort of problem but in reverse which causes the company a lot of problems over the perception of adoption of the service. Many sources put the membership of Twitter around the 4 million mark but their traffic numbers don’t match up this. The problem is that the vast majority of Twitter users never go to the actual Twitter site  but rather use third party clients. So really any claims of traffic numbers for Twitter will always be suspect.

So now we have Facebook bragging about having 400 million members but really how many are actual active members?

Facebook can’t use the Twitter excuse of 3rd party clients stealing away pageviews from the Facebook site itself. So if we are to take any stock in the numbers tossed out by Sandberg at Davos that Facebook is crossing the 175 million unique visits per day this means that approximately one third of their claimed userbase is visiting at any one time.

So what are those other 225 million supposed members doing?

Sure it sounds great to be able to say you have 400 million members but really if almost two thirds of your userbase isn’t using the service that large number rings kind of hollow.

This doesn’t change the fact that Facebook is huge but I would imagine if we were to pop the hot air of the number’s balloon we would find the real member count isn’t near what is being trumpeted.

Facebook member numbers and the hot air of the PR balloon is a post from: The Inquisitr

Firefox 3.6 has finally been released after months of beta testing and bug fixes plus a few release candidates.

The new version of the popular web browser offers a host of new abilities, including a 20% increase in pageload times compared to Firefox 3.5. The browser also uses Gecko 1.9.2 web-rendering which adds to startup speed and stability, while offering faster and smoother Javascript controls.

The new version also includes a feature called “Personas” which lets users customize their Firefox setup with single clicks, not requiring a restart, while an auto-complete form function is available and support for the HTML5 platform is also shown off.

Check out the full set of new Firefox 3.6 features here.

It’s a bit surprising that the 3.6 version of the software is already available with release candidates only arriving at the start of this month, but regardless it’s here to stay and can be downloaded from the official Firefox homepage.

Firefox 3.6 Officially Released Today is a post from: The Inquisitr

According to TorrentFreak, a leak of the forthcoming AC/DC album Black Ice, due to be released October 20 in physical form only and with no digital sales, has been downloaded 400,000 times from BitTorrent alone, so not including other P2P and file sharing services.

AC/DC maintain a complete refusal to allow their music to be sold online, because they believe that their music should be sold in album form only, where as Apple forces bands to offer sales of each single from the album individually. AC/DC cites album sales figures that have actually increased in the last 5 years as proof that their refusal to offer digital sales works for them.

The downloads from BitTorrent may lead to increased sales of the new album; studies have previously found that downloaders are more likely to buy the official release having sampled an illegal copy, than those who have never heard the music previously. And yet, the correlation between downloads and physical copies of music is hit and miss: a Canadian study found increased CD sales, another reported by the BBC found the increase went to purchasing digital copies. AC/DC is limiting those buying outcomes by offering a physical copy only, and the downloads actually do demonstrate one thing clearly: listeners want access to AC/DC music digitally.

AC/DC downloads hit 400,000 prior to physical only release is a post from: The Inquisitr