“This is extremely exciting for me,” Al writes in a recent blog posting. “One of the hardest things I’ve had to deal with in my career is keeping my material topical even though I only release albums every 3 or 4 years. Now, with the advent and popularity of digital distribution, I don’t have to wait around while my songs get old and dated — I can get them out on the Internet almost immediately. It kind of boggles my mind — I thought of the idea for this new song a week ago, and next week it’s getting released!”

Weird Al’s not yet revealing what the song is, but he says it’s a parody of a tune “that very recently was (or perhaps still is) the number one song” in the U.S. — something he describes as “another first” for him. The track will go up on iTunes next Tuesday, October 7.

In a time with such uncertainty about the future of physical music, our odd friend’s willingness to step back from the album-centric approach without abandoning it altogether is admirable. And there’s nothing weird about that.

Maybe certain other bands with antiquated ideas about digital distribution should start listening.

Related posts:

1. Weird Al Yankovic latest music video: Skipper Dan
2. Musicians could teach the music industry a lesson or two
3. iTunes Goes DRM-Free, Changes Pricing System

Imeem’s home page will be getting an update, according to CNet News, and will gain new featured content sections. Users will also soon be able to browse through the site’s most played tracks to find songs they might like. Other additions include a “discover” feature, which recommends songs based on past preferences, and specific artist-oriented pages that bring all of a performer’s material into one place.

While it does offer mainstream music, Imeem appears to be working to set itself apart from MySpace Music by focusing also on the lesser-known, indie-style acts — plus on the fact that its playlists can be embedded anywhere, not just within a single social network’s profiles.

Aside from the slightly annoying account that’s required to do much, I’ve generally found Imeem to be quite easy to use and have been happy with my experiences in the past. I’m not sure the upcoming changes — at least, as they’re being described now — will make a significant impact on the site’s appeal or success. The service’s real challenge will simply be drawing people in, particularly when the big name brands are offering integrated streaming solutions within social networking and even within searching.

Related posts:

1. Meebo Unveils Support For MySpace and Facebook IM
2. MySpace Slipping In UK Traffic
3. MySpace Launches New Data Sharing Service

BBC Worldwide has revealed plans to launch an Internet-based music download service in competition with Apple. The store will feature tunes from the BBC’s archives with the option to pay to download or pay less to “rent” — meaning the track would be downloaded with a temporary lifespan. The service will also let you stream anything in its entirety for free, if you don’t mind pre-, post- and mid-roll advertisements. All purchased and downloaded content will be DRM-free and is expected to run about 79p (USD$.89) per track.

The interesting thing here is the service will actually offer something new compared to its competitors. Rather than standard album tracks, the catalog will be made up of live performances that have aired on the BBC over the years — anything from “Top of the Pops” to various music festivals and radio or TV specials. Some will even date back to the 70s-era “Old Grey Whistle Test”, a program that had performances ranging from John Lennon to the Eagles.

A beta version is expected to debut in November with a full launch following early next year. The name of the service has not yet been decided.

Related posts:

1. Last.fm Radio to go subscription – sort of
2. Splendid: Record Industry Goes After Radio Stations For “Piracy”
3. Apple not going to close iTunes store [obvious]

Playing off the same concept, 8tracks lets you upload up to 30 minutes of music into a custom playlist, which can then be publicly shared with other users. You can search for music using artists, genres, or usernames.

So how is this legal while Muxtape ran into trouble? Muxtape was hosting the files without any type of license agreement or royalty plan, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. 8tracks, in contrast, says it has licenses with ASCAP, BMI and SESAC for the “public performance of musical works.” As such, it does pay a set per-play royalty rate — about one-seventh of a cent per track streamed, according to its owners.

8tracks is very transparent about the whole thing, providing a detailed explanation of the cost and how it can afford it:

“At current royalty rates, the hourly cost per user is just over $0.02 per listener per hour in 2008, increasing to nearly $0.03 per listener per hour in 2010. This means that 8tracks must earn a net CPM from advertising of at least $20 in 2008 (i.e., $20 per 1000 ad impressions = $0.02) and nearly $30 in 2010 (i.e., $30 per 1000 ad impressions = $0.03) to cover the cost of streaming sound recordings. In addition, 8tracks pays musical works royalties to ASCAP, BMI and SESAC, which generally comprises 3%-5% of revenues.

8tracks is taking 2 steps to reduce its royalty liability so can sustain itself as a business. First, it is opting into a Small Webcaster license offered by SoundExchange (at the request of Congress). This license provides for royalty payment on the greater of a percentage-of-revenue or percentage-of-expense basis, subject to a minimum fee, which will allow us to grow our user base – and our potential for advertising – before having to pay the more onerous compulsory rates owed on a per song, per listener basis.

Second, 8tracks is seeking direct licenses with independent record labels and artists who generally see greater promotional value in internet radio – given relatively few alternative channels for exposure – and are thus more willing to consider the percentage-of-revenue terms common to all other forms of radio (traditional, satellite, cable).”

8tracks has apparently been around since 2006 — who knew? David Porter, who used to head up online radio network Live365, formed it with six other people. It’s based in both New York City and San Francisco.

Related posts:

1. Muxtape jammed?
2. Muxtape officially dead, sort of.
3. RIAA on Muxtape: Illegal Play

It’s an interesting concept in the day of closely guarded rights and constantly monitored filesharing: In addition to letting you stream an artist’s music, TrueAnthem offers you the option to download individual tracks or complete albums for free. The free versions come with a brief embedded ad at the top — or, if you want to pay the standard 99 cents per song rate, you can get the tracks ad-free.

TrueAnthem has about 5,000 active widgets around the Web right now. Bands on its roster include acts such as Nine Inch Nails, Hootie and the Blowfish, and Ryan Huston. The company, based in San Francisco, says it’s seen a 500 percent increase in usage since its April launch.

Related posts:

1. Napster Launches New DRM-Free Store
2. iTunes Goes DRM-Free, Changes Pricing System
3. RouteNote Offers Online Music Distribution

First of all, Qbox requires you to download and install a program — strange, considering the concept is totally web-driven. Once you install the utility, though, things get even murkier. It took me some random clicking around to figure out that I was supposed to hit a random, unlabeled icon that basically just opened the Qbox web site in my browser. Again, no instructions, but I deduced that I was presumably now supposed to click through the site to find an option to create an account before it’d let me use the service.

At this point, I was getting a little annoyed, but I was still intrigued enough to keep going. The next problem, though, popped up after I created my account, when I tried to search for songs (also done through the web site — not through the program it made me install). I found plenty of results, but when I tried to click on the play button for any of them, the web site gave me a pop-up window saying the Qplayer utility — the same utility from which I had clicked over to the site in the first place — hadn’t yet been installed.

I still wasn’t quite ready to give up, so after a few unsuccessful attempts at getting around this, I decided to humor it and click “OK” — hoping a redownload would finally convince this service I had the program and was ready to proceed. But alas, still no success. I was unable to ever get it to even recognize that I had downloaded and installed the damned thing.

Oh yeah, and clicking on the “User Guide” just played a long and tedious video with no useful information. The “Help” section consisted of a FAQ that didn’t address anything related to my issues.

I did a little digging and discovered I wasn’t the first one to have problems with Qbox. Blogger Matt Rosoff of Webware wrote about troubles of his own when he tried it out several days ago.

Don’t get me wrong — the Qbox concept is great. It’d be a treat to be able to track down and play music from various social network services in one central place, without having to deal with all the annoying internal menus and search processes of each individual site. Unfortunately, though, it appears that Qbox has a ways to go before it becomes a practical, functioning solution. Let’s hope for its sake that someone else doesn’t take the same idea and do it well in the meantime, or Qbox may never amount to more than a short-lived blip on the Web 2.0 radar.

Related posts:

1. Qbox: Social Network Music Revisited
2. Google Debuts Fast Flip News Reader. Still A Work In Progress
3. Who’s Amung Us: great idea, poorly supported