To be fair, I don’t know the complete business model for digital music well enough to say whether music publishers are or are not getting screwed.  I do know if these folks are going to get paid more, it’s coming out of our pockets, and as the article points out, the outcry is just now starting to settle from Apple’s move a few months ago to implement the first iTunes Music Store price increase.

The kicker to me is that they want to come after other music “sources” in iTunes as well.  These include music in movies and TV shows, streaming radio, and even the 30-second previews for songs in the the store.  This just seems a bit greedy to me.

“In the U.S. while we do get paid a mechanical (licensing fee) from ITunes [sic], we are not getting any performance income from Apple yet,” David Renzer, chairman and CEO of Universal Music Publishing Group, said in interview late last month with entertainment-industry publication, Encore. “(On iTunes) you can stream radio, and you can preview (tracks), things that we should be getting paid performance income for.

“Also, if you download a film or TV show,” Renzer continued, “there’s no performance (payment) and typically there’s no mechanical (payment) either.”  (from cnet)

It might be true that they don’t get paid for these things, but I really don’t think they should come digging around the digital consumer for money.  Talk to the studios about the movie and TV show issue.  Talk to the radio stations about streaming radio.  As for the 30-second previews, just give it up.  We are already paying up to $1.29 per track.  Keep pushing this agenda and a lot of people will fall back on much cheaper ways to acquire music, TV shows, and movies, which result in zero royalties.

Oh, and they are so upset that they are going to ask congress to intercede.  Good thing congress doesn’t have anything on its plate right now.

The MacWorld San Francisco keynote by Apple CEO Steve Jobs came and went yesterday. I have to admit that I’m left pretty unimpressed. I haven’t watched the full keynote, but judging from the announcements that came out, nothing really blew me away. Of course, I bring higher than reasonable expectations into each keynote. Here are my impressions of the high points.

MacBook Air: This is an ultra-thin addition to the Macbook family. It’s less than one inch thick at it’s thickest point. It has a 64GB solid state storage option (for a whopping $999). It sacrifices and optical drive for space, but features an ability to “borrow” an optical drive from another Mac or PC on the network. I think the thinness is cool, but it won’t fit in my pocket, so I’d still rather spend all that cash on a loaded MacBook Pro.

iTunes Movie rentals: This idea interests me, but until I have an HDTV and an Apple TV, I really have no use for it. Given that the library already includes around 100 HD-quality movies, and I do have a new 20″ HD display on my computer, I might try this out to see if an Apple TV is really worth getting when the new TV comes (hopefully soon).

Apple TV: Along with movie rentals, they also released an updated Apple TV and dropped the price to $229.

iPhone software update: Updates are available that allow for a customizable home screen, enhanced mapping with psuedo-GPS for figuring out where you are, and multi-recipient SMS capability. Alas, no news on hardware updates, though. The new maps app is cool, but it guesses your location based on your relationship to cell towers and wi-fi routers instead of GPS. I want an iPhone badly, but I think I can wait until a 3G version comes out, especially now that AT&T has 3G in Oklahoma City, and it is really fast. Maybe 3G and true GPS are coming this year. If so, I’m all over it.

Time Capsule: This is a product that I just might buy soon. They have basically released an AirPort wi-fi base station with a hard drive in it that is capable of acting as a wireless backup disk with Leopard’s Time Machine. I’m currently in the market for two things: a) a hard drive for backup and b) an 802.11n wi-fi router with Gigabit Ethernet. This has them all. So I am definitely going to check this one out.

Those are the high points. I’m looking forward to watch the keynote to see if there is anything I missed. Overall fairly ho-hum compared to previous years, but it’s clear Apple doesn’t save everything for MacWorld anymore. So new announcements could be just around the corner.

“The toothpaste is out of the tube and a whole generation of people is accustomed to music being that way. There’s a perception that you don’t pay for music when you hear it on the radio or MySpace.,” he said.

One idea he has is an ISP music tax, whereby everyone pays around $5 extra and all music on the Web is free. If it’s an optional tax, like taxes of gasoline or cigarettes, I don’t think its a bad idea. However, I have a real problem with forcing a tax on people who “legally” acquire most, if not all, of their music collection.

Read the full article here.

I think this device looks awesome. I only wish it had 3G wireless data connectivity and was being sold unlocked. Alas, it is exclusively for Cingular’s EDGE (2.5G) network. I will be curious to see if Cingular changes its data plans to support a very data intensive phone. That being said, I’ll buy it the second I have $500 to spare.

Check out Apple’s site, and take note of the cool features like the advanced touch screen interface, advanced orientation sensors, as well as info in many ways to get information. It is said to run on slim version of OS X and contains full web browsing, e-mail and SMS capability.