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eMusic, as we have previously learned is the number two digital music provider in terms of catalog size, has once again reached another milestone. Their most recent announcement puts them at the 4 million mark, which is now made up of music from more than 40,000 record labels. Some most recent additions include music from Nine Inch Nails, Liz Phair and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts.

eMusic currently offers music in the MP3 format, of which are all DRM-free. Much of the collection are independent titles, which coincidentally also places eMusic as the number 1 independent music site. In addition to the music tracks, eMusic also offers a complete range of ebooks in a variety of genres.

Read [eMusic]

With a very web friendly release for their latest album, which in turn saw a great amount of success, Nine Inch Nails has taken the Ghosts ‘project’ one step further. In a recent post on the official NIN website, Trent Reznor first begins by thanking everyone for the albums success and then quickly goes on to announce that they are taking another step forward in creating a community around this album.

Today we announce the expansion of the Ghosts project into the visual world. This record began as an experiment with us using sound as a means to describe visuals. Early in the project we thought it would be interesting to see what the community could create / collaborate on as a reaction to the music we were making. We wanted to keep the canvas as blank as possible for you, hence the lack of descriptive song titles and the primarily textural artwork and packaging.

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It seems Trent Reznor was right on with his latest album release for Ghosts I-IV. Based on “confirmed” reports the album has seen sales totaling 800,000 during the first week of its release, which in turn brought in $1.6 million. The 800,000 total included all forms of the album, including the free version which was Ghosts I, along with a combination of the other four available paid options. The paid options ranged in price from $5 for 36 DRM-free downloadable tracks to a $300 limited edition box set.

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In a move that is not all that surprising, especially after Trent Reznor had confirmed being an OiNK user himself, Nine Inch Nails (NIN) have confirmed the legality of uploading and are actually encouraging the sharing Ghosts I. They have in fact not only made Ghosts I available for free directly from their own website, but also uploaded the 9 tracks (or torrents) to other places to include The Pirate Bay, What.cd and Waffles.fm. Not only was Ghosts I uploaded, the tracks were also uploaded as a nice high quality 320kpbs LAME encoded album. Of course I am fairly certain that any NIN fan will quickly shell out the $5 to purchase the complete collection, which also is available in a variety of formats.

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Nine Inch Nails has released their latest collection of music in a very web friendly format. Giving current fans and potential new fans a wide variety of choices to purchase the music in just about any way that you would like to get it. The new music is a 5 set collection that includes 36 tracks in total, and Trent Reznor is giving you options ranging from purchasing the whole collection as a fancy box set down to getting the first nine-tracks as DRM-free MP3’s for free.

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Amazon seems to be primed to give Apple some true competition, they have announced plans to roll-out their MP3 service to an international market during 2008.

Amazon, who is currently the only retailer able to make the claim of offering DRM-free music from all four of the major labels and with that alone iTunes will have some competition. The Amazon MP3 service was originally launched in September 2007 and currently has more than 3.3 million tracks available. Sadly Amazon did not mention any specific date or time for the launch, leaving it simply as 2008. While I cannot imagine this being an iTunes killer, it does give users a very appealing alternative.

Read [Amazon] Via [Reuters]

With the new partnership between major music label Sony BMG and online retail giant Amazon.com, music fanatics can download the songs of Justin Timberlake, Santana, Bruce Springsteen and many other famous artists at Amazon MP3 starting next month.

This is a very significant milestone because Amazon MP3 becomes the online music retailer to carry all four major labels as well as more than 33,000 independent labels. Now, the war is on against the dominant market leader, Apple’s iTunes.

This partnership is part of a

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Sony has just announced they plan to start offering DRM-free music tracks. Shocking news coming from a company that has had more than a fair share of bad press when it comes to DRM, thanks to some root kit issues. Sony has become the last of the four major labels to drop the DRM and have plans to make their newly freed tracks available beginning with Justin Timberlake’s latest single through Amazon’s download service.

Sony is still currently working out the final details which are expected to be announced within a few weeks. No word yet on just how much of Sony’s collection will be available. While this seems like great news, all four of the major labels are now offering at least some tracks DRM-free, its still far from the end of DRM, it is however one step closer which is a good thing.

Read [Business Week]

Warner has added their entire music collection to Amazon as DRM-free MP3’s. According to a spokesperson for Amazon and Warner Music Group this will add “hundreds of thousands of tracks” to Amazon, which now contains over 2.9 million tracks. With 3 of the 4 major labels, Amazon is looking like they will be offering some serious competition for iTunes, now included are tracks from EMI, Universal and Warner.

It seems that Warner is actually understanding what consumers are looking for with digital music, their tracks are going to not only be DRM-free but they will not contain any watermarks which means they can be enjoyed on just about any portable player.

“We believe that giving consumers the assurance that the music they purchase can be played on any device they own will only encourage more sales of music,” said Michael Nash, SVP of digital strategy and business development for Warner Music Group.

Now we are just waiting on availability of DRM-free tracks from Sony/BMG as they are the last holdout with the major labels. Hopefully they will follow suit.

Via [Wired]

On Tuesday, February 6, Steve Jobs wrote an open letter entitled “Thoughts on Music” to the music industry.  His words (or whoever wrote it’s words) were carefully thought out and gave him a chance to share “his feelings” while still maintaining his relationships with the industry.  In the essay, Jobs examines “three different alternatives for the future.”

The first option is that we “continue on the current course.” In a sense, he almost makes it sound silly how segregated the music industry is with Zune music only playing on the Zune player, Sony Connect only playing on Sony players, and iTunes only play on iPod.  He then states that “customers are being well served with a continuing stream of innovative products and a wide variety of choices.” Jobs takes a closer look at the iPod and iTunes.  He mentions that there have been 90 million iPods sold, and 2 billion songs sold from the iTunes Music Store.  That means on average, each iPod user has 22 songs from iTunes.  He says since the most popular iPod holds 1,000 songs, that means that only 3% of the music on the players are protected with DRM.

The second option that Steve speaks of is Apple licensing its FairPlay DRM - which he makes pretty clear will never happen.  He talks about how history (PlaysForSure) proves that when multiple companies use the same DRM encryption technology, there will be leaks of information, making it easy for people to develop DRM-cracking tools.  He points at Microsoft’s decision to move from an open model (PlaysForSure) to a closed model (Zune) as evidence that opening up is the wrong way to go in the future.  “Apple has concluded that if it licenses FairPlay to others, it can no longer guarantee to protect the music it licenses from the big four music companies.”

The third option is to get rid of DRM entirely.  And as weird as it sounds, Steve Jobs may actually be sincere about this one.  I won’t say much more about this one, since it’s best to read this excerpt:

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

All in all, Steve Jobs takes a bold position by writing this essay.  He knows that he’s the godfather of the music industry - even though he runs a products company.  Judging by his language, and how the piece is written, option 3 is really the only one he feels strongly about.  I can’t say how the music industry feels about this, but Jobs does make a good point - the music industry already sells 90% of their music DRM-free - so what’s another 10%?

Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Music [Apple]