The Small Wave.

Much has been made of the “news” that Amazon’s MP3 store is now the #2 online retailer in digital music. You can absorb some various thoughts on this in these articles:

• USA today’s original article, citing no other data than the “Big 4″ labels’ word for it.
• MacDailyNews’ take on the above article, particularly its lack of any hard data.
• The CEO of eMusic calling BS on the USA today article, and claiming that eMusic is #2

And then of course there are the myriad re-hashes of the USA Today article syndicated in papers everywhere, as well as other articles parroting the story as if iTunes is somehow being threatened.

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Picked up an Airport Express today. This thing has intrigued me ever since it was introduced. Not because it’s a super small and convenient device for creating a high-speed WiFi network — complete with Internet and print sharing. And not because it can also serve as an inexpensive bridge for extending an existing wireless network.

No, what appealed to me about it was AirTunes: The ability to stream music. In other words, to plug into a powered stereo and make those speakers appear “remote” to a copy of iTunes on any Mac or PC on the same network.

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According to the Financial Times this is in the works.

Personally, I’ve never been a fan of this model, though assuming it’s optional it finally has a shot to succeed now that the largest and most popular online music store (and second-largest music store) would be offering it for those who want it.

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I’ve written a couple of times about my disappointment with Radiohead’s online distribution of their latest album (In Rainbows).

Initially, I thought that they were just naive and had blown a great opportunity. But I soon found out they knew exactly what they were doing, and were just as bad as the labels in their treatment of those who prefer to download albums instead of buying CDs.

It’s nice to see at least one artist in the business agrees.

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I’m sure the Apple-bashers will be all over this one.

Starting in April you can get music tracks OTA on your BlackBerry. And they’re DRM-free. And you can transfer them to your computer. And all is right with the world. And iTunes is going out of business. And the iPhone is dead in the water.

Or something like that.

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Universal’s had so many bad ideas on ways to hawk music it’s hard to keep up with them all. Still, I’ve tried.

Now one of their brilliant schemes — Total Disaster (a.k.a. Total Music) — is facing scrutiny from the Department of Justice.

Personally, I think Total Music is, well, a disaster. Still, I’m glad Universal’s moves are attracting some attention.

A good article on The Lefsetz Letter about the Stones deal with EMI. One portion of the article makes it clear that Mr. Lefsetz is as fond of Universal’s Doug Morris as I am:

Doug Morris is waiting for Congress to approve blowing up traders’ computers, possibly lynching them in the town square, he thinks he can beat this thing, he believes the good old days are just around the corner.

Too true.

What a busy week for Sony!

First, I assumed that they were going to offer their wares DRM-free from Amazon but not iTunes, and I speculated on what the labels were up to.

Then, they threw me a curve by being incredibly stupid, which diverted my attention briefly.

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So a Brazilian ice cream maker has started a promotion where some of its Popsicles will instead contain a free iPod Shuffle.

Cool idea (pun intended). However, in looking at the pictures of what a winner looks like, I predict the next time we hear about this will be because stores have a lot of poked, prodded, and broken Popsicle packages as users try to determine if they’ve got a winner.

Just a few days ago BusinessWeek ran a story that Sony was looking to sell DRM-free music, thereby joining the other “big” labels (Universal, Warner, and EMI) in offering at least a part of their catalog DRM-free. There was no mention of iTunes; speculation was that, like Universal and Warner, iTunes would be avoided and Amazon would be the online store of choice.

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