— Audio of the April 8th oral arguments in the Sony vs. Tenenbaum file-sharing case is appearing in a number of locations. Follow the links to both MP3 files and YouTube streams. (Recording Industry vs. the People)
— More details have emerged from Piper Jaffray’s biannual teen survey. Only 4% of teens surveyed owned a Zune MP3 player. Sony and Sandisk came in with 2% each. Creative got 1% while iRiver and Dell scored a zero. Even more telling were the teens’ responses to the question, “What MP3 player do you plan to buy in the next 12 months?” The iPod (any variation) scored 100% of the 19% of teens who said they plan to make a purchase within a year. In the fall 2008 survey, 34% said they planned on buying an MP3 player within a year, and only 79% of those planned on purchasing an iPod. (Crave)
— MySpace has upped to ten the number of songs a band can upload to its MySpace page. (Music Week)
— For the release of his latest album, Since 1972, Josh Freese offered a series of packages with a wide price range (from a free download to $75,000 version that includes a few days on tour with Freese and a five-song EP written about the buyer’s life story). Freese has sold more than 70 of the $50 version (CD/DVD, T-shirt and handwritten “thank you”), a few $500 packages (includes a dinner at Sizzler with Freese) and a couple $5,000 packages (a song written about the buyer plus co-director credit on the video). The $75,000 package has gone unsold, but Freese did sell the $20,000 package that includes miniature golf with him, Tool’s Maynard James Keenan and Mark Mothersbaugh from DEVO. (Underwire)
— Lala.com alerted its users to more variable pricing at its site. Its current top ten songs are still priced at $0.89 each. (Lala blog)
— The Courier-Post in New Jersey applauds the state attorney general’s continuing probe into Ticketmaster’s practices. “For too long, ticket buyers have had to wonder how large blocks of the best seats always seem to end up in the hands of charge-through-the-nose brokers while they are left getting busy signals on the phone or watching the Ticketmaster Web site move at a snail’s pace while searching for tickets, only to be told all the seats are gone five minutes after they went on sale. Something is very unfair about how Ticketmaster does business.” (Courier-Post)
— In an email sent yesterday to users of the iLike application on Facebook, the company said the iLike application had been renamed to simply Music.
