It’s unseemly to gloat that “I told you so,” but I’m not being paid for this gig so I’ll take my satisfaction where I can find it: According to a Digital Music News report on Amazon’s plans (free registration required), Amazon will be integrating its much-rumored digital music offering into its existing CD-centric online store: MP3s from participating artists will be blended into the larger, existing Amazon store. “They are not trying to replace iTunes, iPod, Zune, whatever,” one source said. “It’s going to look just like Amazon does today.” That means that a search for an artist will yield a number of results, including CDs, merchandise, DVDs, and MP3s if available. ...

In a previous post I offered some pretty snarky advice for indie labels complaining about eMusic per-track payouts. For this post I ’ll try to look at things in a more objective manner and consider why eMusic does business the way it does, and why eMusic’s approach is arguably better for labels than various alternatives. In particular I’ll address the business case for eMusic offering its new Connoisseur plans, since that was apparently one major bone of contention between eMusic and Victory Records. As Tony Brummel of Victory famously said with regard to the Connoisseur plans, “I just don’t believe in what they’re doing.” He may have lost his own faith in eMusic, but perhaps I can justify it to others. ...

This is my report on my activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending April 20, 2007. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I did this past week: Grants and related activities. I approved two new accessibility-related proposals, and send another to the Mozilla Foundation board for consideration; more information to come later as things progress.. Next action(s): Finish paperwork for new work being funded. Do a blog post summarizing our accessibility-related efforts, as well as a brief meeting report on CSUN and G3ICT. ...

I love that people at eMusic are posting at 17 dots; as I mentioned previously, it’s integrating eMusic itself into the eMusic user community. But. . . I do almost all my blog reading using a feed reader (NetNewsWire in my case), and it’s driving me up a wall that 17 dots doesn’t have a full text feed. Given the rate that they’re posting at, there are a lots of posts to read, and it really interrupts my flow when I see something I find interesting only to be stopped by the inevitable “(more…).” ...

It’s been just over a year since I started working full-time for the Mozilla Foundation, and about a year and a half since the Foundation spun off the Mozilla Corporation as a wholly-owned subsidiary. Since that time we’ve engaged in a number of useful amount of activities at the Foundation; however I think it’s fair to say that the Foundation has barely scratched the surface of what it can do. ...

Hypebot seems to engaging in a mild form of eMusic deathwatch lately, this time questioning eMusic’s apparent success in adding new subscribers and labels. At the moment the discussion seems to center around the issue of per-track payouts from eMusic vs. payouts from the iTunes Store and other digital music stores. In particular, the article quotes one label owner complaining that he gets only $0.17 per track from eMusic vs. $0.69 per track or more from other stores. Previously we heard similar complaints from Tony Brummel of Victory Records, questioning why eMusic would want to introduce new subscriber plans offering tracks at $0.25 per download. Hypebot seems to share these concerns: ...

Courtesy of Hypebot’s New Music Business Briefing this week: The mainstream music industry press (in the form of Billboard) talks about the possibility of Amazon entering the digital music market. Some quick points, for those keeping score at home: Hypebot brags that they’ve been out in front on the Amazon story for some time now. Fair play to them, they’ve done a good job of keeping up to date with Amazon-related developments. Billboard revisits the complaints of the major labels that Amazon wasn’t willing to take on Apple with a DRM-based offering. Sorry, folks, I pointed out over a year ago [what a stupid idea that was][what a]"), especially given that Amazon is in business to serve its customers, not the business models of the major labels. As [I predicted][I predi], Amazon has at least been trying to establish price points for a la carte downloads below the prevailing $0.99 per track model (which in turn is based on a wholesale price to labels of $0.70 per track). However Amazon is encountering resistance, and it’s not clear if it will be successful, at least initially. Interesting times. But enough Amazon for now; this is an eMusic blog, so I’ll try to post on eMusic next. ...

Recently I read a post on Chris Messina’s blog about the Yuri’s Night event at NASA Ames Research Center. It sounds like it was an interesting event ("Burning Man Meets NASA,” as Daniel Terdiman of CNET referred to it), and this is one of those times I regret not being a twenty-something living in Silicon Valley. (I could have watched the webcast, but got distracted by other stuff.) Although I can’t comment on the event itself (I’ll leave that to others), I can provide a little historical perspective. ...

This is my report on my activities related to the Mozilla Foundation for the week ending April 13, 2007. Projects for the week Here’s a partial listing of what I did this past week: Grants and related activities. I committed to speak at the July 2 meeting of the National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science group in Atlanta; thanks to Curtis Chong for inviting the Mozilla Foundation to be represented there. I also attended a dinner with members of the W3C WAI Protocols and Formats Working Group (the folks working on WAI-ARIA and related initiatives); thanks to Aaron Leventhal for inviting me and to Tom Wlodkowski of AOL for hosting the dinner. Finally, I worked on some stuff related to the upcoming W4A meeting sponsored by the Foundation. ...

Today Hypebot posted the promised article discussing how Amazon can succeed in the digital music business. Also as promised, I will now comment on Hypebot’s advice and how it compares to [my own][] on an Amazon digital music service"): Be the first major US store to sell EMI in the mp3 format. This advice seems overly short-term: Sure, Amazon might get some initial press for being the first major US store (note the qualifiers!) to enter the digital music market with major label MP3 offerings, but this does not a long-term strategy make. I think it needs to be coupled with something else, and I think that that something else is Amazon having a clear and public goal to be the market-leading commercial provider of digital music in the MP3 format—a goal which in essence amounts to supplanting eMusic as the perceived number two player behind the iTunes Store. As [I’ve written previously][Ive wr] I think this is a realistic goal, and achieving it would pay big dividends for Amazon in terms of market credibility, just as [it has for eMusic][it has]. ...