Royalty Rate Unchanged; iTunes Stays

Apple had threatened to shutter its iTunes service if royalty rates on downloaded songs went up, but it didn’t happen. A brief AP article notes that the royalty rates were left unchanged for digital downloads and CDs — 9.1 cents per song.

Meanwhile, a writer over at the Motley Fool calls BS on the idea that Apple would ever have shut down iTunes, and explains why. A commenter disagrees, saying Apple could take a short-term revenue hit.

Sony Announces New E-Book Reader

On October 2, Sony announced its new E-Book rear, the PRS-700. From the wording it looks like it will complement, not displace, the PRS-505.

The new reader is about 10 ounces with a six inch display, similar to Kindle. The new Sony Reader will also have a touchscreen (which Kindle does not) and has a stylus with virtual keyboard for virtual notetaking.

Sony Reader, like Kindle, has e-ink display, which means no backlight, which means no night reading. Except the new reader has a built-in LED reading light (wonder what that does to battery life.)

The Kindle has built-in wireless for buying books from Amazon. Sony Reader doesn’t have that but it does have SD and Memory Stick card slots, and the Sony Reader is making major inroads at retailers, being stocked at both Borders and Target.

The PRS-700 will be available next month for about $400. You can get pix and more details at Sony.com.

Everybody Talkin’ ‘Bout slotMusic

I was waiting for the music and the albums list, but it’s not available yet, so I better write this up before it gets moldy. A variety of companies have gotten together to announce the upcoming availability of music — DRM-free music — on microSD cards. They’re calling it slotMusic. The microSD cards means that slotMusic will be perfect for cell phones and other devices that use those tiny cards, but releases will also be packed with USB sleeves that make them compatible with desktop computers.

The press release announcing slotMusic mentions that slotMusic will be released from EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group. It’ll first be available in the US from stores including Best Buy and Wal-Mart, with Europe coming later.

The press release mentions that artists will have the option to put other things on the microSD cards — like liner notes and videos — but it’s not clear if the cards will be re-writable or if they’re write once at manufacture. Passing around a bunch of rewritable media sounds very virus-y. It’s also not clear how much these albums will cost. Wasn’t it the case that CDs cost less to produce than cassettes and yet cost more? Is this going to be the same thing?

There’s a Web site at www.slotmusic.org but there isn’t much there yet. You can read the press release at MarketWatch.

Pirate Bay Hoists the Lawsuit Flag

I don’t know if I’m more bemused by the role-reversal or the pure-D ballsiness. A Wired Blog notes that Peter Sunde, a co-founder of torrent site the Pirate Bay, is accusing a group of Swedish book publishers of illegal scraping, and is threatening a lawsuit, saying Pirate Bay owns the copyright to its database of torrents which the publishers violated.

Once you get past the surrealism, there’s a pretty astonishing statistic you might want to make note of. The book publishers, who were doing all this scraping for a study, noted that 85 percent of the best-selling books in Sweden are available on the Pirate Bay. And Sunde is quoted by TorrentFreak that he’s “a bit sad that it’s not 100%.”