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The Age: Talk show host Oprah Winfrey and humanitarian rocker Bono went on a shopping spree in Chicago to promote a new line of clothing, accessories and gadgets, including a special-edition iPod, that will raise money to fight AIDS in Africa.

Dozens of “(Product) Red” items will go on sale in the coming weeks by Gap, Apple Computer, Motorola, Converse and Emporio Armani.

Portions of the product sales will go to The Global Fund, an organisation that fights AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

Apple will contribute $US10from the sale of each new red-coloured iPod nano. The model, priced the same as its $US199 cousins, goes on sale Friday.

With Apple’s iPod alone, The Global Fund stands to raise millions of dollars. During the holiday quarter in 2005, Apple sold 14 million iPods. The iPod maker also plans to donate some proceeds from a $US25 iTunes Red gift card to the organisation.

“I love the fact that Bono is trying to do something about this problem,” Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs said in a phone interview. “I’ve never been to Africa, but you don’t have to go there to know there are a lot of people dying of AIDS there. In a small way, this is something we could do about it.”

The official details for the Microsoft Zune player are here, and we’ve got the specs for you—most of which we’ve already known for a while now. The player will have a 30GB hard drive, built-in FM tuner, 3.0-inch screen, and 802.11 wireless. It will also come in three colors, black, brown and white.

The wireless networking connects your Zune to other Zunes, letting you share “full-length sample tracks of select songs”, your recordings, your playlists and your pictures with others. You can listen to a track from another person for up to three days, after which you’ll have to buy it from the Zune Marketplace store—their official name for the store.

The Zune Marketplace can be used as a per-song purchase plan—like iTunes—or you can subscribe to a Zune Pass subscription to download as many songs as you want for a flat fee—like Napster.

There’s also pre-loaded music on your Zune from several smaller record labels, not to mention music videos.

Some accessories for the Zune are the Zune Car Pack, which is an FM-tuner with AutoSeek and Zune Car Charger, the Zune Home A/V pack, which lets you connect your Zune to your TV or home stereo system, and the Zune Travel Pack, which gives you headphones, a remote, a bag, a sync cable and an AC adapter. Microsoft is working with other manufacturers like Altec Lansing, Belkin, Griffin, harman Kardon, JBL and more to make additional accessories.

No pricing information or launch date yet.

I don’t think that I will be dropping my iPod or iTunes anytime soon for this. Just because the music is free doesn’t mean the restrictions are worth it.

New.com: Music on the Internet has often been free or legal, but start-up SpiralFrog is looking to offer songs that are both.

The 20-person New York-based company has signed a deal with record label Universal Music Group to offer songs for free, hoping to make money by showing ads to users as they download the music.

“Essentially they are paying with their time,” said Lance Ford, the company’s chief sales and marketing officer. SpiralFrog hopes to begin running the service in December, offering downloads in the Windows Media Audio format. The downloads could be played on the PC or transferred to a portable device, though notably not Apple Computer’s iPod.

Although billed by some as an iTunes competitor, SpiralFrog’s idea is more like subscription services such as Napster or MTV’s Urge. Users are required to go to the company’s Web site each month to validate their music, or else it expires.

This is not the first time that a record label has dipped its toe into offering music that is paid for through advertising revenue. Earlier this month, EMI announced a deal with start-up Qtrax, which is also looking to provide free, ad-supported music.

Read the full article here

LOS ANGELES – Paging Owen Wilson. Steely Dan wants an apology.

The veteran group behind such jazz-rock hits as “Rikki Don’t Lose that Number” says Wilson ripped off its Grammy-winning tune “Cousin Dupree” for his title role as a slacker in the new comedy “You, Me and Dupree.”

In a 10-paragraph letter posted July 17 on Steely Dan’s Web site, and addressed to Wilson’s brother Luke, band leaders Walter Becker and Donald Fagen asked Owen Wilson to appear at a show in Irvine, Calif., to apologize to the band’s fans.

Wilson, in return, would get Steely Dan merchandise and a chance to party with the group.

“He would have to cop to the fact that what he and his Hollywood gangster pals did was wrong and that he wishes he had never agreed to get involved with this turkey in the first place,” says the pair.

Becker and Fagen claim that “some hack writer or producer” heard Steely Dan’s “Cousin Dupree,” about a hormonal houseguest, and “when it came time to change the character’s name or whatever so people wouldn’t know what a rip the whole thing was, they didn’t even bother to think up a new (expletive) name for the guy!”

They go on to trash the movie (a “summer stinkbomb”) and Wilson.

“Instant karma is a fact, Jack,” the pair writes.

Story Source (AP)

Syd Barrett, the troubled and enigmatic co-founder of Pink Floyd, has died. He was 60. A spokeswoman for the English band said Barrett died several days ago. No cause of death was disclosed, but Barrett, who had lived as a recluse for several years in his hometown of Cambridge, England, had suffered from diabetes for many years. In a statement, the surviving members of Pink Floyd — David Gilmour (who replaced Barrett in the group in 1968), Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Rick Wright — said they were “very sad and upset to learn of Syd Barrett’s death.” (Chris Morris)

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LONDON (July - Penny Lane will keep its name. Liverpool officials said Saturday they would modify a proposal to rename streets linked to the slave trade when they realized the road made famous by the 1967 Beatles song was one of them.

The unassuming suburban avenue was named for James Penny, a wealthy 18th-century slave ship owner. Liverpool, the Beatles’ northern English hometown, was once a major hub for the slave trade.

“I don’t think anyone would seriously consider renaming Penny Lane,” said city council member Barbara Mace, who has been pressing to get rid of names linked to slavery. “My proposal is to rename several of the streets and to replace them with the names of people who have done something positive.”

Read the rest here

US satellite radio firm XM is being sued by record labels over a gadget that lets listeners record songs.

The recording industry said XM’s Inno device, which stores music and divides it into tracks, infringes copyright.

The lawsuit seeks $150,000 (£79,537) in damages for every song copied by XM customers to an Inno gadget.

XM defended itself by saying that music stored on the device cannot be moved elsewhere and only lasts as long as a customer is a subscriber.

The Inno device turns a radio broadcast into a download service that resembles Apple’s iTunes, said the Recording Industry Association of America in its lawsuit.

The RIAA represents record labels such as Vivendi Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI.

XM said it would defend itself vigorously against the legal action.

It added that the Inno does not let people download music on demand like iTunes and only lets listeners record radio shows as the law has allowed for “decades”. The device went on sale in early May.

The lawsuit comes after talks between the RIAA and XM on licence agreements for the Inno device broke down.

The RIAA and XM are currently re-negotiating royalty contracts for radio broadcasts.

XM’s rival Sirius Satellite Radio recently agreed to pay the RIAA licence fees for its S50 recording device.

Story Source

Musicians in Edinburgh are preparing for a concert with a difference. During tomorrow night’s performance at Napier University, they are planning to improvise pieces of music without even touching an instrument. Instead they use an electronic brain device to compose their thoughts.

The braincap reads the electronic signals from the brain. They pass through wires into a computer which creates the tune. Musicians taking part in the capital’s sonic fusion festival plan to use technology for a unique jamming session.

Braincap creator Eduardo Miranda said: “One of the pianists will play an improvisation, a jazz improvisation. The other pianist will be wearing the brain/computer interface and the system will be reading the signals from the brain of the other pianist. I would not say that the system is actually interpreting the truth of what you are thinking. It is interpreting the signals and the computer works out a way that music can be produced from those signals. For the person who is going to sit at this machine, they don’t need to be musical at all. ”

Story Source

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Like millions around the world, you have an iPod, the market-leading digital music player made by Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and have spent perhaps a few hundred dollars buying songs from the company’s iTunes music store.

But do you really own the tunes? Whether you do, however, depends on how you define ownership.

“Owning implies control and if you bought the tracks on iTunes you don’t have complete control,” said Rob Enderle, president of market researcher the Enderle Group.

Those songs you bought online from Apple play just fine, of course, so long you do so on the company’s iTunes digital jukebox software, on an iPod, burn a CD (you can only burn the same “playlist,” or collection of songs, seven times), or stream them wirelessly to your stereo using another Apple gizmo.

But Apple’s FairPlay digital rights management, or DRM, software prevents you from listening to those purchased songs on a music player from Dell Inc., Creative, Sony, or others. The same thing goes for songs you’ve imported to your computer from CDs you already own.

The DRM software is Apple’s way of preventing piracy and is a large part of the reason why the recording industry has so warmly embraced the iTunes Music Store.

“A lot of people would argue it’s the closest thing you’re going to get other than buying a CD,” said analyst Mike McGuire of market research firm Gartner of the restrictions Apple and others place on music bought online.

To be sure, Apple rivals have their own DRM technology to protect against piracy, such as Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp., but none have been as successful so far as Apple. The Cupertino, California-based company has a 70-percent market share in the United States for digital music players, and higher than that for music purchased online.

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As if the world didn’t suck enough!

NEW YORK – CBS Radio confirmed Monday that shock jocks Greg “Opie” Hughes and Anthony Cumia will replace rocker
David Lee Roth in the morning slot that used to belong to the long-dominant Howard Stern.

Roth, one of several hosts picked to replace Stern after he moved to satellite, was fired Friday after barely three months on the air in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and four other markets.

Under the terms of an agreement between CBS and XM satellite radio, CBS will broadcast a three-hour version of the Opie and Anthony show from 6 to 9 a.m. EDT weekdays except in Cleveland, where the show will air from 3 to 6 p.m. The broadcast, which pits them against Stern on Sirius Satellite Radio, will be simulcast uncensored on XM. Opie and Anthony will continue to broadcast 9-11 a.m. exclusively for XM.

Additionally, CBS Radio stations in New York, Dallas and Philadelphia will stream the three-hour show online.

Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Opie and Anthony’s syndicated show — which carried on a long-running feud with Stern — was yanked from terrestrial radio in August 2002 after they aired a live account of listeners having sex in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. They were hired by XM in 2004.