One of the most recognizable names in music entertainment has maintained a “No Downloads” policy ever since Apple’s iTunes revolutionized purchasing music on the Internet. AC/DC does not support the download format, and definitely not Apple’s iTunes service. In Australia however, BigPond has added 16 AC/DC albums to its line-up, available in MP3 and WMA formats (some sell as WMA only).
“Since iTunes came into existence, we’ve actually increased our back catalogue sales without being on the site. We were sternly warned by our management team and our record label that the complete opposite would be the case,” Angus Young said in a recent interview.
“Maybe I’m just being old-fashioned, but this iTunes, God bless ‘em, it’s going to kill music if they’re not careful,” Brian Johnson told Reuters. “It’s a…monster, this thing. It just worries me. And I’m sure they’re just doing it all in the interest of making as much…cash as possible. Let’s put it this way, it’s certainly not for the…love, let’s get that out of the way, right away.”
According to AC/DC representatives, the “No Downloads” policy does not just apply to Apple, but to all other companies selling music on the Internet. BigPond music is selling 16 AC/DC albums at $16.50 a piece, but the new album will not be available on the service and no single tracks are available to download. “AC/DC Live” is the number 17 album for BigPond this week.
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It was announced in August 2007, and now finally Limewire has launched a beta for its DRM-free online MP3 download store.
The store offers “a web browser-based interface for downloading music.” The store does not use P2P however and is centralized with the company hosting the MP3s on its own servers. You do not need to be a subscriber to purchase the tracks but you will get better deals if you do. Each individual Track costs $0.99 USD but if you purchase the “Platinum Plan” for $20 USD a month then you receive 75 download credits, good for 75 song downloads. At that rate, each track only costs $0.27 USD.
Users running Internet Explorer 6 & 7, Firefox, Safari or Opera browsers can currently use the store but Limewire hopes to integrate the store into the actual client.
“Our plan with the LimeWire Store is to add to the LimeWire experience–we’re not going to take anything away. We think purchase links should appear alongside Gnutella search results, similar to how Google keeps sponsored links separate. We believe a significant number of users will choose to purchase content if the presentation is convenient and unobtrusive, the price is Right, and the product isn’t hindered by DRM,” added a Limewire spokesperson.
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Apple has announced the release of the 3.1 version of its Safari web browser and it is sporting several key improvements including Windows support.
The company has said the new version “loads Web pages 1.9 times faster than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 and 1.7 times faster than the open-source Firefox 2 browser.” Apple also claims that Safari now runs JavaScript almost 6 times faster than any other browser.
The benchmark stats come from using VeriTest’s iBench Version 5.0 on default settings. The company said the specs of the computer used was an iMac 2.4-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system with Windows XP and 1GB of memory.
Apple Senior Vice President Philip Schiller added that Safari 3.1 is “blazingly fast, easy to use” and has an “elegant user interface.” More importantly, the browser “supports audio, video and animation standards needed for the next generation of Web 2.0 experiences.”
Safari 3.1 is now available for free for Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11, Leopard and Windows XP and Vista.
