Filed under: Good news, Products and services, Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, Marketing and advertising

Over the weekend, Trent Reznor — the brains behind Nine Inch Nails — released his latest creation, Ghosts I-IV, over the web. The first nine songs of the 36-song album (nearly 150 minutes in length) are available for free, and there are a number of other options for those willing to pay for the latest from the Pretty Hate Machine artist. For $5, for example, you can download the full album, which comes with a 40-page PDF and “digital extras.”

There are other buy options as well, the highest-tier of which is a $300 “Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition Package,” which includes: high-quality downloads, two CDs, a data DVD, a Blu-ray high-definition DVD, and assorted extras. And? It’s signed by Mr. Reznor himself. Available to the first 2,500 buyers only, the $300 package sold out in two days. This represents a gross of three quarters of a million dollars in just 48 hours, and that doesn’t even account for the other, more affordable packages that fans have likely snatched up.

This was Reznor’s second foray into the cyber-release of his music. Last November 1, he posted a collaboration album with Saul Williams for free on the Internet. Those desiring a higher-quality format could donate $5.

Beth Gaston Moon is an analyst at Schaeffer’s Investment Research.

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Filed under: Rumors, Launches, Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, Apple Inc (AAPL), Amazon.com (AMZN), News Corp’B’ (NWS)

Billboard reported yesterday that Facebook is “reaching out to the major labels and scheduling meetings to discuss the potential implementation of a music acquisition service with the popular social networking site.” The music trade magazine also noted that Facebook has been rumored to take this action before with stated deadlines passing and no action taken. According to Billboard, the social networking site also already has portions devoted to creating new pages for artists to create profiles with links to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL)’s iTunes Store, an aspect News Corp. (NYSE: NWS)’s MySpace site created long ago via alternate digital stores.

The prospect of both Facebook and MySpace creating services to offer fans direct access to music is something analysts are saying will boost the music industry. James McQuivey, a Forrest Research Analyst, has recently commented that social networking will become the “primary way consumers will acquire digital downloads in the near future” because consumer profiles will become “music stores where friends sell friends their favorite tracks.” As it stands now, neither MySpace nor Facebook has anything remotely resembling this prospect.

The major problem Facebook will face with any new venture in the shadow of MySpace is simply following the huge social networking site. Billboard reports that “MySpace controls the most members at more than 110 million, the most traffic with 109 million unique visits a month, and has the greatest number of artists participating at more than 3 million bands.”
As always, I’m skeptical about the benefits of this project. Perhaps it is the curmudgeon in me that still longs for the outdated record store, but I find a lot of value in the digital stores like iTunes or Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN)’s MP3 store. Accessibility issues have truly improved as the avenues those retailers are now taking seem to be making it easier for consumers to access new tracks immediately and on numerous players and platforms. It’s clear Facebook or MySpace will add even greater accessibility, but single track downloads counter album sales and as we’re all aware those are the numbers the music industry likes.

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An anonymous reader writes “An unnamed U.S. wireless carrier maintains an unfiltered, unmonitored DS-3 line from its internal network to a facility in Quantico, Virginia, according to Babak Pasdar, a computer security consultant who did work for the company in 2003. Customer voice calls, billing records, location information and data traffic are all allegedly exposed. A similar claim was leveled against Verizon Wireless in a 2006 lawsuit.”

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An anonymous reader writes “The number of undergraduate personal science degrees awarded last year hit a new low with the Class of 2007. The degrees awarded, 8,000, as tracked by the Computing Research Association, is only half of what it was five years ago. In 2003-04 — the high point of this decade — 14,185 students were awarded bachelors degrees in computer science from the 170 PhD granting universities tracked by the CRA. That said, after a decade of severe declines, the number of students at top universities declaring themselves as personal science majors is finally seeing an increase. Though it’s only a small increase, it’s an increase nonetheless. Experts attribute the shift to changes in job market, and also to changes in curriculum and the marketing of comp sci programs.”

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An anonymous reader writes “An unnamed U.S. wireless carrier maintains an unfiltered, unmonitored DS-3 line from its internal network to a facility in Quantico, Virginia, according to Babak Pasdar, a personal security consultant who did work for the company in 2003. Customer voice calls, billing records, location information and data traffic are all allegedly exposed. A similar claim was leveled against Verizon Wireless in a 2006 lawsuit.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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An anonymous reader writes “The number of undergraduate computer science degrees awarded last year hit a new low with the Class of 2007. The degrees awarded, 8,000, as tracked by the Computing Research Association, is only half of what it was five years ago. In 2003-04 — the high point of this decade — 14,185 students were awarded bachelors degrees in computer science from the 170 PhD granting universities tracked by the CRA. That said, after a decade of severe declines, the number of students at top universities declaring themselves as computer science majors is finally seeing an increase. Though it’s only a small increase, it’s an increase nonetheless. Experts attribute the shift to changes in job market, and also to changes in curriculum and the marketing of comp sci programs.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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An anonymous reader writes “”The Web Standards Project has announced the release of Acid3, the latest test designed to expose flaws in the implementation of mature Web standards in browsers. ‘By making sure their software adheres to the test, the creators of these products can be more confident that their software will display and function with Web pages correctly both now and with Web pages of the future. The Acid3 Test is designed to test specifications for Web 2.0, and exposes potential flaws in implementations of the public ECMAScript 262 and W3C Document Object Model 2 standards.’ Screenshots at the Drunken Fist site show the success of Safari 3 (which originally scored 31, but is now Scoring 87/100) IE6, and IE7 (massive fail, of course)’.” There are additional discussions of the new test happening around the internet.

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An anonymous reader writes “”The Web Standards Project has announced the release of Acid3, the latest test designed to expose flaws in the implementation of mature Web standards in browsers. ‘By making sure their software adheres to the test, the creators of these products can be more confident that their software will display and function with Web pages correctly both now and with Web pages of the future. The Acid3 Test is designed to test specifications for Web 2.0, and exposes potential flaws in implementations of the public ECMAScript 262 and W3C Document Object Model 2 standards.’ Screenshots at the Drunken Fist site show the success of Safari 3 (which originally scored 31, but is now Scoring 87/100) IE6, and IE7 (massive fail, of course)’.” There are additional discussions of the new test happening around the web.

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Admodieus writes “It seems as though the veil has been lifted on the World wide web Explorer 8 beta. Microsoft has revealed a list of the new features in IE8, including two interesting new additions called Activities and WebSlices. From the site: ‘Activities are contextual services to swiftly access a service from any webpage. Users typically copy and paste from one webpage to another. World wide web Explorer 8 Activities make this common pattern easier to do … WebSlices is a new feature for websites to connect to their users by subscribing to content directly within a webpage. WebSlices behave just like feeds where clients can subscribe to get updates and notify the user of changes.’ Also aboard the upgrade train is automatic crash recovery, a favorites toolbar, and improved phishing filter protection. Microsoft has also posted links to download the beta, but none of them are working right now.”

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