No Rock And Roll Fun

FRANKLY, I'M NOT HP: What's more rammed than the Woolworths video department at Christmas (as well-meaning grandparents try to understand the difference between between the DVD, DVD special edition, VHS and soundtrack CD formats?) Why, the download market, of course, and now comes news that HP are planning to launch a music download service. They're keeping tight-lipped about what it's actually going to involve, because - they say - they're tweaking the design to set it apart from the rest of the market. Hmm. Okay, then.

And, just a quickie - we hate to be fair to the music industry, but it's not really true to say (as David Teather does in this article) that " the music industry itself has focused on closing down the internet as a means of distribution" - not for the last nine months or so, at the very least. Admittedly, they still want to crush anyone not giving them large chunks of cash to them, and it took them five or six years to accept that downloading would continue regardless of what they wanted, but the labels have, at long last, come to terms with the internet being some sort of distributive means.