The attached little sound fragment (a ‘ding’ sound) should show up in Itunes if you subscribe to my Podcast.

If you have Itunes installed, click on:

itpc://marcdelange.com/?feed=rss2&category_name=podcasts

Failing that, go to Itunes, select “Advanced”, then “Subscribe to Podcast” and copy and paste this url into the entry field:

http://marcdelange.com/?feed=rss2&category_name=podcasts

Upon subscription, you should see my blog’s name show up including the below sound file.

newnews.wav

With the launch of the EU iTunes Music Store, one can purchase songs at 99 Euro cents each from a large database of music. The service is focused at EU, and there’s already an existing one in US. iTunes is not available yet in Asia Pacific, but if you have a credit card issued in one of the participating EU countries, you can sign up.

This is an interesting milestone in some respects:

- The music industry and record labels are finally starting to co-operate with online service providers to create an online distribution channel.
- Some of the large volume of songs that are downloaded free (mostly illegal) will start moving to the paid and legal form.
- While current users are early adopters, there will be a critical mass of users in a few years time. I expect next generations will get most of their music by downloading it electronically, rather than buying some kind of physical recording (like a CD).
- And consequence for retailers in this business: they better add a music download service to their portals to survive, or co-operate with the likes of Itunes.

See Apple’s Press Release here.

~m