Amy Harmon at The New York Times has done a nice piece on the pricing of music downloads, What Price Music? She quotes Doug Morris, chairman of Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company:

"This is much bigger than the CD. The CD and the LP and the cassette were all packaged goods. This is about
being able to find all the world's music in one store — a Professor Longhair record, a Benny Goodman record. Where are you
going to find that in a record store now?"

Looks like at least one of the labels is finally getting its act together. It's impossible to say what the long term effect on the music business will be but Morris thinks there will be an increase in overall sales. Nice to see some optimism from such a source.

The NYT also did a nice profile a few days ago of the guys that created Kazaa and their latest adventures with VoIP service Skype. Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis see VoIP having a seismic affect on traditional telephone companies. The article suggests MCI in the US are planning a complete switch to VoIP by 2005. Interesting.

Back to the music business and specifically the RIAA's targetting of file sharers, the EFF seem to have found someone else who has been falsely accused:

"The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier
Foundation on Monday asked lawyers for three
record labels to drop their suit against 35-year-old
Web site designer Ross Plank, asserting that he is the
second target of 261 high-profile suits who is the
victim of mistaken identity. "