Charles on… anything that comes along

I wrote a story for Monday’s paper which didn’t get in: it began “Apple will this week sign a deal with independent labels to put bands such as the White Stripes on its online iTunes Music Store in Europe”. I knew, because I’d been speaking to the people doing the wheeling and nearly-ready-for-dealing.

The piece didn’t appear. Pressures of space. Or else just toooooo boring to tell people. (I don’t know the precise reason - I’ve been on holiday this week, so haven’t asked the newsdesk.)

And I had it in mind to put up a post here on Monday to say it was going to happen, but first I had other things to do, such as self-harm through cutting bramble hedges. Only cut through the electric cord twice.

Anyway, now they’ve done the deed, and inked the deal: Major Indie Music Labels Join Apple’s iTunes Music Store in Europe tells you it all.

Interesting thing about it being that Apple, having been rebuffed, began pursuing the indie labels individually. And they individually spoke to each other, and hammered out what the terms they’d settle for were, and took those back to Apple. A nice example of divide and rule vs all for on, and one for all.

Once the Euro iTMS has The White Stripes, though, I think that’s game over. iPod nation? iPod planet, more like.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Why more indie music isn't on the iTunes Music Store (21 September 2004; score: 88.92%)
• Microsoft packages, and fixing the iTunes Music Store (someone else did) (11 March 2006; score: 85.93%)
• Best and worst value on the iTunes Music Store (3 August 2004; score: 84.48%)

This week’s Network is now online: there’s an interview with Jasper Fforde, who’s written four hugely enjoyable books; and a piece about the risks from premium-rate diallers, which have reached epidemic proportions.

The description for the first feature isn’t right (his heroine doesn’t use a wind-up computer; it’s more like the computers in the books are useless, because they’re windups). But Jasper Fforde is great fun, with a very wry sense of humour; he taught himself to write HTML without a manual by examining source code of pages and messing it about to see what happened. “A bit like learning the offside rule by watching it on TV,” he called it.

His previous book (The Well Of Lost Plots) is a wonderful satire on operating system upgrades and the motives behind them. All made more palatable by being framed in book language.

And do visit his website: the photos of the parallel Swindon are disturbingly real. “We’ve got quite good with Photoshop,”, he says. That’s understating it.

He’ll also be on Radio 4’s Front Row at 1915 BST tonight. Listen in the real world or online. I’ll put up a link to it once it’s happened.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• BT customers scammed by Trojan diallers still have to pay up.. while BT pays the scammers (7 October 2004; score: 78.11%)
• Those damn premium diallers, and Apple vs Real (4 August 2004; score: 68.66%)
• Tagged! Now for three fictional journalists (28 February 2006; score: 62.75%)