}

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iTunes New Music Releases

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Discover New Music

  • An Evening with George Shearing & Mel Torm�

    • 10 out of 10
    • Mel Torm� & George Shearing
    • Of the three men who taught me how to sing, the last was Mel Torme. Apparently, Mel Torme is a joke to anyone more than a decade older than me, a living parody of a Vegas crooner. But I stumbled on th
  • Suspended Animation

    • 8 out of 10
    • Fantomas
    • Mike Patton may well be one of the hardest working men in showbiz these days, and his latest with Fantômas underscores just about how far out he is willing to travel.

      Suspended Animation

  • Supernature

    • 10 out of 10
    • Goldfrapp
    • On their latest CD, Supernature, Goldfrapp has put together a successful mix of 1980-era New Romanticism, German cabaret, and T. Rex glam that leaves you riveted even through the album's lulls. It's a great amalgam that sounds current without sounding at all dated.

  • Bowie at Beeb: Best of BBC Radio 68-72

    • 10 out of 10
    • David Bowie
    • The companion CD to a BBC television concert, BBC Radio Theatre has some of the best renditions of many of Bowie's best songs throughout his career. "I'm Afraid of Americans" is substantial

  • Rock Spectacle

    • 8 out of 10
    • Barenaked Ladies
    • These guys know how to put on a live show, and whomever recorded this knows how to capture one. Rock Spectacle is one of the warmest-sounding recordings I've ever heard, and totally fills a room at a

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News

Gates: New Zune and New Strategies Against Apple

Microsoft’s Bill Gates has ambitious plans to take music customers away from Apple, according to the New York Times on Thursday. This is despite the fact that the Zune music player has just a few percent of the music player market and subscription music hasn’t been a huge success.

Mr. Gates expressed bewilderment that the record industry had failed to turn digital music into a big moneymaker. Jeff Leeds reported that Microsoft has plans to change all that. First, Microsoft has taken pains to associate the Zune with the rising stars in music. Next, Microsoft will focus on selling music without DRM.

The final part of the strategy is to encourage music labels to work harder on promoting unlimited subscriptions. [Apple has always suggested that people want to own their music.]

“Subscriptions have absolutely been a mixed story and are not the mainstream thing today,” Mr. Gates said.

However, he thinks that will change in the future.

"People are going to listen to a lot more music because it’s going to be easy to find neat new exciting music, its going to be easy to have your music with you, in the car, when you’re running,” he said. “It seems like there ought to be a way to translate that into an opportunity."

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