The ongoing tug-of-war between musicians, record labels and digital content providers inched a little more towards artists this week with the introduction of an innovative paid-referral plan from streaming provider Rdio.

The new program pays artists a flat $10 fee for every user they refer, a rare form of direct-to-artist revenue in the music streaming business. But it’s only the latest move to renegotiate the flow of money in the world of digital music - and now even Congress is weighing in.

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According to the latest numbers from Nielsen reported by TNW,digital music sales for the year 2012 are slated to set a new record.

Digital album sales in the US so far this year are up 15 percent compared to the same period last year. Americans have purchased 1 billion digital tracks so far in 2012.

At this rate, Nielsen expects US consumers will break 2011′s record of 1.3 billion digital songs sold.

Thanks to the explosion of smartphones and tablets, consumers’ everyday lives increasingly include digital music. From digital music accounting for just 1 percent of total US album sales in 2004 to nearly 40 percent of total albums sales in 2009, we’ve come a long way. From 1 billion digital tracks sold in 2008, to 100 million digital albums (which each have somewhere between 12 and 20 songs) sold in 2011, the growth is continuing.

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The Clock app has an exciting new feature in iOS 6. You now have the ability to wake up to a full song that you already own, which is a lot better than purchasing ringtones. This has been available through third-party apps for quite some time, but it’s finally a native feature and it works great.

[via AppAdvice]

Digital distribution will be a big revenue stream for music artists in Africa by 2020, predicts digital music company Africori, with percentage revenues from live performances expected to decline. The Next Web reports.

Currently, live music entertainment constitutes over 85 percent of revenue for artists, though analysts expect this to change over time.

During his presentation of the Mobile Entertainment Africa conference, Yoel Kenan, the CEO of Africori, depicted the digital explosion, including through feature phones and smart-phones, as signalling a shift in music distribution modes.

Africori, which helps artists to distribute their songs and music lovers to access their favourite tracks, admits that there is a problem in music distribution in Africa.

We love African music but also know firsthand how difficult it can be to access the songs you are after,? the company said in a post.

Selling music in Africa comes with challenges, including low popular interest in buying music, the proliferation of piracy in the industry and artists being unable to raise funds for proper distribution.

There has already been a shift to the digitization of music distribution in Africa, which Africori predicts will only accelerate over time.

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The Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra has hit a high note by offering free ringtones from its classical repertoire that were downloaded 10,000 times in three days in what it terms an “unexpected success, reports News.com.

Saying it was the first orchestra in the world to launch such a scheme, it put up a dozen 30-second pieces from Brahms, Mozart or Debussy this week at www.brusselsphilharmonic.be/ringtones or on iTunes at 1.29 euros ($1.61) a set.

“They were downloaded more than 10,000 times in the first three days, which was an unexpected success for us,” administrator Gunther Broucke told AFP.

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The ‘Talibani’ village panchayats in Uttar Pradesh are getting bolder by the day and issuing ludicrous diktats in the name of dealing with ‘social ills’. The Daily Mail India reports.

In the latest ‘fatwa’, the panchayat of Ghatampur village in Saharanpur district has decreed that any youth — male or female — spotted listening to music on the mobile phone would be hit with a shoe five times and will also have to pay a fine of `1,500 to the panchayat. The punishment would be doubled for repeating the “crime”.

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A new report from UK analytics firm Musicmetric has pegged the U.S. as the world’s leading downloader of music via BitTorrent. ReadWriteWeb reports.

It’s the stuff of Recording Industry Association of America nightmares: Despite industry efforts to shut down BitTorrent tracker sites, the frenzy of file sharing continues. And - surprise! - recording artists are embracing illegal downloads as just another way to do business.

Musicmetric’s Digital Music Index also reveals that, while BitTorrent is used to download a huge amount of music in the U.S. - about 96.7 million files in the first half of 2012 - it’s not all illegal.

BitTorrent downloading nations. Coming in at number two on the list is the UK with 43.3 million downloads. That’s followed by Italy’s 33.2 million downloads, Canada’s 24.0 million, and Brazil’s 19.7 million files pulled in from BitTorrent. The top five countries pulled down around 217 million files in the first half of 2012, over half of the nearly 405 million files tracked by Musicmetric for the top 20 downloading nations.

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A Minnesota woman, one of the last people to be individually prosecuted in the US for illegal downloading and file-sharing, faces a $220,000 bill after a federal court ruling on Tuesday. The Guardian reports.

The federal appeals court reversed a district court’s decision to reduce Jammie Thomas-Rasset’s owed damages to $54,000 from $1.5m. Tuesday’s ruling (pdf) sets the damages at $220,000 and forbids Thomas-Rasset from making sound recordings available for distribution.

The RIAA accused her of downloading and distributing more than 1,700 music files on file-sharing site KaZaA, but took legal action on 24 works for efficiency. They initially offered a $4,500 settlement which Thomas-Rasset did not accept.

The RIAA sued more than 18,000 people for illegally sharing music in the mid-2000s. Most of those cases were settled out of court or dismissed – Thomas-Rasset’s case being one of the few exceptions.

The group adjusted its anti-piracy strategy in 2008 and stopped suing individuals. Since then, it has been in talks with Internet Service Providers in an effort to create a new strategy to abet piracy.

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Related: - File-sharer will take RIAA case to Supreme Court

As of Tuesday, September 4, owners of Nokia’s Lumia-branded and Windows Phone-powered handsets in the US can access the phonemaker’s free Nokia Music service. The service was available to European Lumia owners since last year, and includes more than 150 unique playlists, each created by a devoted “musicologist.”

[via electronista]

Earlier, a story emerged from the British tabloids that Bruce Willis was considering suing Apple in a bid to determine who gets his iTunes music collection after his death. Perhaps something more suited for April Fool’s Day? C/Net reported it (and fell for it) and has updated the piece to reflect that the original source was a work of fiction. (Willis’ wife tweeted this morning that the story was not true.)

But the one thing still not settled or answered from today’s misreporting: what happens to downloaded content when the buyer passes away?

Only one in a million people actually read the terms and conditions of any Web site, service, or application. You immediately jump to the bottom of the screen and hit the “I Agree” button and sail off on your digital downloading way. It’s the terms and conditions which govern exactly who owns the music you buy even once you escape the mortal coil.

The likely truth is that the contract between you and the service you are using — say Apple in this case — is terminated as soon as the person dies. In that event, the contract expires and the person’s account and any purchased products cannot be transferred to anyone else.

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