Apple, Microsoft, Sony Conspire to Pay Musicians Nothing, but More Accurately

Apple, Microsoft, the big four music labels, and five others have joined together to form a new organization dedicated to developing and maintaining a robust framework of communication standards to support the digital distribution of digital content.

This technology is actually quite a welcome upgrade from the existing methods that ASCAP etc use (statistical sampling) to track artists (musician) royalties. Of course, since history will repeat itself, it is more likely that the technology will simply be used to more accurately track the penny per song that the artist receives.

After all, without the iPod, how would anyone ever listen to music? Apple invented listening to music and watching video on a computer. Believe me, if these big companies could collect royalties on every set of human eyes and ears, they would.