Culturite

At the Macworld Conference & Expo on Tuesday (January 6), Apple Vice President Philip Schiller revealed iTunes pricing changes and a new MacBook Pro, CNN reports.

Schiller explained that the new iTunes store will have pricing ranks, offering songs at three different price points: 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29. More songs will be sold at the lower price point than at the higher, Schiller said. The pricing shift comes more than a year after Apple almost shut down its iTunes store in protest of a proposed royalty hike that would threaten the store’s 99-cent price structure.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced today that all songs at the iTunes store will soon be available without the previous anti-piracy protection software DRM.

Jobs said that from today, all four major music labels—Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and EMI, along with thousands of independent labels, are offering their music in iTunes Plus, Apple’s DRM-free format with higher-quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality which is “virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings”.

Worst Picture:

Speed Racer, Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans, The Day the Earth Stood Still, High School Musical 3, The Hottie & The Nottie, Dungeon Siege, The Love Guru, Postal, Rambo, The happening, Meet Dave, Witless Protection

Worst Actor:

Zac Efron, Dane Cook, Larry the Cable Guy, Eddie Murphy, Al Pacino, Keanu Reeves, Sylvester Stallone, Tom Cruise (Valkyrie), Will Ferrell, Ashton Kutcher, Mike Myers, Adam Sandler, Mark Wahlberg

Worst Actress:

Paris Hilton, Jessica Alba, The cast of “The Women,” Camilla Belle, Cameron Diaz, Kate Hudson, Diane Keaton, Jennifer Connelly, Zooey Deschanel, Vanessa Hudgens, Eva Longoria-Parker, Reese Witherspoon

Worst Screen Couple:

Any couple from HSM 3, Cameron Diaz & Ashton Kutcher, Paris Hilton & Joel David Moore, Kate Hudson & Dane Cook, Kate Hudson & Matthew McConaughey, Larry the Cable Guy & Jenny McCarthy, Any couple from Mamma Mia, Eddie Murphy & Eddie Murphy (Meet Dave), Al Pacino & His Hair, Mark Wahlberg & Zooey Deschanel, Mark Wahlberg & Mila Kunis, Sylvester Stallone & His Ego

Worst Director:

Uwe Boll, Scott Derrickson, Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer, Tom Putnam, Marco Schnabel, Sylvester Stallone, Jon Avnet, Diane English, Roland Emmerich, Brian Robbins, Kenny Ortega, M. Night Shyamalan

Worst Prequel, Sequel, Remake or Rip-Off:

Indiana Jones 4, HSM 3, Rambo, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Disaster Movie, Meet the Spartans, An American Carol, The Women, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Prom Night, Speed Racer, X-Files: I Want To Believe

Worst Career Achievement:

Uwe Boll, Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer, Madonna, Keanu Reeves, Sylvester Stallone

The elder daughter of Pakistan’s assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto has written a rap song expressing her anguish over her mother’s death.

The song, entitled “I Would Take the Pain Away,” and a five-minute video of clips and photographs of Benazir Bhutto has been broadcast on the state-run Pakistani television and posted on the video-sharing website YouTube.

“My mother was murdered. I don’t even comprehend. Was it worth dying for? I’m walking through screened doors,” Bakhtawar, 18, sings in English on the lilting hip-hop song.

“No comfort or ease. I’m begging you please God bless the deceased,” Bakhtawar sings.

Information Minister Sherry Rehman, for years an aide to Bhutto, said Bakhtawar, a student at Britain’s Edinburgh University, wrote the lyrics and music.

“It’s a tribute of a grieving daughter to her iconic and loving mother,” Rehman told Reuters on Monday.

Music was a hobby for Bakhtawar and she had no plan to pursue it as a career, Rehman said.

Asheton, 60, was found on his couch and appeared to have been dead for several days, Ann Arbor Police Sgt. Brad Hill said.

“We do not expect foul play,” Hill said.

Police were called to Asheton’s home shortly after midnight after an acquaintance reported that he had been unable to contact him for several days.

Asheton’s brother, Scott, is the drummer for The Stooges. The pair were founding members of the band formed in 1967 in Ann Arbor along with front-man Iggy Pop.

The Stooges have released a statement following the death of guitarist and founding member Ron Asheton. “We are shocked and shaken by the news of Ron’s death. He was a great friend, brother, musician, trooper. Irreplaceable. He will be missed,” reads the statement from Iggy Pop, Scott Asheton, Mike Watt and the band’s management. “For all that knew him behind the facade of Mr. Cool & Quirky, he was a kind-hearted, genuine, warm person who always believed that people meant well even if they did not.

“As a musician Ron was ‘The Guitar God’, idol to follow and inspire others. That is how he will be remembered by people who had a great pleasure to work with him, learn from him and share good and bad times with him,” the statement continues. Iggy Pop adds, “I am in shock. He was my best friend.”

Amazon recently published a list of its 100 best-selling albums of 2008, and guess which one is on top? It’s the Nine Inch Nails album Ghosts I-IV, which band front man Trent Reznor personally uploaded to the Pirate Bay and the private music tracker What.cd earlier last year. Reznor also offered a free download of the album from the band’s website and licensed it under a Creative Commons license.

It was pretty clear early on that those free releases didn’t harm the commercial success of Ghosts I-IV. Fans paid more than 1.6 million dollars for downloads and deluxe edition physical releases of the album in the first week after its release alone. The album also got nominated for a Grammy award just a few weeks ago, and Reznor followed up Ghosts I-IV with another album that got released via the band’s own Bittorrent tracker.

NIN’s use of torrent sites and Creative Commons licenses often gets compared to Radiohead’s online experiments. Radiohead had offered is album “In Rainbows” as a free download, but asked its fans to donate. The band also teamed up with a traditional label to release In Rainbows in stores.

Amazon recently published a list of its 100 best-selling albums of 2008, and guess which one is on top? It’s the Nine Inch Nails album Ghosts I-IV, which band front man Trent Reznor personally uploaded to the Pirate Bay and the private music tracker What.cd earlier last year. Reznor also offered a free download of the album from the band’s website and licensed it under a Creative Commons license.

It was pretty clear early on that those free releases didn’t harm the commercial success of Ghosts I-IV. Fans paid more than 1.6 million dollars for downloads and deluxe edition physical releases of the album in the first week after its release alone. The album also got nominated for a Grammy award just a few weeks ago, and Reznor followed up Ghosts I-IV with another album that got released via the band’s own Bittorrent tracker.

NIN’s use of torrent sites and Creative Commons licenses often gets compared to Radiohead’s online experiments. Radiohead had offered is album “In Rainbows” as a free download, but asked its fans to donate. The band also teamed up with a traditional label to release In Rainbows in stores.

Amazon recently published a list of its 100 best-selling albums of 2008, and guess which one is on top? It’s the Nine Inch Nails album Ghosts I-IV, which band front man Trent Reznor personally uploaded to the Pirate Bay and the private music tracker What.cd earlier last year. Reznor also offered a free download of the album from the band’s website and licensed it under a Creative Commons license.

It was pretty clear early on that those free releases didn’t harm the commercial success of Ghosts I-IV. Fans paid more than 1.6 million dollars for downloads and deluxe edition physical releases of the album in the first week after its release alone. The album also got nominated for a Grammy award just a few weeks ago, and Reznor followed up Ghosts I-IV with another album that got released via the band’s own Bittorrent tracker.

NIN’s use of torrent sites and Creative Commons licenses often gets compared to Radiohead’s online experiments. Radiohead had offered is album “In Rainbows” as a free download, but asked its fans to donate. The band also teamed up with a traditional label to release In Rainbows in stores.

Amazon recently published a list of its 100 best-selling albums of 2008, and guess which one is on top? It’s the Nine Inch Nails album Ghosts I-IV, which band front man Trent Reznor personally uploaded to the Pirate Bay and the private music tracker What.cd earlier last year. Reznor also offered a free download of the album from the band’s website and licensed it under a Creative Commons license.

It was pretty clear early on that those free releases didn’t harm the commercial success of Ghosts I-IV. Fans paid more than 1.6 million dollars for downloads and deluxe edition physical releases of the album in the first week after its release alone. The album also got nominated for a Grammy award just a few weeks ago, and Reznor followed up Ghosts I-IV with another album that got released via the band’s own Bittorrent tracker.

NIN’s use of torrent sites and Creative Commons licenses often gets compared to Radiohead’s online experiments. Radiohead had offered is album “In Rainbows” as a free download, but asked its fans to donate. The band also teamed up with a traditional label to release In Rainbows in stores.