On Monday the 6th of June, Apple’s keynote at their World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC 2011) had many positive things to announce: OSX Lion, with its $24.99 price tag, vast array of new and improved features and cloud download to Macs (ala Steam); iOS version 5 for mobile devices, and their revamped mobileMe cloud service – dubbed iCloud – to complement them all.

Of all the features introduced, most are unremarkable or arguably not very innovative. If anything, they are just an amalgamation of features previously available elsewhere, except now in an Apple-mandated, fully synchronised, pain-free fashion. All you need to enjoy? An Apple device.

However, the real announcement (the one occupying most of the acres of print and online coverage, and the one also keeping the independent music sector on tenterhooks) has been Apple’s music service. Precious little was revealed prior to the WWDC keynote (in typical Apple fashion), but the real kicker from Steve Jobs came with the traditional ‘One More Thing’ announcement… iTunes Match. Click to read the full rundown from the event and understand why Apple’s new cloud-based music subscription service might not be without its problems.

After reading this article from Broadcast Magazine, it got us thinking:

Don’t demonise piracy, says IT Crowd creator

12 August, 2010 | By Ellie Broughton

Graham Linehan, the writer behind comedy The IT Crowd, has said the entertainment industry is gambling with its future by “ignoring or criminalising” the issue of piracy. Speaking at a debate on piracy last night, Linehan said the current response to online pirates was unrealistic and aggressive.

“It seems a bit like the big corporations are saying, ‘put down the gun or I’ll stab you’,” he said. “The discussion at the moment is not particularly …

Although the latest BPI statistics show that an all-time record of 98.6% of all UK single sales were digital (over 117 million!), the digital world has not fully divorced itself from its history in the real world.

If you’re an artist selling your music online, you still need the essentials – EAN13 barcode, catalogue number and (most importantly) an ISRC for each track, or you simply cannot have your tracks on any of the major online stores. (As a label with 30 years’ operating experience and almost a thousand albums under our belt, this irony’s not lost on us!)

However, unless you work with them on a daily basis, ISRCs can look confusing. How are they made up? What do they mean – and what purpose do they serve? In the first of our Industry Insider articles, Revolver explains it all – read on to find out.