Off the record: David Smyth's column

Are you one of the six people in Britain who has not yet bought an iPod? If so, hang on a while longer.

Norway has just ruled that the way manufacturer Apple sells music for its iPods is illegal, and is threatening to close the service down over there. Other European countries look likely to follow suit.

Thanks to Apple's cheekily named FairPlay system, songs bought from the iTunes online music store will only play on an iPod, and equally, tracks from other stores such as Napster will not work on the device.

This is wrong, say Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, French and German consumer groups. What we need is "interoperability".

iTunes Music Store must remove its illegal lock-in technology or appear in court, says Torgeir Waterhouse, of Norway's Consumer Council.

"We're heading for a big breakthrough that will hopefully pave the way for consumers everywhere to regain control of music they legally purchase," he says.

Apple has responded, essentially arguing that it can't help its collossal success, which has seen iTunes enjoying an 80 per cent share of the legal downloads market and 21 million iPods sold in the past three months: "Apple hopes that European governments will encourage a competitive environment that lets innovation thrive, protects intellectual property and allows consumers to decide which products are successful."

Digital rights management (DRM) is the technology that restricts the movement of the songs you buy, preventing piracy but also, in the case of iTunes, preventing you from taking your business elsewhere.

The official line from the UK's major record labels is that this is a good thing, although it would be fair to say that privately many record company execs believe consumer choice will win and DRM is on the way out.

EMI and SonyBMG have tested the water, releasing Norah Jones and Jessica Simpson singles with no restrictions, and smaller independent record labels already sell their music DRM-free through the eMusic store.

So could Norway's ruling happen here? "I would imagine that the system will be opened up before the UK has to take the same legal steps," says Alison Wenham, of the Association of Independent Music, "but good for them for taking a lead on this."

Leanne Sharman, head of Napster UK, agrees: "As a consumer I want to be able to buy a loaf of bread and put my bread in any toaster. At the moment I'm unable to and it's very confusing. Hardware has become a trap."

Our own Office of Fair Trading is in no hurry to follow the lead of the nations that have criticised Apple, pointing out that "the situation in Norway is not a perfect mirror of that in the UK".

However, a spokesperson says it "continues to monitor the situation as to whether the market is working well for consumers".

And is it really working well for us? All the songs we want (apart from those by many independent bands, which aren't made available) in one vast electronic shop, on one stylish, incredibly popular player. But this is supposed to be a free market, and there's not much that's free about Apple's giant lock-in.

I'm with the band - all 28 of them

Moustachioed Swede Emanuel Lundgren thinks big - and bonkers - when it comes to music. He persuaded 28 of his friends into the studio to make an album of ludicrously optimistic gospel pop about treehouses and chickenpox.

He named them I'm From Barcelona in tribute to Manuel from Fawlty Towers, and then took them on tour.

A mere 18 of them crammed into ULU this week, which left me feeling a bit short-changed, although they did allow four audience members onto the stage because they had brought kazoos.

There were balloons, a Madonna cover and a man with dreadlocks playing a tuba. It was all deeply silly, and like fellow big band the Polyphonic Spree, short-lived novelty status awaits, but if the sun shines this summer, the festival season should belong to them.

New on the net

Once a thriving black market run by men with large microphones hidden under their anoraks, live recordings are now a cheap promotional tool for virtually every band.

The internet is teeming with exclusive sessions, mostly from buzzworthy new acts, although the iTunes store has just put a much bigger band on sale in the shape of eight "Live from London" tracks and a half-hour video by Keane.

The Napster shop also hosts its own regular concerts, the latest being from promising indie troupe Fields and scorching hot young thing Mika.

The internet service providers are in on the act, too - so far this year AOL has hosted sessions from the View, Fall Out Boy and teenypop princess JoJo at //music.aol.co.uk/sessions, and Tiscali is doing something similar with the Mystery Jets and Plan B at www.tiscali.co.uk/music/sessions.
Suddenly, leaving the house doesn't seem like such an exciting idea.