BMI has filed suit against T Mobile, claiming that the mobile phone company hasn’t secured proper licensing for selling ringback tones. According to Digital Music News, the suit filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California, Los Angeles, says BMI has licensing agreements with other carriers.

Since BMI and other performing rights organizations deal in collecting performance royalties, the key point at issue is whether or not ringbacks constitute public performances. Ringbacks are typically heard by only one caller.

In October a federal court ruled that ringtones, which can be heard by anyone within earshot of the ringing phone, were not public performances. The judgement came in ASCAP’s suit against Verizon over ringtones. The federal court ruled that neither ringtones played in public nor a mobile carrier’s distribution of a ringtone are public performances.

Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age by Steve Knopper (The Free Press, 2009)

Ever wonder how the music industry REALLY got into such a problem with the Internet, illegal downloads and all that? Well, this is the book for you.

Steve Knopper takes the reader on the journey to digital music. He begins his book in 1979 with the Disco Crash, followed by the wide-reaching impact of Michael Jackson’s “Thiller” and the rise of MTV. He discusses the introduction of the CD, the problems with indie record promotion, the death of the single, and  Shaun Fanning’s development of Napster.

Too often when outsiders look at the record industry they embrace the stereotypes that the industry is stupid, greedy, and the enemy of consumers and artists.

But the recording industry is made up of people, and humans make mistakes. Human nature is to celebrate when things are going well, and to not want anything to change. When things don’t go well, humans tend to look for something to blame. Napster became the perfect storm to blame.

The power brokers running the recording industry did not grow up with computers; they got to the top with a different skill set than what was required when the Digital Age dawned. When the industry leaders were hit with the new digital reality, their natural reaction was to want everything to stop and go back to the way it used to be. It is understandable that when the rules of the game changed—like they did at the end of the 20th century—then those who had won under the old rules would be lost.

However, the job of leaders is to be able to adapt to change. And the guys at the top—and the great majority were guys—tended to bury their heads in the sand when change hit them. Not only did most not have a grasp of the digital age, they did not reach out for input that would have helped them understand it.

This book is an indictment of the recording industry when it comes to embracing the Digital Era. But Knopper doesn’t just go on a tirade—like so many others—without backing up his story with first-hand accounts of what happened in board rooms of major corporations as Napster appeared on the scene.

He concludes with “The Future,” where he states that the labels “will become an anachronism.” He continues, “The biggest ones may survive, by manufacturing a few…blockbusters every year. They may still make money licensing their catalogs to movies, commercials, TV shows, and video games [but they] ….may have to sell their lucrative catalogs to other companies [who will] stop messing around with any type of digital rights management, stop suing customers, drastically reduce digital-track prices, cut unnecessary overhead like warehouses and crates, and thereby return to 1980s-style profits.”

He notes that some suggest “Apple or Microsoft or some other visionary company with money to burn will buy up the assets and, finally, start running the major record labels as high-tech content houses.” But in the end, Knopper concludes that “it sure feels like the end is near.”

It’s called Droid and it’s coming on strong, directly challenging the iPhone. Scheduled to be available on the Verizon network as early as Oct. 30, the new phone, which runs the Android 2.0 operating system is a technology partnership between Motorola, Verizon and Google.

Some of the new handset’s features include a 3.7-inch touch screen, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 5-megapixel autofocus camera with flash, Wifi, bluetooth 2.0 and GPS. According to BoyGeniusReport.com this is the best Android phone yet with “an amazing screen.” BGR also states, “It’s the Android device to beat, and easily the most impressive. From what we’ve been told, Google had a direct hand in the Motorola Droid. Something to the point of almost dictating every move Motorola made when designing and making the phone.”

Techcrunch’s Michael Arrington offers this analysis. “Make no mistake, this is Android’s flagship product, and the first phone that will pose a significant threat to Apple’s iPhone.”

The continued rise of smartphones is good news for the entertainment industry, since the new hardware tends to boost consumption of movies, music, TV and web data.

Apple revealed some updates to its lineup of iPod devices at a press event today (9/9) in San Francisco, most notably a built-in video camera for the Nano. The Nano makeover will also include the addition of a built-in FM tuner as well as a larger screen and will be priced at $149 (8GB) and $179 (16GB).

The popular iPod Touch will now be offered in a beefy new 64GB model, priced at $399. The existing 32GB and 8GB models will now be offered at $299 and $199, respectively. And though the iPod Classic is the last of Apple’s iPod devices to use a hard drive instead of flash memory, a new 160GB version will be introduced at the current price of $249. Also announced was Version 9 of iTunes, available for download now.

The event also marked the return of Apple CEO Steve Jobs to the spotlight, since announcing his medical leave from the company in January. Jobs returned to work in June following a successful liver transplant in spring. At the conference Jobs thanked his donor, a young adult who died in a car accident, and urged the audience to become organ donors.