This weeks free music comes from the first official Bob Marley remix album, Roots, Rock, Remixed features several of today’s hot producers, balancing that fine line of respect for the source material and using the today’s digital technologies.

Download “Soul Shakedown Party” (mp3)
from “Roots, Rock, Remixed”
by Bob Marley & The Wailers
rockr / Quango / Tuff Gong

• Buy at Amazon.com

It seems that I’m not the only one disappointed in Kimi Raikkonen this year. According to a news item on Pittpass.com and another on gpudate.

“Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has turned the heat up on Kimi Raikkonen, saying the Ice-Man has so far failed to achieve his potential with the Italian team, despite winning the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

We’ve got just over half the season to go. Lets hope Kimi will show us his ferocious competitive form over the next few races - and become the F1 race car driver of the last few years - feared by his teamates and competitors.

Last week, I was a panelist at Digital Hollywood. As usual I was invited to speak to issues around the intersection of technology, digital entertainment business models and content licensing. It turned out to be a great discussion. I suspect that the panel moderator, Mike McGuire of Gartner, had hoped to pit us against each other, and to a certain extent he did. In fact we did not agree that outdated copyright laws and complex content licensing are a bad thing.

The panel split into two groups, the lawyers and the entrepreneurs. We had very different perspectives on how to solve the difficulties, complexities and time involved in negotiating content licensing, especially for new tech enabled entertainment startups.

Technology now enables us to push the edge of the envelope with new entertainment business models. Consumers and artists are ready to try new approaches. In fact, one audience member suggested that Creative Commons offers a solid alternative to the current approach.

This panel, reinforced my opinion that the greatest obstacle to new entertainment business models may be outdated copyright laws and not content pirates or fear of technology.

After the retirement of Michael Schumaker last year, I though this year’s Formula One racing would be boring. It’s been completely the opposite. At least three teams seem competitive McLaren, Ferrari and BMW Sauber. We’ve also got a new era of race car drivers with Alonso, Rosberg, Hamilton and perhaps even newcomer Vettel.

With the single tire manufacturer, the back and forth advantage we’ve seen over the past few years, has been eliminated. It’s good to really see the competition among the teams and their drivers. With six races completed and eleven to go, I’m looking forward to a very interesting and exciting rest of the season.

My only dissapointment, so far, has been the performance of Kimi Raikkonen.

Since Steve Jobs posted his open letter in February this year, calling for the abolition of DRM protected music, there has been several changes in the recording industry. EMI have taken the plunge and released their music on iTunes at a higher quality and higher price — all DRM free.

Last month, in an article in Forbes entitled “Why Online Music Will Stay Locked Up” it was noted that Universal Music Group, had been mulling the possibility of dropping usage restrictions, according to Amanda Marks, Universal’s executive vice president and general manager of digital distribution.

“It is a step that we would not take lightly,” Marks said, adding that “if further tests prove that this provides us with a net positive sales result, by which I mean sales increase more than piracy, then we will try to work out a reasonable solution.”

Just this week Digital Music News reported that Universal Music Group is now actively discussing a possible DRM-free play with Apple.

Between them, Universal and EMI have nearly 50% of the recording industry market share in music purchases. If Universal takes the plunge, it’s my bet that we’ll see the other 2 major labels, Sony BMG and Warner, quickly follow suit.

Wouldn’t it be great to be totally rid of DRM protected music this year. As a consumer, just to have full music interoperability between my different computers and music players, will open my wallet to purchase more online music. As the CEO of Avvenu, where we offer the ability to stream your iTunes music over the internet to another computer or a windows mobile phone, I’ll be happier when we can provide an even better listening experience for our users.