July 23rd, 2008
Apple has once again released the iTunes New Music Tuesday list, and the line up is as complex as usual. Featured proudly at the top of the list is the Counting Crows with their Live from SoHo. Their description of the album:
In an ever-changing music industry where most bands are as capricious as their fickle fans, it’s rare to find a band whose absolute consistency is what makes them so great.
Also featured is Tori Amos, U2, Sugarland, and Miley Cyrus.
As always, there’s lots of new music to check out, so looks around the iTunes Store to see if any of it strikes your eye. I personally, am I looking at the U2 tracks. What about you?
Image via iTunes
Tags: iTunes Store, New Music TuesdayShare This
By Zach Flauaus -- 0 comments
July 18th, 2008
One of the biggest debates in today’s music industry is the debate of Digital Rights Management: The practice of putting restrictions onto your music that states what you can and can’t do with a song. If you’ve bought a song from the iTunes Store or subscribe to a music service, you’ve most likely bought a song with DRM on it. While Apple has introduced iTunes Plus: Songs without DRM and at a higher quality bitrate (256k vs. 128k), it hasn’t reached all of their songs and shows no sign of reaching all the songs any time soon.
I am generally Anti-DRM, but am a fan of an all-in-one solution, which iTunes is. Amazon offers an MP3 library full of non-DRM MP3 songs and Rhapsody now has a DRM-free store, but neither are one-click with the iPod. I would love to see every piece of content go DRM-free, but it just won’t happen with the current setup the RIAA and the MPAA are setup in.
So, are you pro-DRM or anti-DRM? Sound off in the comments below.
Tags: Digital Rights Management, DRMShare This
By Zach Flauaus -- 2 comments
July 17th, 2008
What’s the key to fight the ultra-mega-super-giant iTunes? According to eMusic, social networks. eMusic will start adding links to their song pages where you can easily share your song of choice with the rest of the world, or just your friends. You’ll soon be able to share the song through del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, and Twitter. Also to be added is the band’s Wikipedia page, Flickr pictures, and YouTube videos relating to the band.
“The aim is to make eMusic relevant for an audience that would otherwise link to bootlegs on blogs and elsewhere to get the same material.” -David Pakman, eMusic’s chief executive
I’m not sure about some, but I’ve seen plenty of iTunes links being shared around Twitter, Digg, and del.icio.us. Also, will adding Web 2.0 content like Wikipedia and Flickr content to the band pages make eMusic a better buying experience? My money is on no. Last.fm easily beats eMusic in the social networking field because they have been on the scene for some time now and already lets you add your friends to networks and find other people with similar tastes. My money is on Last.fm.
Via [Electronista]
Read [Fortune]
Image/Logo from eMusic
Tags: eMusic, iTunes, Music Store, Social NetworkingShare This
By Zach Flauaus -- 1 comment
July 17th, 2008
For the iPhone users in the audience who are still a little mad that Apple still hasn’t included stereo Bluetooth (also known as A2DP), you are now able to use your Bluetooth headphones with your iPhone and iPod touch, but there’s a catch (as always). You must spend $62 to get a Bluetooth adapter who’s sole purpose is to provide A2DP. Gotta love it.
The Infinixx adapter uses the standard dock connector that you can find on recent iPods, so you can also use the adapter on your iPod Touch, iPod nano, iPod Classic, iPod Video, iPod Color, and iPod Mini. While it is a Bluetooth adapter, you can’t pair your non-stereo headset with it on your iPhone to have calls through that. Their solution? Pair your headset with the iPhone and your headphones with the adapter. Now that already mediocre battery on your iPhone 3G has been dropped to five minutes. Ok, maybe not quite as drastic, but it’s definitely a significant loss.
At $62, I’d rather wait for official (if ever) A2DP support from Apple, but a pair of wired headphones do the trick just nicely.
Via [Gizmodo]
Read [Brando]
Image from Brando
Tags: A2DP, iPhone, Stereo BluetoothShare This
By Zach Flauaus -- 0 comments
July 15th, 2008
If you haven’t heard (and really, by now you should have), Apple released this new fangled thing called the iPhone 3G. Not sure if it’s hit the major markets of if any of them have sold… Anyways, the bigger news in the digital market is that iTunes 7.7 was released, and PLEASE hold your applause.
Now then… iTunes 7.7 does offer some nice new improvements. It adds the capability to sync with your iPhone 3G along with your newly updated iPhones and iPod touches with 2.0 firmware. It also adds functionality for remote functionality on your iPhone or iPod touch that allows you to control your iTunes library anywhere in your house that you have a Wi-Fi signal. I’ve used the Remote app (along with a bunch of other iPod touch apps which I will discuss that are relevant to music) and I have to say it is, by far, the easiest app I have used. Open Remote, open iTunes on your computer, and sync. But we’ll do a review later on.
If you haven’t already, you can use Software Update to update iTunes to the latest version (on both Mac and Windows) or download the latest version from here.
Image Source: Zach Flauaus/Apple
Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPod touch, iTunesShare This
By Zach Flauaus -- 4 comments
July 11th, 2008
The term “podcast” is so 2007, as is evident with Belkin’s latest product, the Belkin GoStudio (it was originally to be called “Podcast Studio”). The GoStudio is, essentially, a mixer that you can take on the go with you. Featuring an XLR and a 1/4″ microphone jack for the compatibility with your setup, the GoStudio is designed for you to plug in your iPod and use that as your storage medium as it is the easiest mass storage that you may have on you at any given time. The GoStudio can play back the recordings through its internal speaker built-in in addition to recording directly on the device with it’s two omnidirectional microphones. Just a note, the GoStudio is only compatible with the 5th Gen iPod, iPod classic, and the 2nd and 3rd Gen iPod nano.
The GoStudio will be available in September or October for $119.99.
Via [CrunchGear]
Read [PR Release]
Tags: Belkin, GoStudioShare This
By Zach Flauaus -- 0 comments
July 11th, 2008
Who said the digital music market is just iTunes? Apparently, Activision wants to see if they can shake things up by making their own online music store. 
Now, what would a gaming company have to do with music downloads? Well, not much… Until you consider the fact that Activision is the publisher of Guitar Hero.
“I don’t think there have been a lot of credible alternatives to iTunes, but Guitar Hero certainly has that potential.” -Bobby Kotick, chief executive of Activision Blizzard
Well, you keep thinking that Bobby. I agree that Guitar Hero has potential in the online market, but they’d be better off joining iTunes and producing a joint product where you could tag songs that you play for download later on iTunes. Will they follow that road? Probably not because there isn’t a business that hasn’t followed my lead (and probably for good reason), but it’s definitely something they should consider.
Via [Financial Times]
Tags: Activision, Guitar Hero, iTunes, iTunes Store, Music StoreShare This
By Zach Flauaus -- 0 comments
July 9th, 2008
On another b5media site (and my previous home), High Def Delight, Christopher Swenson wrote an article essentially saying that it is time to ditch MP3. MP3 is quite the ancient file format (approved in 1991) yet it is the prominent file format in the digital music market as almost all digital music players are referred to as MP3 players because, well, they all play MP3 players. While I agree with the post that we should start to transfer to other codecs like AAC, I believe MP3 is here to stay for quite some time.
MP3 files are dominant, as I mentioned, and if you asked people what AAC files and Ogg Vorbis files are, your average Joe will most likely not know what the difference then. AAC files are definitely more “efficient” with the sound quality to file size ratio, but if you convert your MP3 files to AAC, you lose more data because all you are doing is just re-encoding that file again and losing the data.
I won’t say too much else as his article is definitely worth a read, but I don’t really think MP3 is going anywhere anytime soon. MP3 is a format that has stood the test of time and has a firm footprint in the ground.
Read [High Def Delight]
Image Source: Zach Flauaus
Tags: AAC, Digital Music, MP3Share This
By Zach Flauaus -- 5 comments
July 8th, 2008
For all two of you who can’t play music on your phone in some method, you now have yet another choice of phones, though it may come with a catch. Nokia’s 8208c is set to be released to China for sure and, possibly, “elsewhere.” Running on CDMA and EV-DO Rev. A networks, both of which are featured in China, this phone seems like a candidate for a stateside release (or possibly even our friends to the north) as both Verizon and Sprint (as well as other regional carriers) run on CDMA.
The 8208 has a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, 3 megapixel camera, GPS, FM radio, and up to 20 hours of music playback. Also included hardware wise is your standard alpha-numeric keypad and a dual-sliding music controls as featured on the N95. There is only 150MB of memory built-in, although it is expandable to 8GB through microSD cards. The phone has yet to have a release date, either for China or the U.S. in addition to a price.
Via [Electronista]
Read [MobileBurn]
Tags: Music on your phone, Nokia 8208Share This
By Zach Flauaus -- 0 comments
July 1st, 2008
You may remember Rhapsody as the people who brought you the $15 unlimited music plan where, as long as you paid $15 every month, you could download as many songs as you wanted. Well, that plan had DRM (digital rights management) so iPod users and users of MP3 players who didn’t have a Plays For Sure-player were out of luck. They have no seen the light and changed their ways to become more like the highly popular iTunes Store.
For just 99 cents you can buy an individual song and $9.99 will land you most complete albums. This is really similar to the iTunes Store, which has been the industry standard. Speculation is that they changed their pricing structure to combat iTunes Plus, Apple’s solution to DRM free songs. Also to combat iTunes is the ability to listen to the whole song before you purchase it compared to 30-second clips iTunes offers. On personal experience, the songs are lower quality than what you would purchase when you stream them due to the fact that people could record the songs the old analog way.
Also introduced was a partnership with Verizon Wireless with their VCAST service. For $15 per month, Verizon subscribers with compatible phones can download as many songs to their phones as they want. In other words, this is the same plan as the old Rhapsody, just now partnered with Verizon Wireless. This plan does include DRM when you have an unlimited plan, but there is an alternative. You can still purchase songs for 99 cents on the VZW/Rhapsody store on your computer DRM free or when you download music over the air for $1.99, it will also include a higher quality, DRM-free download. Confused? So are we.
To sum it up: Rhapsody says no to DRM except on the $15/month plan. This is a step in the right direction and hopefully all the music providers will cave in to DRM-free music.
Via [Ars Technica] and [Broadband Reports]
Image from Rhapsody
Tags: iTunes, Rhapsody, Verizon WirelessShare This
By Zach Flauaus -- 3 comments
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