Posts tagged Mp3 at Switched

Posts with tag mp3

Compression Ruins New Metallica Album, Some Fans Say

by Lee Bains, posted Oct 1st 2008 at 7:41AM

Some Metallica fans are complaining that the band's ninth studio record, 'Death Magnetic,' is -- to borrow from Huey Lewis's 'Back to the Future' character -- just too darn loud, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Since some folks might figure that the pioneering metal band's recordings are supposed to be loud, this grievance warrants clarification. Metallica fans would never lament riffs' being too brutal or vocals' being too gravelly, but they are mourning the fact that the loud-soft dynamics and sonic richness found on the band's seminal records are nowhere to be found on 'Death Magnetic.' The culprit? The increasingly common practice of extreme compression.

Compression, to oversimplify, is a studio process in which softly and loudly recorded sounds are brought to a more equitable level; sound waves that may resemble a stretched-out cotton ball are compressed to look more like a solid block. Intense compression jobs would result, for instance, in a song's delicate bridge sounding just as loud as its bombastic chorus.

While engineers have long used compression to an extent (the reason that the yowls of Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant don't come out distorted), the digital age of music has ushered in this more intense implementation.

Continue reading Compression Ruins New Metallica Album, Some Fans Say

MySpace Partners With Amazon to Stream Free Music

by Tim Stevens, posted Sep 26th 2008 at 9:35AM

Part of what has made MySpace so popular is the ability for bands to create their own pages and post a song or three online, enabling fans to then grab and share those songs on their own pages, showing their allegiance and letting friends rock out when they came by to visit. That functionality got a major boost yesterday when MySpace Music added the entire discography of artists from Sony BMG, Universal, Warner, EMI, and Orchard.

Fans can browse through for their favorites and then stream entire albums through the site, still picking tracks to embed on their own pages. If they want to actually own the songs and play them offline or on a portable player, they'll need to pony up some cash, which is where the partnership with Amazon and its MP3 store comes in, with most DRM-free tracks starting at an iTunes-beating $.79. The problem, for the labels at least, is that buying tracks isn't always easy, as links to Amazon's site are quite frequently missing.

But, despite the typical MySpace glitches and random errors that some reviewers found, feedback is mostly positive. (Media blog paidContent.org even called it "an ambitious new music site not crushed under the weight of legal limitations and lawsuit avoidance.")[From: MySpaceMusic and BBC News]

Airports May Scan For Illegal Downloads on Mobile Devices

by Peter Mychalcewycz, posted Jul 20th 2008 at 1:39PM

For anyone out there who has illegally downloaded music or movies, you may want to pay attention to this.

The leaders of the G8, meeting this week, are seemingly ready to ratify an agreement that would allow customs agents to search your mobile devices (computer, phone, iPod, etc.) for illegally downloaded media content.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta) is considered a step toward stopping piracy, but the logistics of implementing a discretionary system for carrying out the agreement are mind boggling. Consider this: Half of the songs on the average teen's iPod are illegally downloaded.

The biggest concern is that people who have downloaded media for personal use will be at risk of punishment, though no one knows exactly what the punishment would be. It has been reported however, that the European Parliament has suggested kicking offenders off the Internet.

The scenario most likely to materialize is that only those with massive amounts of MP3 or movie content would be at risk. Whatever way the G8 rules, one has to wonder what difference it will make. [Source: Textually]

Rhapsody, Verizon Finally Selling DRM-Free MP3s

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jul 1st 2008 at 10:01AM

In the past, Rhapsody has put all of its efforts behind an all-you-can-eat, subscription-based music service, which is great for the insatiable music enthusiast who never leaves his or her desktop, but bad for the always on-the-go iPod addict. Now, Rhapsody is preparing to launch a downloadable MP3 store so it can directly compete with iTunes and hopefully attract more customers with its new iPod friendly format. These MP3s will be without DRM, which means they are free of the digital rights management (DRM) layer that prevents music files from being played on different types of players (like iPods).

Rhapsody's catalog of four million songs will also be available through partners like Yahoo! Music and Verizon Wireless' VCAST Music service, which will be selling DRM-free MP3s for $1.99 over-the-air (or 99 cents on your PC). This will certainly be a boon to Verizon VCAST Music customers, who heretofore were stuck with heavily-DRM-laden WMA files that were hard to move from one player or computer to another.

While the move from competing with Apple to embracing MP3s and the iPod may sound good on paper, the Web is scattered with the remains of those who tried to take on Apple's store and its iconic media player. Wal-Mart, Amazon, Napster, E-Music, and now Rhapsody, are all stuck fighting for the table scraps left over from iTunes' more than 70 percent market share. [Source: Reuters]

Amazon MP3 Offering Coldplay Albums for as Little as $1.99

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jun 19th 2008 at 5:22PM

Amazon Offering Coldplay Albums for Dirt Cheap

Amazon is looking to blunt Apple's iTunes-exclusive marketing blitz surrounding Coldplay's new album 'Viva la Vida.' Despite Apple's claims of exclusivity, 'Viva la Vida' is the number one selling album on the Amazon MP3 store.

Amazon's plan of action is to greatly undercut Apple on prices. Coldplay's new album is a full dollar cheaper at Amazon ($8.99) than on iTunes, but the really dirt cheap prices are on Coldplay's back catalog. Each week, an old Coldplay album will be made available for $1.99 for a period of seven days, then the the next album in the catalog will go on sale for the bargain-basement of $1.99 the following week.

The Coldplay deal is just part of a larger marketing strategy by Amazon that includes a Friday Five, which is five albums for five dollars, rotated out weekly, and a Daily Deal that offers a different album every day at steep discounts.

Amazon's lower prices are sure to win over some converts, but it still remains to be seen whether or not 'X & Y' can be called a "deal" -- even at $1.99. [Source: BetaNews]

Re-Re-Launched Napster Offers 6M Songs Free of Copyright Protection

by Tim Stevens, posted May 20th 2008 at 10:04AM

For many, the name Napster still evokes memories of the carefree early days of music downloading, when songs were free and illegal, but nobody seemed to mind. Those days, of course, didn't last long, with the service being effectively shut down by pressure from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It was later re-launched as a legal download service, but never quite regained the sort of attention it had in its previous life.

Now, the site is being re-launched yet again as an MP3 download store designed to directly take on the competition from Amazon and Apple.

Apple's iTunes is, of course, the reigning leader in the music download space. Lately, though, online music buyers have been rebelling against the restrictive copy protection that Apple still forces on many of its tracks, and the proprietary format that only really works on Apple's iPods isn't helping, either. Apple last year launched a DRM-free store last year -- DRM- or copyright-free means that the tracks can be played on any MP3 player -- but the majority of the iTunes offerings still have copy restrictions. Similarly, Amazon launched its amazonmp3 service last year, featuring songs in the industry-standard MP3 format and no copy protection.

Now, Napter is also offering MP3 downloads free of copy protection, with most tracks priced at $.99, or $9.95 per album, which is slightly higher than Amazon's offerings. Even so, Amazon can't compare to Napster's six million copyright-free tracks available for download right away, which makes it the world's largest MP3 store. The two services will surely keep competing, which is good news for consumers, and it remains to be seen what iTunes will do to keep up. [Source: AOL News]

iTunes Tax Coming for Californians?

by Tim Stevens, posted Apr 9th 2008 at 8:14PM

The blissfully tax-free nature online music shopping may be coming to an end. Buying virtual goods such as MP3s has been pretty much tax-free ever since the iTunes store launched in 2002, even though various money-hungry politicians around the country have been itching to levy Internet specific taxes for just as long. The latest is Democratic Assemblyman Charles Calderon from City of Industry, California, who wants to start applying a sales tax of 8.25 to 8.75 percent on digital downloads in an effort to remove the state's $8 billion budget deficit.

Calderon wants to update a 75-year-old law that indicates taxes must be applied to "tangible goods." Movies and music for download have so far been exempt from this tax, since users can't really touch or feel them. You can, however, see and hear them when played on a computer, which is good enough for Calderon. By also applying the tax to purchases of online pornography, Caleron believes he can increase state tax revenue by $500 million annually (still leaving $7.5 billion to go).

However, don't fret just yet, West Coast downloaders: Love 'em or leave 'em, the Republicans in California have your back. They are opposing this measure and are expected to block it from passing, meaning your $.99 downloads will stay just that -- at least for now.

From Mercury News

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Underwear That Plays Music

by Peter Mychalcewycz, posted Mar 24th 2008 at 11:36AM

These days, pretty much everything -- from cars to jackets to small farm animals -- has become MP3-friendly. The latest example of the digital music ubiquity is the new iBoxer from Play Underwear.

Available in both mens' and womens' designs, the iBoxer features a small pocket on the left hip that gently cradles your MP3 player of choice so you can frolic freely -- Tom-Cruise-except-in-boxer-briefs-style -- without the burden of actually having to hold your player. The iBoxer is 93% cotton and 7% spandex and is available in a myriad of colors. The price for these beauties? $22.

For now, the iBoxer is the most intimate representation of the human-MP3 relationship. One can only imagine where this gaudy love affair will go from here.

From: geeksugar.com

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Indie Music Offered for Free On MicroSD Cards

by Thomas Houston, posted Mar 20th 2008 at 10:20AM

SanDisk yesterday launched Sansa Sessions, a music distribution effort that uses microSD cards, which are those tiny little pieces of plastic that fit into (and expand the storage capacity of) cell phones. As of this week's launch, the microSD cards contain DRM-free tracks from over 50 indie rock bands, including Nada Surf, Of Montreal, Ladytron and more.

This music sampler comes for free with the purchase of SanDisk's 8GB Sansa Fuze MP3 player, which has a built-in slot for reading the card.

While a microSD card loaded with tunes sounds like a good idea, we're not sure if it could actually take off as a popular format. Sure, file transfer to phones, MP3 players, and computers is easy, but the cards are physically tiny and extremely easy to lose.

From SanDisk and Engadget

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BlackBerrys Getting Music Download Service

by Tim Stevens, posted Mar 13th 2008 at 9:36AM

BlackBerry Phones Getting Music Download Service

Just a few years ago the smart phone was a something only the slightly geeky business professionals of the world would carry, usually by clipping the bulky monstrosities onto their belts for all to see. Today, though, with slim and pocketable smart phones like Apple's iPhone and the HTC Touch, the devices have started to shrug off their professional manners and start to live it up a little. The BlackBerry line, the first truly popular smart phone, is still about the stuffiest out there, but is getting a bit more laid back with the announcement of a custom music store tailored just for the e-mail pushing devices.

The service, from a company called Puretracks, will launch in April and will let BlackBerry users do something that the usually enviable iPhone users can't: Download tracks from anywhere they can get a signal. The Puretracks store will available via the cellular network, while, at best, you can only connect to iTunes from your iPhone via a localized Wi-Fi signal. The BlackBerry will be able to access Wi-Fi as well for faster downloads, but if you're on the go you'll still have the ability to get the latest Project Jenny Project Jan album while you're in the back of a cab on your way to the airport.

No word on just what pricing will look like for the new service, but expect to pay a bit of a premium over iTunes' offerings.

From Engadget Mobile

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World's First MP3 Player Is 10 Years Old

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Mar 11th 2008 at 11:05AM

It's amazing how quickly pieces of technology can become not only an accepted, but also indispensable parts of everyday life. It's hard to believe, but the MP3 player, now more accurately called the Digital Audio Player (DAP) or Personal Media Player (PMP), is 10 years old. Of course, most people just call it the iPod, but that's a whole other story.

It was back in March of 1998 that the world first got a glimpse of the MPMan F10 at the CeBit tech trade show in Hanover, Germany. The prototype garnered enough attention that, by May of that year, the Korean company Saehan Information Systems was mass producing the devices. By summer of 1998, the 32-megabyte (MB) flash device was on sale in the U.S. for $250.

At 3.6 x 2.75 x 6.5-inches, the MPMan was significantly larger than any media player on the market right now, save some of the largest wide screen video players. The Walkman-sized-device could only hold a small handful of songs, and its display was only slightly fancier than your standard digital alarm clock.

By now, of course, Saehan Information Systems and its MPMan are all but forgotten. In fact, many mistakenly point to the Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300 as the first commercially available MP3 player, but the MPMan beat that CD-player-sized wonder to market by several months.

The bulkiness and limited capabilities of both devices may make them seem quaint when compared to your 32-gigabyte (1000 times the capacity of the original MPMan) iPod Touch, but these archaic devices helped spark a revolution that has completely changed the way we buy and consume music and media.

Gallery: The First MP3 Player

From Register Hardware (via Engadget)

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Amazon's Music Store Going Global This Year

by Tim Stevens, posted Jan 28th 2008 at 10:02AM

We continue to be impressed at how quickly Amazon's amazonmp3 store has come in just a few months. What was a plucky little start-up recently became the first digital music vendor to offer copy protection-free tunes from all the major music labels, all in a format playable on nearly any digital music player in the world. The only thing holding it back it was geography, but that's set to change soon with Amazon.com announcing its download service will be going global this year.

Right now you have to be living in the U.S. of A. to purchase music from amazonmp3. The site requires a U.S. billing address and a U.S. credit card. There are ways around this, of course; if you happen to have generous American friends or relatives willing to let you use their plastic you can download the tracks from anywhere. Likewise, since the music is free of copy protection, those friends or relatives could just download them and send them to you, assuming of course they then deleted their copies. But, all that is a little questionable legally, and a bit of a pain to say the least, points that should make this international expansion of the company's store welcome news to many.

No word just yet of exactly when Amazon.com will loose its tracks on the global market, nor are there any details of which countries will be covered and by which labels. We'll bring that info when we have it.

From Reuters

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Sony Now Selling DRM-Free Music on Amazon

by Tim Stevens, posted Jan 11th 2008 at 1:32PM

Amazon.com has done it. In less than six months since its launch, the amazonmp3 service has gone from nothing to establishing a position as the only place on the web to legally download DRM-free music from every major American music studio. It was just a few weeks ago that Warner signed up, leaving Sony as the odd company out, something we predicted would change quickly. We didn't figure it'd be quite this quick, though, with Sony announcing plans to sell DRM-free music on amazonmp3.

DRM is of course the nasty copy protection that comes along much of the music you download online. Lately it's been going out of style faster than trucker hats and corny TV game shows, but Amazon.com's site is the only place on the web that exclusively sells DRM-free music from in a format that works on every digital music player known to man (the ubiquitous MP3), giving it a strong advantage over Apple's iTunes service. Plus, with many of its tracks available for $.89, ten cents cheaper than iTunes, at this point there's no reason not to check out what Amazon has to offer.

From USA Today

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Asus Internet Radios Also Give You the Weather, Stock Updates

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jan 9th 2008 at 11:30AM

Asus isn't just in the market of making laptops and computer parts. Asus also makes an award winning line of Internet radios. At this year's CES, the company is showing off two new members of its AIR (Asus Internet Radio) family.

The AIR 3 allows you to pull in radio streams over Wi-Fi from all around the globe, without a computer. The internal database of over 10,000 streams is updated regularly, weeding out those that have fallen silent and adding new ones as they go live. The AIR 3 also has a built in iPod dock, a USB port for playing tracks off of a Flash drive, as well as weather forecasting and stock tracking widgets.

The AIR 5 is meant for a component stereo system. The screen-less Wi-Fi device has the same USB and Internet radio capabilities as the AIR 3, but also includes a hard drive for storing music locally. The included remote allows you to navigate your media and Internet streams via the LCD display.

Prices were not available, but expect to see the AIR 3 in May, and the AIR 5 in July.

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Rhapsody Comes to Philips Audio Devices

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jan 7th 2008 at 1:51PM

Sure Rhapsody isn't iTunes, but the online music store/serviceis still a massively popular source for digital music, and it has a rather impressive catalog available to purchase or "rent" (via subscription). Yesterday, at CES, Matt Rowlen, Vice President of Real Networks, joined the head of the new Philips Consumer Lifestyle division, Andrea Ragnetti, on stage at a press conference to announce that Rhapsody downloads and steamed media would be made available on Phlips GoGear MP3 players and Streamium home audio devices (pictured above).

Users will be able to browse and download from the Rhapsody subscription based catalog via Wi-Fi. Take that Zune and iPod!

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