Music
Yahoo Shuts Down Premium Music Service
Yahoo has announced plans to shut down their premium music service. The subscription based music service built on Microsoft’s “Play For Sure” technology has been a long time competitor to the likes of Real’s Rhapsody. The service is scheduled to shut down tomorrow and users are to be shifted over to Rhapsody with [...]
Trent Reznor, NiggyTardust, & the ISP Music Tax
Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails) has released the stats from the NiggyTardust experiment. For this experiment, 3 versions of the the Niggy Tardust album were released in a digital format. One in 192kbps, one in 320kbps, and finally a FLAC (loseless) version. For limited time you were able to download the 192kbps for free and you could pay $5 and get any one of the 3 versions of your choice. A great test to see what kind of money could be made from such distribution.
Sony Comes Through, Will Sell DRM-Free Tracks on Amazon
Earlier this week, I wrote an article entitled Sony Misses the Point, that discussed how Sony/BMG deciding to sell iTunes-like cards in brick and mortar stores that allowed consumers to download DRM-Free tracks was a horrible idea and went completely against the idea of digital downloads. Well it seems Sony/BMG was listening (or it was part of their plan all along and they didn’t announce it) and they will be selling their DRM-Free tracks via Amazon’s Mp3 Download store. This news comes courtesy of iLounge.
Sony Misses the Point
So, last week Sony/BMG announced that they were going DRM-Free for their music and the world cheered. Now, today, (as reported by TechCrunch) they are announcing the actual DRM-Free strategy (USA Today article). That strategy? Cards purchased from a brick and mortar store to be used online to download an album. Basically they are going [...]
The Final Nail in DRM’s Coffin
Today via a Business Week article, Sony announced plans to drop DRM and begin selling DRM-Free, Mp3 tracks in Amazon.com’s Mp3 Download store. This is the signal in the true death of DRM (Digital Rights Management).
Sony/BMG records was the final hold out for DRM-Free music after Warner announced in late December that they would be [...]
RockBox on My Sansa
This past weekend, I took the plunge and installed RockBox onto my Sansa e280 (8GB). After fighting with my Vista PC and the RockBoxUtil (used for simple button click install), I finally switch over to my company provided Dell laptop with Windows XP still installed on it and was able to use the RockBoxUtil program [...]
Jermaine Dupri is an Idiot
Somehow in my reading the Huffington Post, I missed a post by Jermain Dupri on the concept of albums, singles, and iTunes. After reading this article, I have come to conclusion that Jermaine Dupri is an idiot and should be stripped of any position he might hold in the entertainment business. Lets look [...]
Songs & Such: “Revolve” by Poor Old Lu
This week, we bring to a close the music of Poor Old Lu with a track off of their last CD, The Waiting Room. Released just six years after what was suppose to be their final album, The Waiting Room easily contains some of the best Lu songs to be recorded and released. What is interesting is not that the songs are well written (they are) but the overall sound and feel of the record shows a band that moved out of their early twenties and was pushing thirty. Do not mistake this as something that is a bad thing. You can really hear that the band and the musicians involved have grown up.