Tag: music

At least that's what you should expect after reading this story on gizmodo about one of the biggest retail chains in the USA shutting down their DRM-based online music store (August 2006 - February 2008) since they're since February 2008 trying to be all-DRM-free. I have no idea how their system works, but in the e-mail published on gizmodo it is suggested by the support team that you burn your music to an audio CD. So I guess the music is somehow bound to a local software component and a server key, so you'd have to re-activate your music if you for example re-install your operating system.

It naturally should be the job of the user first to make sure everything of importance is properly backed up, but in the end most people rely on the service provider to at least act as 2nd tier in the backup-chain. This 2nd level is now dropped. At least they seem to offer a way to get the music out of the DRM-lock, but just think of other services that don't do that. In the end this case should finally shake quite a few people up who previously bought music online without really checking what rights they have on it. Many people always think "Hey, I can get this song online for cheap". Nope, you can get the rights to play it on a single (or 2 or 3) device with a bit of device-lock-in and only very limited ways to use this song for cheap. Congrats.

I at least hope that more people will finally start to get it and also recognize it in other systems; not only those of the music industry but in all parts of the content industry. In this regard (and only in this since I in general don't enjoy people having problems) I hope that many people have bought DRM'd music from Walmart.

Take an old concept, put it onto a new medium ( ... OK, not really new) and think it is a great new idea. This WTF-moment was brought to me by SanDisk in association with this big 4 (SonyBMG, Universal, EMI, and Warner Music) this morning. slotMusic is that "new" idea and it's all about using microSD cards as replacement for the good old CDDAs. Honestly, the idea is in my opinion not completely bad, especially since -- probably thanks to some extra-terrestrial influence -- the music will be stored as 320Kbps MP3s without DRM. As Michael Arrington I'm totally baffled how SanDisk could convince the 4 labels to do that.

Wow, kudos to Trent Reznor and the rest of the Nine Inch Nails for doing something that you have probably already heard about: They put their new instrumental album (or collection, depending on how you look at it) Ghosts I-IV online, giving you 4 different packages to choose from, depending on what you want (no CDs, CDs, CDs and Blu-Ray disc ...). For details, check out the order options page.

(Artwork is part of the album.)

A few days ago when I was watching "The Italian Job" (the new one with Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron etc.) I heard a song that I absolutely wanted to have. After some googling I found name and artist ("To Get Down" by Timo Maas) and started looking for an online store where I could get this song.

Remember the days when MTV was actually good? I mean when they showed music videos? Yeah, it's been a looooong time. Now Last.fm is on the verge of offering all those people who miss these good old days an extension to their current music recommendation service:

Last.fm will soon be able to offer its users personalised channels from the largest legal catalogue of music videos on the web. The quality of videos on Last.fm will be significantly higher than that of YouTube, with audio encoded at 128kbps compared to YouTube's 64kbps.

Last.fm aims eventually to have every music video ever made on the site, from the latest hits to underground obscurities to classics from the past.

Press release

Very nice Now I just hope that their service will be a little bit more performant (on the Flash side) than YouTube.

There is really not much more I can say about this. While 0.99EUR/USD definitely would have been nice, this deal is still a great first step into the right direction and I really hope, that the other major labels will follow EMI's lead in this.

I guess I've now finally reached a point, where I want to and will try something new for me: Music from majors only if I reeeeally want it. For quite some time now I've become more and more annoyed by how big companies like SonyBMG, Warner and their organizations like the RIAA and the IFPI are treating their customers as well as simple the quality of the stuff that is played on the mainstream radio stations. So now I want to do a little experiment on myself and see how long I can survive by primarily getting music from indie labels.

Seems like at least some music companies are thinking about new delivery methods. So happened with Universal Music which according to various news sites out there are going to offer in cooperation with SpiralFrog.com free music downloads while showing you ads during the download process. The Guardian has a very detailed article about this new offer which will launch this year in the US and somewhen next year also in Europe.

According to futurezone Apple and CocaCola have now joined forces and will open a new music store based on iTunes on August 9. What I don't understand here is the "why". Will Cokemusic offer different songs? Will I get a free coke for every 4th song I buy there? Or is this just a different frontend for iTunes with some Coke branding?

Well, at least it's another chance to get free music ... would at least be something new for me since iTunes doesn't give away stuff in Austria. Now I'm really curious what will be there on the 9th.

According to this Microsoft seems to have reached an agreement with MTV to create a service directly battling Apple's iTunes. That actually made me chuckle ... I mean, I don't know what MTV is like in the USA or anywhere else in the world, but the german version is simply trash. It's like you have to make a party everytime they actually play a music video. All the time you get only cheap shows and mediocre to really simply stupid cartoons.