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Sony Digital Downloads
Mad Gav writes "Sony's Music Clip and Memory Stick Walkmans have been around here in Japan for months, but the software from Sony has been lacking, until now. Sony launched their first stab at a digital download service in Japan, albeit with a limited selection of tracks. A single track costs 350 Yen (just over $3) to download. It looks like Sony is finally making serious moves into this arena, and I'd predict that it's only a matter of months before their entire catalog goes online..." The link is in Japanese, but you can understand what's going on there.
Compact flash slow? What interface are you using to transfer? I use smartmedia and my transfers max out the pcmcia interface at 2MB/sec. A 8MB card takes about 4 seconds to transfer all the pictures to and from the laptop. The serial cable that came with another camera is much, much slower.
Now I know exactly what you are talking about. Every digital camera I have used has a major lag time from the time the button is pushed, picture is taken, and the processing time required before the next one can be snapped. It would be nice to have a camera that the instant the button is pushed, a picture is taken. The slowest film cameras are faster than the fastest digital cameras when the button is pushed.
A delay of even 10ms can make or break a picture with people in it. For example, take your stopwatch and start and stop it fast as you can and you should see from 10ms to 20ms. Like the trigger finger on a stopwatch, people's faces can change in an instant.
In the world of high speed digital electronics, why hasn't there been an engineer that has programmed a camera to have the ccd ready to capture on an instant?
Don't be so absolute! It's not a question of being either limited or unlimited, but a comment
on the fact that there are relatively few selections available. In case you haven't noticed, there is already quite a market (and grey/black market) for digital music, that does not involve sony. And there is already a certain expectation for the variety and number of selections that one my expect from such a service. Thus the comment was meant to say that Sony's selection is limited, in comparison to what we're already used to seeing.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Anyone know where I can source blank CD-r discs in the "CD Single" (3.25"?) size?
The price clearly shows they don't get it. The advantage of delivering through internet is that you can skip several steps of the logistics (burning to cd, distributing cd, etc.). In other words the main advantage is that delivering through internet is more cost effective. But what do they do???? They sell at a higher price.
This clearly shows that they don't understand their own business model. All they think about is profit but they don't see the obvious opportunity to make more profit. If they'd offer music at a lower price online they'd make huge profits because people like buying things cheaply (duh).
Sony is in a great position: they are responsible for about a third of 'traditional' music distribution so they have access to the content, they have their technology (storage, playing, recording you name it). All they have to do is put the two together.
Jilles
Is there any service which doesn't have a limited selection of tracks? If there is, I wonder where they get their unlimited supply of disk drives from?
Here is a good review of this thing (which was posted in the previous article, but somehow failed to get moderated above 0). Look down at the bottom of the review to see exactly why this thing a piece of crap designed to trick consumers into buying it instead of an mp3 player.
Here is a post I wrote for the previous article which gives one idea about what we can do to kill the sails of these things.
Finally, I feal I should clear up a little miss understanding about the usefulness of this service to us. Many people have suggested that we will break the encryption and pirate the digitally distributed music via mp3. This is not totally correct. We will crack the encryption, but we will probable need to redistribute the songs as ATRAC3 files since the conversion to mp3 will lose a lot of quality. Note: the lose of quality in the MP3 -> ATRAC3 conversion is part of why the RIAA likes this thing, i.e. it prevents mp3 only artists from having good music. Distributing unencrypted ATRAC3 files will not be a problem, but playing them could be a problem and making our own could be an even bigger problem (Sony may have patents on ATRAC3 algorithms so that they can prosicute the people who write the decoding/encoding software). Plus, Sony charges more for the songs then they would cost if you got them via CD, so there is no advnatage in getting this kind of digital music.
The moral of the story is: SDMI and Sony are evil, they must die.
Jeff
BTW> Now, a project to do an ATRAC3 to mp3 transition without losing quality would be cool, but it would also be difficult (mathematically difficult so Joe Average Hacker could not do it).
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Sometimes it seems to me that we leap to conclusions that large corporations are necessarily evil.
They're out for their own interests. For some, that's evil, but that's what most people do, so why should corporations do any better? In the case of content businesses (like movies and music) they have a clear existing interest: their present revenue stream. You'd fight to keep your job if you were unsure there was anything else and your present job paid well - that's exactly what these corporations are doing.
Yeah, large corporations (and large people, large governments, etc.) sometimes squash the little guy. This is called capitalism (or, if you prefer, Darwinian selection). It can lead to abuses. Name a system that can't.
Now before we get into a political flamewar, let me point out a few things about the VAIO Music Clip and its accompanying service:
The music industry knows they looked bad with the SDMI announcement coming out just after MP3 really hit the hype wave. It wasn't as reactionary as it looked, though. The music industry has been worrying about all things digital for years. Had the SDMI announcement come out a year earlier, we might have been saying "Cool! The industry is getting behind digital music!" How many of us have DVD players? Even if we don't like regional encoding?
It may look depressing at times. But if you think Sony's attitudes seem benighted now, well, two years ago, it was much worse. SDMI may not be what we want, but it took Sony two years to get to that point. They're moving in the right direction.
ObDisclaimer: I used to work for Sony. I personally know some of the decision-makers involved in these things - I saw them wrestle with the many issues involved, and in some cases, helped them understand them. But I don't work for Sony any more and don't have any stock or any financial interest in Sony doing well going forward.
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Klactovedestene!
mambo-x
then you just burn cdr or cdrw (of 10 hrs or so) and you're in business!
try THAT with MD. you can barely get 70minutes on an MD. and recording on MD is in real-time and no faster. if I'm in a hurry, I can grab a bunch of .wav files and create a cdr of .mp3 files in much faster than real-time (since my computer writes to cdr and not some analog or possibly real-time digital link).
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miniCDRW
like I said, with all the new neat things out there, MD is dead, dead, dead.
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when it comes to sony, just say no. they're not our friends. they don't believe in sharing and open software - they only believe in the almighty dollar (or yen).
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MD never really caught on big-time in the US. but I hear its ultra-popular in Japan.
while the US is pretty gadget-happy, I think Japan is even more so. and the sense of national pride helps the population adopt new standards more easily. perhaps the population sees Sony as part of the Great National Good, so stuffing Sony's pockets has a definite trickle-down effect.
but here in the US, we have no such feelings. if anything, there's suspicion about all things corporate Sony.
so until sony breaks apart (never happen) - like microsoft; into software-only and hardware-only components, I'll never trust sony to work on the side of the music lover. they want to keep you spending on both the hardware AND software (music).
for a company like Sony, SDMI isn't just a good business idea, its a religion. and one that I'll never subscribe to.
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and this 4x dubbing box - I bet its not in the same pricerange as typical consumer gear? or even consumer computer gear?
what does it dub from? I bet you can't dub from a hard drive (pc or unix).
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mp3 is far more accessible since its not tied to a media type. in fact, cd audio (44.1/16) isn't really tied to one particular media type, either. but MD IS. and MD is made by a fairly small group of companies, so there's not a lot of price competition going on. over the years since MD has been out, I've not seen any significant price reductions, either.
so given the current alternatives, I see MD as going the way of the 8-track. give it 3-5 yrs and you'll never see MD in the stores.
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...and you really don't need to be able to read Japanese to find out what it's about, because they put up an English page. I can read some Japanese, but I didn't need to.
:-) price of 350 yen! (about $3.50 US)
/.'ers should love: you have to use Windows Media Player! That's right, Windoze only! I think there is a non WMP player (called "Type E"), but I would expect it too to only runs under Windoze. Yes, I know that Microsoft is "considering" a Linux version of WMP, but I wouldn't be surprised if this music distribution system didn't work with Linux even then.
Anyhow, this is indeed SDMI, and you are only allowed to have a copy on one computer and transfer it one time to a digital device, for the low, low
The compression is Sony's ATRAC (the same one used in MiniDisc, which I've heard is a better quality compression format than MP3), and here's the part that
Their site says that "bitmusic will only be available to consumers in Japan; access from locations outside Japan is restricted.". I don't know how they plan to do this, other than by checking IP block ranges (post-CIDR IP blocks are assigned geographically, and I think Japan had only a limited number of IP blocks before CIDR routing was implemented).
And you have to turn on JavaShit to use the web site.
As for the cost, you have to understand the music market in Japan. CDs in Japan tend to cost about 3200 yen (about $30), though two-disc soundtrack sets are usually only a few bucks more. I think it's that high because CD rental and taping of rentals is legal in Japan. CD singles (usually two songs + karaoke tracks) cost on the order of 1000 yen (I think). So the cost really is comparable to that of a single track on a full CD. Oh, and for some reason I do not understand, in Japan, all CDs go out of print two years after original release. Apparently, this happens no matter how popular they are.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }