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Music Companies Bemoan New High-Cap Portables
An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist reports: 'The music industry this week condemned the launch of two recording systems that will let people copy between 30 and 100 hours of music onto a single disc.'" The Sony system is supposed to use "ultra-efficient data compression system used in MiniDiscs" to fit "30 hours of MP3 music" on a CD-R. (I thought MD used ATRAC rather than MP3, and that ATRAC's standard bitrate was 285.3 Kbps -- can some MD gurus bring us up to speed?) Philips' system skips CDs, and instead uses a DVD burner, with the resulting disks playable in a to-be-released portable player. I wonder what kind of DRM features the companies will use to cripple each system.
The music division of Sony has sued the consumer electronics division multiple times. The CE division is no longer allowed to make MP3 devices (like an iPod).
"Owning a computer is like having your very own TV -- with a built in radio!" - Ed Helms
Isn't there a CEO of Sony corporate who keeps his divisions in line with the goals (i.e. bottom line interests) of the company as a whole?
Japanese companies seem to have a thing for conglomerates. I suppose it helps to diversify, but how can something as scattered as Sony be said to have a coherent vision? The only unifying theme I can think of is tech - Sony makes just about anything that holds a computer chip, but they don't do snacks, and they don't do textiles. Strangely, they do make thermoses.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
""It's a no-brainer. Anything which lets people pirate more music like this has to be very bad news for the music industry," says a spokesman for Britain's record industry trade association, the BPI."
...even if you've bought the original music you're transferring.
:)
Because consumer copying, now equals piracy...
AOL (yes I use AOL and I don't care what you have to say on that subject) has on their exit screen an advert for the MusicNet thing.
It says:
"MusicNet on AOL: Burn CDs safely and legally with satisfaction guaranteed."
Erm... since when was burning a CD illegal... or risky (assuming low burn speeds?)
I mean... safely... is that a threat?
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Mini-DVDs. Like the small format mini-CDRs you can burn with ~200 megs of MP3s. I love my Memorex mini-CDR/MP3 player, for the portability of the discs, which I can easily carry 4 or 5 of in my jacket pocket when I go skiing. If they made mini DVD-R/MP3 players, I could fit my entire music collection on one mini DVD-R. And that would convince me to finally buy a DVD burner.
This article claims they can fit 30 hours of music on a CD using MiniDisc compression, which from what I've read only provides a 5:1 compression ratio, or about 6.7 hours on an 80 minute disc. In order to compress 30 hours of music into 700MB you'd need to compress it at about 53kbps, which I don't know of any compression format which provides decent audio quality at that rate. Even the claims of 100 hours of music on a DVD (assuming a standard single layer 4.7GB recordable DVD) would only allow for 110kbps which is getting kind of low.
I'm a singer in an original band. If you ask me, this would be a great way to get music to the masses. We're already savvy enough to deal with the RIAA, and we also feel that P2P filesharing is a great way to get our music out.
Yes, we own all the copyrights. But we don't mind the music being spread around for free. Four words: Word Of Mouth Advertising. Works wonders for any business. The more people hear it, the more people show up at gigs and buy CDs, T's, etc.
A device like this is a musician's dream. When you want to move music around, you're limited to the capacity of CD-Rs and RW's. Well, us po' musicians, anyway. LOL. But I digress. A device like this would save us a WORLD of trouble. All band members record whatever they work on, passing it back and forth via handheld devices such as this, and their computers at home.
The format to record and compress should be open standard, DRM-free codecs, like anything Vorbis. Since I'm the singer, but also something of a geek, I would much prefer Open Source options. Linux-based onboard OS? We know Sony's at least halfway Linux-friendly. They did put out a PS2 kit...
That'd most certainly be something I'd use. Screw DRM. Oh no, I'm going to pirate my own music! Better stop me before I can! I don't want a whole bunch of encryption crap in my music, just the music codec itself. That's just being a pain in the ass, and you know Microsoft is going to lobby for proprietary control. No, no, a hundred times no. Open Source, DRM-Free.
Oh wait. I'm sorry. Everything I stand for isn't what the RIAA/MPAA/MS want. This technology gives me more freedom, allows me to absorb some of the cost of getting a break, and makes things easier all-around. It lessens their involvment, and thus lessens the amount of bucks they deserve. That's bad, isn't it.
I'm just a dumb, awe-struck-by-the-business musician, what do I know...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
Yes: alt-preset-standard uses better psychoacoustic models. It should be transparent on the very large majority of samples. There is it's cousin alt-preset-extreme, with an average of about 256kbs. I haven't heard any artifacts with extreme yet.