UC System Chooses Mindawn Download Service

An anonymous reader writes "In hopes of stemming the tide of students freely sharing copyrighted multimedia files over their campus networks, the University of California (UC) system has selected an online music and video service that supports Windows, Mac OS, and Linux to provide downloadable music and video for its approximately 200,000 student population. Unlike iTunes (which only supports Mac OS X and Windows) and Napster (which is Windows-only), Mindawn works with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. In addition, instead of providing downloads that are degraded by what is known as "lossy compression," downloads from Mindawn are offered in both Ogg Vorbis and FLAC formats." (Vorbis files are lossy too, though my tin ears can't always tell.)

Comments

No Pink Floyd

[nokilli]

No Alanis Morissette. No Marilyn Manson. No Billie Holiday.

Damn man, if it's OK to not have any music, I can support Mac OS X and Linux too! Come on over to nokilli's download service, where you can listen to silence in your choice of MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA or the very popular, highly compressed, zero-byte file format.
--
Why didn't you know?

Re:No Pink Floyd

[Anonymous Coward]

nice offtopic spam, asshole

Re:No Pink Floyd

[Anonymous Coward]

No Alanis Morissette. No Marilyn Manson. No Billie Holiday.

No shit.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[melikamp]

I thought that parent is a troll, so I went and tossed a few querries. Couldn't get any results. So I browsed. It looks like they carry a few hundred of albums. Wow. I've seen personal collections bigger than that. They've got nothing on a university lan.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[strider44]

It's a simple equation. They don't have forced DRM so the RIAA and co won't deal with them.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[Shisha]

No Manu Chao, no Mano Negra, no Banco de Gaia, one album from Duke Ellington....

If anyone thinks this will stop illegal music downloads then they should think again, because 99% of stuff I'd want probably won't be on available legally trough this channel.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[Mr2001]

They don't need Manu Chao, there's already plenty of Bongo Bong in the UC system...

Re:No Pink Floyd

[melikamp]

IMHO, it doesn't makes perfect sense. Apple's DRM is a joke. There must be thousands of technically inept people out there who stripped it by mistake through the CD hole. Additionally, all of the popular music is already available on P2P. So what does the DRM matter? An Apple customer can share her music with her friends. If a Mindawn customer uses P2P, he runs a risk of getting busted. I don't see any difference.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[trisweb]

I'm a UC Berkeley student, and I'll say now that I'm not interested for exactly this reason. Sorry, but I'll stick with CDs if I'm going to buy music.

Berkeley has some of the greatest music stores in the nation. They offer an amazing variety of music (including Pink Floyd) in full lossless audio and no DRM. Until the same is true for an online store, there really is no substitute. I'll take Ameoba over iTunes any day.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[Anonymous Coward]

You've missed the point. No doubt the aim isn't to provide a music download service. It's to cover the University's backside.

When the RIAA comes along and alleges 'inducement' to copyright infringement, the University can point to the fact it provides a legal download service and say "we try to discourage the students but they just ignore us."

Re:No Pink Floyd

[femto]

It is great (and completely valid) that the University is promoting non-RIAA music.

Who says music==RIAA (apart from the RIAA)? The University at least is smart enough to realise that this is not the case and that it is not required to provide RIAA 'music' on tap.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[ifwm]

Yeah, but do they have any good music?

Re:No Pink Floyd

[eldacan]

They offer an amazing variety of music (including Pink Floyd)

Pink Floyd? Amazing indeed! I dare you find one that has Rolling Stones records though...

Re:No Pink Floyd

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm amazed that everyone is looking at Mindawn as it exists now, and not what it will be in a few years. It costs money to put albums onto the internet, and a sweet deal like serving 200,000 students is certainly enough money for them to expand their repertoire.

Also, you have to make tradeoffs for any service. In this case, the tradeoff is accessability. iTunes costs a bundle if you actually build up a collection (like any legal audiophile will), and you couldn't use it on Linux, and DRM, etc. On the other extreme, I remember the days of unlimited downloads on emusic.com, when it was only about $15 for as much non-mainstream music as you wanted.

I'm not one to say that indie is better than mainstream, but it's certainly true that there are so many bands out there that you will be able to find a band similar to your favorite band if you look for it. Very few bands nowadays have a truly original sound - most just use psuedo-individualization to give the illusion of being original. I'm just waiting for the next big genre to hit at this point.

Anyways, the point is, music is music.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[odie_q]

And by "full lossless audio" you mean CD's, I presume? Hardly lossless, I'd say. And despite all the hype about FLAC and similar formats, I am pretty sure a high-quality frequency based format (as opposed to sample based PCM. MP3, Vorbis and ATRAC are all frequency based) could offer much better audio quality per data rate. Providing of course you don't first pass the recording through another lossy scheme such as 44.1kHz/16bit PCM.

Not that most of us have equipment capable of reproducing much higher quality than what fits on a CD, but still.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[Kjella]

No Pink Floyd. No Alanis Morissette. No Marilyn Manson. No Billie Holiday.

In short, what you are saying is that each copyright is a monopoly. There's no real substitute for a Pink Floyd song. Fair enough, others shouldn't be able to make ripoffs that sound almost exactly the same.

But it also means it doesn't matter much how you deliver it. DRM-restricted? Sure, but what is the substitute? I'm not talking about going without music, I'm talking about going without that song. To most people the solution is violating copyright, not switching music.

The best you can realisticly do is get volume. Gather up independent artists and build a big store with low sales/song ratio. Start getting "hits" from the inside. All of them put together is big, if they could unite. Not under one label, but as a huge clearing house of independent music.

And you have to start that somewhere. You can't gather up countless independents (which by definition are far more than big music labels) at once. Doesn't work that way. Seriously, imagine you were meeting with Pink Floyd's representative. Answer the question "What's in it for me?"

Kjella

Re:No Pink Floyd

[The-Bus]

Berkeley has some of the greatest music stores in the nation... I'll take Ameoba over iTunes any day.

Parent is referring to Amoeba Music which is one of the BEST music stores on the planet. (No affiliation). I've been to the one in Hollywood and it is spectacular. The prices, especially those on Japanese imports, are extremely reasonable ($20-$30 as opposed to $46 ).

I've been to Kim's in the NYC village and J&R and a million mom-and-pop stores, but I can tell you for sure if Amoeba was down the block from me I would be broke. Thankfully several thousand miles separate us.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[The Lynxpro]

"I'm a UC Berkeley student, and I'll say now that I'm not interested for exactly this reason. Sorry, but I'll stick with CDs if I'm going to buy music."

Uhm, its not like CDs are 24-bit audio quality. They don't sound all that much better than the other digital file formats, and in fact sounds less than stellar compared against a high end turn table and vinyl media. CDs were great in their day becaues of their high quality, portability factor, and the reduction of audio imperfections. We are now in a trend that will see the CD replaced with online digital formats meant to spur impulse purchases. Portability will win out again over audio quality.

I would have found your argument insightful had you made the point about the quality difference between an iTunes AAC+Fairplay file versus say, DVD-Audio media. But not with CD.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[hondo77]

Amoeba Music is so big and wonderful that I actually suffer a nervous system overload when I'm there and my brain doesn't work so well. "That's crazy," you say? I have a co-worker that described the exact same thing happening to him.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[bill_kress]

There is so much independent music out there now, and it's getting really good. Just skip the commercial stuff all together and start listening to the indi music wave that the big labels are creating.

Try garageband.com, etc.

Also a bunch of podcasts give you music you don't have to pay for at all:

coverville.com (Fantastic, and all their shows are downloadable online)
CBC podcast (Great variety!)
Rock & Roll Geek Show (Talks too much, but sometimes the music rocks).

BTW, I hadn't even considered this until my brother pointed it out, but listening to a podcast full of good music that you have never heard is completely different than listening to good music on the radio. In many ways it's a better feeling, and it's TOTALLY NEW--Kinda like when you were younger and you got a new Album/CD that just rocked from end to end.

The podcasts can be hit or miss, but when they hit, they really kick ass.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[metternich]

As a long time Berkeley resident, I hardily concur!

Re:No Pink Floyd

[cayenne8]

"BTW, I hadn't even considered this until my brother pointed it out, but listening to a podcast full of good music that you have never heard is completely different than listening to good music on the radio. In many ways it's a better feeling, and it's TOTALLY NEW--Kinda like when you were younger and you got a new Album/CD that just rocked from end to end."

I've come to discover this too! That's the thing I think I really like about it. When I was growning up...we DID get all our new music from radio, however, back then, it wasn't as corporate and generic and bland as it is today. They had the 'album' stations, and the DJ's would throw new and fun stuff on the air...even in primetime. Hehehe, hell, I remember once, they put on a whole album (I think Boston was new then), and at the end of side one...well, it just went to the outtrack, and kept popping..for about 15 min. I guess the DJ was still outside getting stoned and forgot about it.

But, the point is...it was fun to listen to the radio, with hits of the day, mixed in with new stuff. I see a LOT of this on the podcasts I'm finding. Much of it is indie...some of it crap. But, at least on the blues stations I'm finding, I'm hearing good stuff, and I'm already looking on Amazon.com for some of the things I've heard. Maybe something like this...getting the corporations OUT of the decision of what to play process...will bring back the good old days...of hearing good, new music...without having to spend your hours of the day searching for it.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[JazzCrazed]

You beat me to it! "Lossless" is, of course, a relative term - and a CD, using the standard Redbook audio format - is lossy compared to the analog source from which it is usually generated. You could consider it lossless if it were a CD pressed or burned from a rip of another CD. But at that rate, you might as well call a CD full of MP3s lossless, too, since the files were just copied onto it with no further compression involved.

And in the end, it's all fairly indiscernable to the average listener. "Lossless" is sort of becoming like the word "digital" is now in marketing-speak.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation: I am a pedantic jackass who likes to hear myself talk.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[mako1138]

Yeah, the parent probably means CDs, but Amoeba sells a lot of vinyl too. It's debatable what's "full lossless" beyond a live performance, but I'd say vinyl gets closer than CD.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[JabberWokky]

You know who you're telling this to, right? I think he's semi-aware of the existence of indie music.

(I've just moved cross country, and I'll miss the hell out of No Kill I's shows... but my SO and I managed to be in Trekkies II because we were at that concert. She's the Orion Slave Girl, I'm Yet Another Klingon).

--
Evan

Re:No Pink Floyd

[Anonymous Coward]

I was wondering if you could explain how a CD is "full lossless audio" seeing as it is digital and the last time I checked, sound is analog.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[trisweb]

I was going to say in my original comment that they have an even higher quality format than CDs too -- Vinyl. The stores in Berkely have more vinyl than I've ever seen in my life. Thought against saying that though.

Do some research. CD's are actually quite lossless mathematically up to frequencies at half of the sample rate. The signal is exactly the same as the one that came in when encoded at a high enough sample rate to catch the highest frequencies. The 16 bits on a CD is certainly a limiting factor, but there are ways around that as well, and you've GOT to be kidding me if you think any MP3, vorbis, or ATRAC is in any way more lossless than straight up digital at the same sample rate and size. Regardless of how you think of it, they remove frequencies from the original to compress it. No way around it. PCM may compress the bits, but they're all there.

Now, whether or not you could actually achieve a higher sample rate and sample depth with the same bit rate with a frequency-based encoding is another story. And probably your point, in which case I apologize.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[trisweb]

All compared to a CD. If you can't hear the difference between mp3 and CD, the difference between a CD and its analog source will be moot to you, so stop complaining.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[trisweb]

Oh you haaaaaad to bring up the turntable. I have one, I use it extensively, and Ameoba has one of the greatest vinyl selections known to man. I didn't mention it because I thought I wouldn't need to. I thought everyone knew CD's were simply better than compressed audio.

Yes, now I'm making the point about the quality difference between an iTunes AAC+Fairplay (you haaaaad to put the Fairplay in it) and a CD. If your ears can't hear the difference between a 128Kbps AAC and a CD, then I pity you. I really do. AACs sound decent, but with good sound equipment, they're hideous. You get all sorts of high-end noise and muddled bass... I don't like the format, frankly.

A CD, on the other hand, is only limited by the nyquist frequency of the 44.1KHz sample rate (22 KHz is the max frequency) and the sample resolution of 16 bits, which gives you a dynamic range of 2^16 (65536) discreet levels per sample. I'll admit, discreet levels is the bad part, but the truth is, mathematically, the signal all evens out to be the same as the analog source up to the nyquist, and more bits per sample gives you a wider dynamic range and higher resolution, which is higher quality.

Regardless of what happens on that level, the fact is, we're comparing 16-bit PCM to 16-bit MPEG-4. There's no argument, one has bits that the other removes to save space, and you can hear it. That is what I mean by lossless, and I can't believe that people gave me flac for it. No pun intended.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[trisweb]

I can vouch for that. I have the exact same thing happen to me. It's great.

And to the grandparent, I do live a block from Ameoba, and yes, I am broke.

Re:No Pink Floyd

[odie_q]

Yes, that was exactly my point :)

And, yes, I do know enough fourier analysis to be aware of the Nyqvist frequency, but I don't know enough psychoacoustics to be sure that frequencies above 22kHz don't affect our listening experience, there are some who claim they do, and some who claim they don't.

In any case, it's pretty moot, since most cd's sound bad simply because the recording has been poorly mixed. I have a few very well-produced cd's and they sound very good to my ears.

Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I speak for everyone when I say: What is a mindawn, and what part of left field did that decision come out of?

Re:Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

It comes from UC. They put the U in inpryouvement. They also put the C in acid.

Re:Who?

[sharkey]

And can you say "Supports Windows, Mac OS, and Linux" some more?

Re:Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay, horse and male anal porn. I've been looking to get my hands on some of that. (pun intended)

Re:Who?

[shark72]

" I think I speak for everyone when I say: What is a mindawn, and what part of left field did that decision come out of?"

Perhaps the decision-makers made the mistake of putting too much trust in Slashdot users -- you know the refrain: "the music industry is going to die real soon now! Consumers demand lossless, DRM-free music! And Linux support!". If that's the case, however, the decision-makers may have missed this article, which seems to indicate otherwise.

Re:Who?

[digitalmedievalist]

You're missing part of reason to be interested in Mindawn; yes, it's super that Mindawn supports Linux and Mac OS X--but don't forget universities have content as well, and a lot of it is music. Mindawn provides a way for university folk to share content--if any UC schools decide to sign on. UC as a system just negotiated favorable terms; signing on is up to individual schools.

Popular music?

[pmazer]

Unfortunately for the UC systems, Mindawn doesn't seem to offer any popular music (songs produced by the RIAA) so I'm not sure that's going to help stem the tide of file sharing.

Not that there's anything wrong with not providing that RIAA stuff...

Re:Popular music?

[bn557]

Maybe the higher ups at the school wanted to see the IT department come up with an attempt at a solution to the piracy problem, and the IT people are smart enough to know they can't really do anything to stop it completely, came up with a solution that was cost effective for the school, was easy for them to do, and made the higher ups happy.

And maybe that's not a run on sentance.

Re:Popular music?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not about having RIAA stuff or not. It is about having what people want. They don't have anything from Sunday Munich or Gods & Monsters and those two bands are not affiliated with RIAA. They created their own labels and started distributing their material on their own.

If a download service does not have any music available that people are interested in, it will not get used, and people will still download what they want from the source that have it, legal or not...

Re:Popular music?

[mako1138]

At Berkeley, they've rolled out Real's Rhapsody service at a substantially reduced rate for students: $2 a month.

So they're taking steps on one campus, at least.

How much money did they plunk on this?

[thewldisntenuff]

I ask this question because I have browsed through the Mindawn service. This might be a loss for the university. Before we get into this debate about what music is good/bad, or the usual "Indie Music is the only real music" posts, let's say something about Joe College Student. Your average college student isn't like us. The average college student listens to RIAA artists like Metallica, Britney Spears, etc. None of those artists (nor any newer music) is available on this catalog. Word will get around campus, and as a result, I have a feeling the service will not be used by the masses.

-thewldisntenuff

Re:How much money did they plunk on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

The average college student listens to RIAA artists like Metallica, Britney Spears

Off-topic but 20 years ago, Metallica was a good band :( I always hate when someone compares it to Britney even if it sucks today.

Re:How much money did they plunk on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed...I think he just needed a name - maybe someone who's used the cover of the RIAA in the past?

Re:How much money did they plunk on this?

[tepples]

The average college student listens to RIAA artists like Metallica, Britney Spears, etc.

Britney Spears is middle school music, not college music.

Word will get around campus

We're talking about music copying, not software copying!

But seriously, it's also possible that word will get around campus about the good songs on the system.

Re:How much money did they plunk on this?

[ifwm]

You know, I wish they had a mod "-1 missed the point"

They provided a music service. There is no reason that must include RIAA artists because

1. RIAA won't fuck with them. What stake can they claim if their artists aren't represented (spare me the moronic RIAA conspiracies). If they REALLY wanted a music service for students, they could partner with a real one, and probably get a deal.

2. They never wanted it used anyway. The purpose of this partnership is to insulate the schools when RIAA comes for the real file sharers.

The very things you claim will kill this are the reasons it was chosen in the first place.

Re:How much money did they plunk on this?

[maxpublic]

Britney Spears is middle school music, not college music.

Another Britney slam from one of those cool counterculture rebels. Y'know, dishing crap about "popular" culture doesn't make you witty or admirable, and it sure as hell won't get you laid. All it does is make you look like a geek, and not in a good way.

Max

Re:How much money did they plunk on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another Britney slam...sure as hell won't get you laid.

wait, so is that your secret?

Re:How much money did they plunk on this?

[SiChemist]

I can't believe that you are seriously defending the music of Britney Spears. She is a no-talent hack that no one would have ever heard of if she weren't young, pretty and willing to wear skimpy costumes in her videos.

Y'know, defending crap singers doesn't make you witty or admirable, and it sure as hell won't get you laid. All it does is make you look like a geek, and not in a good way.

Re:How much money did they plunk on this?

[maxpublic]

I can't believe that you are seriously defending the music of Britney Spears.

Music is a matter of personal choice. Anyone who's managed to mature beyond the age of 12 eventually clues in to this fact. For example, I think rap is pure shit but I recognize that this is my personal opinion, nothing more, and that there are millions out there who'd vehemently disagree with me. And since I don't have a "rebel without a clue" complex I also realize that declaring "rap is shit" as a fact is just plain rude and obnoxious. It won't make me look cool; it'll just make me look like an immature asshole (except, perhaps, to other immature assholes).

The same goes for any other form of music, including popular music. The folks who go around slamming Britney are just little twats who haven't managed to grow up and whose mamas apparently didn't bitch-slap any manners into them. They also seem to think that making these 'bold' statements somehow qualifies them as the intellectual superior to everyone who actually does like Britney Spears, which is nothing more than laughable.

And I do mean laughable. It doesn't get much more pathetic than this.

Max

Re:How much money did they plunk on this?

[tepples]

The folks who go around slamming Britney are just little twats who haven't managed to grow up and whose mamas apparently didn't bitch-slap any manners into them.

Jus' twat do you think you're saying? It's well known that a lot of these pop music performers cannot stay on pitch without a DSP that rounds the pitch to the nearest semitone.

They also seem to think that making these 'bold' statements somehow qualifies them as the intellectual superior to everyone who actually does like Britney Spears, which is nothing more than laughable.

I'm not comparing myself to every fan of Britney Spears, just the middle few percentiles.

Re:How much money did they plunk on this?

[digitalmedievalist]

No money was spent; UC as a system just negotiated favorable terms; signing on is up to individual schools. And you'll note that Mindawn could also provide a way for schools to share their own content--there's a lot of student and faculty created music on campus.

Ok, we get it, it works with Linux

[X43B]

"....supports Windows, Mac OS, and Linux

works with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux."

ummmm, so does it run in Linux?

Seriously though, there is no such thing as a free lunch and all that so I have to wonder what better uses (computer labs, research facilities, etc) are getting short changed to pay for this. I buy my songs legally so I don't like that my tuition and/or school budget getting used to this to prevent us "pirates".

Re:Ok, we get it, it works with Linux

[commodoresloat]

ummmm, so does it run in Linux?

It runs in a web browser. So it isn't a separate application, which makes the phrase "supports windows, os x, and linux" sound a little like marketing fluff.

As others have noted, this is a silly move; not only is there no popular music here, there really isn't much of anything at all. There is a lot more independent music they could be selling, and everything I could find on the site was totally obscure. And while I support the idea of having FLAC available from such a service, they are really cutting out a huge chunk of possible users who will only use mp3 or aac.

Re:Ok, we get it, it works with Linux

[Uncle_Al]

Actually it is an application, so it makes the phrase "supports windows, os x, and linux" sound rather interesting indeed.

http://www.mindawn.com/download.php

Did you actually visit the site?

Re:Ok, we get it, it works with Linux

[cbrocious]

It runs in a web browser. So it isn't a separate application, which makes the phrase "supports windows, os x, and linux" sound a little like marketing fluff.

Wrong. There is a client-side application which is required for listening to the full-length previews they supply (you can listen to them 3 times IIRC)

Re:Ok, we get it, it works with Linux

[commodoresloat]

yes I did, but I somehow missed that. I looked around the music catalog but since I didn't actually buy anything I just assumed that you could just buy it from the website. But this tells me you have 2 applications that you have to use to use this site -- a web browser and the software linked above. This makes it even less appealing.

Re:Ok, we get it, it works with Linux

[digitalmedievalist]

1. No money was spent, in the sense you mean. 2. UC just negotiated agreements with vendors to offer a competitive price to UC schools--individual schools would then decide whether or not they wanted to sign on. 3. Students would then decided if they wanted to pay the fee for any service; the school merely negotiated deals. 4. In other words, students who want the service would pay for it--albeit at a very good price negotiated for them by UC.

this reads like a press release

[Dr Kool, PhD]

Is this "article" a paid advertisement?

Re:this reads like a press release

[pythas]

Hell, I'm pretty sure this IS the press release, or at least excerpts from it (from here:

Mindawn, a revolutionary new online music and video service, has been selected by the University of California system as a partner to provide music and video to their approximate 200,000 large student population.

Universities across the country are facing increasing pressure to curb the practice of individuals distributing digital files of copyrighted songs and movies without permission on university networks. As creators and owners of intellectual property and licensed technology, UC has a strong commitment to upholding intellectual property laws, including the need to protect against the illegal sharing of copyrighted materials in digital format, which is where Mindawn comes in.

Most online music services tie the user to one or at best two computer platforms: iTunes is only for Mac OS X and Windows; Napster is Windows-only. Mindawn, on the other hand, works with all three major platforms -- Windows, Mac OS X and Linux -- and is fully compatible with all three. With Mindawn's cross-platform client software, you can even hear a full preview of the entire song, unlike competing services, which only offer brief excerpts.

Competitors also normally only offer music files that are reduced in quality through what's called " lossy compression". The more compressed a file is, the greater the loss in sound quality. By contrast, Mindawn offers its files in both Ogg Vorbis and FLAC formats. Ogg Vorbis, unlike MP3, is a totally free and open sound format, and offers superior sound quality compared to MP3 and other compression techniques. Meanwhile, FLAC is full CD quality and while 50% smaller, can easily be converted to AIFF or WAV files for use in standard CD players or converted to virtually any other lossy format for use on any portable media player.

Mindawn is the only online music service to offer FLAC and Ogg Vorbis as its standard music file formats, and is the only service to offer music in both "lossy" and "lossless" forms in addition to video.

"Mindawn will be a valuable partner for campuses instituting online entertainment programs because of its wide range of content by independent artists and its offer to allow UC students to market their own music," said David Walker, Director of Advanced Technology for the University of California, who oversaw the selection of vendors for UC . "This is an important endeavor that we are embarking on, and we are pleased to be working with an established leader on the project."

Shawn Gordon, President of Mindawn (theKompany) had this to say, "We are honored and excited to have been chosen to work with such a prestigious University system. We're confident that the technology we bring to the table will be a great fit for UC".

Re:this reads like a press release

[IANAAC]

Shawn Gordon...

Mod me troll/flaimbait, but...

I didn't need to read any further. Sorry, but after a few years of Zaurus ownership, I know that theKompany doesn't really keep its word on the promises it throws out there. Their zaurus mail app is classic build it-drop it support.

Re:this reads like a press release

[Anonymous Coward]

Shawn Gordon...

Mod me troll/flaimbait, but... I didn't need to read any further.

Erm, his name was mentioned in the very last paragraph. If you didn't need to read any further, you still would have read almost the entire thing!

Re:this reads like a press release

[thedustbustr]

Shut the fuck up, and welcome to slashdot

Heh... hilarious

[tabacco]

So even though the vast majority of students on UC campuses carry iPods (thanks to Apple's extensive student discounts on them, including giving them away free with purchase of a powerbook), the UC system has selected a download system incompatible with iPod.

Figures.

Re:Heh... hilarious

[kakashiryo]

There are many solutions to this problem. You could either: 1) Convert your files 2) Use something other than iTunes to sync (Like Anapod http://www.redchairsoftware.com/anapod/)

Re:Heh... hilarious

[remahl]

iTunes can play MP3, Wav and AIFF.

Re:Heh... hilarious

[tepples]

Virtually every online music store other than iTMS uses the PlaysForSure format (MSDRM around WMA). This format does not work with iPod players. However, Mindawn provides FLAC, and FLAC can easily be transcoded into AAC (*.m4a) which iPod players do support.

Re:Heh... hilarious

[pmazer]

iTunes can play MP3, Wav and AIFF.

And Mindawn supports none of these

Re:Heh... hilarious

[neverkevin]

I am not sure where you are getting your information, but apple is not giving "extensive student discounts" to the UC system. UC sells ipods for the same price you can buy them on the http://store.apple.com/ education store.

Re:Heh... hilarious

[TimWeigel]

I don't think that the parent meant that the UC system is getting some kind of break - I think that the parent meant that students in general are getting the extensive discounts.

Hell, that's the only way I was able to afford MY iPod.

Re:Heh... hilarious

[pizzarobot]

Because FLAC is lossess, FLAC files can be converted into AAC/MP3/whatever at their maximum quality (instead of what normally happens when you convert between MP3s, Ogg, etc.)

Re:Heh... hilarious

[Anonymous Coward]

Transcode the FLAC, it's lossless.

Re:Heh... hilarious

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Try telling your average college student that he needs to transcode the FLAC into AAC before listening to the music on his iPod.

Re:Heh... hilarious

[tepples]

Try telling your average college student that he needs to transcode the FLAC into AAC before listening to the music on his iPod.

Transcoding of DRM-less audio happens automatically once the proper QuickTime filter is installed.

Re:Heh... hilarious

[Anonymous Coward]

Virtually every online music store other than iTMS uses the PlaysForSure format (MSDRM around WMA). This format does not work with iPod players.

There's something amusing about those two sentances.

Re:Heh... hilarious

[cnhn]

Mindawn provides FLAC, and FLAC can easily be transcoded into AAC (*.m4a) which iPod players do support. why wouldn't you transcode it to mp3 which works just fine with ipod? jeez use the formats that stay open instead of the DRMed one's even if you do use ipods/itunes

Re:Heh... hilarious

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck trying to install FLAC QuickTime filters on your iPod.

Re:Heh... hilarious

[line.at.infinity]

Mindawn doesn't have an MS PlaysForSure certification either: they couldn't because they don't support MS WMA. Purchased songs are non-DRMed, so they probably wouldn't have had any problems if they also did the transcoding into MP3 and AAC for their iPod customers beforehand.

I think a deal with mp3tunes.com might have been better. While their selection is non-DRMed audio by little known arists as well, the songs are in a format, MP3, that is most widely supported by portable digital audio players, and no additional clunky software is required besides your web browser for obtaining these songs. I guess the tradeoff when choosing between the two services is support for Debian or a wider range of portable players.

At this point the traditional CD buying system seems to be the best option since it offers the widest selection, plus the payment scheme for most customers isn't a mysterious unknown as Mindawn's.

Re:Heh... hilarious

[tepples]

Good luck trying to install FLAC QuickTime filters on your iPod.

Transcoding happens on the PC, not the handheld device.

Re:Heh... hilarious

[Tombstone-f]

Because mp3 is NOT open and AAC is NOT DRMed.

Re:Heh... hilarious

[tepples]

Because mp3 is NOT open and AAC is NOT DRMed.

MPEG-4 AAC is just as proprietary as MP3. Its only big advantage over MP3 is a lower data rate for a given subjective quality level on iPod players and other devices that can play AAC.

Finally, a step in the right direction...

[ShyGuy91284]

The university I attend started Cdigix service last year. I was going to give it a free try, but it only works in Windows, so I never even touched it. Had it worked in Linux, I would have probably given it a try (If they had my type of music), and maybe continued using it.

Re:Finally, a step in the right direction...

[Magus2501]

I tried CDigix for all of 12 minutes. It didn't work with FireFox (at the time, it needed ActiveX), and they didn't have any of the music that I want to listen to. I asked them to remove my account, and they did. At least their customer service was prompt!

Target market?

[ForumTroll]

So basically by using this service they get a much smaller selection of music available in formats that the average user doesn't want and only really gain support for Linux. I really doubt that simply supporting Linux is going to give this application any traction as Linux users do not compromise a large enough target market for an application like this and most Linux users are quite able to get iTunes working in a VM. Being a full time university student, I personally think that students would prefer a well known application like iTunes which they most likely already know how to use and can offer more features (ex. Podcasts, easy integration with iPods etc.).

I mean how can they fight piracy with a service that doesn't offer any music that the average student is going to want? You may or may not like popular music however it's what the students want to listen to whether we like it or not.

Top Tracks

[nherc]

Here are the Top Track from Mindawn:

• All The Water of This World - Aaron English
• The Sense - John Luttrell
• Waterfall Carnival - Frogg Cafe
• Journey to Farpoint - John Luttrell
• Consider the Lilies - JoAnn Gordon
• Quest for the Heartland - Ricocher
• All This Time - Frogg Cafe
• You're Not Alone - JoAnn Gordon
• Windy Day - John Luttrell
• Full Moon - Chrome Shift

Compare this to ITunes:

• Pon de Replay (Radio Edit) - Rihanna
• Feel Good Inc. (Album Crossfade) - Gorillaz
• These Boots Are Made for Walkin'... - Jessica Simpson
• Don't Cha (featuring Busta Rhymes)... - The Pussycat Dolls & Busta Rhymes
• Best of You - Foo Fighters
• Don't Phunk With My Heart - Black Eyed Peas
• Sugar, We're Goin Down - Fall Out Boy
• Behind These Hazel Eyes - Kelly Clarkson
• Beverly Hills - Weezer
• Lose Control (Featuring Ciara & Fa... - Missy Elliott

Now how is this going to reduce piracy?

It just sounds like they are throwing a bone to the RIAA in that they are AT LEAST making an attempt at offering an alternative to P2P perhaps trying to shield themselves from direct litigation on the REALLY, REALLY cheap.

Re:Top Tracks

[pmazer]

Dude, they have Quest for the Heartland by Ricocher!?! Rock on!!

Re:Top Tracks

[Brandybuck]

Now how is this going to reduce piracy?

I have no idea, since I haven't heard of anyone in either list.

Re:Top Tracks

[Shut the fuck up!]

So what's the comparison? I've hardly heard of any of the artists in either list and the few I have, well, I don't even need to hear the songs to know they suck.

Re:Top Tracks

[Anonymous Coward]

These Boots Are Made for Walkin'... - Jessica Simpson

You know this song has become the standard for the vacuous no talent blonde wanna be slutty girl. And it is sad because Nancy Sinatra was not like that. She wasn't incredible talented, but she has some grace and style. And there was a time when the women who sang this song were in fact women and were in fact not so trampy, and did in fact have some ability to sing. And were in fact women and not just bags of flesh to be used.

It is like the Dukes of Hazard. A fun show with fun actors and people who did not take themselves seriously, but were still respectful. Even the preview with that bag of flesh makes me want to sue for destroying the last vestiges of my innocent childhood.

Anyway, since anyone who sings the song after this will be considered a lower life form than jessica simpson, the song should probably be retired. Unless Paris Hilton feels the need to assert herself as the lowest of the low.

Re:Top Tracks

[Anonymous Coward]

Now how is this going to reduce piracy?

I don't know. I've never heard of any of those artists.

Re:Top Tracks

[arose]

I have to say the second list looks almost as alien as the first one to me and from the few artists I recognize in the second I would choose the first.

Re:Top Tracks

[TheRaven64]

I don't think this is aimed at reducing piracy. I think this is aimed squarely at the RIAA, with a simple message. The message is that they can either provide DRM-free music, or they can find other markets. If more university campuses sent this kind of message, then there would be a significant incentive for them to start providing music via Mindawn and similar services.

Re:Top Tracks

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, who mentioned Boston?

Re:Top Tracks

[cozziewozzie]

Well, I don't know anybody from the first list, but I know for a bloody fact that I wouldn't listen to any of the sorry excuses for music from the second list.

Re:Top Tracks

[dr_eaerth]

Waterfall Carnival - Frogg Cafe
All This Time - Frogg Cafe
Full Moon - Chrome Shift

Mindawn may be very limited, but the top list at mindawn has two excellent bands (Frogg Cafe is great progrock with an occasional Zappa influence, and Chromeshift is very catchy metal), while the top list at iTunes has all crap.

To admit, this isn't music that makes a difference to your typical college student, and also to admit, no top ten list of songs should have multiple tracks by a single artist, unless that artist is that unbelievably popular. But this type of music, neglected in the popular circles, is a basic requirement if I am ever going to sign up for any music service. It is not the only requirement, because well-known music is also necessary, but the requirement is still absolute.

Right now, this service can't reduce piracy at all. But on the other hand, if they are able to continue and improve, they might do something just as important: sell better music.

Re:Top Tracks

[digitalmedievalist]

Mindawn does more than offer music to download--it allows the university and students to upload. Also, Mindawn is not the only service UC negotiated deals with; CdGix is another.

good luck...

[Sathias]

Riiiight... they are going to stop piracy by providing a paid streaming audio and video service with crap content to a group of people that typically have little money.

Re:good luck...

[patio11]

Your post seems to have been cut off. I presume the ending of that sentence was intended to be "little money, high speed Internet connections, large amounts of free time, and few compunctions about stealing when its unlikely they will be caught."

*BSD was born there

[tepples]

I really doubt that simply supporting Linux is going to give this application any traction as Linux users do not compromise a large enough target market for an application like this

You seem to forget that this is University of California, the birthplace of *BSD. Even if the app doesn't support *BSD, FreeBSD can run many Linux binaries more smoothly than Wine runs Windows binaries.

I mean how can they fight piracy with a service that doesn't offer any music that the average student is going to want?

"Ve half vays off making you vant the music." Use the same technique RIAA labels use in motor vehicles and grocery stores: advertise to a captive audience. Play the music in the hallways after class. Play it in the dining halls.

Re:*BSD was born there

[ForumTroll]

"You seem to forget that this is University of California, the birthplace of *BSD. Even if the app doesn't support *BSD, FreeBSD can run many Linux binaries more smoothly than Wine runs Windows binaries."

I still believe throughout most of the University the majority of computer users still use Windows and/or Mac OS X and all of them have access to computers with those operating systems. I don't believe it is worth it to gain a small subset of Linux/BSD users, who most likely would have gotten access anyways, and sacrifice including the music that the students want to hear and are going to use.

""Ve half vays off making you vant the music." Use the same technique RIAA labels use in motor vehicles and grocery stores: advertise to a captive audience. Play the music in the hallways after class. Play it in the dining halls."

This sounds like you are more interested in forcing them to change what they listen to instead of picking what they actually want and would use most.

Re:*BSD was born there

[Pollardito]

"Ve half vays off making you vant the music." Use the same technique RIAA labels use in motor vehicles and grocery stores: advertise to a captive audience. Play the music in the hallways after class. Play it in the dining halls.

or, more likely, play it in the elevators

Re:*BSD was born there

[Mr2001]

This sounds like you are more interested in forcing them to change what they listen to instead of picking what they actually want and would use most.

That's exactly what the RIAA does. They pay radio stations (through "independent promoters") to play their songs, so people become familiar with them and want to hear them some more. You think people would listen to Jessica Simpson if she were just some nobody on an indie label?

Re:*BSD was born there

[ForumTroll]

"That's exactly what the RIAA does. They pay radio stations (through "independent promoters") to play their songs, so people become familiar with them and want to hear them some more. You think people would listen to Jessica Simpson if she were just some nobody on an indie label?"

What the RIAA does makes no difference in this context. The university is not the RIAA and does not have the means to perform similarly. The university shouldn't be a promoter of any type of music it should be trying to provide a service that the students are going to use and one which will combat piracy (which was the original goal).

As for the Jessica Simpson comment, it is irrelevant to the argument. The university isn't in some war with the music industry and shouldn't be interested in shaping what the students listen too. The university doesn't have the means to change what the students are going to listen too. Students get their music from what they hear on TV, Radio, Movies, in Clubs etc. not from what the university exposes them too. The university simply does not have the power to select and decide what music the students should be listening to and it should only be concerned with providing a service that will be used by the most students and that will effectively reduce piracy. Students aren't going to adapt to the music that is on the download service they're either going to get what they want or disregard it.

Re:*BSD was born there

[Mr2001]

The university simply does not have the power to select and decide what music the students should be listening to and it should only be concerned with providing a service that will be used by the most students and that will effectively reduce piracy.

First off, "a service that will be used by the most students" !necessarily= "a service that provides all RIAA music". Students care about DRM too.

Second, that's not their only concern anyway. Another is cost - they could just buy every student whatever CDs and iTMS tracks they wanted, thus satisfying all student demand for music and eliminating illegal downloads, but it would be prohibitively expensive. This solution is presumably a lot cheaper, and will still get some use.

Students aren't going to adapt to the music that is on the download service they're either going to get what they want or disregard it.

All I can say to this is I think time will prove you wrong. It won't replace P2P downloads entirely, but students will find music they like on this service, especially once UC radio stations start playing music from there. If any group is open to new music, it's college students.

Re:*BSD was born there

[FlacoFuerte]

I was a student on two different UC campuses and have friends from every other campus, nobody, on any of the listens to college radio. Nobody. Secondly, the only thing students care about DRM is circumventing it or avoiding it, if they even know what it is.

Re:*BSD was born there

[ForumTroll]

"First off, "a service that will be used by the most students" !necessarily= "a service that provides all RIAA music". Students care about DRM too."

I don't really think the DRM matters much to most people. I would even go as far to say that most people don't even know what it is. DRM hasn't reached the level yet where the majority of the public is aware of what it is or what it does. I've been around a lot of students (many with iPods and portable mp3 players), as I am one myself, and virtually none of them no what DRM is or how it effects them.

"Second, that's not their only concern anyway. Another is cost - they could just buy every student whatever CDs and iTMS tracks they wanted, thus satisfying all student demand for music and eliminating illegal downloads, but it would be prohibitively expensive. This solution is presumably a lot cheaper, and will still get some use."

Well from what I'm aware they are paying for this music service as well so I would be interested in some hard numbers of how much they will be saving when compared to iTunes or Napster and how the payments are worked out. iTunes and Napster are fairly reasonably priced IMO and have been known to give significant discounts/deals to colleges and universities. You may be right and this service may in fact cost much less than the competition and perhaps that was the big motivating factor.

"All I can say to this is I think time will prove you wrong. It won't replace P2P downloads entirely, but students will find music they like on this service, especially once UC radio stations start playing music from there. If any group is open to new music, its college students."

I honestly hope you are right on this point but I couldn't see it happening anytime soon. The UC radio stations aren't very popular. At this point in time I think the student population gets most of its music influences out of modern day pop culture. I believe they get music from places like MTV, iTunes, movies, word of mouth etc. and this is where RIAA has such a huge advantage. They understand completely where to advertise their products and don't allow the competition to do the same.

making up for timothy

[fuckdot]

Posted by timothy on Tuesday July 19, @01:22AM from the extracting-money-from-a-captive-audience dept. An anonymous reader writes "In hopes of stemming the tide of students freely sharing copyrighted multimedia files over their campus networks, the University of California (UC) system has selected an online music and video service that supports Windows, Mac OS, and Linux to provide downloadable music and video for its approximately 200,000 student population. Unlike iTunes (which only supports Mac OS X and Windows) and Napster (which is Windows-only), Mindawn works with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. In addition, instead of providing downloads that are degraded by what is known as "lossy compression," downloads from Mindawn are offered in both Ogg Vorbis and FLAC formats." (Vorbis files are lossy too, though my tin ears can't always tell.)

Re:making up for timothy

[Umbral Blot]

dupe dupe, I call dupe. Jeez, editors these days

No Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks

[Anonymous Coward]

8-(

Hate to do this ... but

[Electralake]

OK so I hate to do this, but when I searched the site I didn't find any music I would listen to. (I'm a twenty-something year old person, almost ready to breach the age barrier) Also as a programmer I noticed that they put listings in the drop down that returned no records. It looks like someone is trying to pad their website. (ie. Bluegrass, Children's, Comedy, Hip Hop, R&B (site couldn't handle the '&" sign I think), Rap, Reggae, Rockabilly, Trance, and Spoken word) Maybe 'Pad' is a strong word, how about it isn't finished yet. Maybe they are still trying to tie in the DB records to the web interface and they got slash doted to early. I hope that is the case.

Re:Hate to do this ... but

[Anonymous Coward]

Twenty-something and compleatly closed-minded. You didn't find any music you currently allready listen to, so that means that it has nothing you would ever listen to...

How We The Public Really Feel About The RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

So long as the RIAA believes it is justified in charging far more than the market will obviously bear for it's products we will continue to download them for free and we will continue to resist and resent attempts to use our tax-supported government workers as the RIAA goon squad.

And, FYI that's real democratic capitailism in action for you. Now if they provide a *full* catalog of *actual* music at a reasonable monthly subscription rate (vs charging per download) supporting all popular OS's their servers will be jammed with business and their cash registers will ring happily again.

We are willing to spend, but we are not willing to be fleeced.

It's obvious....

[Fred Smythe]

...clearly they asked the folks at the student radio stations what the kids listen to these days. /worked in college radio //has NEVER met a student radio DJ who wasn't a HUGE music snob

Re:It's obvious....

[scseth]

I worked as the General Manager of UC Irvine's radio station, which interesting enough is considered a premier college radio station due to the ecclectic playlist.

College students make up a very small minority of our listeners. Gauging the average college student's music choices based on college radio station's playlists will give you a very, very incorrect assessment of the college music market. A better assessor would be CD/record sales at on-campus music stores, which undoubtly will match general population top 40.

Re:It's obvious....

[Fred Smythe]

I agree entirely. My comment was directed more at the irony of a college picking a music service with obscure artists, what with the "What? People have heard of it? We can't play THAT!" mentality that most college radio stations seem to have.

Hmm...

[Jeffus]

I'm all about supporting sites with unique and obscure catalogs but jeez, this is ridiculous. This provider is the internet's version of a ghost town. Except they don't even have tumbleweeds. Why even post an article like this? Bleh. If you want a real alternative, check out eMusic.com.

Re:Hmm...

[sg_oneill]

emusic can be as useless as tits on a bull

but MAN do they have a wicked Frank zappa back catalog.

Re:Hmm...

[Jeffus]

Amen to that. That have pretty good back catalogs for a lot of greats.

Re:anthrax nukes osama bush cia carnivore clinton

[Anonymous Coward]

And you thing that they do not know where you posted from?

Even if you went from your system in Texas to Suadi Arabia to Al Qaeda Headquarters to Iran to China to NK to Sk and finally back to /., you would be tracked every step of the way. Something to think about.

Re:Because....

[botzi]

...Your average college student isn't like us. The average college student listens to RIAA artists like Metallica, Britney Spears, etc.

...the average /. reader doesn't?
Yup.
Right.
I hear you loud and clear.

is mindawn paying the uc system?

[Anonymous Coward]

because this music sucks ass

Since when mindawn?

[maxoct97]

Mindawn isn't the service they chose. Maybe they chose it in addition but this is the service they chose:

http://www.cdigix.com/website/press/press071805. asp

It offers popular music as well as movies and TV. Mindawn I'm still kind of confused on.

Re:Since when mindawn?

[Jeffus]

Well, cdigix is only windows compatible. Good work UC. I can't even confirm lossless files on my apple.

Re:Since when mindawn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting... I suppose until there is a press release on a UC system website, all of these other press releases are to be suspected. And seeing as the main UC systems site appears to be down right now, there's no real way to check there. No announcements of such a service have reached UCD students though.

Re:Since when mindawn?

[erikus]

They are offering cdigix with other alternatives. This /. post turns it around and makes it look like mindawn in the primary service they're offering. See this article instead:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/200507 19/ap_on_hi_te/campus_downloads

From the article:
"To give students additional downloading options, both university systems also are negotiating with other music and video providers, including Napster Inc., Sony Corp. and Mindawn ..."

And that is a bad thing?

[WindBourne]

Quite honestly, this will make RIAA pissed (pushing the indies does not go over well for them). In addition, this will give mindawn major exposure. I would not be surprised to see several major groups/labels sign up (but I would be surprised if it was more than that). But more importantly, I suspect that mindawn will cost a fraction of the itunes/any windows set-up, and offer a "well, we are offering an alternative service".

I'm Confused

[bill_mcgonigle]

What does this have to do with higher education again?

Is the Citizenry of California really paying for college kids to download music?

Why not deliver pints of Ben & Jerry's to the dorm rooms too? I mean, it's hot in California - think of the children, won't you?

If they're having problems with bandwidth, give them an allotment per MAC address or other authorization token and charge them for overages. Next.

Re:I'm Confused

[maxoct97]

I wouldn't mind the ben and jerry's. but the UC's have established a pretty good system that monitors P2P usage and separates that from surfing the net for research. It allocates a particular amount to both, and (while I haven't used it yet) I hear it's pretty fair.

Re:I'm Confused

[KillShill]

i wonder how they can monitor encyrpted communications...

i mean all you would have to do is set up the appropriate config and they would be none the wiser. most p2p apps have configurable ports. then there's pptp, proxies, etc.

frankly i don't see how it's not possible.

Re:I'm Confused

[NitsujTPU]

So, what you're saying is, students should set up a VPN over which to steal music.

Re:I'm Confused

[KillShill]

i'm saying their rights to use the network which they pay for with their massive and ever-increasing tuition shall not be infringed.

and when you take the same attitude of "the big copyright extending, EU/US "harmonization" cartels/thugs" from really and actually stealing from the public then i'll be glad to discuss this further with you.

Re:I'm Confused

[NitsujTPU]

Hold up buddy.

I didn't say anything that you have any reason to snap at.

I said, "Gosh, students are going to go, and set up a VPN, over which to get free music."

You're right, no problem. They hire a colo facility, run a proxy & vpn, pay for bandwidth costs on 2 ends of the equation, and get free music.

It doesn't make a lot of sense, unless they already have these things, but they could do it if they really wanted to.

I'm with the FSF, not the RIAA, dude.

Re:I'm Confused

[malvo]

Well the citizens of California are paying to defend these students from litigation, regardless. The reason the UC system is considering these measures is to try to cut down on the cost of defending these students.

Re:I'm Confused

[Anonymous Coward]

Well the citizens of California are paying to defend these students from litigation, regardless

Why are they defending their students? Pirate music, suffer the consequences. The fact that they're using a college internet connection to do so is largely irrelevent - just as my ISP isn't responsible if I pirate music via their network. Let the kids defend themselves from their own damn law suits. They won't defend students caught dealing drugs or shoplifting, so why should there be any difference here? If they have to, they should block every port except 80 until they sign a waver saying that they take full responsibility for their machine's internet traffic.

I managed to "survive" college without downloading commercial music (because it wasn't yet on the internet), occasionally visiting a music store to buy CDs. They still have physical music stores, right?

Re:I'm Confused

[patio11]

I think the idea is "Pay a little for downloading music today, avoid paying a lot for contributory copyright infringement tomorrow". Not that I think its a great idea, but it shows good faith on part of the University -- "We recognize our students download music, we tried to make the legal way as attractive as possible and have taken all reasonable steps to stop illegal downloading, so please don't sue us for a million billion dollars"

Re:I'm Confused

[Alioth]

What does baseball/football/basketball et al. have to do with higher education? What does a nice looking campus have to do with higher education? Perhaps we should just turn universities into monasteries, since it's such a waste of taxpayers money to provide any kind of entertainment!

Re:I'm Confused

[Hobobo]

Umm...it's part of the operation of a college. The citizens of California also pay for the raquet ball courts at the UCLA Recreation Center and the UCLA Arcade. There's more to a university than books and professors.

Re:I'm Confused

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm saying their rights to use the network which they pay for with their massive and ever-increasing tuition shall not be infringed.

Ha, that's rich. I actually was a student at Berkeley, and lived in the dorms around 2000, and with the Napster craze the residential network was basically unusable. How about my right to use the network that I only marginally paid for legitimate research, like, oh, browsing the Web at speeds better than a 2400 baud modem?

It was seriously that bad. I generally had to use my EECS department account to get any real work done. They had to start throwing up draconian caps and user education programs to try and cut down the usage (user education programs that need to be done on a constantly refreshed student base). I'm glad to see they've instituted a more intelligent system since then.

I didn't pay thousands of dollars a year in tuition and fees, plus various government subsidies in the form of grants and taxpayer funding for the U.C. system, to be entertained. If you want to be entertained, there are a lot cheaper venues. Heck, you can get your own personal T1 for less money. I did it to get a top-notch education in electrical and computer engineering (which I did, go Bears).

Re:I'm Confused

[Anonymous Coward]

This has nothing whatever to do with providing music to students. It an attempt to show due diligence in preventing students from using state-owned (i.e. big pockets) network to host music. By paying someone to provide music to students the state can claim that they were working address the issue, should the RIAA decide to sue them.

Re:I'm Confused

[MikeBabcock]

What does the field outside have to do with higher education? Why not just use the 14-16th floors of a skyscraper?

Re:I'm Confused

[radish]

What does baseball/football/basketball et al. have to do with higher education?


Speaking as someone who went to University in the UK (where college sports teams are strictly amateur and are lucky to attract 20 spectators to a match) I see the whole obsession with sports as seriously detrimental to the education system over here in the US. My GF works at a technical school near NYC and even though they're really not a big sports school they still have these little primadonna assholes running around doing whatever they please just because they're good at basketball. They disrupt lessons, distract the other kids (who are actually there to learn something) and generally make a nuisance of themselves, yet the academic staff are powerless to expel them because Admissions want the publicity of winning the odd game of football or something. Totally fucking absurd. If you want to train people to be football players have football schools - Universities are for people who want to actually study for a degree. Of course I have no problem with people playing sports on the side - but there are too many people majoring in dicking around and taking classes on the side.

Re:I'm Confused

[The Lynxpro]

"Why not deliver pints of Ben & Jerry's to the dorm rooms too? I mean, it's hot in California - think of the children, won't you?"

As a graduate of UC Davis, that would actually make sense. Especially during summer session II. Davis gets so hot during July and August, you'd swear the campus was located in Needles, California. Ben, and Jerry, do you hear the plea? :)

Ben & Jerry's also should get props because they've offered free iTunes downloads in some promos...

Re:I'm Confused

[mako1138]

It wouldn't be too hard to get Ben & Jerry's delivered to all the dorm rooms, actually. They have a store on the west edge of campus, on Oxford street, only a few blocks away from most of the dorms.

give them an allotment per MAC address

Exactly what we have at Berkeley. If you go over the weekly limit, you get cut off.

Re:I'm Confused

[digitalmedievalist]

Geeze The citizenry isn't paying anything, unless they're UC students at a campus who contracts with Mindawn or another service, AND the citizen student elects to pay for a subscription to one or more services. All UC did was negotiate a favorable deal; individual schools can offer it to students, who pay, as they choose.

Huh?

[Brandybuck]

So you're telling me that the music software UC Berkeley chose doesn't work with the OS that UC Berkeley made? Does anyone know if this works with Linux compatibility feature of FreeBSD?

If it only ran on one platform, people would scream about a monopoly. If it only ran on two platforms, people would yell about collusion. But since it runs on three platforms, the Linux people don't see any problem. I'll stick with Open Source Software, thank you.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

It works with any machine with a web browser and a music player that can handle Ogg Vorbis or FLAC. The "Windows, Mac OS X and Linux" thing was just marketing speak for the above.

Re:Huh?

[nanoyak]

What are you talking about. Mac OS X is a derivitive of BSD so therefore it's running on the OS that was created there.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a source package called mindawn-1.3.050119_x86.src.tgz, although I can't find any source code in that package

Re:Huh?

[Brandybuck]

Technically Linux is a derivative too, since all the code SCO presented as evidence turned out to be from 4.4BSD :-)

One Reason

[emkman]

"Mindawn will be a valuable partner for campuses instituting online entertainment programs because of its wide range of content by independent artists and its offer to allow UC students to market their own music. This is an important endeavor that we are embarking on, and we are pleased to be working with an established leader on the project."

The ability for students to market their music online easily is something other music services don't offer. This was possibly a significant factor in choosing this company. Its a very University of California type thing to do, and I as a UC student can't say I'm upset about this.

Re:One Reason

[Anonymous Coward]

and its offer to allow UC students to market their own music

read: since we couldn't get any of the music students enjoyed, we decided to make a system were the students made their own music, and then we charged them for it :) (of course the producers might get reimbursed a nominal fee)

Re:One Reason

[rsmith-mac]

http://www.musicrebellion.com/">Music Rebellion already tried this a year ago already; they've more or less folded now. Realistically, it's doesn't seem to be a very popular option with the college audience.

Re:One Reason

[jtmas83]

The ability for students to market their music online easily is something other music services don't offer.

Actually, when Napster made a deal with the University of Rochester, part of that deal was to allow UR students, like those at the Eastman School of Music, to add their own music to the service to be shared within the university. I'm not sure if many people did this and I'm not sure if the music was also available to everyone who uses Napster or just the UR campus service.

Anyway, Napster has proven to be quite popular at UR. What's interesting, though, is what happens when someone finds music they like: 70% purchase the song through iTunes, even though it's possible and cheaper to purchase it through Napster. I think this says a lot about the popularity of iTunes. In fact, it seems reasonable to say that colleges offering streaming or tethered download based services are actually increasing the use of iTunes.

Re:One Reason

[Lord_Dweomer]

It also costs $50 for someone to be listed on the service. Honestly, I think the students would be better off giving out demo discs and getting paid to play at parties.

Re:anthrax nukes osama bush cia carnivore clinton

[Anonymous Coward]

tell them to come and get me

anthrax nukes osama bush cia carnivore clinton extremists chopper pgp department of defense david koresh fbi echelon tank new world order united nations takeover wtc korea file china rpg rumsfeld electronic implant fema nwo satellite com communism saddam ammo mao anti-aircraft nuke overthrow coup 911 9/11 bomb ashcroft terrorist coverup national kaczynski government eyeball hostage data holograph black helicopters arpanet deepthroat nsa watergate d.o.d. homeland security encrypted document unabomber uplink nasa b.e.a.s.t. biometric haarp star wars gas cyanide

just one question

[Anonymous Coward]

... where's the metallica?

i wouldn't use this service if u paid me to.
i know i download music illegally, however, i get
music before it hits the retail store. sometimes, an artist goes back in the studio to put 4 tracks on the album to re-release it.

"online piracy" is a double-edged sword. yes, the artist is losing some money, however, with all the people ripping advance albums from artists, many artists cannot get away with releasing horrible albums. like i previously mentioned, young jeezy had an advance online. there was discussion through a lot of music boards and on IRC about the album being OK, and certain songs weren't as good as others.

what did jeezy do? he went back in the studio and fixed it. added 4 tracks. still came out on the release date.

on one hand UC looks good for offering the service, however, this service won't go too far because a lot of these musicians are nobodies. only people who appreciate indie music will download it. i won't because i'm tired of indie people whining about labels. start your own label like diplomat records, cash money records, etc. just use a label for distribution.

Sorry, mon...

[pedestrian crossing]

Albums in category Reggae
No albums were found in this category

Tracks in category Reggae
No tracks were found in this category

Re:Sorry, mon...

[FidelCatsro]

I Know a fair few students who enjoy listening to Dub ,Generally whilst partaking in other activities.
I think this may be them trying to reduce drug use in students.
Either that or they are trying to reduce the amount of phoney Jamaican accented people who claim to be Rastafarian( Generally having no idea what the hell the religion entails bar the smoking part)

Why do we need an official music source?

[fermion]

You know, in my day the university wasted money on cool things. Like roofs for buildings. Or Computers. Or, honestly, kickbacks so the athlete could get drugs and hookers. While we poor science students had to pay for our own.

But seriously, what is the point of an official music source. Did they ever have an official radio station? Or an official music store? Or an official candy bar?

Kids are going to listen to podcasts, and want the song. If they have a dollar, they might buy it off iTunes. Otherwise they will do what has always been done, which is record it off the radio or get a copy from someone else. Nobody has money, and this stuff is expensive.

And the music industry should play a soft touch with the kids. As far back as the 70's and 80's, I can assure you that Deborah Harry and madonna would not the rich chicks they are now if stupid middle school kids were yelled at for copying music. And do you think that the silly college kids bought anything from REM? Not often.

I don't know what the solution is. Everyone deserves to rich and unhappy. Everyone deserves thier cut. But a school contracting with a single service does not seem to lead to everyone getting thier cut. The selected songs will be counted, but everything else will be missed. I only use iTunes, and I only get a 25% hit rate. If the hit rate for a kid is 25% i am sure they will never check the site again. The register claims that zero songs have been bought through the napster deals.

In any case, I am glad the U went with an indie source. It will be good for the kids. I hope that they still have access to iTunes if everyone has an iPod. Although I bet that Apple would have cut a really good deal for each student to have $50 gift card.

Re:Why do we need an official music source?

[WindBourne]

First, I am not sure when you went to school, but offhand it is still the same (in most states (that excludes the state of Colorado due to a piss poor gov.). The roofs are still being built. Computers till flow, and yes, the jocks still get drugs and hookers (see the CU fiasco).

As to this "free" service, well, the universities have several issues. One is that RIAA/MPAA are suing them silly. Likewise, numerous federal and states laws are being enacted against them. This is simply CHEAP insurance against lawyers, and law makers.

Re:Why do we need an official music source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Official radio station: KALX 90.7 FM
Official (some music) store: Cal Student Store
Official (music) groups: the marching band, a well-known (at least in the area) a capella group, also I think an orchestra

Admittedly, no official candy bar, although the unofficial CalBar is supposed to be quite tasty.

The radio station is useful for emergency notices, besides being a platform for media students.

Not only that

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're telling me that the music software UC Berkeley chose doesn't work with the OS that UC Berkeley made?

Not only that! I've got from a reliable source that Cal even has Windows machines on its campus!

And they even sell Windows machines.

And the top album is...

[timdorr]

Frameshift's "Unweaving the Rainbow"?

Yes, I already can hear the mouses at UC clicking furiously to download their copy...

Re:And the top album is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Frameshift rock. You're missing a lot if you don't like them. I can't believe that many familiar names, of my favorite artists, are found there...

Ryo Okumoto, Frameshift, etc...

That is cool. Very cool.

.ogg on os x

[aierwin]

so they are delivering .ogg files to osX.
Did they also wrote a vorbis quicktime component for qt7?
Else those .ogg's are close to useless on osx since they con't be played in itunes.

Re:.ogg on os x

[Anonymous Coward]

Another way to look at it is that iTunes is useless because it only plays one or two formats.

Re:.ogg on os x

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there no OGG player for OS X. Man, that sux.

Re:.ogg on os x

[HFXPro]

ITunes has no support for plugins? I guess Mac doesn't have anything similar to DirectShow either.

Helping out:

[Neil Blender]

This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original...

Oh, what? Dupe checking in Slashcode?

$0.99 or $1.24 - waaaaay too expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

$0.99 for an OGG version or $1.24 for a FLAC - what a ripoff.

Who came up with the $0.99 per song price point anyway? That's what they are on a CD where there's 16 songs, but 1 or 2 are worth a crap and the rest are junk.

I want songs at $0.30 per song for anything older than 6 months. $0.50 for a song between 1 and 5.999 months, $0.75 for a song that's 0-1 month old...

And none of this charging more because it's not lossy crap... give me a break already with the scams. If I have to pay more, I guarantee I'm giving it away to everyone I can think of... Hell, I'll probably get irked and burn CD's and leave them in the halls for all to take.

As for the selection on this thing - it sucks. It's not even close to what mp3.com was in it's heyday...

Oh well, this will come and go like the rest of the crap... One of these days someone out there will realize that if they give users what they want at a reasonable price - then the piracy will go down to about 5% (it'll never be zero)... then they can get back to business and create new songs rather than recycling the same crap day in and day out...

Re:$0.99 or $1.24 - waaaaay too expensive

[Uncle_Al]

$0.99 for an OGG version or $1.24 for a FLAC - what a ripoff.

Actually it is not per song....
...it is per 10 minute blocks ;-)

I think this is a rather nice way of paying for music...

Re:$0.99 or $1.24 - waaaaay too expensive

[HFXPro]

I'd pay $.99 and $1.24 for non DRM before I'd pay $.99 for lossy DRM encumbered crap. But I agree, I think $.99 is too much for a song that I have to use my bandwidth to download, especially if I get limited to what I can do with the file after. What ever happened to the promise the CD's where supposed to get as cheap as cassettes after a couple years. Of course it never happened. But hell, if I could be a whole CD for say $5 bucks from the store I would. I have not bought a album, and I have downloaded a single RIAA song that I did not already own on some piece of media in 2 years now.

but does it

[nilbog]

support linux, windows, AND osX?? It wasn't CLEAR from the article... oh, and DOES IT support linux, windows, AND osx? That would be so cool.

Re:but does it

[eclectro]

Yes, it supports all those platforms. I'm glad that UC made a stand like this.

Frankly I'm tired of the DRM crack mentality of the RIAA.

Also, the fact that Linux is supported is nice. I don't think you will see RIAA music on linux because it's a "hackers" platform.

American universities

[BlightThePower]

I just don't get this constant infantilisation of students in American colleges. Their students are adults, why should they be provided with music and video to stop them from stealing it (read: violate copyright etc etc, lets not start with that old chestnut)? Competent adults should surely be responsible for their own actions. How on earth has this landed on the plate of the institution anyway? If its a question of bandwidth usage that can be easily and almost immediately curbed without apology.

In my view institutions of higher education are just that, not glorified baby sitting services for adolescents. Things like introducing this service are a complete waste of the time of university employees and don't exactly help these kids grow up and take to the responsibility of being the adults they are.

Re:American universities

[foniksonik]

"institutions of higher education"

If this is your view of American colleges... you are entirely mistaken. For one thing, we're not talking about colleges here.. we're talking about Universities... now to move past the semantics...

Universities are businesses, not educational institutions at all. Like any business they must compete for revenue with the rest of their industry. Some compete by being the best available educational resources of learning for their high paying customers... and others compete by providing the best available 'socialization' resources for their customers (aka students, their parents and the foundations that pay for those who can't afford the high tuitions).

Including such things as music services, internet access to the www (as opposed to just the local network), festivals, pubs, stores, cafes and all other things that a person in their 20s might consider appealing while they are stuck for 4 years learning how to be a good employee...

I won't even go into the fact that modern humans are not ADULTS at 18 or 22 or even 24 anymore... as a society we've pretty much pushed the age back to the early 30s by now, at least in America.

Re:American universities

[Rick and Roll]

I agree. It's silly.

Re:American universities

[fuzzybunny]

Speak for yourself. I graduated from UC Berkeley in 1997 and consider myself and many of the people I was fortunate enough to associate with there a good cut above the muppets you describe. That said, a lot of them were self-centered immature slobs too, but the point holds.

Universities may be businesses, but in the case of many of the better ones, they still churn out loads of smart, educated individuals. In the case of Cal, most of us pretty consistently had the feeling of having to fend for themselves, and all I-had-to-walk-to-school-barefoot-in-the-snow-uphil l-both-ways aside, it turned me into an adult. Depending on how on the mark you are with your pretty cynical comment this may have been an unintended side effect, but it was an effect nonetheless.

Yes, spoon-feeding students music downloads is "infantilization", and it doesn't belong there.

That said, I don't consider myself part of that society (I left the country right after graduating) and what I see when going back to visit my folks doesn't make me inclined to dispute your overall assertion.

Re:American universities

[Edmund Blackadder]

Problem is since most students are poor the school will probably be the one that gets sued for their copyright infringement. And as much as the UC system may like to treat kids as adults, they know very well that some of their students will download copyrighted music and will not be able to reimburse the university for their costs when the record companies sue. So the univesrity would love to let the students be responsible, but the RIAA will still hold the university responsible.

The universities are kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. They have to offer broadband in the dorms in order to offer modern learning opportunities, and expose their students to the internet, but on the other hand they know that exposes them to additional liability.

It seems like the UC schools have come upon an interesting way to solve the problem. I hope it works.

Re:American universities

[Mr2001]

Including such things as music services, internet access to the www (as opposed to just the local network), festivals, pubs, stores, cafes and all other things that a person in their 20s might consider appealing while they are stuck for 4 years learning how to be a good employee...

Right on. This decision makes more sense if you think of it as a way to add value to the service provided by UC (regardless of their stated reasons, curbing piracy blah blah). The fact is, university is a place where you spend a lot of time and money, and you want to have a good time while you're there.

It's like attracting employees with arcade games in the break room, an office located close to coffee shops and pubs, or even something as mundane as health benefits. "Apply to UCXX and enjoy a state of the art computer lab, fitness center, and all the music you can download!"

Re:American universities

[Alioth]

I won't even go into the fact that modern humans are not ADULTS at 18 or 22 or even 24 anymore... as a society we've pretty much pushed the age back to the early 30s by now, at least in America.

I don't think you're right. Just because someone's not totally ossified does not mean they are not adult and responsible (and know they are responsible) for their own actions. Most normal functioning people today are adults by 18, certainly by 21. Most of my friends (and myself included) had moved out of home by 18. I had moved to another frickin' continent to live and work by my early twenties. You may say "Well what's your point?" - my point is that myself and the majority of my peers were taking responsibility for themselves and responsibility for their own decisions (and their consequences) by age 18, and that is what adults do - not kids (who are shielded from that by parental responsibility).

The only thing you can really say about most young adults is that they will lack experience (of course they will!) and it's therefore inevitable some of them will do things that in hindsight are terribly misjudged. That doesn't mean they are kids. The infantisation (is that a word?) of young adults is I think a particularly American pheonmeon too, and I think it's misplaced and wrong.

To go to your other point (socialization et al.) at universities, these places aren't monasteries. People will generally learn much better in an environment they enjoy being in (regardless of their age).

Re:American universities

[BlightThePower]

Well look, I'm from England not America, the term "college" is pretty interchangable where I work put it that way. The University where I teach is an educational institution, you want socialisation goto the pub or something. Certainly some facilities are offered but not where they conflict with the mission of the institution. Its a different mentality in the States clearly, I just don't recognise the mind set. Internet access is provided for work purposes, its a disciplinary offense to use it for anything else, thats the long and short of it.

Re:American universities

[Anonymous Coward]

You may consider yourself an elitist and thumb your nose at others who just go to school to party but you are a part of the same social institution. You are being trained to be a good worker bee in our highly economic society.

"Smart" is also a relative term. A term I have been recently acquainted with is the term "thintelligence". This describes people who know how to do a narrow set of tasks very well (computers, engineering, science, whatever) but they really don't have knowledge beyond this and hold the same conformist attitudes towards society that everyone else has.

Its' Good for the Universities to Offer Music

[Anonymous Coward]

Students will never go back to what they have always done-- IE: Radio or record stores. For the past couple years, the two biggest ways to get music at the UCs campuses were either to use a i2hub or iTunes built in music sharing feature with the whole dorms network.

At any one time 20 people shared music that could be played with iTunes or downloaded with myTunes. If what you wanted wasnt there, i2Hub was to the rescue with file sharing with university students from all over.

Mindawn is a joke to most college students. Infact, as a UC student, it first pissed me off. If that Cdigix service will be offered to students, then it has great potential for curbing downloading. Lets remember that students will always flock to where the music is free. No student will ever walk out of their room and spend money for a song if they can have it in 5 minutes for free with seemingly very little risk. After all, less than 2000 people have been sued in 4 years?

Also, dont be concerned that the California people are paying for all of this. Since these are subscription based services, you can bet that students will see the charge as yet another fee to be paid quarterly.

Obligatory AllOfMp3 link

[OverlordQ]

AllOfMP3 with many [MP3 (LAME/Blade), WMA (7/8/9), OGG (CBR/VBR), AAC (vbr/cbr), MPC, Lossless (Monkey's, OptimFROG, FLAC, PCM, WMA 9 Lossless)] encoding options

Re:Obligatory AllOfMp3 link

[peter_gzowski]

How about we link to a service which is known to compensate artists, supports Linux, and offers high quality (192 avg bitrate VBR, lame encoded) mp3s without DRM for about $0.25 per track, like EMusic? The don't have the major artists that iTunes has, but at least they have a more substantial catalogue than Mindawn (who had heard of this site before reading this story?), comprised mainly of indie rock that college kids might be inclined to listen to. They're also cheaper than Mindawn, and they have artists that at least some segment of the population has heard of, namely those who pay attention to music criticism.

Re:Obligatory AllOfMp3 link

[Overzeetop]

Oh, I don't know, AllOfMP3.com has complied with the law of their country (to the letter, if not to the spirit - would you expect more from the RIAA?), carries open formats (FLAC), and all of their downloads are unencumbered by DRM. Most are available up to lossless quality - a far sight better than 192kb lame, good though it may be for portable gear.

Here's what I like about them: if you don't really know whether you'll like th album, get it at low bitrate - It'll cost pennies. If it's a keeper, redownload at lossless or 320kb, or go pick up the album at the store and rip it yourself, should you be worried about the artists not getting their rubles. The fact is that it is on line, has a fairly good catalog, and it's cheap to try. Heck, I got a newish Jimmy Buffet album recently from them. Lets just say that if Jimmy gets his payment, it will be far more than the music was worth. I'm just happy I was out less than $1 for that crap.

Re:Obligatory AllOfMp3 link

[shark72]

"Oh, I don't know, AllOfMP3.com has complied with the law of their country (to the letter, if not to the spirit - would you expect more from the RIAA?)"

Yes -- artists will make a hell of a lot more money on an RIAA-supported online store than they will on AllofMP3.

"The fact is that it is on line, has a fairly good catalog, and it's cheap to try. Heck, I got a newish Jimmy Buffet album recently from them. Lets just say that if Jimmy gets his payment, it will be far more than the music was worth. I'm just happy I was out less than $1 for that crap."

Rather than resorting to piracy, why not simply sample the wares of the tens of thousands of musicians who are willingly giving thier stuff away, and embrace the try-before-you-buy method?

If that's not to your liking, the all-you-can-eat subscription music sites (Yahoo!, Real, Napster, and the like) encourage this sort of thing. Downloading some music from a band you're not sure you like incurrs no additional cost. And Yahoo! is only $4.99 a month, which is less than an hour of work even if you make minimum wage. It's simply not worth rationalizing giving money to some Russian site just to save five bucks.

Re:Obligatory AllOfMp3 link

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't use AllOfMP3, because it is not legal for me here in the US, as best as I can tell. But, it is tempting. I would like to find a good source of online music. I would even pay a reasonable cost. The services you mention are junk, because the music they offer is all infested with DRM. That is what makes AllofMP3 tempting. I do keep checking their site out to see if they seem to be legal. They are the only music site I have seen who seems to have the mechanics down. They store their music uncompressed and compress it for you in whatever form you want.

Re:Obligatory AllOfMp3 link

[Overzeetop]

Well, the all you can eat stuff is a good idea, if I had the time. As it is, I put $10 in AllofMP3 about two and a half years ago (longer?), and I've still got a balance of $3-4. I'm just not that big a consumer.

Well, that and I have easynews. Which is to say the AllofMP3 looks particulary legal in comparison. (Oh, and just to prove that I don't even use easynews much (several text groups, some binaries), they roll your unused gigs nowadays, and I've got something like 95GB of unused bandwidth, and growing every month.) As for legality, I have actually "replaced" a damaged CD using easynews to get a FLAC rip. I've also d/l albums for which I only have the LP (and I no longer own a turntable).

Get illegal downloaders legal at all costs

[Anonymous Coward]

If students are sued... then they can't pay for school... no more tuition for the school... and considering students in universities are downloading the most, universities are trying to do the right thing by getting them off of illegal downloading. I believe the hope is that once young adults start downloading legally, theyll eventually pay for subscription services once out of college.

I wouldnt be surprised if in the future, broadband ISPs start offering the same type of service to their subscribers. If yahoo offered on demand music, you bet for $35 to $50 a month for DSL theyd get it. And since not everyone would download, they would make more money or keep prices cheap but I think the former is more likely.

M$ Strategy - Catch 'em young!

[metalmaniac1759]

Why doesn't the RIAA try the M$ strategy of "catching 'em young?" College kids can't afford the money for buying the overprices CDs. But college is *the time* when you develop a taste for music.

Why doesn't the RIAA give CDs, etc. at a lower price/free to college students and universities and charge the salaried class which can afford them?

Nandz.

Re:M$ Strategy - Catch 'em young!

[jcnnghm]

And Anheuser-Bush should give free/hugely discounted beer to college students so they develop a taste for Anheuser-Bush beer.

Quite a few college students still buy CD's, they may be poor but they still have enough money to spend to make them a serious market. And it's not like the RIAA has a lot of competition. What else would the kids listen to, the crap on Mindawn.

i hope this works

[pintomp3]

though it's a bit optimistic, i hope the students really take the their selection. i like the grass-rootsy feel of supporting open-source drm-free codecs and non-RIAA content. it's like organic music. perhaps this will open the door for a larger audience to ween themselves off of the riaa koolaid. most of you are complaining it doesn't have enough "popular" music. maybe this can change what is "popular". longshot, but post like "it's not itunes, it sucks" and "it doesn't have britney spears, it sucks" is not going to help us break riaa monopoly. for all the M$ bashing that goes on here, it's amazing to read "everyone uses ipod/itunes, just use that". i would have expected more support for ogg and flac than for itunes on an open source friendly site.

Re:The first Slashdot troll investigation - repost

[Sathias]

My guess is this post will be modded down for being off-topic ;)

Mindawn? How about Mind-Yawn?

[shodson]

Man, what a crummy selection. Is this the official PBS-sponsored music download site or what? I could get music like this down at the local library.

Try MP3 search, legal (as legal as it gets in Russia) MP3 downloads for $0.10 a piece, and no DRM, MP3s with VBRs exceeding 200Kbps.

actually, they do deliver pints of ice cream...

[Anonymous Coward]

The management had ice cream delivered to the freshmen dorms here at UCSD (Marshall) during exams on more than a few occasions.

We also had social events that were catered. Ice cream at those, too.

Welcome to California. If you don't like the way we do things, kindly suck a cock.

Re:actually, they do deliver pints of ice cream...

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to California. If you don't like the way we do things, kindly suck a cock.

Your first two sentences were interesting, but the third is too hot to handle. I for one don't like pulling the feathers out from between my teeth.

Negative review

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to go being all negative.

Maybe they will introduce better music, and as a result college kids will actually grow a taste for good music?

cross platform application

[chrisranjana.com]

Any application which is cross platform always rules the roost !

Why exactly is this bad?

[mincognito]

I bet UC is paying next to nothing for this with minidawn hoping to profit on more musicians signing up to distribute music through their service (for $50). If i were a struggling band, I'd considering paying $50 to have my music distributed to 200,000 college students. And i'm sure those of you saying how crap the minidawn music selection is are the same ones calling for RIAA boycots in other post. I, for one, think it's great that a university is choosing to promote non-RIAA music to students.

Worse than that...

[Bazman]

Albums in category Hip Hop
No albums were found in this category

Tracks in category Hip Hop
No tracks were found in this category

Albums in category Rap
No albums were found in this category

Tracks in category Rap
No tracks were found in this category

Yet they have 36 pages of Progressive Rock. Draw your own conclusion...

Re:Worse than that...

[Anonymous Coward]

That Rap and Hip Hop sucks?

Re:Worse than that...

[VAXcat]

No hip hop? No rap? Well then, this service can't be all bad. I find it incredibly ironic that, due to advances in electronics technology, really great sounding audio gear can be had for practically nothing these days, compared to the fortunes HiFi gear cost in the 60s...and the young folks today use it to listen to hip hop and rap, where audio fidelity is very much not an issue...

Re:Worse than that...

[Bazman]

I cant really agree with you, there's an awful lot of production goes into Hip-hop and Rap, getting the bass just right so it kicks you out of the club headfirst.

But I dont think FM radio or low-bitrate MP3s will handle being cranked up to such volumes.

Re:Worse than that...

[VAXcat]

In the case of hip hop and rap, the key word in the above reply being "awful"...

Mindawn wins!

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

At least, I'm sorta familiar with Luttrell and Chrome Shift, and the cuts I recognize from the iTunes listing are all stuff I'd rather not waste time in an elevator listening to.

Read the FAQ

[mwvdlee]

In the artist FAQ it actually says the artists have to pay $50 to get on their site... that's probably the reason no decent artists are on their.

Just to make sure not even the most common popular artists are on there: No "spears", no "jackson", no "madonna, no "metallica", not even any "beatles".

Re:Read the FAQ

[odysseyandoracle]

No one has any Beatles, except allofmp3.com.

Re:Read the FAQ

[ndtechnologies]

Which is precisely why our music store doesn't do that. I've been in bands most of my life, and the one thing that really sucks is to see a site that takes money up front from you.

In our setup, we only take a commission on a song when it is sold.

Re:Read the FAQ

[Paul Slocum]

I was sitting here thinking I'd put my band on there until I read that. I don't pay to get my CDs in online stores, why should I pay for this? And it's especially unappealing considering they don't even have any decent indie labels on board.

The only way this thing is possibly going to work is if they can talk indie labels like Subpop, Matador, Merge, KRS, Warp, etc to join. And that's definitely not gunna happen unless they waive that $50 charge.

Re:Read the FAQ

[kalidasa]

Are the Beatles on ANY download service? They certainly aren't on iTunes for the obvious Apple Computer/Apple Corps reason; but I wouldn't be surprised if they're still holding out on competing services (after all, they didn't start releasing CDs until 1987).

Re:Read the FAQ

[Kjella]

Right... so a "decent artist" doesn't know how to figure out an ROI on $50. I mean people who actually do the economics as a living and *know* they'll get sales, not someone who'll put up a song hoping a dozen people down at the club will co-fund their hobby.

The second part was just absurd. Spears, Jackson, Madonna, Metallica, Beatles. Yeah, I'm sure they're missing because of the $50 entry fee. *rolls eyes*

Re:Read the FAQ

[mwvdlee]

People who do the financials for the big names know they should probably RECIEVE money from the company that wants to list them instead of having to pay them.

Re:Read the FAQ

[Fweeky]

Do you have any plans to support lossless formats like FLAC? I'd be willing to pay extra ;)

Re:Read the FAQ

[shark72]

"I was sitting here thinking I'd put my band on there until I read that. I don't pay to get my CDs in online stores, why should I pay for this?"

I think Mindawn is actually hoping you'll take this approach. If you don't think your band is appealing enough to make $50 in sales for the rest of your life, then you self-select out, and Mindawn is saved the hassle of cataloging tracks from bands whose own members don't think are good enough to make any sales.

Meanwhile, bands who think their tracks have sufficient appeal will cough up the $50 lifetime fee. The $50 helps keep Mindawn in business, and Mindawn's customers are rewarded with a higher quality-to-crap factor, thanks to the the bands who seriously evaulate their marketability and determine that they're not capable of making their $50 back on Mindawn, ever.

By the way, I listened to your MP3s on your web site. I really dig your sound (but it could use more cowbell). I hope you reconsider listing yourself on Mindawn.

Re:Read the FAQ

[ndtechnologies]

Actually I have been thinking about it, and that is in our future plans as we upgrade our site. Right now we don't have the set up for it, but it is something we will begin doing in the next several months. I'm debating on FLAC or WAV, but it will probably wind up being FLAC. But as with everything in our Music Store, we leave that option up to the artist, if they want to provide a lossless version of their music. We try to give them as much control over their music as we can. But I don't see why they wouldn't.

Dueling press releases?

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

Or maybe they are partnering with more than one service?

Protection

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

from the extortionist.

Shoot. The way the schools are having to do this ought to be clear evidence in anyone's mind that the RIAA are out of line and out of control and not that far removed from a protection racket.

What's with all the negatives?

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

Yeah, I'm sure that 9 out of 10 /.ers could put up an equivalent download service in ten minutes.

This is called a creative solution. While RIAA is telling everyone to look at the waving hand, UC is saying, hey, let's be the hand with the rabbit.

So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot owns stock from SCO AND Mindawn...

10% is not an "extensive discount"

[AHumbleOpinion]

$20 off of a $200 iPod mini, $30 off of a $300 regular iPod, that's a 10% discount. How does 10% qualify as "extensive"? I'm happy to take the 10% but it only a fair discount, "fair" as in a little better than mediocre not as in reasonable. Or maybe a token discount would be a better label. iPod is just too hot for anything more.

Re:10% is not an "extensive discount"

[JohnsonWax]

Apple has been running a promo that is effectively a free iPod mini with the purchase of a Powerbook or a range of other products.

It's quite a nice offer. I got a 10GB iPod on a similar offer a year+ ago.

Re:10% is not an "extensive discount"

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is, of itself, about a 10% discount on the Powerbook. That Powerbook that you're paying a premium over the alternative for. That Powerbook Apple sold you for 10% off so you wouldn't buy the less expensive PC, buy an iPod outright, and still come out ahead.

Net profit for them. Net loss for you.

Re:10% is not an "extensive discount"

[Anonymous Coward]

The Powerbook is 10% off AND you get the free iPod mini.

Re:10% is not an "extensive discount"

[The Lynxpro]

"Which is, of itself, about a 10% discount on the Powerbook. That Powerbook that you're paying a premium over the alternative for. That Powerbook Apple sold you for 10% off so you wouldn't buy the less expensive PC, buy an iPod outright, and still come out ahead."

Sorry, bub, but a PC notebook that supposedly costs much less does not come loaded with OS X or any of the iLife Suite programs. What you get is faster hardware running an inferior OS and lacks great standardized bundled software. And with the educational discount promo, the purchaser of the iBook also gets a free iPod Mini.

No real selection

[Skynyrd]

OK, I like metal.
So I browsed the metal selection. All 21 (twenty-one) "records". I have never heard of any of the bands.

This will be a huge failure.
HUGE.

Did I say this would be a huge failure?

This is a freaking joke.

Re:No real selection

[tomstdenis]

Conformist.

You're clearly not into the music but some sick form of groupy love child.

Here's a tip bupsy the ability to write a song isn't solely that of BMG or Sony Music [or ...].

There is a lot of talent out there [and no-talents but that exists in the "industry"] that doesn't or hasn't signed with a label.

Also metal is so 1980s. Cut your hair and join the rest of us in the 2000s ;-)

Tom

You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[TheViciousOverWind]

Geez, when iTunes, WMA or DRM in general comes up, everyone screams for support of Linux and non-DRM - When someone actually chooses a vendor that works on Linux and doesn't have DRM, it's suddenly not good enough.

Well, tough luck - a company has got to start from somewhere, and with a business-deal like this backing them, it's very likely that they're going to grow at a fast rate and add a lot more music to their portfolio.

This is good news for everyone not interested in the chain and ball that is DRM.

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[melikamp]

After reading other comments, I actually agree with you. It looks like they are not with RIAA because they don't want to. I have nothing to say against an independent publishing effort.

I was just surprised at the implication that UC made this deal to combat piracy.

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[gl4ss]

look, when they have a collection that is smaller than what you'd probably get by gathering free music from the net then it's not that good.

it's easy to be drm free when you only got artists from labels that just want the publicity(for gigs etc). it's also easy to be cheap then.

wouldn't matter of course if they were kick-ass bands that had kick ass music... but this really isn't going to have anything against some ftp on the lan in univ. of california. something that tells that mindawn is at it's infancy is that there's 0 songs in some of the categories(why are the categories there??).

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[DaHat]

I think you miss understand business.

Part of business is a group providing goods and services to customers, and if they are unable to provide those goods and services customers want today, then they are likely to go to other companies who can provide what they want.

At the end of the day, it is all about making money by providing what it is the customer wants, which is why the iTunes and (new) Napsters of the world are doing so well compared to these new ones that do not have the blessing of the RIAA.

You can talk about ideals and being DRM free all you want, but the fact is that the vast majority of customers are willing to accept such minor restrictions to be able to have the convenience of purchasing and downloading music from their favorite big name artists at home, something they cannot do with most of the alternative services.

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[ndtechnologies]

I run my own independent music service. We also use Ogg Vorbis format. The problem that I find is that the general public doesn't necessarily want to support Independent Music, because it isn't what they hear on the radio or on MTV.

I can see the university's standpoint on this though. They are using Mindawn as an alternative downloading solution, and it should be a boon for Mindawn because they have a guaranteed customer base.

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[zootm]

The bottom line is that people in general don't care enough about DRM to make a DRM-free system economically viable. If the record companies had something significant to gain from not using DRM (other than probably paying a fairly insignificant licencing fee, which some salesman probably justified to them), they'd be a lot more likely to stop using it.

Even if people were told "what's wrong" with DRM, they wouldn't care, in most cases. It's the same story as Free Software -- no-one but us geeks care -- but at least with Free Software people can see a price advantage (in general).

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[Anonymous Coward]

"...because it isn't what they hear on the radio or on MTV."

And that is a bad thing?

As much as I hate the radio and MTV -- there is quite a bit of quality control going on. It might not be quality control in the genres you want to hear, but it is going on.

There are very few in the independant realms that do this. The few that do are accused of selling out. Most want volume.

I've worked in the music industry long enough to realize that I really don't care for much of whats on the majors, but for the most part, its a safer blind pick. Most independant labels? I can go through their entire catelogue and find maybe ONE album thats passable.

Don't get me wrong -- its not that i'm against independant labels and otherwise. I was a long time subscriber to Maximum Rock and Roll in the 80s. I love the stuff. But unless you have direct recommendations for music from guys that spend all day long listening to it, the Radio and MTv are the places to find this stuff. At least they have quality control...find an independant lable that doesn't just accept anyone that remotely sounds identical to their lead band (generally run by their owner).

Note: for the record, I have worked in the industry and I still work with a major on occasion, so I may be biased.

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[PhilHibbs]

Geez, when iTunes, WMA or DRM in general comes up, everyone screams for support of Linux and non-DRM - When someone actually chooses a vendor that works on Linux and doesn't have DRM, it's suddenly not good enough.

Are you sure that the person that you're responding too is one of the people that "screams for support of Linux and non-DRM"? We aren't all one person, you know. Some people have independent minds and opinions.

This is good news for everyone not interested in the chain and ball that is DRM.

Surely you mean that it's good for everyone that is opposed to the chain and ball that is DRM. One of my colleagues is not interested in DRM, and he uses iTunes to get songs for his iPod. The DRM is of no interest to him, he just plays his tunes.

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[Anonymous Coward]

actually that just means you are out of touch with the average person.

you really should get to know them...

how pissed they get when they find out they cant plug a dvd player into their vcr (because their tv only has one set of inputs).

how pissed they are they cant just copy a file for a friend (IM it for instance)

the average person doesnt like drm, they just dont know thats what it is called.

so you just need to stop hanging out with geeks and stop speaking for the people you obvisiously dont know

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[sobachatina]

the general public doesn't necessarily want to support Independent Music, because it isn't what they hear on the radio

Actually, in my case at least, the reason that I gave up trying to listen to independent music was that about 80% of the songs I listened to were completely unappealing to me. At least with the radio someone has filtered out the universally bad music and tried to catagorize what was left.

I experimented with iRate for a while and found that only about 1 in 5 songs was worth keeping on my drive and then only 1 in 5 of those were truly good. I'm sick of wading through obnoxious new age techno and those silly girls that sing celtic music to find one good song.

At least with the radio I can expect to like 1 in 3 songs that are played.

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[DrSkwid]

If you want to support independent music, a good starter would be learning how to spell it.

While you're in the dictionary, check out some of the other words we have in there.

Next time, just say no!

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[hondo77]

The problem that I find is that the general public doesn't necessarily want to support Independent Music, because it isn't what they hear on the radio or on MTV.

I run my own new music site and I have to disagree with you. The public is interested in convenience and chasing down indie music on all these sites and wading through the 95% of bands that are crap takes too much time. I do it but it's long, discouraging stretches of annoyance before coming across those gems. The radio or MTV2 is easy and that's what most people want.

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[L7_]

Thats why there are recommendation services. You find one band that you like and you get recommendations for tens or hundreds of others. As a simple example, chances are you go to Amazon.com and type in thier name and pull up thier albums you get a list of "People that bought this, also bought ...". It is a good starting point.

Hell, running a music type of website like you do (assumed so, by the link in your profile), you have probably heard of audioscrobbler.com which is a way to automatically see hundreds (thousands!) of artists, albums and songs that you would like if you could just seed it with one (maybe two) bands that you like, and see what everyone else with your same musical taste (they are out there) is listening to. I am sure that there are plenty of other websites with the same recommendation services, but thats the one that I use.

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[hondo77]

Yes and yes. MusicMobs, too, but this got started with indie music. Amazon's recommendation service is actually fairly useful but it's not very indie-oriented. CDBaby is a great site but they don't have any music recommendations other than their Editors' Picks, which is so not tailored to my tastes it isn't funny. With my site I want to mix the majors with the indies but it's tough and time-consuming, something the public isn't interested in. They want convenience, baby, and that's what radio spoon feeds them.

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[cayenne8]

"...because it isn't what they hear on the radio or on MTV."

Hmm...exactly WHEN was the last time you actually heard music on MTV?

I remember the old days when it truly was Music Television...now, I see nothing but Real World reruns...and asst. other crap. Hell, VH1 doesn't show music anymore either....

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[hb253]

Er, there was not one misspelling in ndtechnologies post. What are you talking about?

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[Ogerman]

it's very likely that they're going to grow at a fast rate and add a lot more music to their portfolio.

Not likely. They have near-zero mindshare and their artists are entirely unknown. What is going draw people, especially pop-culture-inundated students, to this tiny new catalog? Absolutely nothing at the moment.

The problem with all current attempts at promoting independent media is that everyone assumes they can use the same methods as the big guys -- like actually selling music, whether on CD or via download. They're thinking way too much inside the box. You would think that after thousands of failures, independent artists would have realized that they've continually put themselves into an obvious catch-22.. Most people only buy music if it is popular. Music cannot become popular without being heard. If you sell your music, only people who buy will hear it. If you're not popular, nobody will buy your music. The major labels break out of this catch-22 via marketing and controlling influence over all popular broadcast media. In other words, they force music to become popular so that artists can make money. Now, once an artist is popular, they no longer need big labels, but by that time they've been contractually entangled and it's too late. Independent media has almost no marketing and almost no influence over popular broadcast media. The only way for a new independent artist to become popular in the mainstream is to give away their music in an effective manner. After they are popular, they can make money however they choose -- by selling albums, concert tickets, merchandise, etc. Of course, most new artists think, "If I give away my music, I can't make money." But the opposite is true. If they try to sell their music at the beginning, they will NEVER make money or else it'll take them decades to become marginally popular.

But how does one give unknown music away effectively? Many have tried before but never with much success. Why? Because they've all done so passively. Simply putting up a website or putting songs on a P2P network will not effectively give away music if it is not already popular. These are good tools once momentum starts to build, but they don't solve the problem. The catch-22 simply becomes: People will not download your music if it isn't already popular. Sure, the handful of people who care about independent music might stumble upon it, but there aren't enough of these people to meaningfully support artists. The only way to attain popularity with unknown music is to actively promote it. The method depends on the audience and environment, but it always involves investment of time and money. This is no different than starting a personal business. There are always upfront costs and sometimes even a small loan is necessary. But where there is no risk, there is no reward. It would seem that most independent artists today are terrified of risk.

Never underestimate the marketing power of backpacks filled with $0.10 mass-produced CD's labeled "feel free to copy for all your friends."

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[ndtechnologies]

Can you explain to me where I incorrectly spelled something, and what does that have to do with the subject matter of the original post?

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[DrSkwid]

independent
catelogue
lable

add in the puncutation :

whats
its
thats

will that do ?

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[ndtechnologies]

"independent catelogue lable add in the puncutation : whats its thats will that do ?" Ok, so you are telling me that you spelled those words correctly? The only one you spelled correctly was "independent". "Catelogue" is spelled http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=catalog Catalog or Catalogue. Both meanings are the exact same. "lable" is spelled http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=label Label maybe I am totally missing something here...

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[Popcorn Dave]

In reruns on old VHS tapes?

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[DrSkwid]

>The only one you spelled correctly was "independent"

lol, I spelled independent correctly by accident, all the rest were the OP's mistakes

independent, catalogue, label were misspelled as independant, catelogue and lable

now shush and go away

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[ndtechnologies]

lol, totally my mistake. I just now figured out that you were referring to the original post by Anonymous Coward...my bad. :)

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[DrSkwid]

hehe I thought so :)

Didn't want to insult your /. using skillz

Re:You got to start somewhere - This is good news.

[zootm]

In my experience, just not true. Sure, people get pissed when they can't "just send" a file. But when I tell them why, they just don't care enough to do anything about it.

Many of these services have the ability to share files with a limited number of acquintances (iTunes certainly does) and that is enough to placate most people. They just don't care.

Besides, the way you describe it, it sounds like I'm hanging out with non-geeks! I don't know anyone other than complete geeks who've tried to actually hook a VCR up to tape a DVD... most people are content when its wired up sufficiently to make it play!

You can always convert

[samael]

FLAC->MP3 isn't hard. And I don't think there _is_ an MP3 download service, is there? Other than emusic, which has gone steadily downhill for years...

Re:You can always convert

[radish]

There are lots:

beatport.com
audiojelly.com
playittonight.com

etc

Helps if you like dance music though :)

Re:You can always convert

[WebMacher]

There's Audiolunchbox.com and Magnatunes.com (alternative/indie stuff), Calabashmusic.com (which specializes in world music), and several others listed here: http://www.andrewdavidson.com/links/mp3-download/

And actually, I thought emusic had gone downhill too (I was really angry about the abrupt change in service terms -- they really should have given long-time customers download credits or something), but I have to say that I've been finding lots of stuff each month that I like, and I like the redesign. Go figure.

From the FAQ...

[XeRXeS-TCN]

Mindawn seems to be more like a community site / online record company, rather than a music store in it's own right. *ANY* artists can sign up for $50 a year (or the current special deal of $50 for lifetime) and upload as many albums as they want, with 75% of the sale coming back to them if it's exclusive to Mindawn, and 55% if it isn't.

From the Artists FAQ:

Q. So what's the catch to get in to Mindawn?
A. It costs you as an artist just $50 per year to have your account, with as many albums and tracks as you want. You don't even have to print CDs -- just put some of those new songs you're working on up for sale online. You don't even have to even work around the concept of an "album" if you don't want to. Just create your account and load your content -- you can be 'live' within 30 minutes of opening your account. UPDATE: For a limited time the $50 fee is for a lifetime account, don't miss this limited opportunity to sign up with Mindawn for a one time fee of $50 for LIFE!

Q. How much do I make from those sales?
A. We have two royalty models:

75% for electronic content exclusive to Mindawn. However, you can change at any time to the second model:

55% for non-exclusive electronic content

That means you get either 55% or 75% of the total price -- far better for artists than most record labels or iTMS.

So while they do work with record companies, a lot (most?) of their music will inevitably be from independant artists, and anyone who wants to share their work. From the Customer FAQ:

Q. What kind of content can I expect?
A. You won't likely find major label releases -- we're geared more towards supporting independent artists and small record labels. Our system is also not closed to anyone, and we are adding content at an exponential rate. You can use our sophisticated search technology to find music you will likely be interested in, as well as demo the available songs as mentioned above. You're likely to discover some hidden gems that you wouldn't have found any other way.

Not a system for everyone, since many students will be more interested in the big names which tend to get pirated in the first place, but a nice enough system, and the artists certainly aren't hard done by. They even provide software, MARS (Mindawn Audio Ripping Software), for ripping CD, WAV or AIFF to OGG or FLAC format for using with their system. That's not to say that you couldn't use flac/oggenc, especially since it isn't F/OSS, but it's nice that they've provided their own multi-platform utility with a GUI to help out in that regard... not to mention the fact that the MARS documentation says that you need oggenc/flac/cdparanoia installed on Linux in any case.

Re:From the FAQ...

[Ferromancer]

Not a system for everyone, since many students will be more interested in the big names which tend to get pirated in the first place, but a nice enough system, and the artists certainly aren't hard done by. They even provide software, MARS (Mindawn Audio Ripping Software), for ripping CD, WAV or AIFF to OGG or FLAC format for using with their system. That's not to say that you couldn't use flac/oggenc, especially since it isn't F/OSS, but it's nice that they've provided their own multi-platform utility with a GUI to help out in that regard... not to mention the fact that the MARS documentation says that you need oggenc/flac/cdparanoia installed on Linux in any case.

There's a nice piece of software that I use called Exact Audio Copy. It provides an amazing GUI that can be switched from noobie mode to ultra-1337, it can detect and correct errors on even really badly scratched CD's, provides online CD database access, custom naming schemes, lots of ID3 tag options, and you can encode to *any friggin format you want to*. It has built-in support for a very large number of formats, but you can also integrate it with LAME, oggenc, flac and whathaveyou. Oh yeah, and it's free too. Windows only, but it might work with wine on linux.

Also, if you want more bang for your buck, er, download, Rarewares has special builds for oggenc, flac, and other formats that support a larger number of features. For instance, they added hard min-max bitrate levels for ogg vorbis (so ogg doesn't encode silence at 100kbps), and something called "impulse-trigger", which helps with promblems in echo from rimshots or something like that. The forums at hydrogen audio explain the extra features in more detail.

Clever play by UC

[MWelchUK]

I think this is a very good move by UC.

The university probably have an obligation to ensure all members of the university can use the services they buy in to and probably also have an obligation to ensure that the deal is fair for the students. As a result they were required to go for a provider which catered for windows, Mac and Linux. The popular providers don't do this and worse they wrap all there files in DRM. DRMed music files would no doubt increase support calls from not technical students to the universities help desk, all those students whose old computers have died and who have managed to copy there music across, only to find that it won't play...(or similar - I guess this is the case, I don't have any DRMed music.)

Mindawn don't carry popular music, but this is probably more because the record labels are unwilling to provide mindawn with them in a suitable form for them to sell (ie. allow them to sell them as unDRMed ogg vorbis files at $0.99).

I think that by choosing Mindawn UC is covering there back, whilst at the same time sending a message to the record labels that they want them to provide music at reasonable price, in an OS agnostic manner, without DRM.

I'm sure this deal won't stop the UC pupils from getting itunes accounts and grabbing all the utter shite pop they want, but at least the university aren't bank-rolling this.

Re:Clever play by UC

[gl4ss]

it probably also was very, very cheap to UC too.

if their deal includes that they pay only by what they use instead of a flat fee(which they pretty much must I guess unless mindawn wants to take a huge risk).

however here's an idea: sign up as an artist, make some crap tracks, sign up to UC - download your own tracks over and over again and then PROFIT from your part of the sale. "$1.24 per 10 minutes of lossless compression (FLAC format)" - and the artist share is 75% of that. so.. UC'ers have now an easy way to fleece the UC(signing up for mindawn costs 50$).

Why the hate?

[DarkDigger]

People here seem to be bashing this service because they're unfamiliar with all the groups listed. Since when did you have to be familiar with a group for them to be good. Have you never listened to "random" music before and found that you enjoy it?

I applaud the UC system for endorsing a system which doesn't support the RIAA cartel and uses truly free formats for downloads. Also, all the ranting about tax dollars/tuition being wasted isn't necessarily justified. This could be a simple endorsement of the service by the university. I remember when Napster was making deals with several colleges last summer and some of the schools were paying for it out of their tuition. My school was one of them (USC), but I found out when I got back to campus that USC didn't pay them a dime and was only endorsing them. I don't see why this might not be a similiar situation as well.

And yes, their catalog is small, but let's hope the support of the UC system (and maybe the slashdot crowd?) will help them to expand their catalog. Just because music isn't heavily advertised or commercialized, doesn't make it bad.

Re:Why the hate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its true that it doesn't make it bad, but it dosn't achieve their goal of stopping the illegal transfers of popular music. And since the majority here bash this music, how might it be recieved by a college campus? I only think a small percentage will love it. Others will casually browse. Definately witll expand... but not into mainstream.

I think it is rather unfortionate that the poster of this article didn't see the deal the UCs also are making with cdigix... which does offer the mainstream music as a subscription, like Napster.

4'33" of silence, perchance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mind you don't get sued by copyright lawyers representing the estate of John Cage.

No, but lots of 'Prog Rock'!

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet the students are over the moon :-)

Top 5 albums

[HaydnH]

Did anyone else notice that the top 2 albums are buy a band called Frameshift? Has anyone ever heard of them??

I guess they were the 2 albums the site owner used to test if the thing worked properly... i.e: they've probably been downloaded twice each ;P

Re:Top 5 albums

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's a great band featuring Dream Theater's singer, James LaBrie. I'm sorry for you that you haven't heard of them.

Re:Top 5 albums

[Anonymous Coward]

The first Frameshift is with the vocalist from the multi-platinum selling band Dream Theater (James LaBrie) and the second Frameshift album is with the multi-multi-platinum selling vocalist Sebastian Bach. Too bad you haven't heard of them, they are great albums.

Grr aargh!

[I am Jack's username]

We prefer to be called buccaneer-Americans.

Good luck.

[illtron]

No iPod, No iTunes, No Deal.

That pretty much sums it up.

No audio preview either

[Midnight Thunder]

Looks like you can't hear a preview of the track either. I like to discover new music, but without a preview option there is no way for me to know whether a track is worth buying.

Unless the manage to add DRM. to their OGG and FLAC tracks. they won't be able to get any of the big names, since it won't go down well with the record companies.

Re:No audio preview either

[Midnight Thunder]

My bad, looks like I didn't read the FAQ:


Q. How do you handle demo songs?
A. Our Mindawn player will use your Ogg Vorbis files as the demo file. The user can play it in full up to 3 times, and thenthe local copy of the file will self-destruct. The file is not playable outside of our player software, and our player "knows" how many times it has been played.

Q. How can I hear a demo version of a song?
A. First, download the Mindawn Player for your platform. Then register as a Mindawn user and then log onto Mindawn using the player. You will then see a column "Demo" in the listing of tracks, if a demo is available for that track. If a demo is not yet available, please try again later.

MP3s and AACs sound terrible on a real stereo

[obarthelemy]

I listen to my music both on the move and **at home** (surprise). I've tried several (legal) download services, and on my $2k stereo the downloaded songs always sound bad compared to a CD. Since I don't want to pay twice for the same song, I'm back to ripping my CDs to FLAC, and then WMA-ing them for the road (to my ears, 96kbps WMA = 128kbps MP3, and is good enough for my not-high-end MP3 player).

I fail to understand why everyone isn't complaining about the not-so-good sound quality on the legal download services. To me, that's much more important than Linux/Mac support, or even DRM ;-)

Re:MP3s and AACs sound terrible on a real stereo

[KD5YPT]

Because most music currently involves heavy metal and rock bands. And reduction in sound quality is negligible.

Jokes aside, most people aren't audio-philes, so most people can't tell the difference or care about it.

PS. Ripping CDs should be fair-use. If it wasn't for the idiotic DMCA, it still is.

10,000 songs is ....

[goombah99]

10,000 songs is enough for anybody.

Re:10,000 songs is ....

[hondo77]

For you, maybe, but not for me.

Colleges now responsible for student law breakers?

[PetoskeyGuy]

This is stupid. If people do copyright violation, then let the music industry have them. That's the idiotic out of proportion punishment that needs to stop. Hiding it in tuition fees is just enabling the RIAA to keep on bullying people.

The College just wants to be their supplier. They should also make sure they are the only provider of drugs and alchohol on campus. Then students wouldn't have to worry about getting caught by authorities and the schools, they can go sample everything because their tuition paid for it and the school gets more money for doing un-needed construction to pad the presidents resume while still justifying a 7 to 10% tuition increase per year.

(My old school hiked tuition 8% while swapping the football field and library. Nothing wrong with either, or great about the replacement.)

Worste Possible thing for RIAA

[Erris]

Not a system for everyone, since many students will be more interested in the big names which tend to get pirated in the first place, but a nice enough system, and the artists certainly aren't hard done by.

So "Piracy" of big names goes on. Everyone knows the RIAA fucked them and is making all the money.

In the mean time, people have an incentive not to "pirate" this music. Anyone who's interested can check it out, you can easily give your friends a copy if you want, it's a reasonable price and you know the artist gets paid when you buy. That's very good reason to simply buy the music and not go through the trouble of setting up additional software to share something anyone can get on their own.

You realize, of course, what this means for "big names" don't you? There's a subtle shift in value where the "big name" looks cheap and dirty but paranoid and asinine while the new name looks Cool and easy. Eventually, you wonder why the big name was so greedy, threatening with their shit. You then wonder why you wanted the big name to begin with.

It's superior competition that's legal and won't be shut down. They just got a bookmark in my music Folder.

Pssst! Wink wink

[BlightThePower]

infantilize infantilization" (nfn-tl-z, n-fn-)
tr.v. infantilized, infantilizing, infantilizes

1. To reduce to an infantile state or condition: "It creates a crisis that infantilizes themcauses grown men to squabble like kids about trivial things" (New Yorker).
2. To treat or condescend to as if still a young child: "The Victorian physician infantilized his patient" (Judith Moore).

I think its a new slang word thats found its way in but yeah apparently its a real word. It described what I meant anyway.

crap content? well then where...?

[Savatte]

Wait, I thought the RIAA provided crap content. Looking at the artist lists, I don't see any bigname RIAA artists, just unknown bands. But if this is crap, what is the good stuff and where can I get it?

San Francisco and Berkeley are _cold_.

[Anonymous Coward]

The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco. -- Mark Twain

The immediate SF Bay area stays around 60-70 during the summer. Pass through the Caldecot (aka cold-to-hot) tunnel, and you're in 90-100 weather.

Re:San Francisco and Berkeley are _cold_.

[omnifrog]

You haven't lived in the bay area in a while. The temperature outside of SF has gone up. Sunnyvale routinely is in the high 90's or 100, Berkeley spends a month in the 90's as well.

There's something wrong with the weather out here.

Ignoring Motivation

[foregather]

Lets remember the motivation that all the Napster knock-off services are trying to push on schools: liability shielding.

Besides bandwith issues, which, as another poster has already pointed, out can be readilly capped per MAC address, a school's only practical concern with copyright infringement taking place over their network is that the RIAA and MPAA are thrashing about in the dark trying to find the best people to hit with lawsuits over it.

We know that music rental services have been peddeling themselves as less messy alternatives than having to turn over identifying information on your students to the RIAA when their Jane Doe lawsuits hit your network, but this is a minor inconvience compared to the possible lawsuits the entertainment industry lawers might cook up. What happens when the industry decides to sue the colleges themselves for contributing to large scale infringement because they didn't take steps to control how the children in their care used the bleeding edge networking tools that the school provided?

A music distribution service without RIAA content will not really stop the Jane Doe lawsuits against your students, but taking affirmative steps to try and build up a climate of non-infringing music sharing might be enough to ward off a neglience claim down the road. In terms of building that climate I think it makes a good deal of sense to pick a service that has an open procedure for bands to add their music and that even allows students to distribute their own music, both things that Mindawn has.

Re:Since when mindawn? Or cdigix? Or what?

[walter_f]

In terms of platform support, cdigix' Ctrax music offering does not seem to be too open-minded:

"(SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS)

Minimum Requirements

Use a PC that has a minimum of 128 megs of RAM and a Pentium III 650 MHz or Celeron 700 MHz processor
- Windows XP is required for Ctrax

Internet Explorer version 6. This may be downloaded from: Microsoft Internet Explorer Download

Windows Media Player Version 9. This may be downloaded from: Windows Media Player Download

Macromedia Flash Plug-in version 7.

http://www.cdigix.com/website/cdigix/faqs.asp

Kind of a closed shop... :-(

Walter.

Uh, well, for one..

[Marc2k]

For one, you can buy legal downloads from Bleep, which Warp Records (Aphex Twin, Autechre, Non Prophets, Prefuse 73) started, and apparently also features artists on other labels, such as Ninja Tune, Domino, etc. Warp started out putting out electronic music, mostly IDM-ish stuff, but lately they've been putting out good music from across the board.

The Regents are on crack

[cerebrum86]

Thanks, Pres. Dynes! You cut our financial aid by a couple million dollars, and spend it on a half-assed "legal" music service that I doubt will get popular at all. Or are you paying for it with the higher fees you instituted? Isn't there supposed to be a budget crisis?

Either way, we're all getting the shaft.

Re:The Regents are on crack

[The Lynxpro]

"Thanks, Pres. Dynes! You cut our financial aid by a couple million dollars, and spend it on a half-assed "legal" music service that I doubt will get popular at all. Or are you paying for it with the higher fees you instituted? Isn't there supposed to be a budget crisis?
Either way, we're all getting the shaft."

If you think that was a crack induced decision, just check out the political donations given by the UC system in 2004. The UC System, not the alumni associations, gave the Kerry campaign over $100,000. Now, I would be mad too if they did the same for the Bush campaign. To me, it is absolutely unacceptable that a public educational system can legally give away taxpayer money as a campaign contribution.

Re:The Regents are on crack

[Overzeetop]

$$$ to startup music co with limited selection or $$$ to lawyers for the RIAA suit filed about infringing content on your net.

This money hasn't been spent for your music enjoyment, its for plausible deniability.

Oh, and quit whining. The CA system is so cheap for in-state students its laughable. If you think UCs are expensive, I suggest you price a private college.

Re:The Regents are on crack

[cerebrum86]

This is the problem when one party has an unchallengable majority in a legislature like the Dems do in CA. They stack the committees and organizations with like-minded jackasses who immediately kowtow to the prevailing herd mentality of that party.

Disclaimer: This would happen no matter WHO was in power-Dems, GOP, or a third party.

Re:The Regents are on crack

[cerebrum86]

Whining? I'm not whining. I'm irritated that money that the system claims is unavailable for improving my education is going to a luxury like a music service. Also, I never EVER said the UCs were expensive in terms of tuition. You're right, they're more affordable than even other state universities. My beef is with how they USE my money, not that they're getting more of it.

Re:The Regents are on crack

[The Lynxpro]

"This is the problem when one party has an unchallengable majority in a legislature like the Dems do in CA. They stack the committees and organizations with like-minded jackasses who immediately kowtow to the prevailing herd mentality of that party."

While the sentiment is there, I can't agree with that because it is the Governor who appoints the UC Regents. And Gray Davis was the only Democratic governor of California (and barely for 5 years) since 1982.

But my original point was there should be no political donations from a public university system to any candidates whatsoever.

Re:The Regents are on crack

[Anonymous Coward]

the UC is not paying for the service beyond whatever they spent to evaluate services, it's simply recommended and deployed.

MindShare

[Doc Ruby]

What happens to their fair use rights when they use this system? Can they listen to a record with their friends? Can they loan it to their friends for a while? Or does this narrow platform throw away their rights, offering only the exceptions to free expression ("copyright") completing the "temporary, partial" monopoly on content as permanent and complete?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

From Mindawn's FAQs

[Anonymous Coward]

"We believe that in general people don't want to give away something that they paid for. "

Am I the only one that thinks this phase doesn't make sense? I would understand it if we were talking about objects, but not digital copies...

What! No Irix support?!

[Anonymous Coward]

No Solaris?! No AmigaOS?! What about NEXTStep, Tandy, BSD, and BeOS??!

These mindless-drone bourgeois-complacent supporter-tools of The Man's state-of-the-status-quo preferred operating systems will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

Yessir, any day now, that revolution. . .

Distracting

[Jerry Rivers]

I'd be willing to take a few minutes and browse their entire catalogue if it weren't for the really annoying flashing ad selling, um, something or other. I was too annoyed to notice what it was.

Consider this then:

[gotr00t]

The combined sales of "Virtually every online music store other than iTMS" do not even touch the sales of iTMS alone.

Moreover, you make it sound like the iPod only supports music downloaded from Apple's service, while this is certainly not the case. You can load up your own collection onto the device as well in mp3 or even wav format. Mindawn provides mp3, which the iPod supports _directly_.

That's... not entirely true.

[gotr00t]

Having been to UC Berkeley for a year, I can say that this is not the case. On campus, wireless is widely avaliable, and there are no quotas imposed. In the dorms, there is a 5gb/week cap on bandwidth, but they do not care what you actually do with it (though they made it clear that they do not condone piracy, and would not stand up for us if we did get caught)

Besides, it's incredibly hard to monitor _that_ much traffic on a packet by packet basis. If they did actually create such a system, then getting around it would be trivial given the tools avaliable to encrypt, encapsulate, or do whatever with every packet.

Re:That's... not entirely true.

[mako1138]

I think the parent is referring to packet shaping, which they use at Irvine. It makes P2P incredibly slow, essentially unusable.

Though at Berkeley, there's a mention of a monitoring system somewhere on the Rescomp site. It supposedly saves all your traffic for a certain period of time. It's possible, but more likely just FUD.

Yeah, that's why...

[speck]

The average college student listens to RIAA artists like Metallica, Britney Spears, etc.

Yeah, that's why college radio stations are so notorious for playing only the most mainstream music.

Teathered Downloads

[Nom du Keyboard]

Reports I've seen are that these are all teathered downloads. Of course, you have your 4 years there to figure out how to break the DRM teather.

min-dawn v. mind-awn

[pbhj]

I'm just not quite sure how to pronounce it. "Mind-awn" presumably a type of awning for covering your mind? Or, "min-dawn" which seems to be like dawn only less so!?

Perhaps they meant "Minddawn"?

But then finding good names - that carpet baggers haven't grabbed the domain for and aren't RTM - is very hard.

Subpoenas

[Thu25245]

Every time the RIAA sues a downloader, they have to subpoena his/her ISP. Universities provide internet service to students living in dorm rooms, so they are served with the subpoenas.

The university's legal office then has to respond to the subpoena and investigate the matter with the campus network admins. Often, they also inform the student and commence disciplinary procedures for violating the university's usage policy. This involves a non-trival amount of university resources.

It's in the university's best interest to avoid this through any means it considers practical.

You joke about Ben & Jerry's...

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to Middlebury College in VT, and we always had plenty of Ben & Jerry's ice cream in every dining hall. Many students took it upon themselves to "deliver" whole containers to their own dorm freezers, if you want to take the comparison that far.

Of course, it was often factory seconds (too much cookie dough, for example, but who would complain about that?) but it was still tasty.

What does this have to do with music? I have no idea - I certainly wasn't downloading any music on my awesome Mac Classic II at the time!

Wow you're right!

[william_w_bush]

Wow, you're absolutely right, iTunes music sucks!

kelly clarkson and jessica simpson? on the same list? Is this a music ranking or a pr0n site?

"Your own collection"

[tepples]

You can load up your own collection onto the [iPod brand] device as well in mp3 or even wav format.

Except here, "your own collection" refers only to phonorecords in CDDA format, not digitally delivered phonorecords from a PlaysForSure store. If you want to use "your own collection" of music from a PlaysForSure store, you have to burn it to CD and then rip it to mp3 or m4a.

Mindawn provides mp3, which the iPod supports _directly_.

Even better!

As a UCLA student...

[spuckupine]

::browse catagories::

::select trance::

Albums in category Trance
No albums were found in this category


Tracks in category Trance
No tracks were found in this category

what the crap? i'm not paying for this...
i'm so nostalgic for the days of mp3.com