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

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: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: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: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?

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".

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.