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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.)
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?
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?
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
My MythTV HowTo
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.
- 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.
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
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.
Blessed are the 1337, for they shall pwn the earth.
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.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
"Mindawn will be a valuable partner for campuses instituting online entertainment programs because of its wide range of content by independent artists and its offer to allow UC students to market their own music. This is an important endeavor that we are embarking on, and we are pleased to be working with an established leader on the project."
The ability for students to market their music online easily is something other music services don't offer. This was possibly a significant factor in choosing this company. Its a very University of California type thing to do, and I as a UC student can't say I'm upset about this.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
though it's a bit optimistic, i hope the students really take the their selection. i like the grass-rootsy feel of supporting open-source drm-free codecs and non-RIAA content. it's like organic music. perhaps this will open the door for a larger audience to ween themselves off of the riaa koolaid. most of you are complaining it doesn't have enough "popular" music. maybe this can change what is "popular". longshot, but post like "it's not itunes, it sucks" and "it doesn't have britney spears, it sucks" is not going to help us break riaa monopoly. for all the M$ 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.
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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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.
My <1000 UID is with a hot chick
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:
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:
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.