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Barenaked USB Drive
CryptoKnight writes "The Barenaked Ladies are releasing their next album via a reusable 128 MB USB flash drive. From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer article: 'Rather than distribute via CD, DVD or download, the Barenaked Ladies are making their newest selection of songs, videos and exclusive material available on a USB flash drive. Nettwerk Music Group is releasing Barenaked on a Stick beginning today, says the Hollywood Reporter. It plays on PCs, Macs and any other audio product with a USB port -- like some car stereos -- and costs $30.'"
Great music distribution method. Perhaps some SD and other memory card-tricks will follow.
Psst - I went to the web site and there are no naked ladies in the band
I lost my sig...
They're charging $30 for an album with compressed audio? No thanks.
-Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I dont' care what people say, compressed audio sounds different/worse than straight recordings. If they are compressing their entire CD down to 128M I wonder what the compression rate will be? I'm also curious if I can buy their USB drive and then receive via download, mail, or other the high quality, non-compressed tracks. Does anyone else agree?
Generation Trance: What generation are you?
Probably because on top of all of the content, you also get a REUSABLE USB STICK! It doesn't actually sound like a bad deal if you actually stop and think about it.
The reason I don't buy from online services is I refuse to pay money for lossless codecs. If I am paying for music, I want to get all the bits, and then determine for myself which lossless codec I use to compress the song.
I would hate to see situations like this, where albums are only avialable in a lossy format, become the norm
Download my free songs!
Joking aside, 29 songs is probably enough material to take up at least two CDs, hence justify the higher price (along with extra bonus material which BNL has had on some of their previous CDs).
"Why would I spend $30 to get an album on a USB stick when I can get an album on CD for $16 or on Itunes for less than that?"
iTunes is DRMed. Also, according to TFA it has 29 songs plus extras (videos etc).
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Barenaked has always been a great band that does things a little different.
In this case the sum of the parts is greater than the items. Sure the music can be delivered cheaper and a memory stick is cheap. But the willingness to try something a little bit different just to see what happens is worth some applause.
By the way, these guys produce good music. They are worthy of support.
Everyones complaining about the price, and yet no one is happy that mainstream bands are staring to use technology in a cool way. Also, if yourtoo lazy to RTFA.... "This 128 reusable drive contains 29 songs, including the band's 2004 "Barenaked for the Holidays" album, in MP3 format along with live tracks, in-concert spoken quips, album art, photos, videos and more."
Yay, I have a sig.
The term seems more than a bit outdated. Will there be any cool graphics on the USB stick itself? Could be quite a collectible if the edition is truly limited.
It costs more than a CD ... And if everyone released music like this, I'd have 128Meg USB drives laying around my house all over the place.
The audio's lower quality
It doesn't work in my car
That's only slightly more practical than releasing your album on the first 600 meg of a 500 gig drive, for $200 each.
To me that reads as "people being trained to attach little black boxes of music to their computer, with the eventual intention of DRMing said boxes". If people are trained to attach arbitrary boxes to their computer to get music/films, the next step is to have those boxes "streaming" the audio/video straight to a Trusted Output Device [tm]. This probably wouldn't stop piracy, but it'd make backing up your media nigh-on impossible, since you'd no longer be able to copy directly.
This fits in well with plans to make Windows Vista only play DVDs at full quality using the aforementioned Trusted Output Devices [tm]
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Lets see:
Ebay plain 128 MB USB drive sells for $15 - $20 US
Average BNL cd sells for $14 to $15 US on amazon, shipping extra..
So, it's not an absurd price.
Oh, and a few details from the amazon page:
# 128mg Flash Memory USB drive (2.0 technology, also maintains compatibility with USB 1.1)
# Contains nearly 30 tracks of music (in MP3 file format), PLUS in-studio video snippets, live concert excerpts and more
# Reusable drive can be used for any and all file types (limited to capacity of flash drive)
# MP3 files included are completely DRM-free
Also, it's 29 songs, cost you $29.00 on itunes for the works.
It's not out of line, an interesting way to attract attention!
Bavarian Purity Law of Rice Krispie Squares: Rice Krispies, Marshmallows, Butter, Vanilla.
It costs more than a CD
The audio's lower quality
You get about 3 times as many songs as you would on a CD.
You can burn it to CD.
This is like them releasing it as an iTMS exclusive, except:
It's not DRMed.
They throw in a 128M flash drive for free.
So don't buy it. But if you like the music, they're giving you 2 CDs worth of songs for the price of 2 CDs in a smaller, less scratch-prone format. I'm not sure why you're being a dick about that.
Well, if they included the 3rd and last paragraph to the story, you would have seen this ...
... only thing I'm wondering about is the quality of the tracks, 29 songs and videos on a 128MB drive?
"This 128 reusable drive contains 29 songs, including the band's 2004 "Barenaked for the Holidays" album, in MP3 format along with live tracks, in-concert spoken quips, album art, photos, videos and more."
I think if you are a BNL fan, this would be well worth it
But they're compressed... what a bummer, the reason I don't use iTunes is because I don't want compressed music... now they're not even offering CD Quality music with their new release?
How much for the 1gigabyte version with the flac songs?
The Barenaked Ladies publicists/marketing cooked up a winner here. The truth is that none of us, bar some small minority care about BNL, but it made it to the front page of slashdot. This is called a Press Hit. Their publicists are getting a fat check on this one.
We seem to enjoy missing the point, so we start arguing about whether other bands will follow. I will put this in for kicks:
Some might, but upping the distribution costs that much is not profitable long term since consumers wont pay $30 for the same thing everytime.
2*31*37*263
Not if the songs are some shitty 128kbps mp3.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
I think it has more to do with the fact that most people have no idea what "lossily compressed" means. As far they're concerned MP3 = music file. They aren't aware of the existence of FLAC or OGG files, let alone that they have any benefit over mp3s.
Oh, Edmund, can it be true? that I hold here, in my mortal hand, a nugget of purest green?
He's stating that the value of a BNL CD is about $15 from Amazon, not that you can buy this $30 USB drive album on Amazon.
So in reality, $15 for the album and $15 for the drive and the price is pretty reasonable. That's the point of his post. Feel free to agree or disagree but flame at your own risk.
"This is considered plagiarism."
Maybe it's because "less scratch-prone" is a nonsensical argument. I've got more than 300 audio CDs, and none of them have any visible scratches (as far as I know, anyway) - scratches on the CD just aren't something you're concerned about when you buy music.
Sure, you get a free USB flash drive when you buy this thing, but seriously, it's not worth the price difference. One store chain here just had a sale on 512 MB flash drives for 20 EUR - that's 5 EUR for 128 MB, which is nowhere near the extra 15 USD you'd pay for the flash drive here compared to the CD.
What you *do* get is music in a lossy format, which is a genuine disadvantage over a CD. Why didn't they use FLAC instead? Sure, they might have used a larger drive then, but at least then it just *might* have been a good deal when you compare the price to what a USB flash drive and a CD cost, together.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Maybe it's because "less scratch-prone" is a nonsensical argument. I've got more than 300 audio CDs, and none of them have any visible scratches
There's no way to respond to that except to say, "No, it's not." And it's not. Maybe if you had fewer CDs, you'd have more scratches. Not that scratches, themselves, actually pose much of a problem until your sister tosses it in the back seat of your car and leaves it there for a few days while her friends sit on it. USB drives are safe from that. And while it's unlikely that that will ever happen again, it's still a check in the USB column.
Sure, you get a free USB flash drive when you buy this thing, but seriously, it's not worth the price difference.
There isn't a price difference. 29 songs = 2.2-ish CDs = 30 bucks.
What you *do* get is music in a lossy format, which is a genuine disadvantage over a CD.
People download songs all the time and feel fine about it. I, personally, can't tell the difference between 128kbps MP3 and a CD, which is why I'm pro-this. And again, if you don't like it, don't buy it. Nobody will hurt you for it. I'm sure CDs are going to be around for at least another week or two in any case.
Why should I pay $30 for COMPRESSED music! It seems that the music industry took a giant step backward in audio quality! Generation "iPod" is happy with compressed music. Of course, with the crap that passes for music these days (including BNL!) I guess it doesn't matter.
Best Buy can have you arrested
Sorry for posting as an AC, but I've already modded on this story.
Oooh it's compressed ... well most mere mortals can't tell the difference anyway, and I read about a good test (if I can find the link I'll post it here), where they did blind tests with compressed and uncompressed audio .. the stupid audiophiles couldn't tell the difference.
This is a terrible idea. Only a small amount of people actually own computers and know what a flash USB drive is, let alone how to transfer the songs to a CD. I think that they are seriously overestimating the computer saviness of society on this one. I know a lot of people that would think this is a good idea. But I'm a big geek, and so are all my friends. We're definitely not what you would call average. If I want MP3s, I'll buy the CD, and rip it to MP3. I'm not going to pay $30 for mp3s on a device I may or may not end up keeping the songs on. I like CDs because they provide pretty much permanent storage, as long as I don't scratch them, and I don't have to worry about losing the music when my hard drive dies. I don't see any advantage over offering the music in this format over a standard audio CD.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
But they're compressed... what a bummer, the reason I don't use iTunes is because I don't want compressed music... now they're not even offering CD Quality music with their new release?
Even CD's are compressed down to their sample rate. Of course, they're also compressed to maximize volume thus destroying their dynamic range.
I'd rather have a cassette that was mastered well than a modern CD that has been smashed up against the noise ceiling. A 256 kbps VBR MP3 in the hands of someone who cares will sound a lot better than a studio producer in a Porsche mashing 100 years of audio engineering in a misguided attempt to be louder than Howard Stern.
The ______ Agenda
barely palatable... come friday circuit city will have 512MB memory cards for $9.99 After Rebates. for $30 I can have 1.5 GB of SD or Compact Flash memory, that will connect to any device with a memory card slot/ide controller... including several portable mp3 players, pdas, digital cameras, some printers, i think they're selling memory sticks for $15 AR so you could get 1 GB of storage that would work in your PSP.. Some TVs even have memory card slots to do photo slide shows!
USB? great i can use it on a computer or a laptop, maybe one model of mp3 player, maybe some digital camera out there... there might be some pda out there that supports usb... sure, not everyone has a pin thru for compact flash to ide, and sure not every modern pc has flash card readers standard... but they make a SD card + 'thumbdrive sized' usb sd card reader at least with that the memory card would be usable in Any device that used SD memory/has a usb port instead of just the latter...
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
First RIAA is bad because they release CD's with DRM to stop us from ripping MP3's. Now BNL does this, which is obviously a slap in RIAA's face, and most of the comments here are pissing and moaning about stupid media or lossy codec?
Damn, folks. Make up your minds.
If you like the music, $30 for better than two albums is a pretty fair price. If you would rather purchase a different format, maybe suggest it to them in a constructive manner. You might be suprised.
- If we aren't supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of meat? - Steven Wright
Your post shows (yet again) why a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
"Compression" -- ie lossy data stuffing -- is a totally different thing to "compression" -- ie fiddling the freqs to make a CD seem "louder". I can understand why you'd be confused, since they use the same word for both. Kinda like "bad" meaning "bad" - but also, if you're Michael Jackson, meaning "really really good". English is a bitch like that. "Bitch" as in "bitching" -- it's a vital feature of all languages that words can mean more than one thing.
And far from being a common thing, the misuse of the kind of compression you are wailing about is usually limited to the worst of the worst of throwaway pop music.
Most artists, labels, studios, and mastering engineers are, literally, psychotic about maintaining sound quality, which is one of the reasons a CD that's even just averagely mastered will beat your "well mastered cassette" any day of the week and six times on Sunday.
Simply _playing_ a cassette stretches the tape and starts scrubbing away at the data. And that's not even to mention the difference in dynamic range. From the article that you linked to yet obviously didn't read:
"[with CDs] consumers could purchase a recording in a medium whose dynamic range exceeded that of $20,000 professional tape machines."
BNL is NOT releasing their new album in this format. This is for their older Christmas music and some live tracks. Their new album is currently being recorded and will be released on CD by their own label "Desperation Records" and distributed by Warner.
Games are also missing this thing called "motion blur" with makes 30-60fps for a movie tolerable but stands out in a game. Games are a string of stills of static items strung together, movies/etc are a bunch of stills of dynamic objects strung together, including motion blur due to shutter time, etc. Catch an action frame in a movie and you'll see the bluring between frames... do it in a game and you'll have a static screen shot that might as well be a painting.
I thought this was becoming the way of the future anyway. Its not uncommon for mp3 players to come with albums already loaded, so I dont see why it is a big deal for people to want to distribute their music on a flash disk.