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SanDisk, Music Publishers Push DRM-free SlotMusic Format
Strudelkugel writes "The LA Times and others are reporting the music industry is working with SanDisk to try unrestricted music files on microSD memory cards to improve sales of physical media: 'In addition to music, the slotMusic cards will come pre-loaded with other things, such as liner notes, album-cover artwork and sometimes video.' The important part: 'The music on slotMusic comes without copyright protection, so it can be used on almost all computers, mobile phones and music players — but it won't play on an iPod, which doesn't have a micro-SD memory slot. It has one gigabyte of memory, and the music tracks are played back at high quality.' Could it be the labels have finally recognized that providing features and convenience to customers is preferable to suing them?" Most computers also don't have microSD slots; according to EMI's press release, there will be a "tiny USB sleeve" packaged with each card, and the "high quality" format means up to 320kbps MP3. From the given description, it seems like it would be no harder to transfer the tracks to an iPod (via a computer) than to most other players.
I don't want a memory stick containing lossy 320kbit songs, I can get that easily enough off the CD (they are still giving you a real CD, right?).
Why not include a 24-bit 192 or 96 khz lossless format, and maybe something in 5.1 instead? DVD-Audio and SACD didn't take off because no one adopted the players, but it might take off if you made it easily playable. I might even pay a slight premium.
I don't know about the rest of you guys, but the idea of buying music without in some way being able to damage the environment has been KILLING me.
Way to get on that EMI. Thank god!
RandomAndInteresting.comdefending the world from stupidity since 1979
we all know it'll only catch on if the porn industry start distributing on microSD as well.
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
Great. More crap to throw out. Isn't one of the big selling features of digital distribution that it produces less crap to landfill?
No copyright protection? So they are only releasing music that is in the public domain!?
Or did the newspaper screw up, and mean to write "no copy protection"?
Kudos to EMI for doing something digital without DRM, but how is this better than what Amazon.com offers us now?
I can download DRM-free songs from Amazon for less than a buck, and albums at about $8. Windows Media Player downloads the album art, and a plug-in gets me lyrics. I can transfer the song to other devices, friends, or burn to CD. Amazon's library is HUGE.
And internet distribution doesn't impact the environment.
About the only advantage I see to this is the "up to 320k", whereas Amazon's are 160k I believe. But, I don't think I'd be able to tell the difference.
Physical distribution is dead. If they want to cater to impulse buyers at a retailer, install a kiosk with a variety of ports, card readers, BlueTooth, etc and let people download stuff instantly.
-David
...they have conceived of a method of using physical media to transport bits. And they'll still charge $15 for an album.
You know, watching these guys over the last decade has been like watching a retarded child learning to go poo in the toilet. They're six years old when they finally get it right, and then they look at you like they've just won the Olympics.
No disrespect to retarded children intended.
Am I thinking about the same micro-SD as everyone else? Smaller than my little finger nail?
It's small enough to get lost in your pocket, sucked up by a vacuum cleaner or whatever. They're also fiddly to handle: can you imagine picking through your album collection with a pair of tweezers, squinting at the 3mm x 5mm labels to find the one you're after?
It seems a bizzarre choice for a portable music medium. If they're not intended for carrying around but supposed to be used only once, to get the music onto your player/computer, why not just sell the download?
Stereo, for example, was invented to create more space for sounds in a recording.
No, it wasn't. Stereo is used to recreate the spatial component of music: when you record a number of instruments sitting at different positions in the studio, you should be able to hear where those instruments are. That has nothing to do with 'too many waveforms ...cramped together on the same output'.
In fact, in a stereo recording, most of the information will be played back by both speakers.
It is possible to make a recording where the left and right channels have nothing in common, but you'll find that those sound very unnatural, so these recordings are (thankfully) rare. It's like having half the musicians on the far left of the stage, and the other half on the far right, with nobody in the center.
you need different ranges assigned to different speakers that can give out that frequencies. but, there has to be more of the same speakers assigned to a particular frequency range - lets say, you got a certain size of tweeter. if there are 4 of this, and you divide a small incremental range of high frequency sound to four of these in small increments, you'll have, say, seperated two sopranos' (each soprano will have differences in their frequencies, even if minute and hardly identifiable by human ear) voices to two tweeters of the SAME kind, but while playing these two sopranos' voices, each of their voices will come from the different tweeters. this will increase the distinctiveness of each sound. here, the quality of the tweeters matter VERY much.
Nonsense. No audio system works like that.
1. you can't separate two voices or two instruments like this, because each voice produces a range of frequencies that mostly overlaps. They'll sound different because their harmonic spectrum (the relative volume of each harmonic) differs a bit, but there is no filter that can separate them.
2. A loudspeaker box usually contains a few drivers of different sizes, because the driver size needs to be matched more or less to the frequency. A 12" bass driver is too heavy to produce 10 kHz, conversely a 1" tweeter can't move enough air to produce convincing bass. The challenge is to use no more drivers than necessary, because dividing the frequency spectrum like this introduces all kinds of problems. The holy grail of loudspeaker design is the point source: a single point that can produce the entire spectrum.
The only reason loudspeaker arrays are used, is volume. Multiple parallel drivers can produce more volume than a single driver.
There are some interesting side effects to arrays. The dispersion pattern changes a bit, which can be beneficial if done right. But 'a sound stage that encompasses you'? No. That's due to the surfeit of power which sets up reverberations in the hall. You get the same effect cranking up your non-array home stereo.
But I'm not audiophile, ...
They all say that until someone finds children's music on their computer!