Interesting - they just got an investment from Real Networks. According to the article "RealNetworks' technology will become the primary platform for the Rhapsody service and the two companies will explore collaborating on future services." I wonder what this will mean for Rhapsody.
Wrong - they have music from all 5 major labels plus many independent labels. Rhapsody has this as well. MusicNet is a separate company from AOL and is actually owned by three of the five major labels (Warner, BMG and EMI).
It's all 5 major labels, which control about 80% of the music sold in the US, plus a number of indie labels. But not all songs from all labels are available because in some cases the artist may control their own digital rights (e.g., Dave Matthews, Madonna, the Beatles), and in other cases the publisher/songwriter hasn't made a deal.
By the way they haven't "partnered with the RIAA" for this, they've made deals with individual labels. The RIAA is a trade organization that lobbies for the music industry, they don't license music.
Interestingly, Emusic is actually owned by the largest of the major labels, Universal (OK, technically they're both owned by the same parent company, Vivendi).
It would probably help for people to understand the current state of licensing for music subscription services. I am presenting this without any comment on whether legal subscription services are a good value or are likely to succeed, so don't flame me.
The current "on-demand" subscription services (the major ones being Pressplay, MusicNet, Listen.com's Rhapsody) all have licenses from all 5 major labels plus a number of indies that allow them to do the following:
on-demand streaming (e.g., search for a track and stream it)
tethered downloads - DRM'd downloads that can only be played on the PC they were downloaded to
burnable/portable downloads
The licenses from the labels generally require the subscription service to pay a small fee (say, 0.2 cents) for each song streamed or each time a tethered download is played. Each time a portable/burnable download is purchased, the label gets about 50 cents. The music publisher gets an additional fee of roughly 8.5 cents.
The prices now are all about $9 to $10 per month for unlimited streams and tethered downloads plus about $1 per track for burnable/portable downloads. Rhapsody and MusicNet currently don't offer transfers to portable players, only burns, but of course you can rip to MP3 after burning.
Currently the selection is variable, with some albums or tracks not available at all, some only available for streaming/tethered downloads but not for burning, etc., but the selection has been steadily improving over time. For example the current no. 1 album by 50 Cent is available on all of the services, and is available for burning. The Norah Jones album that just won 8 Grammys is as well. Some artists like Dave Matthews, Madonna, Metallica and the Beatles own their own digital rights and have not allowed their music to be made available on the subscription services yet.
Another issue affecting availablility is publishing rights - the subscription services need to make deals with publishers representing songwriters in addition to the artist or label who controls the master (recording) rights. In many cases this is why only certain tracks on an album may be available.
As far as I know Rackspace is a managed hosting company. Rackable Systems makes servers - Yahoo and Google both use them. Anyone know if the article has it wrong, and Pixar is actually using Rackable machines?
This article does not represent an official NARAS position. It is the opinion of one member. As the prologue to the article states, this is a paper he submitted to NARAS only a couple of days ago. Perhaps it will have some effect, but at the moment I'm quite certain that the official position of NARAS remains aligned with the RIAA's position.
Looks like these are the same guys who operated echo.com, the most kickass Internet radio site, which shut down about a year ago. It was a personalized radio thing, kind of like Launchcast, but you could listen with other people and vote whether you wanted to skip the current song, etc. The player was this mutant web-based IM client / music player and it was about the coolest thing I've seen done with Flash. My girlfriend and I used to listen to music and IM together while we worked.
Anyway, I'm glad to see these guys have managed to stay alive and if their new service is like the old one I'll definitely check it out.
See this page for a chart of oil reserves by country. Canada is 12th on the list with 38 Gb (billions of barrels) of reserves & estimated undiscovered resources. Saudi Arabia alone has about many times this amount (over 300 Gb). Russia is second with 168, Iraq third with 145, then Iran with 115. The US has about 100.
If you're really interested in a good analysis of the Bush administration's motives in Iraq, check out this article. The conclusion is that it is primarily about oil, specifically control over the price of oil.
Re:My answer to what the record companies should d
on
Goodbye, Liquid Audio?
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· Score: 1
Um, guess you missed the announcements that two of the five major labels (Universal and EMI) are doing just that. Universal's price is 99 cents per track, and these are burnable, unrestricted files.
There's no information on Listen's site about Rhapsody 2.0, which will feature burning. The FAQ you list applies to their current service, specifically the Naxos Classical subscription.
The new service will have no DRM, and you will be able to buy as many tracks as you want at 99 cents each. The interesting thing is that they are going to stream PCM audio directly to the burner. So, DRM won't be the issue, buffer underruns will be when their streaming servers can't keep up with your CD player!
How does this compare/relate to commercial efforts such as ParkerVision's Direct2Data and Vanu Bose's company Vanu? ParkerVision has a number of patents on their technology, will this be a problem for you?
The article says he has "grossed more than $1 million" over 8 years. This does not mean he has over a million dollars in assets. It probably does mean he's making a pretty good living, depending on the expenses involved in making light sabers.
IT seems that the IRS will probably ignore the company since there is no money to squeez out of them, and the employees will get the shaft...
No, the IRS will actually go after officers of the company and members of the board of directors. Not sure who's on their board but if there are any VC's or anyone else with deep pockets they'll end up footing the bill.
As much as people may want to believe this, there's a pretty obvious flaw with the argument that file swapping = CD sales - namely, that even though Napster is shut down, new file swapping services are bigger than Napster ever was.
I helped set up a jukebox-based ripping system for an Internet radio site. We use a 600 disc JVC CD jukebox with 6 Plextor drives, and a bunch of Linux boxes. We use cdparanoia for ripping and scsi-changer to control the robot arm in the jukebox. We currently stream in RealAudio 8 format so we use RealProducer for encoding, but we also write out the WAV files to tape so that we can re-encode in new formats without having to handle the CDs again. We wrote software in-house to manage the ripping and encoding processes.
This would be a bit pricey for personal use (the jukebox is about $8K), but it's worked out extremely well for high-volume ripping and encoding.
I don't see how this proves Cringeley was right - he was right that they were headed for bankruptcy, but everyone saw that coming. It doesn't show that his analysis of why they were going bankrupt is correct.
I think that if you were to go back and look at all of Cringeley's predictions, you'd find that he actually has a pretty poor track record.
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Interesting - they just got an investment from Real Networks. According to the article "RealNetworks' technology will become the primary platform for the Rhapsody service and the two companies will explore collaborating on future services." I wonder what this will mean for Rhapsody.
Wrong - they have music from all 5 major labels plus many independent labels. Rhapsody has this as well. MusicNet is a separate company from AOL and is actually owned by three of the five major labels (Warner, BMG and EMI).
By the way they haven't "partnered with the RIAA" for this, they've made deals with individual labels. The RIAA is a trade organization that lobbies for the music industry, they don't license music.
Interestingly, Emusic is actually owned by the largest of the major labels, Universal (OK, technically they're both owned by the same parent company, Vivendi).
The current "on-demand" subscription services (the major ones being Pressplay, MusicNet, Listen.com's Rhapsody) all have licenses from all 5 major labels plus a number of indies that allow them to do the following:
- on-demand streaming (e.g., search for a track and stream it)
- tethered downloads - DRM'd downloads that can only be played on the PC they were downloaded to
- burnable/portable downloads
The licenses from the labels generally require the subscription service to pay a small fee (say, 0.2 cents) for each song streamed or each time a tethered download is played. Each time a portable/burnable download is purchased, the label gets about 50 cents. The music publisher gets an additional fee of roughly 8.5 cents.The prices now are all about $9 to $10 per month for unlimited streams and tethered downloads plus about $1 per track for burnable/portable downloads. Rhapsody and MusicNet currently don't offer transfers to portable players, only burns, but of course you can rip to MP3 after burning.
Currently the selection is variable, with some albums or tracks not available at all, some only available for streaming/tethered downloads but not for burning, etc., but the selection has been steadily improving over time. For example the current no. 1 album by 50 Cent is available on all of the services, and is available for burning. The Norah Jones album that just won 8 Grammys is as well. Some artists like Dave Matthews, Madonna, Metallica and the Beatles own their own digital rights and have not allowed their music to be made available on the subscription services yet.
Another issue affecting availablility is publishing rights - the subscription services need to make deals with publishers representing songwriters in addition to the artist or label who controls the master (recording) rights. In many cases this is why only certain tracks on an album may be available.
USB 2.0 is backwards compatible with USB 1.1.
The article originally said Rackspace. The author corrected the story after I emailed him about it.
As far as I know Rackspace is a managed hosting company. Rackable Systems makes servers - Yahoo and Google both use them. Anyone know if the article has it wrong, and Pixar is actually using Rackable machines?
This article does not represent an official NARAS position. It is the opinion of one member. As the prologue to the article states, this is a paper he submitted to NARAS only a couple of days ago. Perhaps it will have some effect, but at the moment I'm quite certain that the official position of NARAS remains aligned with the RIAA's position.
Anyway, I'm glad to see these guys have managed to stay alive and if their new service is like the old one I'll definitely check it out.
Kleenex is used as a noun - my father says "Kleenex" to refer to a tissue. Of course he also says "icebox" instead of refrigerator...
If you're really interested in a good analysis of the Bush administration's motives in Iraq, check out this article. The conclusion is that it is primarily about oil, specifically control over the price of oil.
Um, guess you missed the announcements that two of the five major labels (Universal and EMI) are doing just that. Universal's price is 99 cents per track, and these are burnable, unrestricted files.
Wrong!
There's no information on Listen's site about Rhapsody 2.0, which will feature burning. The FAQ you list applies to their current service, specifically the Naxos Classical subscription.
The new service will have no DRM, and you will be able to buy as many tracks as you want at 99 cents each. The interesting thing is that they are going to stream PCM audio directly to the burner. So, DRM won't be the issue, buffer underruns will be when their streaming servers can't keep up with your CD player!
How does this compare/relate to commercial efforts such as ParkerVision's Direct2Data and Vanu Bose's company Vanu? ParkerVision has a number of patents on their technology, will this be a problem for you?
This guy's company Escient turned CDDB into a commercial product and later spun it off as a separate company (Gracenote).
The article says he has "grossed more than $1 million" over 8 years. This does not mean he has over a million dollars in assets. It probably does mean he's making a pretty good living, depending on the expenses involved in making light sabers.
I think Get Your War On is an better piece of satirical writing on Sept. 11th and its aftermath.
No, the IRS will actually go after officers of the company and members of the board of directors. Not sure who's on their board but if there are any VC's or anyone else with deep pockets they'll end up footing the bill.
You may also want to check out the Inspiron 8200, just announced by Dell. Has the new P4-M at up to 1.7GHz, up to 1GB RAM, Enhanced UXGA, etc.
As much as people may want to believe this, there's a pretty obvious flaw with the argument that file swapping = CD sales - namely, that even though Napster is shut down, new file swapping services are bigger than Napster ever was.
Um, what about IBM?
This would be a bit pricey for personal use (the jukebox is about $8K), but it's worked out extremely well for high-volume ripping and encoding.
I think that if you were to go back and look at all of Cringeley's predictions, you'd find that he actually has a pretty poor track record.
Ever heard of Phish?