>>"What bitrate do they encode at?"
Well, they encode at 128k, more than adequate for most purposes, but clearly not for the music archivist.
>>"What kinds of download speeds do you get?"
As far as download speeds, I've seen stuff where I'll pretty consistently get anywhere from 200-300k bytes/sec.
>>"I can't see how this works as a viable longterm business model. Serious music fans like myself are more likely to drop cash for the short term subscription, leech everything they want, and maybe check back in a year"
You know, I thought of this too but I opted for the year subscription anyhow. I think they have a large enough selection to keep me busy for a while, and they do seem to add enough music periodically to keep me interested. It seems that if you're REALLY eclectic, then you'll be spending a lot of time there.
"Fact is, I still buy a lot of CDs, even though my mp3 collection is up around 800 albums."
Yup. I have almost 600 myself, but purchasing CDs has been a harder sell for me lately because 1) there isn't a huge retail selection of things that I like and I *hate* most homogenized mainstream pop, 2) most of what I *do* like is out-of-print, too expensive, or too difficult to find, and 3) I could never listen to everything I have now. I've made it a habit that if I'm going to buy cd's, I'll mostly buy from the used cd sections in stores or download from e-music.
>>"If services like this exist and get better, why would I ever spend more than 0.30 cents an album?"
Hmmm. Don't know. I'm going to take a wild guess here, so please don't take my word as gospel. Any additional input surrouding this is appreciated:
My thought would be that maybe it could end up a little like the video business - you come up with a hit album and keep it off the legal mp3 sites for a while, then maybe after the popularity dies down to a certain threshold, then they can release it on mp3 format.
The main thing is that once they get you on a subscription, you're pretty much guaranteeing them a certain amount of business, one that they can quantify and captilize on older music that they don't pay as much attention to anymore. Hmmm... this is a scary thought: I wonder if they could use that as an excuse to stop producing older CDs and flood the market with their newer stuff...
The one thing that I've noticed with e-music is that they seem to have agreements only with certain labels (as you stated, there's a some independents, which probably explains why I like a lot of the jazz that's on there). That means that there's also a pretty large gap in what they carry until they can get new agreements signed. They've indicated that they're working on this, which I'm willing to support if it means I'll get more bang for the buck on my subscription. I'm definitely an early adopter on this.
What I'd REALLY like to see is that they've purchased rights to a lot more out-of-print music. That would REALLY catch my attention!
..so much as I do an alternate distribution method to CD's...
Having been a saxophonist for many, many years, I listen almost exclusively to a *lot* of jazz. However, on the standard P2P model (or at least WinMX, which is what I've used in the past), I'm pretty much at the mercy of random people to even have specific artists that I'm looking for, working under the hopes that I'll get what I want providing I have something of equivalent value to trade.
This is probably one the things that I like about e-music is that they have a decent jazz selection that I can listen to previews of and have unlimited downloads at my leisure at a good bandwidth. A lot of the retail market doesn't usually have what I want, probably because most of what I listen to isn't mainstream..
I personally see them eventually building this into some kind of centralized repository that maybe someday we can even have all of our out-of-print albums available in this kind of distribution model.
Though I really hate a lot of what the RIAA and the MPAA is pushing in trying to get DRM into every electronic device we own (ESPECIALLY since I'm pretty sure most consumers DON'T WANT IT), I'm personally okay with paying for this kind of distribution model as long as I get to move my downloads over to whatever computer and/or device that I want without ever getting hassled.
NOTE: I am in no way affiliated with e-music or its partners. I just subscribe to the thing.
I do understand what you're getting at, but I guess I've been so inundated with the stereotypical episodes that I get bored with TV very easily - I can usually figure out most of what's going to happen within the first 5-10 minutes of watching a program that I actively have to search out stuff that I find genuinely different. I really want to see creative stuff that bucks the trend. And thanks for the response, BTW - your points are very well taken.
#3. I guess I wasn't specifically looking for another Kirk - I just had a hard time swallowing the fact that it always seemed that they were attempting to portray the fact that humanity had managed to shed the past. That's one of the things I liked about B5 - you still had poverty, greed, and ambition. Stephen, the doctor on B5 once said something to the effect that "it'll take the human race more than a hundred years to evolve past that" or something along those lines, and I think I agree that even several hundred years seems way too short for human nature to change that drastically.
I also liked the fact that earth wasn't necessarily the strongest or the best power. Clearly this is one of the things that made the Borg so popular. I also like storylines that bring the notion to the table that Earth is not invincible.
#4. I guess I do understand your answer on this one too. I think I've just always kind of wanted to see some creativity in the way a storyline develops, and I don't feel like there's a lot of that anymore - I really like unpredictable stories -or- stories that have a lot of gray area. For instance, instead of having one major character that would play a cop chasing a particular criminal throughout the movie, you'd have maybe three successive "heros", so to speak, where one might get killed, one might get maimed, and the third might succeed. The difference being that you'd get to know and care for each one on their own merits. I know people get attached to certain characters, but I've always felt that the hallmark of a good series stems from the fact that the people that you care about can be lost, and from some of the situations they're in, it doesn't (shouldn't?) take much. I find that when characters _always_ come back from the brink of death, it leaves me cold.
#5 - I actually find your Miles/Keiko statement a much better argument - I liked the fact that they built that particular relationship on non-major characters.
As an example for my point, in one of the episodes, they brought a person in who was a classical piano player who played music with Picard when he had his tin whistle. I would much rather have seen this particular relationship develop rather than the Beverly thing. That person was a minor character that I would have enjoyed seeing them eventually bring up as a major one.
1. Why does Star Trek always have humanoid characters shaped with extra bumps on their head that are all roughly the same size? For instance, I liked the concept of the Horta in the original series - I would have liked to have seen something like a Horta Federation captain or maybe a Denobulan or perhaps even an Andorian.
2. Why do they make the ugliest characters evil? I'd like to see some character interaction and consistent development with some butt-ugly insects or 30 feet giants to be direct allies with the good guys. I keep thinking that real aliens would probably take all shapes and sizes, from massively huge or small and don't necessarily always take a humanoid size.
3. Why is it that Picard always tried to play the high ground on the fact that humans had gotten past many of their deficiencies? One of the things that I liked best about Kirk was that he willing to embrace humanity with its character flaws - he said something in "A Taste of Armageddon" to the effect that "yes, we're killers, but the important thing is that we're not going to kill today". I think it'll take more than a few centuries to evolve past our basic human deficiencies.
4. Why don't they have major characters die on a rotating basis and constantly develop the more ancillary characters? Whenever a conflict in an episode arises that puts a major character at risk, I don't always like the fact that I already know that that character is going to make it out fine. (Tashia Yar and Jadzia Dax not withstanding, but then you always know it before the fact because they announce it in the previews!)
5. Why is it that whenever a crew member falls in love with someone that's not in the main storyline, they never seem to bother to develop it? The person that they're involved with always leaves, gets transferred to another starbase/facility, or dies at the end of the episode. There have been times that I would have really liked to have seen some of the relationships develop further.
I think I'm one of the rare few that thought that Deep Space Nine was great. I _loved_ it when Sisko actually hit Q!
I think B5 had a lot of these qualities too, and is still my favorite SciFi show to date..
I'm more on the IT side of things than development, but at my company we had a big project to get out the door by Jan. 1st of last year and we had a senior project guy that practically killed himself getting it done.
We were under resourced, there was a hiring freeze, and eventually he quit in a huff due to the stress and the hours and almost managed to screw the project completely.
I wouldn't work the 15 hour days (unless it were for a short stretch and I knew I was getting fairly compensated for it). I know it's especially tough in this market, but I'd start looking elsewhere immediately - this is a recipe for disaster and a foreshadowing of a management style that's petty and short-sighted. It sounds to me like this idiot just does NOT have the best interests of the employees in mind and will have no compunctions to screw you the first chance they get.
Life is just way too short to be unhappy and in a situation that sucks. I wish you the best of luck, man...
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AGH. Forgot the Paragraph tags and posted the above without previewing. Sorry. Don't know how to edit a post.
>>"What bitrate do they encode at?" Well, they encode at 128k, more than adequate for most purposes, but clearly not for the music archivist. >>"What kinds of download speeds do you get?" As far as download speeds, I've seen stuff where I'll pretty consistently get anywhere from 200-300k bytes/sec. >>"I can't see how this works as a viable longterm business model. Serious music fans like myself are more likely to drop cash for the short term subscription, leech everything they want, and maybe check back in a year" You know, I thought of this too but I opted for the year subscription anyhow. I think they have a large enough selection to keep me busy for a while, and they do seem to add enough music periodically to keep me interested. It seems that if you're REALLY eclectic, then you'll be spending a lot of time there. "Fact is, I still buy a lot of CDs, even though my mp3 collection is up around 800 albums." Yup. I have almost 600 myself, but purchasing CDs has been a harder sell for me lately because 1) there isn't a huge retail selection of things that I like and I *hate* most homogenized mainstream pop, 2) most of what I *do* like is out-of-print, too expensive, or too difficult to find, and 3) I could never listen to everything I have now. I've made it a habit that if I'm going to buy cd's, I'll mostly buy from the used cd sections in stores or download from e-music. >>"If services like this exist and get better, why would I ever spend more than 0.30 cents an album?" Hmmm. Don't know. I'm going to take a wild guess here, so please don't take my word as gospel. Any additional input surrouding this is appreciated: My thought would be that maybe it could end up a little like the video business - you come up with a hit album and keep it off the legal mp3 sites for a while, then maybe after the popularity dies down to a certain threshold, then they can release it on mp3 format. The main thing is that once they get you on a subscription, you're pretty much guaranteeing them a certain amount of business, one that they can quantify and captilize on older music that they don't pay as much attention to anymore. Hmmm... this is a scary thought: I wonder if they could use that as an excuse to stop producing older CDs and flood the market with their newer stuff... The one thing that I've noticed with e-music is that they seem to have agreements only with certain labels (as you stated, there's a some independents, which probably explains why I like a lot of the jazz that's on there). That means that there's also a pretty large gap in what they carry until they can get new agreements signed. They've indicated that they're working on this, which I'm willing to support if it means I'll get more bang for the buck on my subscription. I'm definitely an early adopter on this. What I'd REALLY like to see is that they've purchased rights to a lot more out-of-print music. That would REALLY catch my attention!
Having been a saxophonist for many, many years, I listen almost exclusively to a *lot* of jazz. However, on the standard P2P model (or at least WinMX, which is what I've used in the past), I'm pretty much at the mercy of random people to even have specific artists that I'm looking for, working under the hopes that I'll get what I want providing I have something of equivalent value to trade.
This is probably one the things that I like about e-music is that they have a decent jazz selection that I can listen to previews of and have unlimited downloads at my leisure at a good bandwidth. A lot of the retail market doesn't usually have what I want, probably because most of what I listen to isn't mainstream..
I personally see them eventually building this into some kind of centralized repository that maybe someday we can even have all of our out-of-print albums available in this kind of distribution model.
Though I really hate a lot of what the RIAA and the MPAA is pushing in trying to get DRM into every electronic device we own (ESPECIALLY since I'm pretty sure most consumers DON'T WANT IT), I'm personally okay with paying for this kind of distribution model as long as I get to move my downloads over to whatever computer and/or device that I want without ever getting hassled.
NOTE: I am in no way affiliated with e-music or its partners. I just subscribe to the thing.
#3. I guess I wasn't specifically looking for another Kirk - I just had a hard time swallowing the fact that it always seemed that they were attempting to portray the fact that humanity had managed to shed the past. That's one of the things I liked about B5 - you still had poverty, greed, and ambition. Stephen, the doctor on B5 once said something to the effect that "it'll take the human race more than a hundred years to evolve past that" or something along those lines, and I think I agree that even several hundred years seems way too short for human nature to change that drastically.
I also liked the fact that earth wasn't necessarily the strongest or the best power. Clearly this is one of the things that made the Borg so popular. I also like storylines that bring the notion to the table that Earth is not invincible.
#4. I guess I do understand your answer on this one too. I think I've just always kind of wanted to see some creativity in the way a storyline develops, and I don't feel like there's a lot of that anymore - I really like unpredictable stories -or- stories that have a lot of gray area. For instance, instead of having one major character that would play a cop chasing a particular criminal throughout the movie, you'd have maybe three successive "heros", so to speak, where one might get killed, one might get maimed, and the third might succeed. The difference being that you'd get to know and care for each one on their own merits. I know people get attached to certain characters, but I've always felt that the hallmark of a good series stems from the fact that the people that you care about can be lost, and from some of the situations they're in, it doesn't (shouldn't?) take much. I find that when characters _always_ come back from the brink of death, it leaves me cold.
#5 - I actually find your Miles/Keiko statement a much better argument - I liked the fact that they built that particular relationship on non-major characters.
As an example for my point, in one of the episodes, they brought a person in who was a classical piano player who played music with Picard when he had his tin whistle. I would much rather have seen this particular relationship develop rather than the Beverly thing. That person was a minor character that I would have enjoyed seeing them eventually bring up as a major one.
Thanks for some thought provoking conversation!
2. Why do they make the ugliest characters evil? I'd like to see some character interaction and consistent development with some butt-ugly insects or 30 feet giants to be direct allies with the good guys. I keep thinking that real aliens would probably take all shapes and sizes, from massively huge or small and don't necessarily always take a humanoid size.
3. Why is it that Picard always tried to play the high ground on the fact that humans had gotten past many of their deficiencies? One of the things that I liked best about Kirk was that he willing to embrace humanity with its character flaws - he said something in "A Taste of Armageddon" to the effect that "yes, we're killers, but the important thing is that we're not going to kill today". I think it'll take more than a few centuries to evolve past our basic human deficiencies.
4. Why don't they have major characters die on a rotating basis and constantly develop the more ancillary characters? Whenever a conflict in an episode arises that puts a major character at risk, I don't always like the fact that I already know that that character is going to make it out fine. (Tashia Yar and Jadzia Dax not withstanding, but then you always know it before the fact because they announce it in the previews!)
5. Why is it that whenever a crew member falls in love with someone that's not in the main storyline, they never seem to bother to develop it? The person that they're involved with always leaves, gets transferred to another starbase/facility, or dies at the end of the episode. There have been times that I would have really liked to have seen some of the relationships develop further.
I think I'm one of the rare few that thought that Deep Space Nine was great. I _loved_ it when Sisko actually hit Q!
I think B5 had a lot of these qualities too, and is still my favorite SciFi show to date..
I'm more on the IT side of things than development, but at my company we had a big project to get out the door by Jan. 1st of last year and we had a senior project guy that practically killed himself getting it done. We were under resourced, there was a hiring freeze, and eventually he quit in a huff due to the stress and the hours and almost managed to screw the project completely. I wouldn't work the 15 hour days (unless it were for a short stretch and I knew I was getting fairly compensated for it). I know it's especially tough in this market, but I'd start looking elsewhere immediately - this is a recipe for disaster and a foreshadowing of a management style that's petty and short-sighted. It sounds to me like this idiot just does NOT have the best interests of the employees in mind and will have no compunctions to screw you the first chance they get. Life is just way too short to be unhappy and in a situation that sucks. I wish you the best of luck, man...