LOS ANGELES -- A new Internet music download site for PCs debuting Tuesday boasts the cheapest per-song rates yet but many of the same restrictions on copying that have stymied wider use of other music services.
Although online retailer BuyMusic.com will offer a catalog of more than 300,000 songs from the five major record labels, users of the service will not necessarily have the freedom afforded customers of Apple Inc.'s iTunes service to transfer the music purchased to multiple computers and portable devices, or to burn it to compact discs.
BuyMusic hopes to score the sort of attention that helped drive sales for Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store since its launch April 28.
BuyMusic founder Scott Blum called Apple CEO Steve Jobs "a visionary, but he's on the wrong platform." While Apple users constitute about 3 percent of the personal computer market, BuyMusic is targeting the 97 percent of people with PCs.
BuyMusic, which is based in Aliso Viejo, Calif., will vie for a share of that market with a handful of online music subscription services, including pressplay, Rhapsody, MusicNow and MusicNet, which have not managed to cull substantial customer traffic from the free file-sharing networks.
The service has about 100,000 more songs than iTunes but comparable to pressplay, which was acquired by Roxio and is expected to undergo a relaunch later this year under the Napster brand.
BuyMusic is charging 70 cents for individual song downloads -- 9 cents lower than MusicNow, which previously had the lowest per song price. It's also undercutting competitors' price for a full album download at $7.95. The iTunes' service charges $9.99 for most full albums.
BuyMusic downloads are in Microsoft's Windows Media format.
Still, BuyMusic suffers from some of the same licensing drawbacks that the other PC-based digital music retailers have.
Jobs secured uniform licensing deals from all the record companies that allow all iTunes songs to be burned onto CD an unlimited amount of times, save for a restriction for making multiple CDs with the exact song lists. All songs on iTunes can also be transferred to up to three different computers and to the iPod, a portable digital music player.
Blum was not able to obtain uniform licensing rights from the record labels and artists. As a result, different songs on BuyMusic have different restrictions for how often, if at all, they may be burned onto CDs or copied to other PCs or portable music devices.
By year's end, BuyMusic and the other PC-based digital music retailers are expected to face a competing PC version of iTunes, which has had more than 6.5 million songs downloaded to date.
Well, when my dad tells me he downloaded GIMPrint to see if he could get his old printer to work, I'd say that GIMP (while it's not the same thing) is definitely gaining mindshare.:)
Many of the games I've seen for the Mac compensate for the lack of buttons by engineering the playing experience better. And if they don't, then they don't do well.
Also, many Mac game "Quick Guides" are much MUCH shorter than their Windows counterparts. Like, usually on a 1:4 ratio. I haven't seen this one, but we'll see if that holds true. I WILL be downloading this game.
It's new stuff, standards heavy, but I've seen him a few times on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and have been pleased with it. His performance last week just floored me, though. Fun, upbeat stuff is what I've mostly heard. Check out the comments on Amazon.com. John's a guitarist, with stand-up bass and piano rounding out the trio.
Admittedly, I don't have first-hand experience, but it's my impression that it's not iTunes sharing that was really the "enabler" - that it was a set of third-party plugins that made ripping the streams possible. Correct me if I'm wrong on this.
See my comment subject for more details.;) But, if this is the case, then you're right, it is a bogus fix. You could capture any sort of streamed audio. In fact, Casady & Greene's SoundJam, the precursor to iTunes, had a feature for recording audio streams to MP3. It was one of my biggest "missed" features when iTunes came out. But iTunes surpassed it in other areas, so I was okay with that. I did most of my recording work on my 8600 that has built-in audio in RCA jacks, my TiBook doesn't have that feature, so I didn't miss it too much.
But, if you're Steve Jobs, and you have this fabulously-profitable and popular service, that depends on a tenuous contract with the RIAA...and the RIAA says "You'll make this change, or we'll nullify your contract, and you can kiss your license to sell our music goodbye"
Here, I would argue that the contract is the thing, and that you'd be discounting Steve's experience heavily. This is the original Apple guy, the NeXT guy, and the Pixar guy. This guy knows his business. The iTMS wasn't going to make or break Apple, I don't think he'd have mortgaged the store to bring it to iTunes, which is, speculatively, why he may have been looking to buy Universal. "Okay, if you don't wanna play, then I'll buy my own music company, do my own distribution and we'll just see how long it takes y'all to catch up." Which is not to say that the RIAA didn't come back and say "Well, okay, but we reserve the right to comment on any shady stuff that comes out of this situation", but I don't think Steve likes being told how to do things.:)
As far as I know, I'm entitled to have an opinion. Whether or not you agree with me is another matter entirely! =)
Whether or not you're right is also another matter entirely.;) I'm kidding. Of course you're entitled to your opinion, but it read like you were saying "I don't, but you should". If that's not what you were going for, then I respectfully retract that statement. I know the position of the RIAA, but Apple's position on this issue has historically been pro-use, contrasted with what I see as MS's restrictive, tied-down, kowtowing to the RI/MP-AA use of DRM. If Apple changes their position dramatically, then I will be looking for other products that are not as restrictive, and I'm sure they'll spring up, roaching much of what Apple's worked for in this whole iLife thing.
And your non-Mac-ness doesn't offend. It's kind of cute.;)
It looks as if the WAN sharing ability wasn't even planned - as the documentation from the 4.0 release refers to same-subnet sharing.
I think it probably was either not planned or a late add-on. Jobs referred to it in his introduction of the software, IIRC. They may not have anticipated this "solution" so quickly. Who knows? They may introduce some sort of management as you mention that could unlock the feature in the future when it's more stable, or locked down.
We can hope. But I'm an optimist, and your original reply smacked of pessimism.:)
I think the expression you're looking for is "Apple is fully within their rights on this" - which I won't argue with. If they want to remove a feature from their software, that's their perogative.
Thanks for the help, but both statements work. If their software is enabling piracy, then yes, they are "right" to disable the feature.
We don't know their motivations for removing this feature - but it's reasonable to think that a complaint from the "Big 5" may have been the catalyst. If this is the case, how long will it be until the next step down the slope?
It seems that you are expecting there to be a next step, which is an assumption made under the slippery slope logical fallacy. There may not be another step. And I would almost say that your admission of not using a Mac at all precludes you from this conversation. You can say "I'll never use their stuff because it looks like they're going this way" or "I like all my software and hardware open", but to say you don't use and won't use, then give advice to people who do use on what they should say is somewhat backhanded. "I've never driven or owned a Ford because they suck. You shouldn't drive one, and call Ford and tell them they suck." would seem to be an appropriate analogy, which doesn't make sense to me.
There's also an argument to be made about calling the removal/neutering of a popular feature an "improvement"...I would expect every iTunes user that used this feature to complain to Apple about "spinning" this as an improvement. It's a slap in the face to the customers that are responsible for their success.
I've not seen this "spun" by Apple as an "improvement". On their iTunes 4.0.1 update page it states: "iTunes 4.0.1 includes a number of performance and network access enhancements, and only allows music sharing between computers using iTunes 4.0.1 or later on a local network (in the same subnet)." This does not sound to me like a positive spin, but a plain statement that they have limited the functionality. I would think that people using the iTunes Music Store would have used it for convenience of purchasing, not for ease of unauthorised sharing. People using the cool wide sharing feature of iTunes may be a bit peeved, but it's not like they had the functionality even one month ago, and they may figure out ways to do it again, just not Apple Authorised.
...and I don't really care. I haven't read the posts here yet, but I hope there's not a lot of grousing about it. Apple is fully in the right on this, if their software is being used in a way they don't like, they can certainly change it. They've never been up for pirating, and shouldn't be.
Actually, in looking around last night, I found (I think) that most albums were $9.90, saving that all-important 9 cents!;)
I also did see one album that was over $11, like $11.98, but can't remember which one.
I think it's a fine price. People will complain. I saw the X album "More Fun in the New World" and would've dropped the dough for 3 or 4 songs right there, if I had the dough. But in talking with co-workers and thinking about it this morning, it's pretty much the service I want for a lot of the music that's up there.
Ok, a troll, but a valid troll nonetheless. So, in the interest of wasting server space - "I just got a TiVo with the Home Media option. I'm wondering if the new AAC format will work with it - Does it stream the song from the Mac (already decoded) or does it stream&/or cache the file, then decode on TiVo?"
I just got a TiVo with the Home Media option. I'm wondering if the new ACC format will work with it - Does it stream the song from the Mac (already decoded) or does it stream&/or cache the file, then decode on TiVo?
I just got the USB wireless adapter and haven't set it up yet, so it's a question for those of you who might be a little farther along in this equation than myself...
I guess, but jeez. They should have a section here "NNTNFN" - Not Necessarily The News For Nerds. This should go there.
And I'm not sure the fine line is there. You can report without gushing. Sure, you might be informing, but you don't haveta say stuff like "What can't this device do?" I'm sure there are plenty of us that can tell you *exactly* what it can't do. If you're gonna inform, inform. If you're gonna do a review, then do that. But it's not even a good review.
But you're right. It's not the NYTimes. It's not even the Canyon Courier.
...that it's a big "rah-rah" ad disguised as an article that's short on details but is "cool" because it runs Linux? I mean, that's great, but front-page worthy? Or...even newsworthy?
What can't this device do? Not much, we suspect, given its embedded Linux operating system, graphical touchscreen interface, and sophisticated communications capabilities.
After seeing this recently and "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid", I'd say his movies are vastly overlooked/underrated. Mike Meyers actually just signed a development deal to make movies using old film clips ala "Dead Men...", too, so it's an idea with legs, for sure!
I remember lusting over the Osborne even though we had an Apple II. The screen was too small, but it was just so cool and had *2* floppy drives! You could carry it around! I remember seeing one in person in some computer store after reading the ads/articles in Byte magazine. Sweeeeet.
Seems to me they'd almost have to know what they're talking about when faced with talking to CIO's and purchasers who have been in networking for years. Otherwise they'd be toasted.
CIO: "So, what are the new features of DeviceX that I should know about?"
CiscoSales: "Well, it's got FeatureA, FeatureB, FeatureC...",br>
CIO: "Hm...tell me more about FeatureB."
CiscoSales: "Well, you should really talk to one of our technical experts...."
CIO: "Goodbye."
the poetry is some of the best stuff I've ever read, as it relates to an actual, tangible subject instead of thoughts and gossamer.
For songs comparable to Tom Lehrer, I'd suggest the Animaniacssoundtracks. Most specifically, Yakko's Universe, Planets, Wakko's America, and Presidents. Using familiar tunes to teach, it's great. Especially the ending of Planets. (Kind of need to hear it, but it's classic all the same.)
I've said it before, but it's a moot point and beating a dead horse, so I'll say it again...;)
The labels shot themselves in the foot when they didn't just go with Napster. They had their distribution model already set up, had the installed user base. Napster had like, what, 50 million users? Just start charging $20/month for unlimited downloads. So 49 million bail? That's still 20 million a month they still don't have.
Labels were dumb, now they're trying to catch up. I'm not saying they get what they deserve/reap what they sow, but,...well, yes I am.:)
We're all right about Steve Albini. Point well taken about brevity. And doesn't he hate the term "producer"? Whoever mentioned him as "recording engineer" is more to the point. Lysol makes a good point above about the "Albini Sound".
And mostly, as producer, I think of someone in charge of getting the most out of a band and performance. Albini most likely stays away from all that.
But rograndom especially correct, that it was most likely Andy Wallace's mix that helped the sound. Kind of like Jerry Finn's role with Blink 182. The songs are from the artist, but it's all in the mix, as they say.
And for the first AC that replied to my post, what the hell is your comment supposed to mean? I know plenty about the "music industry", but what else was he supposed to do for Nirvana? Save Kurt from drugs? From Courtney? I'm not privvy to the inner workings of Nirvana, but his best bet would've been to set up the mic's, get in the booth, let it roll and stay out of the way.
Yeah, I heard of Nirvana. Albini produced them after Butch Vig catapulted their sound into the stratosphere of stardom.
Funny, I was just talking with a friend last night about how great Albini is, but didn't do a whole lot for their sound on "In Utero". Butch Vig probably did little more than compress and punch it up.
Albini's article is great, is spot-on with regards to figures, and is a wonderful treatise on the robbery of the music industry, but let's not seemingly portray him as the reason Nirvana got big.
...take time off drinking and learn some computer stuff. Code. Learn how to wire things. Just mess around, it doesn't matter if anyone cares if you screw stuff up now, you'll know a lot later and it'll come in handy.
Especially when it comes to getting a job and enjoying it.
Oh, and don't be an asshole and quit/get kicked out of your band in 1994. You guys will be great, and then you won't have to worry about getting a job.
The Emmys have won for best award show, or best director of an awards show. I remember the director accepting the award while directing the show.
"I just want to thank bla bla bla. Camera 10 (shows that person in the audience, something like that). Camera 3 (back to him). This means a lot, and I'd like to thank my wife and kids at home. This one's for you guys! Camera 8. Cue music. Camera 4. Fade booth audio..."
Slashdot Mirror
By Alex Veiga, AP Business Writer, 7/22/2003
LOS ANGELES -- A new Internet music download site for PCs debuting Tuesday boasts the cheapest per-song rates yet but many of the same restrictions on copying that have stymied wider use of other music services.
Although online retailer BuyMusic.com will offer a catalog of more than 300,000 songs from the five major record labels, users of the service will not necessarily have the freedom afforded customers of Apple Inc.'s iTunes service to transfer the music purchased to multiple computers and portable devices, or to burn it to compact discs.
BuyMusic hopes to score the sort of attention that helped drive sales for Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store since its launch April 28.
BuyMusic founder Scott Blum called Apple CEO Steve Jobs "a visionary, but he's on the wrong platform." While Apple users constitute about 3 percent of the personal computer market, BuyMusic is targeting the 97 percent of people with PCs.
BuyMusic, which is based in Aliso Viejo, Calif., will vie for a share of that market with a handful of online music subscription services, including pressplay, Rhapsody, MusicNow and MusicNet, which have not managed to cull substantial customer traffic from the free file-sharing networks.
The service has about 100,000 more songs than iTunes but comparable to pressplay, which was acquired by Roxio and is expected to undergo a relaunch later this year under the Napster brand.
BuyMusic is charging 70 cents for individual song downloads -- 9 cents lower than MusicNow, which previously had the lowest per song price. It's also undercutting competitors' price for a full album download at $7.95. The iTunes' service charges $9.99 for most full albums.
BuyMusic downloads are in Microsoft's Windows Media format.
Still, BuyMusic suffers from some of the same licensing drawbacks that the other PC-based digital music retailers have.
Jobs secured uniform licensing deals from all the record companies that allow all iTunes songs to be burned onto CD an unlimited amount of times, save for a restriction for making multiple CDs with the exact song lists. All songs on iTunes can also be transferred to up to three different computers and to the iPod, a portable digital music player.
Blum was not able to obtain uniform licensing rights from the record labels and artists. As a result, different songs on BuyMusic have different restrictions for how often, if at all, they may be burned onto CDs or copied to other PCs or portable music devices.
By year's end, BuyMusic and the other PC-based digital music retailers are expected to face a competing PC version of iTunes, which has had more than 6.5 million songs downloaded to date.
But good for you guys for working it out. :)
Well, when my dad tells me he downloaded GIMPrint to see if he could get his old printer to work, I'd say that GIMP (while it's not the same thing) is definitely gaining mindshare. :)
But, it sounds like a good spin from Apple, that they're still "playing nice" with Adobe. All that's left is an Office killer and we'll be set. :)
Also, many Mac game "Quick Guides" are much MUCH shorter than their Windows counterparts. Like, usually on a 1:4 ratio. I haven't seen this one, but we'll see if that holds true. I WILL be downloading this game.
It's new stuff, standards heavy, but I've seen him a few times on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and have been pleased with it. His performance last week just floored me, though. Fun, upbeat stuff is what I've mostly heard. Check out the comments on Amazon.com. John's a guitarist, with stand-up bass and piano rounding out the trio.
Watchmen.
Dark Knight Returns.
Ronin.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
That should get you started. :)
See my comment subject for more details. ;) But, if this is the case, then you're right, it is a bogus fix. You could capture any sort of streamed audio. In fact, Casady & Greene's SoundJam, the precursor to iTunes, had a feature for recording audio streams to MP3. It was one of my biggest "missed" features when iTunes came out. But iTunes surpassed it in other areas, so I was okay with that. I did most of my recording work on my 8600 that has built-in audio in RCA jacks, my TiBook doesn't have that feature, so I didn't miss it too much.
But, if you're Steve Jobs, and you have this fabulously-profitable and popular service, that depends on a tenuous contract with the RIAA...and the RIAA says "You'll make this change, or we'll nullify your contract, and you can kiss your license to sell our music goodbye"
Here, I would argue that the contract is the thing, and that you'd be discounting Steve's experience heavily. This is the original Apple guy, the NeXT guy, and the Pixar guy. This guy knows his business. The iTMS wasn't going to make or break Apple, I don't think he'd have mortgaged the store to bring it to iTunes, which is, speculatively, why he may have been looking to buy Universal. "Okay, if you don't wanna play, then I'll buy my own music company, do my own distribution and we'll just see how long it takes y'all to catch up." Which is not to say that the RIAA didn't come back and say "Well, okay, but we reserve the right to comment on any shady stuff that comes out of this situation", but I don't think Steve likes being told how to do things. :)
As far as I know, I'm entitled to have an opinion. Whether or not you agree with me is another matter entirely! =)
Whether or not you're right is also another matter entirely. ;) I'm kidding. Of course you're entitled to your opinion, but it read like you were saying "I don't, but you should". If that's not what you were going for, then I respectfully retract that statement. I know the position of the RIAA, but Apple's position on this issue has historically been pro-use, contrasted with what I see as MS's restrictive, tied-down, kowtowing to the RI/MP-AA use of DRM. If Apple changes their position dramatically, then I will be looking for other products that are not as restrictive, and I'm sure they'll spring up, roaching much of what Apple's worked for in this whole iLife thing.
And your non-Mac-ness doesn't offend. It's kind of cute. ;)
It looks as if the WAN sharing ability wasn't even planned - as the documentation from the 4.0 release refers to same-subnet sharing.
I think it probably was either not planned or a late add-on. Jobs referred to it in his introduction of the software, IIRC. They may not have anticipated this "solution" so quickly. Who knows? They may introduce some sort of management as you mention that could unlock the feature in the future when it's more stable, or locked down.
We can hope. But I'm an optimist, and your original reply smacked of pessimism. :)
Thanks for the help, but both statements work. If their software is enabling piracy, then yes, they are "right" to disable the feature.
We don't know their motivations for removing this feature - but it's reasonable to think that a complaint from the "Big 5" may have been the catalyst. If this is the case, how long will it be until the next step down the slope?
It seems that you are expecting there to be a next step, which is an assumption made under the slippery slope logical fallacy. There may not be another step. And I would almost say that your admission of not using a Mac at all precludes you from this conversation. You can say "I'll never use their stuff because it looks like they're going this way" or "I like all my software and hardware open", but to say you don't use and won't use, then give advice to people who do use on what they should say is somewhat backhanded. "I've never driven or owned a Ford because they suck. You shouldn't drive one, and call Ford and tell them they suck." would seem to be an appropriate analogy, which doesn't make sense to me.
There's also an argument to be made about calling the removal/neutering of a popular feature an "improvement"...I would expect every iTunes user that used this feature to complain to Apple about "spinning" this as an improvement. It's a slap in the face to the customers that are responsible for their success.
I've not seen this "spun" by Apple as an "improvement". On their iTunes 4.0.1 update page it states: "iTunes 4.0.1 includes a number of performance and network access enhancements, and only allows music sharing between computers using iTunes 4.0.1 or later on a local network (in the same subnet)." This does not sound to me like a positive spin, but a plain statement that they have limited the functionality. I would think that people using the iTunes Music Store would have used it for convenience of purchasing, not for ease of unauthorised sharing. People using the cool wide sharing feature of iTunes may be a bit peeved, but it's not like they had the functionality even one month ago, and they may figure out ways to do it again, just not Apple Authorised.
So, in short, my original comment stands.
...and I don't really care. I haven't read the posts here yet, but I hope there's not a lot of grousing about it. Apple is fully in the right on this, if their software is being used in a way they don't like, they can certainly change it. They've never been up for pirating, and shouldn't be.
I also did see one album that was over $11, like $11.98, but can't remember which one.
I think it's a fine price. People will complain. I saw the X album "More Fun in the New World" and would've dropped the dough for 3 or 4 songs right there, if I had the dough. But in talking with co-workers and thinking about it this morning, it's pretty much the service I want for a lot of the music that's up there.
Ok, a troll, but a valid troll nonetheless. So, in the interest of wasting server space - "I just got a TiVo with the Home Media option. I'm wondering if the new AAC format will work with it - Does it stream the song from the Mac (already decoded) or does it stream&/or cache the file, then decode on TiVo?"
I just got the USB wireless adapter and haven't set it up yet, so it's a question for those of you who might be a little farther along in this equation than myself...
And I'm not sure the fine line is there. You can report without gushing. Sure, you might be informing, but you don't haveta say stuff like "What can't this device do?" I'm sure there are plenty of us that can tell you *exactly* what it can't do. If you're gonna inform, inform. If you're gonna do a review, then do that. But it's not even a good review.
But you're right. It's not the NYTimes. It's not even the Canyon Courier.
What can't this device do? Not much, we suspect, given its embedded Linux operating system, graphical touchscreen interface, and sophisticated communications capabilities.
Come on, that's marketing, not reporting.
Seems that glrotate came to the conclusion via post hoc, ergo propter hoc
Wait a minute, though. Isn't that a logical fallacy?
After seeing this recently and "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid", I'd say his movies are vastly overlooked/underrated. Mike Meyers actually just signed a development deal to make movies using old film clips ala "Dead Men...", too, so it's an idea with legs, for sure!
I remember lusting over the Osborne even though we had an Apple II. The screen was too small, but it was just so cool and had *2* floppy drives! You could carry it around! I remember seeing one in person in some computer store after reading the ads/articles in Byte magazine. Sweeeeet.
CIO: "So, what are the new features of DeviceX that I should know about?"
CiscoSales: "Well, it's got FeatureA, FeatureB, FeatureC...",br> CIO: "Hm...tell me more about FeatureB."
CiscoSales: "Well, you should really talk to one of our technical experts...."
CIO: "Goodbye."
For songs comparable to Tom Lehrer, I'd suggest the Animaniacs soundtracks. Most specifically, Yakko's Universe, Planets, Wakko's America, and Presidents. Using familiar tunes to teach, it's great. Especially the ending of Planets. (Kind of need to hear it, but it's classic all the same.)
The labels shot themselves in the foot when they didn't just go with Napster. They had their distribution model already set up, had the installed user base. Napster had like, what, 50 million users? Just start charging $20/month for unlimited downloads. So 49 million bail? That's still 20 million a month they still don't have.
Labels were dumb, now they're trying to catch up. I'm not saying they get what they deserve/reap what they sow, but,...well, yes I am. :)
And mostly, as producer, I think of someone in charge of getting the most out of a band and performance. Albini most likely stays away from all that.
But rograndom especially correct, that it was most likely Andy Wallace's mix that helped the sound. Kind of like Jerry Finn's role with Blink 182. The songs are from the artist, but it's all in the mix, as they say.
And for the first AC that replied to my post, what the hell is your comment supposed to mean? I know plenty about the "music industry", but what else was he supposed to do for Nirvana? Save Kurt from drugs? From Courtney? I'm not privvy to the inner workings of Nirvana, but his best bet would've been to set up the mic's, get in the booth, let it roll and stay out of the way.
Funny, I was just talking with a friend last night about how great Albini is, but didn't do a whole lot for their sound on "In Utero". Butch Vig probably did little more than compress and punch it up.
Albini's article is great, is spot-on with regards to figures, and is a wonderful treatise on the robbery of the music industry, but let's not seemingly portray him as the reason Nirvana got big.
Especially when it comes to getting a job and enjoying it.
Oh, and don't be an asshole and quit/get kicked out of your band in 1994. You guys will be great, and then you won't have to worry about getting a job.
Other than that, you'll do fine.
"I just want to thank bla bla bla. Camera 10 (shows that person in the audience, something like that). Camera 3 (back to him). This means a lot, and I'd like to thank my wife and kids at home. This one's for you guys! Camera 8. Cue music. Camera 4. Fade booth audio..."
Something like that. Pretty funny.