Player Blog Category Archives: Content

Online Music Store Comparison

ExtremeTech has taken a look at the many popular online music stores and compiled their thoughts into one big roundup. All the biggies are covered: eMusic, Apple's iTunes Music Store, MSN Music, Napster, Sony's Connect Service, Musicmatch, Rhapsody, Virgin and the Wal-Mart Music Downloads Store.

As you can see, there are a lot of choices and a lot of variables to consider, so their last words are probably the best:

All of the services we looked at offer free limited-time trial periods, so if you've been looking to expand your music collection, and are looking to move beyond CDs, then give one of these services a try. In some cases you'll need to give a credit card number during the trial period, and the cancellation is an opt-out process where you'll stay in the service if you don't actively de-activate your account. So if you decide a service isn't for you, don't forget to actively shut the account down to avoid unwanted credit card charges.

Learning Japanese Through your MP3 Player

If you've considered learning Japanese (or any language foreign to you), using your MP3 player to help might be a novel way to go. A recent Ask MetaFilter question has several good answers.

Note that even though the original poster mentions the iPod specifically, any audio player should equally useful.

Napster to Go Review

Endgadet has written a review of the new Napster to Go music service. Unlike other online music stores, such as Apple's iTunes Music Store, that let you buy specific tracks for a flat rate, Napster to Go is "buffet style". As long as you continue to pay the monthly fee, you can download as much music as you want. When you stop paying, the Napster DRM technology won't let you play the music you downloaded anymore.

Which style, if either, is right for you is a personal choice, but the Engadget review (and the many comments that follow) should help you decide.

Related Links:
Napster To Go Launches
Napster to Go Superbowl Commercial

Creative Zen Micro Now Plays For Sure

Creative has released a firmware update for the Zen Micro that adds support for Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM technology. Napster to Go, among others, uses PlaysForSure to protect music, so the Zen Micro is now compatible with Napster's newest service. [Via Nomadness]

To install the firmware, download the file from the Creative support site, connect the Zen Micro to your computer, run the download .EXE and then click Upgrade.

Public Libraries Can Now Offer Downloadable Audiobooks

In what may be a first, the Great River Region Library system of Minnesota and other public libraries have begun offering free audiobook downloads to their patrons. Currently 700 titles are available and 30 new titles will be added each month.

The audiobooks come from Recorded Books and are licensed to libraries by NetLibrary. Even if you don't have a NetLibrary account, you can still browse the audiobook collection.

Unfortunately the DRM protection technology NetLibrary uses isn't compatible with the Apple iPod. It does, however, work with Microsoft WMA-compatible devices, which includes just about every modern MP3 player except the iPod.

If you don't have a NetLibrary account, check your local library's website. If they're a NetLibrary member, you can probably login or create your own NetLibrary account through their website.

Once you're logged into NetLibrary, you can either download CD or radio quality copies of the audiobook. Once downloaded, the files will be accessible for 21 days, but you can renew them once.

Note that even though your public library may be a member of the NetLibrary system, you may not have access to the audiobooks. If that's the case for you, contact your library directly and encourage them to subscribe to the audiobook plan.

Making Drive Time More Productive

You're probably already aware of the availability of CD audiobooks from retailers and libraries that can be easily ripped to MP3 for use on your audio player. Now text-to-speech software company NextUp has taken this concept a step further. They just announced version 2.0 of TextAloud which will "read" text into MP3 audio files that you can use with your MP3 player.

Theoretically you can "listen" to just about anything online: newspapers, eBooks and even (heaven forbid) work-related documents.

If you want to check it out, there is a free demo of TextAloud.

Also, even though the demo doesn't include it, you can get additional AT&T Natural Voices to read your docs. AT&T has several different male and female voice styles that do an impressive job on your text.

PS: here's this post read by the TextAloud Mary voice.

Napster iRiver H10 Deal: Over in the Blink of an Eye

For a very short period of time, Napster was offering a free iRiver H10 to the first 1000 people who subscribed for a year. Since a year of Napster to Go costs about $180 and an H10 retails for $280, this was pretty much a no-brainer. Needless to say it didn't last long and 1000 lucky people are getting an iRiver H10 on the cheap.

As with most other hot deals, keep an eye on eBay as people start to auction off their lucky catches.

Even if you missed it, Napster does have a few specials for new Napster to Go subscribers. If you subscribe for 3 months, you get $45 off the retail price of the iRiver H10 or the Creative Zen Micro. Of course, this isn't much of a deal unless you were going to subscribe to Napster to Go in the first place.

Napster to Go Superbowl Commercial

Why wait until Sunday? Napster has bought commercial time for Napster to Go during the Superbowl. If you'd like to see the commercial now, it's available online here.

As an added bonus, Napster included exciting shots of people jogging with their MP3 player and listening to music on their laptops!

Napster To Go Launches

Online music store Napster launched its Napster To Go service today in the US, Canada and the UK which allows members to download an unlimited number of songs per month onto both desktop PCs and compatible MP3 players. The service costs $14.95 per month and is the first to use Microsoft's WMA-10 digital rights management (DRM) technology, also known under the label Plays for Sure.

Napster to Go isn't like other music stores such as Apple's iTunes Music Store, which charges $0.99 per track but lets you use the song perpetually. Rather, Napster to Go doesn't charge per track, but you can only listen to the music while you continue to pay the monthly subscription fee.

Also, since the service uses a brand new technology, only a few, select devices are currently supported: iRiver H10, Creative Zen Micro, Gateway Photo Jukebox, iRiver H320 and a few others.

Presumably iRiver, Creative and Rio are working to update their older devices to be compatible as well.

Don't look for the iPod to join list, though. Apple has its own store and iPod devices are the only ones allowed to use it. Generally, every other MP3 player vendor has lined up behind Microsoft to use their song protection technology.

More bits at Tech Digest UK, Yahoo! News and Engadget.

iTunes Music Store Goes North

Apple has opened yet another branch of its iTunes Music Store with the launch of its Canadian site. Their breathless press release features words like "revolutionary", "pioneering" and "legendary" throughout, so don't bother reading it or you'll have to wash your eyes out with soap. We just wanted you to know that iTunes Canada opened.

Tunes are 0.99CDN (about 0.84USD). As tempting as it sounds, we're not sure if you can buy tunes from the US from the Candadian store.

The MP3 Experiment

The mp3 Experiment is the world's first live theatrical performance that audiences will experience exclusively through headphones. There are no actors. There is no host. Audience members will download an mp3 track from the show's website in advance, load it onto their portable players, and bring it with them to the show.

The lights go down, a video projection cues the audience to press play on their mp3 players simultaneously, and the show begins. The mp3 track is an intricate mix of music and instructions from an unknown voice. The show is 100% audience participation; the crowd becomes the show, working together to create pure happiness on stage.

Even if you can't make it, you can still download the audio from their website.

Jump into Podcasting

Recently there has been a surge on interest in podcasting so we'd like to provide a quick intro and note some resources to get you started.

First off, what is podcasting? Essentially it's a new way to receive audio content periodically from syndicated web sources for later listening on your audio player. That's quite a mouthful, so let's break it down a bit more.

You may already be familiar with weblogs, newsreaders and, maybe, RSS. PlayerBlog is a weblog. We make period posts. People who are interested (and we thank you for your interest!) in being notified when there is a new post subscribe to our newsfeed in their newsreader.

So far so good? The new twist with Podcasting is that the "posts" are actually audio files (radio show-style or music or anything) that you can listen to at your leisure, but the concept of posts, newsfeeds and newsreaders is still in the mix.

So now that you know what podcasting is, here's how you can get started listening and making your own podcasts. Engadget has guide for getting podcasts onto your iPod or on WMA audio players, which includes just about everything but the iPod.

Once you've figured out how to make it work and gotten iPodder running, here is a good place to start for podcasts.

Free Download of Wired's Cover CD

Need some new tunes for your audio player? LegalTorrents can hook you up:

A 320kbps MP3 version of November 2004's freely distributable Wired Magazine cover CD - includes Beastie Boys, David Byrne, Dan The Automator, Gilberto Gil, Cornelius, and many more Creative Commons-licensed tracks for remixing, spreading - unmissable.

[Via BoingBoing]

Ballmer Says iPod Owners are Thieves

Steve Ballmer, the ever-quotable CEO of Microsoft had a few choice words for the iPod legions (and presumably other audio player device owners as well) that haven't embraced Microsoft's Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology. Basically he said you are all thieves:

At the heart of the debate is Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology which will let content providers such as record labels and movie studios keep control of their intellectual property (IP) - or at least ensure all royalties are paid and copyright observed.

Billing Microsoft as the good guys and Apple the villains of the piece - at least as far as corporate America, rather than users, is concerned, Ballmer said: "We’ve had DRM in Windows for years. The most common format of music on an iPod is 'stolen'."

"Part of the reason people steal music is money, but some of it is that the DRM stuff out there has not been that easy to use. We are going to continue to improve our DRM, to make it harder to crack, and easier, easier, easier, easier, to use," he said.

[Via Slashdot]

The New Napster

Jason at Digital Media Thoughts has written up his experiences into a brief review of the new Napster online music store. So far? Not good:

I've been using Napster for a couple of weeks now and while I like several aspects of it, the more I use it the more frustrated I am with it.

Tethering, Tying and You

Engadget has a pair of interesting editorials on tethering and tying. Tying is the practice of selling a "parent" product that requires a separtely sold "child" product to be complete: razors and blades, printers and toner and (apropos of this site) iPods and iTunes music. Of course, you aren't forced to buy music from iTunes. But if you are buying DRM-protected music, these pieces are relevant and thought provoking.

The first is from NYU professor Siva Vaidhyanathan:

Tethering should be a great deal for hardware makers. They all seem to be trying to corner the market on "secondary goods."� Whether they make coffee makers, garage door openers, ink-jet printers, batteries, video games, or digital music files, producers are employing tools that range from copyright to contract to design to freeze out generic competitors.

But some times, as with the coffee maker, such tethering limits consumer choice to such a degree that many consumers who would otherwise jump into the early adoption game eschew the new device in favor of diversity and flexibility.

Next is the response, written by Greg Scher:

Like iTunes™ protected files, MP3 files are tied to the presence of a standards-compliant player in order for you to hear the music. MP3, contrary to some assertions, is not an open format in the truest sense of the word "open"�. Makers of software and hardware players must pay a license fee to the owners of the MP3 standard in order to produce compliant products. The portability of MP3 comes at a price that is paid for by developers of MP3 players and encoders, like Apple. As a consumer, you should be aware of this. Someday, the ability to play an MP3 file may not be as free as it is today.

More bits at BoingBoing and a whole bunch more weblogs.

Related Links:
Real Networks Introduces Harmony

Real Networks Introduces Harmony

Real Networks announced a new technology that will supposedly ease some of the incompatibility problems of digital music store DRM systems between different types of devices. The technology is called Harmony and will be included in a beta version of RealPlayer v10.5, available on Tuesday.

The problem that necessitated something like Harmony is that there are a number of DRM protection technologies in wide use today. DRM is supposed to keep purchasers of digital music from freely duplicating songs by controlling how and where the content can be used. There are a number of schemes in use today, but all are incompatible with each other.

Real Networks has its own DRM technology, Helix, but the Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra was the only device that supported it. Harmony, then, was designed to bridge Helix-protected songs (purchased from Real's online music store) onto devices previously incompatible with Helix. Essentially, Harmony converts the protection wrapper from Helix format to the DRM format of the target device. This conversion shouldn't (theoretically at least) degrade the quality of the music, since only the protection wrapper is being changed. According to Real, Harmony make a laundry of devices Helix-compatible:

With Harmony Technology, RealPlayer Music Store supports more than 70 secure portable media devices, including all 4 generations of the iPod and iPod mini, 14 products from Creative, 14 from Rio, 7 from RCA, 9 from palmOne, 18 from iRiver, and products from Dell, Gateway, and Samsung. Generally speaking, Harmony supports any device that uses the Apple FairPlay DRM, The Microsoft Windows Media Audio DRM, or the RealNetworks Helix DRM, giving RealPlayer Music Store support for more secure devices than any other music store on the Internet.

It is worth noting that the reason why Real only had 1 compatible device before today was largely uninterest on the part of audio player makers. The big two in the DRM race are Apple and Microsoft. Microsoft was compatible with just about every device on the market, except for the market-leading iPod. Manufacturers just didn't see the need to add yet another standard into the mix. As was widely reported, Real CEO Rob Glaser attempted to get Apple CEO Steve Jobs on board, but was flatly turned down:

In April, Glaser e-mailed Jobs suggesting they meet to discuss making the iPod compatible with RealNetwork's music store, an alliance that would help fend off digital music advances by their shared rival, software giant Microsoft. Instead, RealNetworks said Apple officials did not respond and accused Apple sources of leaking the private e-mail to reporters.

Also, there is one big caveat to Harmony and one big implication. The caveat is that Harmony doesn't allow you to covert between the two dominant schemes, Microsoft WMA and Apple iTMS. Harmony converts from Real Helix to WMA or iTMS only.

The implication, however, is that Real or other companies could bridge between WMA and iTMS. This would be a much bigger deal, since the number of songs sold by these stores is drastically larger. Of course, Real's legal department is probably already standing by to take calls from Apple and Microsoft's legal teams.

More bits at Corante, Geekzone, SFGate, NetImperative, Billboard, BBC News, Slashdot, Engadget and BoingBoing.

The DRM Wars, Part XXVIII

CNet has an article on what's happening with copy-protected CDs and the balance of power between the digital rights management (DRM) technologies of Apple and Microsoft. Even though Microsoft has lots of support for its WMA technology, the market-leading iPod keeps it from being a one-horse race. [Via Gizmodo]

Two big players in the CD copy-protection business were relying on Microsoft's Windows Media Audio format to placate consumers and create songs that could be copied in a limited way. That gave Microsoft a potentially profitable inroad into the music industry. Until, that is, Apple's iPod became a phenomenon. The iPod doesn't do WMA--thus, neither will many consumers.

Free MP3 Player from Napster 2.0

In a bid to increase subscriptions, Napster is giving away a 128MB Rio Chiba MP3 player to anyone who subscribes to their music download service for a year. A year's subscription at $9.95 per month works out to be $119.40 and for an extra $80 you can upgrade to a 1.5GB Rio Nitrus. In terms of just getting the player, this isn't that great of a deal. However, if you were already planning on subscribing this is at least some extra incentive.

Probably more important than the promotion itself, is what this says about the state of the resurrected Napster 2.0 business. They simply aren't doing well.

"While Roxio has forecast up to $40m in Napster revenue this year, we believe that they really have to reach close to $300m to break even, and reaching that goal will likely not happen in the next 12 months," said McNealy.

More bits at Gizmodo, Engadget, DAP Review and BBC News.

OD2 Preempts the Party for iTunes in Europe

The day before Apple will launch a Europe-compatible iTunes Music Store, On Demand Distribution (OD2), Europe's largest music-download service, announced SonicSelector. Via a Microsoft Windows Media Player 9 plugin, SonicSelector offers streaming downloads at a penny a song and full downloads for 75p each. It doesn't seem to be available in the US, but at least the Europen non-iPod owners have a place to get tunes as well.

SonicSelector is presumably based on Microsoft's WMA DRM technology. This means that it is compatible with most recent MP3 players except for the iPod.[Via DAP Review]

New MP3 Format Coming

The Fraunhofer Institute, the originator of the MP3 music standard, announced that it is adding support for surround sound and a form of copy protection to the MP3 file format. The surround sound feature will be able to use 5.1 speaker setups if available, but will remain compatible with 2-speaker stereo systems. Fraunhofer is also adding what they call Light Weight Digital Rights Management (LWDRM). LWDRM adds a unique user signature to MP3 files that could be used to track who originates and shares files. [Via Digital Audio News]

More on Audiobooks: Cheap or Free

Today must be content day, as this the 3rd post of the day on the subject. In any case, here are two ways to get cheap or free audiobooks. First, the aforementioned Kevin Kelly says that Cracker Barrel stores have audiobooks for $20. But when you're done, you can return them minus $3 per week that you had it. Not a bad deal if you frequent the Interstate highway system.

Second, Boingboing tells us that science-fiction author James Patrick Kelly is experimenting with free audiobook downloads of some of his work.

Kevin Kelly: Salvaging a Commute

If you haven't already discovered the world of audiobooks, your MP3 player is a great place to start. Books in MP3 format are starting to become available and are a great way to spend a commute. Kevin Kelly has a dozen reasons why you should give audiobooks a try.

Also, don't forget that Lawrence Lessig's latest book Free Culture is available in DIY MP3 audiobook format.

iTunes Updated on Its Anniversary

Today is the one year anniversary of Apple's iTunes Music System (ITMS). To commemorate the day, Apple has released an updated version (v4.5) of the iTunes software for both Mac OS X and Windows.

New features include iMix and relaxations of DRM authorization policy. iMix lets you create playlists with track commentary that you can share with others, like the celebrity playlists that Apple produces. Also you can now authorize 5 computers to play your purchased tunes, instead of 3. The number of times that you can burn purchased music to CD has been reduced to 7 from 10.[Via Slashdot]

CNET Launches Free Music Download Service

CNet announced today the opening of its free music download service. CNet owns the former MP3.com, but we don't think that this is the content that was housed there previously. Rather, it is CNet's effort to reconstitute a MP3.com-like site. The MP3.com name will be used for an, as of yet, unlaunched music news site.

Also, don't forget that eMusic still has its 50 free MP3s deal going on as well.

Room for 1000 Songs is Enough?

Jupiter Research has released the results of a recent survey that suggests that space for "1000 songs" is sufficient for average consumers. 1000 songs with Apple's iTunes AAC or with 128-bit MP3 encoding would be roughly 4GB. Not suprisingly, this is the size of the extremely popular Apple iPod Mini and Creative Nomad MuVo².

BBC News and CNet also have articles on the survey.

From the BBC News article:

"[T]he report said that almost half of those thinking about buying a portable player, 45%, would like one that could play video."

From the Cnet article:

"Hard drive size isn't the only thing that matters to music lovers. When asked which features matter most, 55 percent listed a rechargeable battery, 52 percent said small device size, and 49 percent said the ability to connect the device to their computer. Vendors should be cognizant of these priorities, Jupiter said"

50 Free MP3s from eMusic

If you're a cheapskate like us, you like being able to try something first before buying it. Now eMusic, the online music store, has come through for us. Right now they have a free 2-week trial that will let you download 50 free MP3s. Even if you don't subscribe, you do get to keep the 50 MP3s. With their subscription service, tunes are as low as 22 cents each.

Even better, most of the MP3s are encoded at a higher bitrate with VBR, which is whole lot better than the fixed 128-bit encoding used in the past.

Streaming MP3 of Lessig's Free Culture Now Online

As mentioned previously, Stanford University Law Professor Lawrence Lessig's most recent book, Free Culture, has been re-fashioned into a freely available audiobook. The finished collaboration is now available online at Turnstyle.org.

New Book Available for Audio Format for Free

There's a interesting experiment going on now: an attempt to create a homemade audiobook from Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig's new book, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. Even though the book is now available at regular online and brick-and-mortar bookstores, Professor Lessig has made his book available online for free via the Creative Commons license.

If making a new book freely available online wasn't enough, some folks are taking a stab at producing an audiobook. This is also freely available for download and is the perfect thing to put on your MP3 player for the daily commute or while washing dishes.

Currently, all but two chapters have been recorded and made available. Check back at this site to get the last bits when they're done.