Myspace Isn’t So Good for Music Afterall
Not only are music fans beginning to prefer Wikipedia over Myspace for finding out information about musicians, other fans are using the Myspace forums and blogs to post links to their illegally uploaded mp3s. There are numerous threads within the music forums on Myspace that contain active and unbroken links to full album downloads.
This is rather interesting, especially considering that just recently Universal Music, Sony-BMG and Warner Music signed a deal with Myspace to create “Myspace Music” where fans can listen to free streaming music (of their choice, of course), whilst being bombarded with advertisements. All this, in an attempt to retrieve revenue lost, from… illegal mp3 file sharing.
I found these forums searching for information on the upcoming Breeders album, Mountain Battles, set for release on the 7th of April, only to find a leaked copy fully available to download.
The question is - was the temptation to download it too much? Or did I simply click the “report abuse” button and quickly move on.
What do you think?
The Music Industry is Anti-Innovation
I’ve been following the “Big Four vs Eircom” story today and getting very annoyed over the whole thing. Coincidentally, this month the MP3 Player is 10 years old, and 10 years ago the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) tried to ban the sale of the first mass-market MP3 player (Diamond Multimedia’s Rio PMP300). Diamond countersued, and won, claiming that the RIAA’s actions were an attempt to impede the growth of a market (digital music), which it didn’t control.
Rumour has it that in the late 90’s Sony were in the process of developing a hard drive based MP3 player, but pressure from Sony Records (members of the RIAA, and were obviously anti-MP3) meant the project was shut down. Then Apple came along in 2001, launching the iPod, thus reaping the oh-so-many benefits.
Clearly the music industry bosses are just bitter.
They can’t keep up with the market and they certainly can’t control illegal downloading. There is no technical solution to filtering and banning peer-to-peer file transfers and Eircom can’t and won’t do it. There’s no point in trying to control the digital music black market, it will always exist and always HAS existed. What the music industry needs to start doing is offering consumers better value for money and incentives to start buying CDs again.
I mean, for god’s sake, they’ve had the last 10 years to think about it.
Over the last few years I’ve seen some fairly awful attempts to engage the consumer for example: full albums available on 64mb SD or MiniSD cards, access to secret sections of an artist’s website only if you purchase the CD, “bonus” DVDs that are really just teasers/trailers, etc.
I honestly don’t understand why I can’t just walk into HMV and connect my MP3 player via USB and pay to instantly download a full album that comes with a nice little book full of lyrics and artwork. I like lyrics and artwork. Yet, so many bands neglect to include lyrics in the album sleeves. So, why would I bother buying the CD if it doesn’t offer me anything extra, except for being another plastic dust collector on my shelf?
Photos: Uh Huh Her
Lots of strong emotions about this gig and a lost blackberry. Have a listen to the band here. There are many many more photos on my flickr page.
Guide to the Creative Zen
Back in November I wrote that the next gadget that I was going to buy was the Creative Zen, and believe it or not, I did. That’s actually quite unusual for me, as more often than not a total information overload (damm Internet!) usually leaves me undecided for a very long time. At the last minute I almost listened to the little voice that said “What about that cheap iPod? It could double as an external hard drive” even though I don’t need one. I’m glad I didn’t listen because I’m totally in love with my Zen. It’s so perfect for me. Perfect size for watching a few videos now and again, perfect for popping into my pocket to walk down the road listening to some tunes. Perfect for flicking onto the radio to catch a news/traffic bulletin… oh, and the microphone is going to eventually come in handy during lectures (at least that’s the idea). It also has this one shortcut button that you can assign to open any application on the player - mine simply plays all my songs on shuffle, it’s seriously handy. You know what? I can’t imagine an iPod being so versatile… at all. Accessories wise, I bought a case for it but haven’t felt the need to actually use it, because it feels so sturdy in your palm. I also got a pair of Sony headphones (the standard creative ones in the box are seriously low end) and one of those sticky screen protectors so I don’t scratch it whilst it’s bouncing around with my keys and change.
There are some minor drawbacks, however. This IS of course the case with most technology these days (what, you expect it to work out of the box?!) Despite what the sales people drone, even an iPod won’t play your DVDs for you straight out of the box. A number of minor tweaks are required.
Guide to the Creative Zen
The first step with the Zen is to update the firmware for the device. Firmware is a computer program, it’s similar to an operating system (like Windows) and it can be updated in order to have new features added (just like Windows). You can find and download this on the Creative website, or directly from here (links to the European site). All you have to do is make sure your Zen is connected via USB before opening the downloaded file.
The second step is to download and install the newest version of Zen Media Explorer (this is a very handy utility for transferring files to the player), also on the Creative website, or here. Once this is done, your player and transferring files will run smoothly. If you don’t follow these two steps be prepared for the occasional need to reset the player and you might also encounter a few issues with transferring large numbers of files.
So, now you’ve got music… but what about a few videos? Personally, I don’t even bother ripping DVDs, I get all my video goodies online, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t still have to convert them. Unfortunately, Zen Media Player doesn’t convert videos very well (just trust me on that one). Thankfully there are many free converters out there. I currently use iRiverter, which you can download here. This will convert videos you’ve downloaded from the Internet, like movie trailers etc., but it will also convert DVDs to play on your Zen.
The reason I’ve chosen to recommend this software is because it is the fastest I’ve tried, but in order to get iRiverter working for you (as the name suggests, it’s not exactly designed with the Zen in mind), you’ll need to download this file (links to anythingbutipod.com, registration is required). The folder where you have installed iRiverter has a subfolder called “profiles”, unzip the file and save it in this subfolder. When you’re using iRiverter make sure that you change the device that you want to convert the DVD for to “iAudio” and then “D2″, the reason we do this is because the settings for the iAudio D2 player are the same as the Creative Zen.
Ripping DVDs is can seem like a daunting task, but all it requires is some patience and you’ll eventually get the hang of it. Depending on the length of your DVD, it can take quite some time to convert and this all depends on how much computer memory you have for the task. If you find it’s taking a long time, don’t sit and wait for it to finish, go be productive elsewhere for 30 minutes. Although, converting video files you already have on your computer takes very little time in comparison.
What’s the next gadget that you want to buy?
Today’s Science Week submission… because I enjoyed writing one yesterday and if I have a chance I’ll do tomorrow’s (Which invention has helped you most with your working life?) and Saturday’s (In your opinion what was the best invention in 2007?) too.
An mp3 player that isn’t an iPod…
Ask anyone about MP3 players and obviously the iPod is perceived as the ubiquitous model. This is the work of incredible marketing on the part of Apple and despite masses of criticism (quick battery death, difficult repairs etc.,) the iPod has managed to outsell its competitors, even when the likes of Creative and Archos seem steps ahead of Apple in terms of quality, durability and innovative thinking. These are some of the reasons that the next gadget I want to buy will be the new Creative Zen.
The Creative Zen is a flash based mp3 player, similar to the iPod Nano, both of which are very different to the iPod Classic model which is a hard drive based player. There are some major differences between flash based players and hard drive based players, it’s not only price and size, durability is the key.
Hard Drive based mp3 players
A hard disk drive (HDD) stores your data on rapidly rotating platters with magnetic surfaces. Picture the internal components of an iPod (or any other hard drive based player) as a small disk, spinning continuously as your songs load and play, quite similar to a CD spinning in a discman. You can even feel the slight vibrations of the disc when holding an iPod in your palm. These moving parts make the iPod quite fragile, especially if you drop the device while it is in use.
Flash Memory based mp3 players
Flash memory is a solid state storage drive (SSD), meaning that everything is electronic rather than mechanical like in a hard drive. This indicates that there are no actual moving parts, making flash based mp3 players more resilient to both dropping and everyday use. It is for this reason that flash based players are favoured by joggers and athletes.
The iPod Touch, Nano and Shuffle are all flash based players and in comparison to their more popular counterpart the price to storage space ratio is far higher. For example the 16gb Nano is €199 and the Classic 80gb is €249. Flash players might be more expensive than hard drive players, but they’ll certainly outlive any hard disk players on the market (this is especially true for iPods, having been criticised heavily for their seemingly built-in obsolesce).
This is where the Creative Zen comes back into consideration. It has an SD memory card slot which gives you unlimited media storage possibilities. The idea being that when your Zen becomes full you simply buy a memory card(s) for it. The latest SD memory cards are available in up to 32GB in size and although these are expensive at the moment, flash memory is following Moore’s law which indicates that the price should continue to drop at an exponential rate as the maximum capacity increases. What I really like about the Zen having an SD card slot is the fact that I already have SD cards from mobile phones and cameras, which I can re-use in the Zen.
The other huge selling point of the Zen is the 2.5inch screen – the same size screen as the iPod Classic but the Zen is a fraction of the size. Its size is comparable to a credit card and is a very slim 0.44-inch thick. Surprisingly though it actually feels very sturdy in the hand. The Zen also plays a wider variety of file types, so no need to convert your entire music collection or to use iTunes, you can even use Windows Media Player or Winamp to manage your music and video files. The Zen can also be used as a dictaphone as it has a built-in microphone and also has an FM Radio (a must for a PhantomFM fan like myself) – 
these are two features that you must purchase additional accessories for in order to have them on an iPod, accessories that cost over €50 each.
Overall the Zen represents, to me, a better investment than any other kind of mp3 player would, especially an iPod. I’m going to be a very happy music/video lover once I get my paws on one of these.
You can view other entries to today’s question over on Damien Mulley’s blog.
Meeting My Hero
I think Im finally ready to write something about the amazing experience I had on Monday. So here goes… More »