MP3

Swapping Out My XM Radio for a Zune

Posted by fogview at 12:48 PM on June 30, 2009

I’m a long time XM Radio customer, starting over five years ago with a $9.95/month plan. Since the merger with Sirius, I’ve seen my plan increase to $12.95/month. A few days ago I received an “Important Information About Your XM” email from XM Radio saying that my monthly rate will increase by $1.98/month for a “U.S. Music Royalty Fee.” (I guess they didn’t make it $2.00 because they thought I would notice the increase.) So, now it will cost almost $15/month for a service that has increased 50% over the past five years. This is after the merger with Sirius that was going to make the service more affordable for everyone.

After the iPhone 3.0 launch, I found a free Sirius/XM application for the iPhone that allows you to stream Sirius/XM channels. I though this would be a great thing until I found out that this free application requires you to be a Sirius/XM subscriber and to play an additional $2.99 for a “Premium” upgrade. This would push up my monthly cost to $18!

So where does the Zune come into all this? I purchased a Zune when they first came out and used it for a while but it was replaced by an iPod Nano and iPod Touch. The Zune desktop software (Windows only) is now up to version 3 and Zune software has much improved. The Zune Pass is a monthly subscription service that gives you unlimited access to music in the Zune Marketplace for $14.99/month. In addition, you can download 10 DRM-free songs each month.

I mainly use my XM Radio to listen to music in car and I’m thinking I can save some money and get 10 free songs a month by switching out my XM service for a Zune Pass. By bringing back my Zune and signing up for a monthly Zune Pass, I can download lots of music on my Zune for trips in my car and build up my DRM-free music collection (for use on my iPod). As an added bonus I can download and play songs on multiple (Windows) computers. I generally use my Mac for day-to-day use, but I also have a couple of Window machines nearby, so this is not a problem.

I think Satellite Radio is a great thing and would love to keep the service but I feel it’s pricing itself out of business. Before you had a choice between two satellite radio services but now we are down to one, and a costly one at that.

Now, if I can just figure out where I put my old Zune player and hope that it still works.

73’s, Tom

Tags: satellite radio, siriusxm, xmradio, zune, zune pass

Posted in MP3, Music

3 Comments

Why I Like Amazon Music

Posted by susabelle at 6:26 AM on May 20, 2009

I have been a consumer of Amazon MP3’s for at least two years. Probably longer. I choose to buy music through the Amazon MP3 downloader above almost anything else. One simple reason: no DRM.

Amazon MP3’s can be downloaded for great prices, and they can then be burned to a CD, moved to an MP3 player, transferred to another computer, whatever you want to make your listening easier. With iTunes, if I download a song or album, I have to use it on that machine, or on my iPod, but can use it nowhere else. In our house, there are four people, 7 computers, and four MP3 players, only one of which is an iPod. iTunes may have a great selection of music, but because there is no flexibility in use, iTunes is pretty much useless to me.

From Amazon last week I downloaded an album of 50 kid songs for my 7 year old. I burned them onto CD and placed them on her computer so we could update her MP3 player when she is ready for new music. I also downloaded two jazz albums for my own use, burned them to CD for my archives and also uploaded them to my iPod. And I downloaded an album of circus music for my husband that he will use for background music when doing shows. I burned them to CD and they are now in his show trunk. And finally I downloaded the latest Green Day album for my 15 year old. She immediately put it on her MP3 player.

I paid $23.95 for all of this music. The same music on iTunes would have cost well over $100, and the songs would have all had to go on my iPod. With Amazon, I can download whatever I want and give it to whichever family member is desiring it, and save it to whatever device I choose. This flexibility pushes Amazon to the top of my list when it comes to music accumulation. I live in constant fear that I will lose my downloaded iTunes music in a computer crash or iPod failure. With the Amazon music, I know it’s always there, in multiple places, and that if I crash a computer or my iPod, I can still retrieve my Amazon downloads either from the CD I put them on for archives, or by logging into Amazon from another computer and re-downloading them (for free).

Another bonus for using Amazon? They often have freebies, or 99-cent album sales, or special deals (I got the Green Day album for 5.99 as a deal of the day). When it comes to pinching a penny, I’m an expert, and I definitely take advantage of Amazon’s specials and sales.

To be fair, I have also tried eMusic, and while it’s a great service with decent prices, selection is rather limited and can keep me from using that subscription enough to make it worth paying for. Perhaps when they are further developed, they will be a better service. eMusic downloads are also DRM free and can be burned to CD or uploaded to any type of MP3 player.

Posted in MP3, Music, amazon, drm, ipod, itunes

5 Comments

Pimp Your MP3 Player

Posted by shane at 11:04 AM on October 4, 2008

I just saw a cool open source product to freshen up an old mp3 player from Rockbox. It is a firmware product to improve the user experience if your outdated player needs a kick and it is free of course. It supports a lot of Apple’s players obviously but also does not leave out the less popular players which is a huge positive for me. I have a Creative Zen which is not on the list yet but my daughter has a Sansa which is possible to upgrade. My experience has been that the player may die before I get tired of the firmware but I am very rough on my players. To be honest though, I have never even thought about the possibility of changing the firmware on a player. Good thing this internet thingy is still around for ideas to flow every which way. There may even be a different firmware that is available for my Zen so I will have to start a search. I am pretty happy with what I have but there is no harm in window shopping.

All this being said, be careful & if you don’t know what you are doing you should leave well enough alone. It can void your warranty but chances are that it is out of date anyway if you need new firmware. True geeks won’t have much fear though. Some of the screenshots I saw over at Lifehacker were very nice. So give this software a try on that old ipod that is collecting dust in your drawer. I think I will experiment on my wife’s Nano today since it is jacked up anyway and will not turn off.

Tags: firmware mp3 player, ipod, rockbox

Posted in MP3, geeks, ipod

Comments 1 Comment

How to fight The RIAA

Posted by shane at 8:06 PM on October 2, 2008

It seems like the RIAA is unstoppable in its crusade to sue music lovers into oblivion. They are using the courts to get their way with ridiculous judgments being handed out. A single illegal downloaded song can cost a person thousands. The RIAA really does not want to go to trial; they hope to scare people into paying up when threatened with a lawsuit. Most people will just pay up to avoid the extra hassle of facing a trial. I am not advocating stealing music because I believe it is stealing when you take something without paying. However the music industry (not all artists… look what Radiohead did) is being bull headed instead of changing with the times. And these judgments are not punishment that fits the “crime” There is no way that a few songs should cost as much as they do in penalties. The question is what can we do to destroy the RIAA.

I don’t think trying to pass any laws will help because the lobbyists are more incentivized than voters. They make money to get laws passed or to prevent laws from being enacted. Voters are just regular people with jobs & real lives. We don’t have time to know every single detail of what to vote on and when to do so. It is a very difficult thing to make changes through the voting booth. Tough but not impossible I know. Maybe a better way is to wreck the chances of any jury awarding outrageous cash to the RIAA & other such scum based groups. One way to do that is FIJA (Fully Informed Jury Association). Basically the Constitution set up the average person to be the final branch of government. We the People are the final road block to oppressive government. If lawmakers pass bad laws which are ruled on by corrupt judges then the jury becomes 12 super powerful humans that can do good. FIJA looks to educate Americans on a jury’s role in trials. Now this not mainstream stuff & judges will actually throw people off juries if they are found to be members of FIJA. So it is not going to be something that the powers that be will endorse, but the Constitution is supposed to be the highest law in the land. The concept is that a juror can not only find a defendant not guilty based on the evidence but also based on the fact that the law is BAD. The jury is in control. No really, they are. No matter what the judge tells them to ignore or base their findings on, they have the final say. So if I were on a jury and I knew I could prevent a real injustice from happening I would think it was my duty to do the right thing. If the word could be spread about FIJA then juries everywhere could be used to do away with bad judgments like what the RIAA goes after. This is a big task I know but I see no other way because the RIAA will not stop until someone stops them over & over again.

Tags: abuse of power, court cases, fija, mp3 downloads, riaa

Posted in MP3, Music, riaa

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Best Buy + Napster = Good Investment

Posted by susabelle at 2:04 PM on September 17, 2008

A lot of people are saying that Best Buys’ purchase of Napster was a bad idea. I disagree. This actually might be a great thing for Best Buy and it might just put Napster back on the map. And it’s really not the same as Blockbuster – Circuit City deal.

First of all, forget what Napster did in the past – it’s irrelevant. We’re not ignoring the past, we just are not going in that direction. Napster of 1998 is not Napster of 2008. I have a couple friends that still use the service and they have basically told me it’s no different than any other music service like Rhapsody or iTunes.

Next – Imagine what Best Buy can do with Napster. Something as simple as offering free music downloads with purchases. If you can get free music, why not go to Best Buy for a stereo, vacuum cleaner or computer?

Someone gets a new computer and you can install 100 of your favorite songs. Or even Geek Squad will do it for a little extra. Nice little perk for you to get a PC or Apple computer.

Because of this, I would expect the music section of Best Buy to shrink. Instead of selling CD’s, It would be prudent to focus on box sets and downloaded music. I could even see a Kiosk in the Best Buy to allow people to bring their MP3 players in to get more music.

Car Stereos could see the best benefit from this. You get a 30 gig hard drive MP3 player for your car and you get a 6 month subscription to Napster. You drive off with a new sound in your car and music to play while driving off.

I would also guess Napster will get an expansion of Video on their site. Music Videos, Live events, etc. Not sure if Movies would also be part of this, but it’s not impossible.

There is one thing I would suggest Best Buy do with Napster – Promote the free and low priced stuff. Local bands’ music, Podcasts, Videocasts, Books on Tape, etc. Set up a decent area so people can turn their Napster into a full Media experience.

This is not like the Blockbuster Circuit City deal. I could have definitely seen Blockbuster do the same thing, but with Napster, there’s a bit more flexibility. All that, and you don’t have to return the DVD’s to the store.

We should see a big push of this merger this holiday season. Retail has always had only one goal – make more money. This might just be the advantage to get people to get their holiday gifts from Best Buy rather than other online and retail stores.

Posted in MP3

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Pandora Should Leave USA

Posted by shane at 2:56 PM on August 31, 2008

I don’t know how Pandora works. I just know it does. Pandora is an online music service I’m sure most of you have heard of if not used. I started using it last year and I absolutely love it. It learns what you like as you use it. You pick a single song or artist when starting up and it selects songs that it thinks you will enjoy based on some algorithm that is beyond my comprehension. I have been listening to Pandora since I sat down in front of my computer today and have heard about 2 songs that I was not crazy about and zero that I hated. That is a pretty good music service in my opinion. I hate fm / am radio because of the commercials. I have no time for them. That is why I like podcasts because most have no commercials. Even the live reads on some podcasts like Todd’s are fine because they take up less time and I think they sound more authentic because they are coming from the mouth of someone I trust for information.

I think it was the last podcast when Todd mentioned that Pandora might have to go to a subscription model since they are having to pay so much to some group (RIAA I assume) to play the music. If I were in front of my computer all day I would gladly pay a reasonably price but I work outside everyday while playing podcasts / music on an mp3 player. I think they will survive if they go to that model but I wish it did not have to come to that. I have heard songs that I either have never heard or did not know the details on and now love. How stupid is it for the RIAA & music artists to stop a service that puts music that they want to sell in front of millions of potential customers? I could easily download a program to record the music that is streaming through Pandora or I could keep track of the data for the music I like then go get the music through bit torrent. And I could get this music for free without Pandora but I don’t. I want musicians I like to make a great living & get rich. And it is just as easy to get my mp3’s from Amazon’s DRM free music service with one click purchasing as it is to steal it. The people who download for free are mostly younger people who don’t have the money to buy all the music they want. So the artists would likely never see any money from these people anyway until they were able to buy instead of get it free.

The RIAA is doing a disservice to musicians everywhere. Whether you agree with my logic or not the fact is that music is available for free and it can be gotten anonymously. So musicians better get with the program or become extinct. This is not 1985 so you better adjust to the marketplace. You cannot sue your clients and became profitable. I don’t know how the RIAA backs up their lawsuits but I want to see people just ignore the lawsuits & see what happens. Can they garnish wages, etc? I am not advising this action I just want to know how they plan to deal with people who non cooperate. If I were in charge of Pandora I would move my operations overseas & do like the Piratebay & keep my server locations secret. They have played by the rules and still have been attacked. They need to fight fire with fire.

Tags: drm free, pandora, riaa

Posted in MP3, Media, business, drm, internet, riaa

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Can Dell challenge Apple in MP3’s

Posted by todd at 7:42 AM on August 19, 2008

A recent article in Businessweek discusses how Dell plans to make a second play into the MP3 space based on its recently acquired Zing software and the ex Apple iPod executive, Tim Bucher, that came with it. The strategy that they are taking looks to drive the MP3 player market right into Dell’s sweet spot, but the question is going to be whether they can produce an attractive player, and if they cannot what other ways could they take advantage of the market.

Dell has a history of taking a trial run in a market, leaving and coming back stronger running back to when they first entered the laptop market. The failure of the first attempt caused them to post their first ever loss. They studied the lessons they learnt from this and re-entered the laptop market bigger and better. Since then they have had trial runs in the server, storage, workstation, printer, peripheral and leasing markets before re-launching to greater success after having learned the lessons needed. Typically the trial run has been with third party re-badging with the second slice being with their own designed equipment. That Dell has previously played in the MP3 market and is now re-entering suggests that they have a very good idea on how to make money.

The crux of what has been made public to date is to create an open distribution system that multiple vendors can use. It sounds like they might be setting up a system where they build a wholesale media warehouse and offer a simple set of retail solutions and services that other parties can buy. They could take a cut on the pass through, or could even charge at cost if there was other ways for them to gain revenue from the system. If this is correct it is a system that I believe could really work.

If anything about the iPod has driven its success though, it is the utility of its design and the (relative) ease of use of iTunes. While Dell can get the second down, it is not particularly renowned for its design work. Even if they can find designers, what features could they offer over the iPod that could attract people away? It will likely come down to a player with similar features at a lower price as Dell is still the lowest cost of sale vendor around. For this to work for Dell the volume needs to be very high. I have my doubts.

The revenue then needs to come from the service. We already know that the position of iTunes is not unassailable with Amazon currently taking large chunks of market share, the trouble Apple has had attracting more studios over to the DRM free iTunes plus. The key here will be to dominate the back end. At the moment the best you could do to sell licensed music yourself would be an affiliate program, having a wholesale backend would allow you to set up a store and take a direct cut. The difference is that with a front-end sales system you can dictate your own margins. Giving the record company a single entity to negotiate with, while allowing them to get a large retail presence will also suit them greatly. This will be an interesting story to watch develop.

Tags: Dell MP3

Posted in MP3

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Uploading Your Vinyl Records

Posted by shane at 11:22 AM on August 14, 2008

If you like vintage records then you’d love Cliff Bolling. This guy is such an enthusiast that he digitized his collection, started a website, and began uploading his music to it to share. The first thing that comes to mind is copyright of course. But most of these records are apparently no longer for sale so there is no damage to the artists. But even if they were it is unlikely that 1 out of 100,000 people would know about these artists and an even smaller percentage would buy one of their records. So let’s say one of the artists would like to get paid some small amount if possible but the records are not being made anymore nor are they being made in CD format or available in MP3 format at online music venues. Likely the musician’s target audience is as old as he is. Let’s say 60-80 year olds. Likely they are not surfing the internet to get his 1940 hit in mp3 format and since the music is not available in physical form they cannot get it that way. The way I see it is the musician needs a new younger audience so the only way that audience will be created is by good people like Mr. Bolling sharing his collection online. The problem most artists, musicians, writers, etc have is their obscurity not people pirating their materials. If no one knows about your work how you can sell it? Would it be better to have 1 million downloads of your 1942 song go out free to possible new customers or have zero downloads go out? The answer is obvious. If no one knows about you are you really in business? Last year my cousin said he had just bought a USb turntable to convert old records. They were from her family’s skating rink back in the day. He said he and his son had a great time listening to all those songs that you rarely hear now. I bet at least a few mp3 downloads happened from that experience.

As of today Mr. Bolling’s website is down. According to the article update linked at the bottom of this post, apparently it is not due to the dreaded RIAA. But it is due to a huge traffic increase due to his press coverage online. Yahoo is his hosting company which according to a quote from Mr. Bolling “the option I’ve subscribed to offers unlimited bandwidth and unlimited data transfer” should not have ripped his site down. This goes to show another example of companies promising unlimited cell minutes, data transfers, and bandwidth only to go back on their word when unlimited gets to be too much for them. It is a tough battle for us normal people trying to share media we like with others. Between gangs like the RIAA and controlling internet service providers there may be a shift in the near future. There will always be sharing online but more and more people will begin trading hard drives with each other as storage devices get cheaper every day. If I were Cliff Bolling I would just transfer my domain to godaddy, make a smaller website, and upload my mp3s to places that will host for free then link to each song from his site. Filefront is a good service that I use sometimes. I don’t see that they would have a problem with any copyright stuff either.
Original article link.

Tags: Hosting, MP3, riaa, vintage records, Yahoo

Posted in MP3

Comments 1 Comment

Sony, will you ever learn!

Posted by todd at 5:23 PM on January 8, 2008

I despair of Sony ever deciding to do anything to make their customers life simpler. Sony-BMG have announced they are facing up to reality and releasing music without DRM. In typical style for the current Sony management, they cannot even do the right thing right. Rather than just release their catalog to one of the existing online distributers like iTunes or Amazon in unprotected form, they are releaseing only 37 albums and they are available only from Sony’s Musicpass store. The details of the albums they are releaseing are in their press release.

And just to turn a bad idea into a completely stupid one, they have created a long and complicated process to buy an album online.

1 – Go to a store, that’s right an actual physical trip to a store like BestBuy or Target where you could also buy the physical CD while you are there.
2 – Buy a “Platinum MusicPass” gift card for $12.99
3 – Scratch said card for a code number to validate an album purchase
4 – Go back home and log into MusicPass
5 – Use your code to buy an album from the extensive selection of 37 available.
6 – Wonder why you have no option to buy an individual song
7 – Step into the room of mirrors and have a good long look at yourself, trying in vain to rationalise that what you have done to purchase some music is superior in any way to any other method of getting music.
8 – Resolve to never buy anything Sony sells ever again for fear that their stupidity might somehow rub off on you.

A similarly incredulous blogger on Dvorak Uncensored posts an amusing comparison to a potential new pizza puchasing system.

[It was unbelievably hard to write this post expletive free!]

Posted in MP3

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GNC-2006-12-15 #225

Posted by geeknews at 3:31 AM on December 15, 2006

Lots of great content tonight and some more serious topics that I would love to get some feedback on including what one question would you ask Bill Gates if you had the chance.

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Comments to 619-342-7365 e-mail to geeknews@gmail.com

Listener Links:
Software Inspector
iPod Versus a Zune
MagnaTune
Amarok
iBloks

Show Notes (Non Exclusive)
GWT
Gates DRM
WeedShare
YouTube Home Page
Pingable Sites
Video Stumble
Coke Cooling Tips
FCC and Wifi
AutoRuns
Map the Internet
10K Challenge
New Bandages
Bosch Parking
Microsoft i’m a Zune!
Skype Lie Detector
ISS Solar Panel
ISS New Truss
Comets Ingredients
Google Domains and GoDaddy
9 Million Macs
Solar Flares
MP3 File Informationals

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tags: godaddy, iss, mac, Microsoft, MP3, Podcast, zune

Posted in MP3, Microsoft, Podcast, godaddy, iss, mac

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Russia to shutdown AllofMp3.com

Posted by todd at 12:27 AM on November 29, 2006

Allofmp3

In what can only be described as a stunning turn of events it appears that Russia has agreed to shutdown AllofMP3.com as of this writing the site was still up and online. I am sure that many will be disappointed if the site indeed gets shutdown. The question I have is where will it re-surface next? But I think everyone knew that the sites days were numbered. [TechCrunch]