Autechre will be broadcasting live from the Warp Records HQ this Sunday at 8pm, which I believe translates to 3pm EST. I’ve got Audio Hijack Pro queued up and ready to record… It’s been a while since I’ve actively listened to Autechre, but I always like it and am looking forward to this broadcast. It’s pretty intense music in general… if you can’t take dissonant and heavy beats mixed with distorted noise and ethereal synths, you probably won’t be too into it. In my house, it’s headphones only. Their latest album Untilted, is online and can be streamed today…so far so good.
The Return of Album Art?
On recommendation, I picked up the latest Verve Remixed 3 through iTunes and for the first time noticed there was an included PDF of the album art. As you might have heard iTunes can catalog more than simply music files and this is a great way to bundle the full art and info — not just a single cover. While it’s not the same as flipping through the booklet while listening to an album, it does at least give you a more complete experience. I hope more albums start coming this way.
Russell Simmons
As I was walking to pick up dinner tonight I noticed a particularly blinged out black SUV (think it was a Suburban) but did not think much of it until I went inside and saw Russell Simmons slurping some soup and chatting via bluetooth on his Blackberry 7100t. He seemed to be traveling with a partner / driver / protector — aka very large dude sitting a few seats over at the sushi bar to give his man some space.
MSN Music, Messenger and Sprite
I just caught this post at Principius which reveals a very interesting brand integration through the MSN Music site.
MSN Music has a new setion called “The Scenario†which includes polls and music recommended by Miles Thirst and a number of featured artists and they have also created a new channel on MSN Radio called “Thirst Radioâ€.
The team over at MSN have also put together a few things for MSN Messenger as part of the deal as well…of course they have the usual sort of stuff…backgrounds, user tiles and emoticons…but they have also created…“The Conversationatorâ€. “The Conversationator†is an “activity†for MSN Messenger which allows you to send little audio grabs from Miles Thirst to your other buddies on MSN Messenger while IM’ing them…a little annoying, but its the first external marketing use of this sort of technology on Messenger we have seen. [principius]
As is noted later, the Agency (Ogilvy) is really not behind this at all, but rather it’s based on a deal that was struck by MSN (who built the experience) and Mediavest, the Media Agency for Sprite / Coke.
As a Mac user, I can only check parts of the site out, but I have to say it’s definitely cool. I don’t know how you would find the site – perhaps as simple as browsing the hip-hop section on MSN or spotlight content… It will be interesting to see whether it’s purely online, or whether there are additional placements which try to attract the youth market.
syncOtunes
syncOtunes seem like a great way to sync the libraries of multiple machines. It copies the files across to another machine and imports them to your second iTunes library. I have not played with it yet, but would actually prefer to see a system that simply synced the library file itself, leaving the tunes in one place. In my config I use multiple machines and essentially the same library file, which lets me mount the network drive and play anything I want. I manually sync my iPod so I can copy to it from any machine as well.
The kleptones invite you to take a journey “From Detroit To J.A.”
Why not to Pay the Napster Taxman
Pretty interesting analysis on the Napster To Go service – especially interesting after seeing their spots in the superbowl. As someone who digitized his whole collection I can fully relate to this. I still wouldn’t mind topping off the tank though, but I guess I would prefer it come through iTunes so I could continue have a single, simple management system for all of my music.
From where we sit, the math doesn’t break down terribly well in Napster’s favor.
Let’s take a look at consumer A. This consumer goes to Amazon.com and does a search for Creative – one of the Napster supported music device makers – and picks up a 20GB player for $249.99. Let’s assume he keeps the device for three years, paying Napster all the time. That’s $538 for the Napster service, bringing the three-year total to $788.19.
Consumer B types iPod into the Amazon.com search engine and finds a 20GB device for $299. Apple doesn’t offer a subscription service, so this customer has to buy songs at the 99 cent rate or at $9.99 per album. Subtracting the price of the iPod from the $788, consumer B would have $489 left over for music. That’s roughly worth 489 songs or 49 albums.
We posit that during this three-year period both Consumer A and Consumer B will actually end up with close to the same number of songs on their devices. Customers do not, as Napster suggests, pay $10,000 to fill their iPods with 10,000 songs just because the capacity is there. They take their existing music, CDs and MP3s, and put that onto the device first, then later add iTunes songs as they go along. A Napster customer would have a similar mix of old music and new downloads.
The big difference here is that after the three years are up, Consumer B has something to show for his investment. He still owns the music. If the Napster customer stops paying for the service, his music is all gone. He’s paying $179 per year to rent music. This isn’t high quality stuff either. It’s DRM (digital rights management)-laced, low bitrate slop. [The Register]
Napster To Go
I love this idea… it’s not enough to get me to switch to Windows, but it is certainly a good sounding deal. I wonder if Janus DRM in Windows Media Player would even be supported on the Mac.
Napster To Go launches Thursday and costs $15 a month. It’s the first digital music service to use Microsoft’s long-anticipated Janus technology, which allows monthly subscribers to take their music with them instead of having to pay for an individual song each time they want something new in their MP3 player.
…
As long as subscribers keep paying the monthly fee, they can transfer as many songs as they like from Napster’s catalog, which now totals more than 1 million tunes, to a portable device. If Napster users want to burn tracks to CDs, they must pay the standard $1 price tag. [Wired News]
Sirius Enlists Record Executive for Its Satellites
According to the NYT…. Sirius has struck an exclusive pact to sign Jimmy Iovine, chairman of Interscope Records, as a consultant and adviser in the development of programming and marketing arrangements.
Motorola’s iTunes Phone
Engadget scores a picture from the Motorola Keynote at CES which showed off the first of quite a few iTunes capable phones coming this year. This looks like a very nice form factor and will allegedly use a similar interface to the iPod Photo which so photos, and pictures will most likely sync through in the same manner as an iTunes connected device.
While I personally like the idea of this phone and could consider something like this as a second device (maybe for my wife) this particular phone is not for me. While the masses don’t want tightly converged devices, I do. The thought of going back a step to carry a second device for email and other Palm related activities is not going to work for me. Looks like the headphone jack is on the top… no word yet on whether it will be a 2.5mm jack or whether standard headphones will be easily supported. I’d bet that if this is a 2.55mm jack that a variety of new accessories to support this and other pending phones will soon arrive benefiting those of us on the Treo and other similar units.
Let the year of the MP3 phone begin…
RIAA goes well beyond just suing consumers
They want your machine to go down down down…
BoingBoing reports on a hole in some Windows DRM that is being fully exploited by record industry pal Overpeer to infect user machines. Lovely.
Xm or Sirius with Apple?
While all the rumors say that Sirius has something cooking with Apple, I just caught an XM exclusive album on iTunes via my newsreader. A quick search revealed another XM album as well as well as a track from Sirius…
I guess they’ve both been dabbling…
Slip Slip Streaming Away
Rogue Amoeba has something very nice cooking for current or future Airport Express owners…
Rogue Amoeba is pleased to announce our newest product, Slipstream. Slipstream is the first and best way to send audio from any application directly to remote speakers attached to Apple’s renowned AirPort Express device. With Slipstream, audio from any application can be sent to the AirPort Express – users longing to send audio from applications like RealPlayer and Windows Media Player need look no further than Slipstream. [Rogue Amoeba]
iPod beats MyFi
Cnet takes the MyFi, XM’s portable player for a spin and gives it a pretty healthy smack-down. Sounds like XM’s naming strategy – stations like Fred and Ethel – are not as easy to get as Sirius’ choices like Purejazz and Chill. I’d still eventually like to see a portable Sirius player he says less than a week into usage. So far I totally dig it. I’ve had the radio going all day basically on the Chill station but with some Jazz (both Purejazz andd Standards) thrown in for good measure.
Back to the review for a sec… it is hard to beat your own personal taste with the radio compared to what you might find on your iPod’s playlists but the right programming can easily keep you happy.
Music Choice via PCS
Given my recent interest in Satellite subscription radio I find this announcement to be pretty interesting, though for now I think I will continue to ride the free wave for cellular… With my Treo I can easily stream from Shoutcast using Pocket Tunes Deluxe for free. I’m not a sprint customer and this is not what I would consider compelling enough to interest me to switch, though it does speak to the network and what you might be using it for other than just making calls.
Music Choice Today is a new music streaming service that is expected to be launched soon by Sprint PCS. Through Music Choice Today, Sprint customers will be able to have unlimited music streaming for $5.99 a month. [Mobiletracker]
Doing some Sirius Listening
We received the Tivoli Audio Model Satellite as a gift and it arrived today… I activated it just before dinner and have been enjoying it immensely since. The radio is pretty small and got a “wow thats actually pretty handsome” from my wife – so well done Tivoli! Since we live in NYC, it was a touch tricky getting a good signal with the antenna, but we have that resolved for the time by moving it closer to the window. I’ll probably have to spring for an antenna with a much longer cable so we can connect it to the stereo and still get the same reception. That’s a small glitch, though obviously critical in the whole thing. We face East and are close to the river… There’s no satellite in range, but we are getting a decent terrestrial connection
Sound is rich and warm directly from the radio even in mono which is how it’s setup currently. With headphones, I am very pleased… a touch more volume would not kill me, but perhaps I should look at it more like personal protection that I can’t totally blast myself out. The remote is a slim Bose-like credit card, which are my least favorite as I have larger hands, but I’ll get it programmed into my Harmony soon enough.
Activation of the service was pretty painless, though I’d say I had a rookie guy on the phone. Not sure if that’s a Friday night thing or just holiday season. Steps to listening… attach antenna, plug it in, turn it on and call in with your SID. All told, it took between 5 and 10 minutes to be listening which is really not bad at all.
My wife noticed how great it is to be able to just look up and see who you are listening to and I agree that’s a great feature. Selection is another killer feature. We almost never listen to the radio unless we are renting a car and then it’s reluctantly if the iPod is low on juice or just to listen to the local jazz station since the selection here is pretty weak and filled with commercials. No more…
We’ve listened to some Elvis (13), Kids Stuff (11) and then found our way around the dial through some Jazz Standards (75) followed by Chill (64), a station I will be listening to in heavy rotation. I’ve also been checking out the Reggae (30) and Hip Hop stations and really like Back Spin (43) and Eminem’s Shade 45 (45). There’s much more to check out, including live broadcasting of sports, weather and news. I’ll be able to listen to the Eagles play when they don’t air on TV – like this weekend again!! We’ll probably also be looking into some NPR.. amongst many many other choices.
While I did not previously appreciate the cool factor, I have to say I really dig it. I can see immediately adding this to any future car we might buy. I noticed that Sirius offers free streaming access to everything for subscribers which is very cool for when you might be away from your radio.
Highly Recommended!
WeFunk Radio now in Podcast
The iPodder Directory notes the launch of the WeFunk Radio Podcast…
Eminem on SNL
Call me crazy, but I think Eminem was reading from a teleprompter during his performance of Mosh to keep up with his lipsynching… There were definitely a few out of sync moments.
I like the song, the video and the message, but it was still a surprising reveal.
XM Radio via PC
This is a nice bonus to Windows Media users… though I wonder when or if this will reach other platforms like the Mac via iTunes. There’s no reason for it not to play through really… Sort of defeats the whole satellite bit since you no longer need an antenna making this simply premium subscription radio.
XM Satellite Radio and Online Radio subscribers will be happy to know that they can tune into their favorite XM Radio stations via Windows Media Player 10 Digital Media Mall or through Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005’s new XM Online Spotlight channel. The XM Radio Online service will cost subscribers $7.99 a month, while XM Satellite Radio subscribers will receive a discounted rate for XM Radio Online of just $3.99 a month. [eHomeUpgrade]
Pocket Tunes to Wirelessly Stream Music Collections
It will be interesting to see how this works… You could actually do this now via Slim Devices free server software which already connects directly to your iTunes library or simply a folder of tunes. This service sounds like it will allow for a simpler solution to browse and select tunes. Slim makes it easy to stream but since you need to connect to your library over a data connection it can be a bit slow to do on a GPRS connection while streaming. If you’ve already configured the playlist though, you should be cool.
The Pocket Tunes service for Palm OS will allow users to browse their music collections and playlists stored on any home computer. The selected music can be streamed to any Palm Powered smart mobile devices via WiFi hotspots or mobile data services. Users will have access to their entire music collection wherever they may be, without requiring significant memory on their Palm Powered smartphone or wireless handheld. The service will automatically transcode music files stored on the home computer to an appropriate rate based on the available bandwidth. [PalmInfocenter.com]