Music

Samsung Helix XM2go Portable Satellite Radio/MP3 Player
Announced at the CES 2006 show earlier this month, the Samsung Helix XM2Go has now appeared for pre-orders on Amazon.com (US).
There’s been quite a lot of excitement about the Helix, which comes with an alluring feature set, offering a portable satellite receiver and mp3 player/recorder in a highly pocketable package.
The big news about this unit is its ability to receive XM satellite radio transmissions, letting users combine live XM radio with their personal digital music collections (MP3s and WMA).
XM Satellite Radio may not mean a lot over here in Europe-land, but in America it’s the country’s most popular satellite radio service, offering 160 digital channels, including news, sports, talk and entertainment, traffic & weather with “the deepest playlist in the industry” covering over 2 million titles.
The good news is that the service is commercial free – the bad news is that it’s a subscription service, with plans starting at $12.95 a week.
The Samsung Helix XM2Go lets users record up to 50 hours of broadcast on its built-in flash memory, with users able to build their own playlists on the device, mixing XM radio content with their own digital music.
A handy built-in memory buffer lets listeners save an entire XM radio song even after the song has already played halfway through, and a built-in FM transmitter means that music can be beamed to any FM radio frequency, making it easy to listen to XM content on any home or car stereos.
The Helix offers a neat TuneSelect feature, which alerts users when one of their favourite artists or songs is being played on an XM channel and there’s also built-in support for the XM + Napster music service.
This lets users ‘tag’ a song they hear on the XM radio, and then buy and download the tune song via Napster.
The attractive looking device measures a cutesy 3.7 x 2.2 x 0.6 inches, weighs in at a lightweight 4.5 ounces, with a large 2.2 inch 180 x 180 TFT colour screen dominating the front of the unit.
It’s not cheap at $399.99, (~e335, ~£229) but that’s the sort of price early adopters can expect to pay for such a cutting edge gizmo.
Shipping is expected in early April, with the optional YA-CP100 car kit retailing for $69.99 (~e58, ~£40).
Amazon
XM Radio
22 February, 2006
Dixons Loads Unsigned Music Acts Onto MP3 Players
In an interesting and innovative twist, Dixons have teamed up with Pulse Rated, a Internet radio station, to fill up the empty space on new MP3 players with tracks from unsigned bands.
The 60 unsigned bands – none of which you’re likely to have heard of before – were shortlisted by Pulse Rated from more than 10,000 wannabes, and Dixons will load a freebie tune from each on selected MP3 players.
The music covers a huge range of genres including pop, rock, dance, R&B and hip-hop (no death metal?).
Bryan Magrath, stores and marketing director at Dixons, was honest about the music on offer: “It is an indication of the rate at which technology is moving that just two years ago an initiative like this wouldn’t have been considered. We won’t be giving Simon Cowell sleepless nights yet, but we do believe we can play a role in helping break new and emerging music talent.”
Richard LaBrum, chairman of Pulse Group, commented: “This promotion is an incredible opportunity for these up-and-coming acts to get their music listened to by a much wider audience.”
We expect this initiative to increase our already impressive tally of artists offered recording deals as a result of our activities – all of which are provided totally free of charge to the artists,” he added with a plug-tastic air.
Anything that gives enterprising bands an opportunity to be heard outside their immediate fanbase can only be good for consumers and the band themselves, so we like the sound of this a lot.
Unless the next MP3 player we get comes with a load of boy band tosh, of course.
The first players preloaded with unsigned bands will be the 512MB and 1GB Logik MP3 players, retailing at £39.99 (~$70, ~€58) and £64.99 (~$113, ~€95) respectively.
Dixons
Pulse Rated
20 February, 2006
Motorola Dis Apple, Expect More Microsoft Music Phones: 3GSM
The news is coming out of 3GSM thick and fast. To keep up we’re planning to report is a slightly different way. When we see a press release that we thinks of interest to you, Dear Reader, we’ll put it up in full, with a brief comment at the top. Normal service will be resumed post 3GSM.
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There’s been plenty of rumours about Motorola not being happy with Apple, following the iTunes Mobile launch. Today Mot announce that they are two-timing Apple with Microsoft. Interestingly they say they’ll have OTA (Over The Air) delivery of content by 2007.
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Motorola and Microsoft Plan to Bring More Choice to Mobile Music Fans
Seamless integration of Windows Media technologies will deliver complete music experience and redefine music discovery on Motorola handsets.
BARCELONA, Spain – 13 Feb 2006 – Today at 3GSM World Congress 2006, Motorola Inc and Microsoft Corp strengthened their existing relationship by announcing a collaboration to integrate Microsoft(r) Windows Media(r) technologies on a number of Motorola’s music handsets, which will allow users to access content from the broadest selection of online music stores from around the world.
Motorola’s music handsets will add support for Windows Media Digital Rights Management (DRM), Windows Media Audio (WMA), the enhanced Windows Media Audio Professional (WMA Pro) codec and Media Transfer Protocol (MTP). These technologies will give consumers the maximum flexibility and options when purchasing and playing back their digital music.
Forthcoming Motorola music handsets will enable seamless connectivity to Windows(r)-based PCs via the USB 2.0 high-speed protocol. By supporting MTP, Windows Media Player will automatically recognise Motorola handsets and enable users to quickly and easily sync their music from their PC to their phone. Music acquired from any pay-per-download or subscription store using Windows Media technology will transfer and play back on Motorola handsets.
In addition to making Motorola handsets interoperable with PCs, Motorola and Microsoft plan to provide mobile handset offerings that are tailored for discovering and acquiring music over an operator’s 3G network. Incorporating the efficient encoding capabilities of the WMA Pro codec, this rich music offering will provide operators with handsets optimised for efficient music downloads* over a 3G network. Consumers will also benefit from quick and easy access to high-quality music on the go.
“Our relationship with Microsoft is about making the mobile world seamless with the desktop world and allowing consumers to experience music wherever and whenever they want,” said Richard Chin, corporate vice president of Global Product Marketing at Motorola. “Building on our existing relationship, this expanded collaboration can further enrich the mobile music experience and expand the mobile music offering to our operator alliances and consumers.”
“Combining Motorola’s wireless handsets with Windows Media technologies will significantly advance the mobile music experience,” said Amir Majidimehr, corporate vice president of the Windows Digital Media Division at Microsoft. “Motorola’s upcoming handsets with Windows Media will offer consumers and operators worldwide the widest range of high-fidelity, no-compromise music choices.”
Motorola began shipping Microsoft technologies on select handsets in 2005, and plans to offer Windows Media-enabled music experiences on multiple handsets worldwide in the second half of 2006. Support for over-the-air delivery capabilities and WMA Pro is expected to follow suit in 2007.
13 February, 2006
1Gb Nano iPod Debuts As Apple Cuts Shuffle Price
Keen to further expand their vice-like grip on the portable digital music market, Apple have unveiled a cut-down 1GB version of their turbo box-shifting iPod Nano player.
Apple are hoping that their new 1GB Nano iPod will lure in yet more punters with a wallet-tempting price tag of just $149 (~£86, ~€125), $50 less than the cheapest Nano currently available, a 2-gigabyte model.
The new 1GB Nano can hold up to 240 songs or 15,000 photographs and comes with all the usual Nano features, including the colour display and docking connector.
The company have also announced price cuts for their entry level model, the tiny, screen-less iPod Shuffle which has been reduced to $69 (~£40, ~€58) for the 512MB model, and $99 (~£57, ~€83) for the 1GB model.
Apple are the undisputed lords of the US digital music device market with an estimated 70 percent market share, and these latest price cuts will no doubt have some rival product execs reaching for the bottle in desperation.
As Shaw Wu, an analyst with American Technology Research, put it: “Apple is selling a $69 MP3 player with the best software. How do you compete with that? It’s tough.”
“In the US market they have already won,” he added, estimating that Apple currently has something like 40 percent share of the worldwide market.
The iPod range continues to be an outrageously successful money spinner for Apple, with around 32 million iPods shifted last year, including 14 million during the holiday season.
iPod Nano
8 February, 2006
Get Free Entry to iTunes Music Store Billion Songs Countdown
Apple have announced a competition to become the downloader of the 1 Billion th music track on iTMS.
Just over a year ago we put out a brief piece expressing our frustration at Apple making a PR splash every time it sold another 100m tracks. Our plea … don’t worry about telling us until the next figure was significant.
Well it looks like that day is fast approaching.
At the time of writing, we see on the live track count that they’ve sold just short of 950,981,000 tracks.
The prize for the 1Bn th track is well worth winning
1 x 20-inch G5 iMac
10 x 60GB iPods (5 white/5 black)
1 x U.S. $10,000 iTunes Music Card (good for any media type)
On the back of the billionth hoopla, is the plan to reward track purchasers every time a 100,000 song is hit, which provides
1 x 4GB black iPods nano
1 x US $100 iTunes Music Card
which is also not to be sneezed at.
You know we like to save you money when we can and for those with sharp eyes, you’ll see near at the bottom of the page in light grey (thanks Apple), “*No purchase necessary to win. Click here to submit a free entry form.” Following the link takes you to the form telling that you can indeed make up to 25 free entries a day. We’re not sure on the US rules for competitions, but we know in the UK that free entry is essential when there’s no skill involved with entering the competition.
Best of luck – and let us know if you win!
iTunes Billion Songs Countdown
Free entry form – iTunes Billion Songs Countdown
7 February, 2006
The MP3 Era Spawns Its First Superstars
Now holding the record for the fastest-selling debut album in the UK, the success of young British indie-rockers Arctic Monkeys shows how the Web has changed both the way in which bands promote and market themselves and how people find new music.
Before the Web, keeping in touch with fans (and prospective record buyers) was a tough business for unsigned acts.
For most bands, their only point of contact with their audience was at a gig and once their knackered Transit van had spluttered out of town, there was little prospect of keeping fans notified, short of setting up expensive snail-mail mailing lists or local poster campaigns.
But the Internet has changed all that.
When a band leaves the stage these days you’re more likely to hear them clearly shout out their Web address than a mumbled “thankyougoodnight” and any leaflets will be festooned with .com addresses.
For less than the cost of a handful of flyers, bands can set up their own Websites, offer free downloadable tunes, sell merchandise, maintain free email mailing lists and invite a dialogue with their fans.
The Arctic Monkeys built up their formidable fan base after handing out free CDs of their tunes at early gigs in 2004.
Excited fans uploaded the songs onto file sharing networks to share with others as the buzz around the band built up a head of steam.
Suddenly venues were packing out and the band were astonished to hear punters singing along to songs before they’d released a single record.
With a growing fanbase clambering for more, it wasn’t long before record companies were begging to sign up the band, and last week’s album release on Domino Records saw the Artic Monkeys record-breaking leap up the charts.
Of course, it wasn’t just the Web that made the band a huge success, it was the chuffing great tunes, but it does illustrate how the Internet is changing the way some consumers discover new music, and how bands are able to exploit these new possibilities.
It’s just a shame that the MP3 age arrived after the ‘zenarchist’ KLF had left the music business.
Now that could have been real fun!
KLF: how to have a number one the easy way.
6 February, 2006
Mot SLVR L7 iTunes Mobile Launched By Motorola
Four months after releasing their first iTunes-enabled mobile phone, the disappointing Motorola ROKR E1, Motorola have had another stab at creating the perfect music phone.
Their new, none-more-black SLVR L7 is a slinky non-folding affair, with a design reminiscent of the box-shifting RAZR clamshell phone.
Motorola are hoping that that the new handset will go down better than the ROKR E1, whose well documented shortcomings pinned sales around the 84,000 mark last year – compare that figure to the tens of millions of RAZRs that flew off the shelves in the same period.
The biggest complaint was the laughably feeble memory on the ROKR that could only hold a maximum of 100 iTunes songs – regardless of memory capacity – and a treacle-slow song transfer rate.
Crazily, the SLVR L7 doesn’t fix these sales-losing issues, and comes with the same ridiculous storage limitation for iTunes files and the same Ye Olde Super-Slowe USB 1.1 connection.
Someone’s ‘avin’ a laugh, surely?
Looking at the spec sheets, things get even worse, with the handset lacking the useful music-oriented features seen on the ROKR – there’s no external stereo speakers or dedicated headphone jack, so ‘phones have to be plugged into the charging jack via an adapter. And that’s rubbish.
At least the L7 looks a lot better than its predecessor, with a glass-infused plastic case, anodised aluminium back, stylish flat-keypad design and a large, 176×220, 262k-colour screen.
The pocketable quad-band handset (1.93″ x 4.47″ x 0.45″) also comes with a VGA camera, TransFlash memory card slot and Bluetooth (but not for listening to music).
In a flurry of arty waffle, Steve Lalla, vice president and general manager for mass-market products at Motorola, explained that the, “L7 is really in what we call our ‘self-expression portfolio,’ where design and style is the key premise behind the product”.
We suspect punters would have been far happier if they’d just designed away the ridiculous 100-song limit instead,
The Motorola SLVR is expected to be available in Q3 2005. Pricing to be announced.
SPECIFICATIONS: Sleek, super-thin design without sacrificing advanced functionality
PTT with icon presence indicators for one-touch connections
Integrated VGA camera with 4x zoom and video capture and playback
Bluetooth Class 2 for hands-free connectivity
MP3 player to store, repeat, shuffle and play favorite tunes; 22Khz polyphonic speaker
Up to 512 MB or removable TransFlash memoryWAP 2.0
Downloadable wallpaper, screensaver and MP3 ringtones
J2ME™ MIDP 2.0
Integrated hands-free speakerphone
Messaging via MMS*, IM Wireless Village* and email (POP3, SMTP)
Motorola’s SCREEN3 technology solution featuring zero-click access to news, sports, entertainment, and other premium content.
Motorola SLVR
1 February, 2006
Skype To Sell Warner Music VoIP Ringtones
Looking for new sources of revenue beyond their Internet telephony service, Skype have announced a deal with Warner Music Group to flog ring tones and artist images.
The agreement – the first between a music company and an Internet telecoms outfit – will see Skype marketing the ring tones and artist images.
The tie-in will see Warner Music Group supplying the ring tones to Skype, with each song snippet being available for 68p (€1, $1.50), with pricing for artists’ mugshots yet to be announced.
“We are excited that more than 70m Skype users around the world will now have the ability to enjoy content from Warner Music artists,” said Alex Zubillaga, executive vice-president in charge of digital strategy and business development at Warner Music (that’s some job title – we wonder if he meets people saying, “Hi, I’m Alex Zubillaga, EVPICODSABD at Warners?”)
The service is launching with Madonna as a “featured artist” with Skype adding: “In the coming months, consumers will be able to download master ringtones from WMG artists including Madonna, Green Day, Mike Jones, Paul Wall, D4L, T.I., and many more to Skype’s leading Internet calling service.”
The move sees eBay looking to cash in on their considerable investment in Skype, and with an estimated 74m registered users, there’s considerable scope for some juicy ringtone-shifting action.
Ringtone sales have proved a surprise hit for mobile operators and content providers, coining in an astonishing $4bn in worldwide sales in 2004 – around 10 per cent of the $32.2bn worldwide music market.
Not surprisingly, record companies love the additional bonus revenue scooped in from ringtones, particularly as their emergence comes at a time when sales of compact discs are in decline, partly as a result of illegal music downloads (and partly as a result of their greedy pricing strategies).
Skype
Warners Music
31 January, 2006
First UK Filesharers Sued By BPI
News has broken that two men in the UK have been found liable for file sharing their music. The first ruling of its kind in the UK.
Both men who were ruled against are, as yet, unnamed. The details that are know are – one is a postman, father of two and living in Brighton; the other living in King’s Lynn.
King’s Lynn, as we shall call him, has been instructed to pay £5,000 ‘down-payment’ on costs and damages, Brighton must pay £1,500. Both have been instructed to stop filesharing.
Having been found liable, the two are now exposed to the BPI’s legal fees. Given the City law firms the BPI use, where it’s not unusual to pay £200/hours for their services, it’s going to be an expensive business. BPI have stated that “Total costs are estimated at £13,500 and damages are expected to take the bill even higher.”
Each defense used a different argument. The first, that the BPI had no direct evidence of infringement; the second on the grounds that he was unaware that what he was doing was illegal and did not seek to gain financially.
The second case was dismissed by Judge Justice Lawrence Collins declaring, “Ignorance is not a defence,” which we thought was known by one and all. Given the weakness of this defence, we imagine that this person must have defended themselves. Details of argument against the first were no disclosed.
The names of the people who were sued haven’t been released by the BPI. When we asked for their names, we were told they weren’t to be made available as, “we don’t want to put them through anymore stress.” A bit strange when the stress they’re under, which we imagine to be pretty considerable, would have been caused by the BPI’s actions.
This route, taking legal action against members of the public, has been well trod in the US. Reaction there has been varied from Hurrah! from the majority of the US music business – to Boo! from a large number of citizens, who in reaction have threatened not to buy music from the major music companies.
The BPI is obviously taking this opportunity to pressure the 51 file-sharers that they have in their sights, urging them settle. We suspect that many will take the hint.
27 January, 2006
Pantech & Curitel PT-L1900 Music Phone
Despite being billed as the “Killer-Sound Phone” by makers Pantech & Curitel, we’re happy to report that the PT-L1900 doesn’t emit a murderous noise beam, but is in fact a top notch music phone.
Sporting a full Digital Amp Chipset, the PT-L1900 serves up a sonic feast, with 11 acoustic modes, a 7 band equalizer and 3D stereo sound.
MP3, WMA, OGG, MPEG4 audio/video formats are supported, with a 2 megapixel camera offering video recorder/playback, flash light and digital zoom function.
The Korean manufacturers have excelled themselves with the publicity shots, this time shoving the grinning model into a room full of speakers to underline the phone’s music focus. Well subtle!
Back to the phone, the mid-size device (102X48X25.7mm) is dominated by a large, two inch, 240X320 pixels (QVGA), 262k colour TFT LCD display screen, with a slide out keyboard for phone functions.
Onboard there’s 128MB of memory for MP3 files, with a TransFlash card slot for expansion.
The 125g multimedia smartphone comes stuffed with lots of extras too, including alarm clock, calendar, calculator, memo, text viewer, PC sync, photo caller ID, photo album, photo editor, screensaver, wallpaper and games.
Rounding off the feature set is a built in speakerphone, vibrating alert, MOD (Music On Demand), MMS, WAP browser, PictBridge support, Voice recording and USB connectivity.
The makers claim up to 190 hours of standby time and up to 3½ hours of talk time.
Available in silver and white, we’ve no idea when – or if – this Killer-Sound Phone will make the shores of Blighty, but if you’re prepared to do battle with babelfish, you can find out more information from their website:
Pantech & Curitel
26 January, 2006