Music – Page 34 – Digital-Lifestyles

Toshiba Announce First 60GB Music Players

Toshiba have added some new models to their gigabeat series, including the world’s first 60GB digital music player. All players in the gigabeat F series have 2.2 inch QVGA high resolution colour displays and feature storage capacities from 10GB to 60GB. Based on Toshiba’s 1.8” hard-drive technology, the music players will début in Japan in November 2004.

The 60GB model will store 15,000 4 minute tracks encoded at 128kbps in either WMA or MP3 formats – that’s nearly 42 days of continuous music.

Interaction with the gigabeat F players is done through Plus Touch, a plus sign-shaped sensor that allows users to navigate quickly through music libraries and tracks. The players attach to PCs through a USB cradle, and users can rip any CD in their optical drive by pressing the RipRec button on the cradle. Toshiba’s gigabeat Room software manages music on the PC and player, synchronises tracks within designated folders and allows artwork and notes to be attached to music. Supporting Windows DRM, the players are fully compatible with either Windows Media or MP3 files, but no AAC as yet.

So what next? Who will be the first to break the 100GB music player barrier, and when?

The Toshiba players

Chrysalis Launch Music2Mobile

Chrysalis Mobile have launched a new range of licensed products for mobile phones under the name Music2Mobile. The product range will include ringtones, images and, eventually, downloads of full tracks. The label also intend to licence content to other major providers in the UK and abroad.

Music2Mobile has already been picked up by Carphone Warehouse, and they will soon be offering products through their UK stores. That’s right – although the product is available download from internet and WAP sites, the range is principally intended to comprise of branded, physical products. They’ll be popping up in point-of-sale displays in a shop near you soon.

Content is selected on a weekly basis by a team at Chrysalis Mobile to keep up to date with consumer tastes, and will initially feature these three offerings (information supplied by Chrysalis Mobile):

Playlist – full physical catalogue of tunes across seven genres. Content can be requested directly by texting to short-codes, accessing via a music2mobileTM-powered WAP portal or over-the-counter instore using pin-code activation.

Genre Cards – seven individual cards updated monthly, containing ten leading songs within a specific music category; these cards are paid for over-the-counter and the consumer can then select multiple content items from the card list.

Monthly Theme Cards – individual cards promoting official content (including real tones and wallpapers) from a specific artist and negotiated directly with labels; the consumer purchases the card over-the-counter and selects their favourite content for download.

Monthly Tone Chart – a Top 20, instore ring tone chart updated fortnightly. Content can be requested directly by texting to short-codes, accessing via a music2mobileTM -powered WAP portal.

Chrysalis Mobile are not offering full song downloads immediately, preferring instead to wait until network bandwidth and phone technology are capable of delivering the user-experience the company wants.

But why concentrate on retail? Nick Gregg, Strategy Director of Chrysalis Mobile, said “Retail is a logical extension for Chrysalis Mobile given our focus on leading brands that have significant audience reach. Under the music2mobileTM brand we have coupled the development of high quality content optimised specifically for mobile phones with our experience working directly with record labels to provide a real differentiated service for major retail players.”

Chrysalis Mobile

PassAlong Networks Launch Innovative Music Referral Service

PassAlong Networks have launched what should not be dismissed as YAMS (Yet Another Music Store). They are starting with a 200,000 track catalogue and increasing to 500,000 by the end of the month.

There are two interesting parts to this one. Firstly, they actually encourage people to pass music around, and secondly they’re using multiple sales channels for the music they are representing, including eBay. While they’re not the first company to sell via eBay, they are the first to offer eBay-ers tracks from the major labels. They will also be selling via their own site at PassAlong.com.

The passing of tracks is very exciting and something that we’ve been enthused about for a long time. Our logic – what is the most ideal sales person? A passionate one, and you don’t get much more enthused than a band’s fan.

PassAlong allows links to songs to be passed to others via email, instant messaging (IM) or Web sites/blogs and to thank them for the viral spread of tracks, each track that is passed on and purchased by the receiver earns credit for the initiator of the transfer.

The content that they launch with, is protected and they are initially using Windows Media DRM (WME) but are keen to point out that they have (wisely) designed their systems to work with any DRM system or music format.

In October, the company will launch its Discover Music service, which will allow users to publish playlists for others to view, and in turn purchase. Following this, their future plans include offering white-label digital music stores.

PassAlong Networks are a Nashville, Tennessee-based company who were founded in 2002 and are now a 60-person startup. Dave Jaworski, who entered the world of technology at a pre-public Microsoft, after some time spent in radio, heads them.

It is very refreshing to see a company that appears to really understand the music consumers’ drivers and natural enthusiasm. We’ll be watching them with interest.

PassAlongNetworks

PassAlong.com

UK Apple iTunes Too Expensive says Consumers’ Association

Ever since Apple iTunes Music Store and Napster 2.0 launched in the UK, we at Digital Lifestyles have been thinking that the UK pricing has been unreasonably high, being out of step both with the US and Europe. The UK Consumers’ Association (CA) has today mounted a campaign to increase the public understanding of the problem.

The CA has written to the UK Office of Fair Trading (OFT) explaining the situation and highlighting that the current position is possibly in breach of European law. Under Euro law all consumers in all member states should enjoy the same benefits that the single market brings – it’s like if citizens in Seattle had to pay more for their iTunes music than the rest of America. Clearly with a differential between iTunes UK (79p, 1.15 Eu) and Germany & France (0.99 Eu, 67.7p UK) there is not a level playing field. Those UK citizens who understand that they can use either the French or German sites to order directly on find they are charged the UK price if they are not able to supply as an address in either of these countries.

Although the CA campaign is focused on iTunes, perhaps because of the mainstream press attention it has attracted, Apple are not the only service where UK consumers are overcharged. The differential on Napster UK is even greater when comparing their UK pricing at 99p (1.44 Eu) against Apple European iTunes at 99c Eu (67.7p UK). This becomes even more distorted when US prices are used as a comparison 99c US = (55.4p). Clearly albums bought on the any of the services multiply the differential by a factor of 10, as most of the albums cost ten times a much as single tracks.

When we queried the UK Napster price back on 1 June 2004, Adam Howorth, Communications director at Napter UK told us: “it’s simply down to the higher wholesale price we get from the record companies in the UK. If they would reduce their prices, so would we.”

Overcharging UK citizens had always been the way business has been done, but most had imagined that this discrepancy would evaporate with digital goods. The old arguments that were always given; it’s a small market; goods are hard to distribute; it’s more expensive to support, all fall away with digital distribution. It is to Apple’s great shame that they have continued the overcharging, while clearly understanding all of the advantages that digital distribution brings.

We will be watching with interest the reaction of the British public to this. It may give an indication to their reaction when they start to realise that the DRM-protected goods that they are beginning to buy do not work on all of their various devices.

Consumers’ Association

GWR enable multi-cast audio network

In a bid to improve the efficiency of it’s disparate, countrywide 31 radio stations, UK radio broadcaster, GWR Group.

By using the multi-casing network each GWR site will be able to send live content broadcasts, eg celebrity interviews, to a few, several, or all of its other sites for inclusion in the local programming.

THUS plc, a UK provider of network services, will be providing a national IP-based Multi-Platform Label Switching (MPLS) platform.

Now GWR’s data, voice and broadcast traffic have been combined on to one network, adding new radio station sites will be simple and low cost.

GWR previously led the UK field by being the first radio operator to drive their output from entirely CD-based output.

GWR Group

Thus

Wireless Wippit

Wippit, a London-based P2P subscription music service has launched a new phase to their product, allowing customers to download full length audio and video tracks to mobile devices as well as associated truetones, polyphonic and monophonic ringtones and wallpapers.

Customers will no longer need a PC to make the most of the Wippit service, as they can simply install an application to their phone by sending a text message. The application then allows subscribers to download and play music or videos whenever they like.

Paul Myers, CEO and Founder of Wippit said “When Wippit launched the first legal P2P service in 2001 we offered ringtones so that our users could find everything in one place. After that we introduced the first mobile search facility for MP3’s and downloads, including the incorporation of sound recognition technology. Downloading directly to your mobile phone is the logical next step on the path we’ve been treading since launch. We’ve been waiting for the handset and network capability to catch up, and now it has.”

Wippit also announced a partnership with SlamTV, the mobile entertainment provider, to bring high quality, fully-licensed music and video to mobile phones.

Neil Marshall, Sales and Marketing Director for WebTV commented “SlamTV co-operating closely with a strong brand such as Wippit, can only be good news. Wippit’s mobile customers will now have access to over 300,000 music and video files from some of the world’s major music labels and content owners.”

The Wireless Wippit beta test will feature alternative content from Wippit’s online service though it will be cross-promoted. Video will cost UK£3.00 (€4.40) and audio tracks will cost UK£1.50 (€2.20), truetones UK£4.50 (€6.60!!!), polyphonic ringtones UK£3.00 and wallpapers and monophonic ringtones UK£1.50.

Wippit

Judiciary Committee Votes Custodial Sentences for File Swappers and Spyware

The US House Judiciary Committee has voted for criminal penalties for individuals that install spyware on PCs and for movie pirates.

A new copyright bill, the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act is calling for sentences of up to three years in jail for individuals who illegally share US$1,000 (€819) worth of copyrighted material over the internet. That, plus the promise of being sued by the RIAA should be enough to deter most people from ripping off music.

When the House Judiciary Committee approved the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act, Congressman Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas, said in a statement on his website: “Piracy of intellectual property over the Internet, especially on peer-to-peer networks, has reached alarming levels… This legislation increases cooperation among federal agencies and intellectual property owners, and assists federal law enforcement authorities in their efforts to investigate and prosecute intellectual property crimes.”

Additionally, people who install spyware on victims’ PCs for the purpose of stealing identities and personal details will also face prison sentences. The Internet Spyware Prevention Act, sponsored by Bob Goodlatte and Lamar Smith is to go towards the full Congress and suggests jails sentences of between two and five years depending on the severity of the case.

Since the CAN-Spam act was entirely toothless, time will see just how effective these two pieces of legislation will be if they finally become law.

Lamar Smith

Audiofeast Internet Radio Service

Audiofeast have a new service, designed to help listeners get the most out of internet radio – using their Virtual Broadcast Network, subscribers can rip internet radio stations for time shifting, or listening on their MP3 player.

The service features more than 400 channels of news, sports, business and entertainment radio programming in an “all you can listen to” format for PCs, MP3 players and other mobile devices.

“Our goal is to reignite the passion consumers once felt for radio programming, and deliver that experience on a portable player in high fidelity,” said Tom Carhart, AudioFeast’s co-founder and chief executive officer. “Although the market for MP3 players and online music services has undergone explosive growth in recent years, the task of searching for compelling content and loading it on a portable player is still a difficult, time-consuming and expensive process for consumers. Unlike track-at-a-time downloads, AudioFeast delivers a vast library of radio programming that is constantly refreshed, affordable and ready to listen to whenever you are.”

The company have licensed media from more than 70 partners, including Bloomberg Radio, BBC Radio, Discovery Channel, History Channel, NPR, SportsNews Radio and The Wall Street Journal Radio Network.

The service uses Audiofeast’s Virtual Broadcast Network, a secure distribution system which is actually based on P2P technology to keep distribution costs down. Like a TiVo, Audiofeast allows users to skip, pause or rewind radio broadcasts, and transfer them to their portable devices for later listening. The client is compatible with players Creative Labs, Dell, iRiver, iRock, RCA and Rio, with more being anounced. iPods aren’t directly supported, but since MP3s aren’t protected, you can transfer your files manually to your player.

The company intend to launch a music service in October top complement their existing product. A one year subscription costs US$49.95 (€51).

Audiofeast

Microsoft’s Music Store Beta

Microsoft have made a beta version of their new music store available to the public. The store is entirely browser-based and does not require a separate client like iTunes. The iTunes store has many more features, but then it’s an application – taken together with Windows Media 10, the MSN Store becomes much more useful than on its own.

Artist pages have a couple of features not seen on previous music stores – like “Buy Tickets” and “Find Lyrics”, but these just trigger web searches, showing that the store is integrated with MSN’s search facilities. Microsoft are hoping to make more use of this integration with the new version of MSN Search in the future – searching for bands on their search site will return direct links to buy music.

Songs have ratings on the page, on the same line as “Buy track” – and providing you trust strangers’ opinions, might be a useful feature for the easily swayed. Previews are available, but there’s no progress bar to tell you how far through the track or preview you are.

The selection of music is pretty much as expected, though there are a few bands that you won’t get on iTunes – Kraftwerk, for example. The much-hyped internet début of the Beatles is yet to happen.

Naturally, all tracks are sold in WMA format, version 10 of which is out tomorrow, though the full version of the store itself is not expected to launch now until October.

MSN Music Beta

Apple Pulls an Amazon with iTunes Affiliates

Apple have announced a rather smart new extension to their iTunes offering – an affiliate programme. Now websites can earn commission on tracks that recommend to potential customers.

It’s already possible to link to specific content on iTunes, but adding a 5% commission sweetener will encourage sites to promote the music store and favourite tunes. Will providing a financial incentive to promote tracks affect iTunes’ contribution to the new downloaded music charts? It’s too early to tell.

Amazon’s own affiliate service has been a great success, and some of the more prominent affiliates have done reasonably well out of it. Whilst individual tunes are certainly cheaper than books, music has a higher consumption and churn rate – bloggers will leap on this opportunity straight away, as they can now profit it out of telling everyone how cool their music tastes are.

Apple will be supporting their new affiliates with Apple-designed marketing materials and a regular newsletter.

“By working with affiliate websites we’re not only expanding access to iTunes, but are giving site owners the ability to connect to one of the hottest brands online, creating a quick and easy way for them to generate additional revenue,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of applications. Apple said it has to date sold over 125 million songs from its iTunes Music Stores in the U.S., U.K., Germany and France.

As an extra incentive, affiliates have the chance of winning an iPod Mini if they sign up before 15th September.

iTunes Affiliates