Posted 2 months, 1 week ago at 10:24 am. 0 comments
Pricing Raise
eMusic has decided to increase their pricing plan for new subscribers. The new price will apply to all members but there’s a few additional benefits if your account was active before July 17th. New members will have to pay $11.99 for 30 Mp3s.
Older member will have to pay $11.99 for 40 Mp3s. On August 17th, all older members will also receive an additional 10 track booster for 30 days.
Design Raise
Since the past week, eMusic has changed their site design to reflect the Web 2.0 style ( which has now become standard). This includes larger easier to read fonts and bigger graphics.
Album Pages
Albums now have a huge graphic of the album cover to the left. The track list is now displayed to the right. Below that are some newer toolbars like “Discover” that take you to other critically acclaimed albums and stories in your music genre. Below that is “Dig Deeper on the Net” where you can see videos from Youtube users that relate to the artist and a wikipedia entry. Thats if your artist has a unique name, otherwise you’ll see some strange unrelated videos.
[via eMusic]
Most of the other pages have not been updated to fit with the new design, so if they do, this article will be updated to reflect that.
Posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago at 4:10 pm. 0 comments
After the fallout between MTV and Microsoft; Urge + MTV + RealNetworks teamed up to create the huge mega partnership with the Rhapsody brand. Previously Rhapsody was created exclusively by RealNetworks to distribute DRM music to MP3 Players that supported Microsoft’s PlayforSure Brand. Rhapsody wasn’t really much of a hot property and it felt like they were just giving it away for free when you joined a Cable TV Network. It seems after years of waiting, their commercials are finally broadcasting on TV as they promote new albums from mainstream artists. Now they are offering DRM-Free tracks from Universal Music Group as long as you download the Rhapsody Player.
The DRM-Free tracks are only limited to Universal and are only available up until Janurary. Current TV commercial spots include Jennifer Lopez, and of course 50 Cent. After Janurary, no one from Universal has announced what is going to happen, but in the end we hope they and other record labels spread DRM Free tracks to other music companies. Its unfortunate that RealNetworks require you to download their software to purchase their music, as other companies like Emusic and Amazon Mp3 store do not require you to do so.
Posted 1 year ago at 11:49 pm. 0 comments
Yes, you read right, this is far more than just displaying music in your profile. Some people have asked if there was a way to be able to listen to what your buddy has on their computer, and now you can! The "sharing" of music, lies within its iTunes-like interface. Users can stream but not download any song you have listed. It allows people to listen to any track you have within your music folders, and play them instantly. You can also download a playlist to play it within your own MP3 player as a streamed file. Mind you, this is not the actual downloading of the song, think of it as a personal radio station shared only to your friends.
Whats really amazing about all of this, is how fast it is to search through your songs. You can type a few letters and it will instantly display within each category. If you want only RAP music, you can type in Rap, and it lists up all the songs within that genre that is rap. You don’t have to always listen to your friends music, you can use it as an organizer for your own music to find songs quicker than your own Mp3 Player. Maybe AOL should have released this at TechCrunch40!
Download the Aim Tunes Plugin.
Posted 1 year ago at 10:24 pm. 1 comment
Winamp 5.5 Launched this week with some new features and a new direction. Winamp unveiled a new skin called Winamp Bento, which sort of mimics the style of iTunes and Foobar. Winamp Bento is generally Winamp 5 + Media Library + Album Art. The skin is very micro so senior citizens should beware of tiny hard to read icons. The skin’s main attraction is its Media Library panes. Although very confusing to control, you can now change the media library to show only album art.
By default, it will show up with the Artist and Track List, and its up to you to figure out how exactly to make it show up the way you want. My dislikes for Media Library is how easily confusing it is to use. In the original Winamp 5, there’s 1 window for the main player, another window for the playlist, and then Media Library’s 4 panes of crazy going at you at one time! Its great for people who keep their music organized by album, but for the majority of users, nothing beats adding songs to the playlist.
Fortunately Winamp Bento has the option to convert the player back into the classic Winamp style, but with a few changes. Now the Playlist, Music Player, and Album Information is shown side by side. No longer will you have to worry about these windows taking up large portions of your screen.
Posted 1 year, 2 months ago at 3:37 pm. 2 comments
Why aren’t people buying DRM-Free Music?
The legal pressures and scare tactics of the RIAA have dampened some the efforts of some file sharers. However, people who do want to legally buy music still can’t, not because they can’t afford it, their music just isn’t available to download. The big major music groups are still cautious of selling Mp3s without some sort of control over them. One of the big reasons Mp3s are illegally downloaded in the first place is because nobody is selling music the majority of people like. All mainstream music listeners are forced to use iTunes, Zune Marketplace, Napster, and Rhapsody. Major record companies can then set restrictions on which computers and devices you can listen to music with. Yes, you can burn music from "some" of the music services but there is a loss in quality when converting back to Mp3 . There are people like me who are obsessed with audio quality and want to hear every bass and treble note as original as intended. The second problem going on is the legal pressures. It might scare off some people, but in reality it starts an uprising against the RIAA. Its like a sword fight of 5 people against millions, and the 5 are stabbing each other in the back. The major source of getting DRM free music legally is through ripping CDs and converting to MP3, but we can no longer trust record companies as they may secretly install anti-theft programs. The point here is, if you make your songs available as MP3 at an affordable price, I can buy it and will have no need for file sharing.
Who are living the DRM-Free Lifestyle?
We can’t just blame companies for this whole mess, we’ll also rant at the consumers too. Consumers are the third part of the problem, not because they are downloading illegally, but because they eat only food thats given to them. Their main sources of music are MTV, VH1, BET, CMT, Fuse, and radio stations. Consumers are too close-minded to look for other artists who aren’t signed to big major record labels. I don’t blame them though. The music sold on DRM-free music sites aren’t that great to begin with, but they do have their own cult followings. If you do spend the time to research other artists who don’t give a damn about the RIAA, you might find something you like. Only those who are in search for new artists and new music are the ones who live the DRM-Free lifestyle. You may want to call them the Indie generation, but at the same time they are still boycotting mainstream RIAA music, and purchasing from artists they actually like.
How can you Sell DRM Free Music?
My journey of DRM-free music started years ago with the little company called KarmaDownload, it has now been shutdown for financial reasons that they won’t even disclose. KarmaDownload sold music with the choice of bulk or per download. The bulk option didn’t work for technical reasons so I had to pay per download. Entering billing information once, you can download as many times as you want and be charged for each transaction. This may not go so well with credit card companies and their fees but it worked for the time being. For every 10 songs you download, you get 1 free, and that was pretty hot.
1. Keep Billing Information Seamless
I should only have to type my credit card information once. After that unless its a yearly security thing, I don’t want to type it anymore. Sites like JunoDownload and Emusic keep this seamless. Beatport asks for your security code each time, but Clickgroove asks for billing information all the time making it very annoying.
2. Music Previews should be long and instant
I want to hear song clips longer than 30 seconds. Emusic’s previews are painfully short. Short previews do not give an essence of what the song is like. JunoDownload however has longer previews, sometimes up to 2 minutes. I prefer hearing music clips within the site instead of using Winamp. DanceTracks Digital, and DJDownload place all music within flash playlists. DJDownload takes it a step further and adds each song to the playlist instead of clearing all music out like ClickGroove.
3. Allow purchasing in Bulk
Emusic is the only site that does this perfectly. 30 songs for $9.99 is great compared to other sites which would have given me 5 songs. I’m not saying this pricing method is great for artists, but it got me paying for music. Not many other sites do this, but It would be nice to allow 1 or 2 free songs for a certain amount of purchases.
I’ve only highlighted music services that specialize in electronic/dance music, but there are plenty more out there such as 7digital/indiestore where most tracks are Mp3s but some are WMA’s with DRM. If EMI sold DRM-Free tracks on Itunes, Warner Music, BMG, and the rest can and should. Electronica and Indie musicians have been selling Mp3s for years, why can’t mainstream artists just jump on the bandwagon?
Posted 1 year, 6 months ago at 12:28 pm. 0 comments
Winamp Remote Launched in Beta proclaiming to be the new service to stream music over your computer to your mobile phone. The problem is the lack of information out there to complete the process. Infact Aol Mobile gives no indication to which phones it supports and without diggiing up some information your basically installing something that may not work at all. Winamp Remote uses Orb software to connect you to Music on the Go. It supports all Microsoft Smartphones, Phones with a 3GP Player, Nokia 6620 and 6680 with RealPlayer, and Nokia Series 60, Series 80, and N-Gage QD. Once thats out of the way, Winamp Remote still is buggy and has a long ways to go in order to be efficient. Don’t expect much technical support now, but wait a bit down the line when it gets more popular.
Posted 1 year, 10 months ago at 4:58 pm. 0 comments
Using Data from Last FM and Amazon, TuneGlue allows you view a map of artists and their similar connections. Its pretty cool that you can easily find new artists that stay within a genre.
I chose a map of Domu and the results were pretty spot on. You start out by typing an artist name in the search box, then click on them to expand. New nodes will appear as you can expand them even further. In my example above, I quickly found similar artists and went even further to the point where pretty much everyone was connected to someone. The framerate drops when there is alot of connections, which is expected.
