Our Digital Music

Apple has once again released the iTunes New Music Tuesday list, and the line up is as complex as usual. Featured proudly at the top of the list is the Counting Crows with their Live from SoHo. Their description of the album:
In an ever-changing music industry where most bands are as capricious as their fickle fans, it’s rare to find a band whose absolute consistency is what makes them so great.
Also featured is Tori Amos, U2, Sugarland, and Miley Cyrus.
As always, there’s lots of new music to check out, so looks around the iTunes Store to see if any …read more

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One of the biggest debates in today’s music industry is the debate of Digital Rights Management: The practice of putting restrictions onto your music that states what you can and can’t do with a song. If you’ve bought a song from the iTunes Store or subscribe to a music service, you’ve most likely bought a song with DRM on it. While Apple has introduced iTunes Plus: Songs without DRM and at a higher quality bitrate (256k vs. 128k), it hasn’t reached all of their songs and shows no sign of reaching all the songs any time soon.
I am generally …read more

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What’s the key to fight the ultra-mega-super-giant iTunes? According to eMusic, social networks. eMusic will start adding links to their song pages where you can easily share your song of choice with the rest of the world, or just your friends. You’ll soon be able to share the song through del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, and Twitter. Also to be added is the band’s Wikipedia page, Flickr pictures, and YouTube videos relating to the band.
“The aim is to make eMusic relevant for an audience that would otherwise link to bootlegs on blogs and elsewhere to get the same material.” -David Pakman, …read more

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For the iPhone users in the audience who are still a little mad that Apple still hasn’t included stereo Bluetooth (also known as A2DP), you are now able to use your Bluetooth headphones with your iPhone and iPod touch, but there’s a catch (as always). You must spend $62 to get a Bluetooth adapter who’s sole purpose is to provide A2DP. Gotta love it.

The Infinixx adapter uses the standard dock connector that you can find on recent iPods, so you can also use the adapter on your iPod Touch, iPod nano, iPod Classic, iPod Video, iPod Color, and iPod Mini. …read more

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If you haven’t heard (and really, by now you should have), Apple released this new fangled thing called the iPhone 3G. Not sure if it’s hit the major markets of if any of them have sold… Anyways, the bigger news in the digital market is that iTunes 7.7 was released, and PLEASE hold your applause.
Now then… iTunes 7.7 does offer some nice new improvements. It adds the capability to sync with your iPhone 3G along with your newly updated iPhones and iPod touches with 2.0 firmware. It also adds functionality for remote functionality on your iPhone or iPod touch that …read more

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The term “podcast” is so 2007, as is evident with Belkin’s latest product, the Belkin GoStudio (it was originally to be called “Podcast Studio”). The GoStudio is, essentially, a mixer that you can take on the go with you. Featuring an XLR and a 1/4″ microphone jack for the compatibility with your setup, the GoStudio is designed for you to plug in your iPod and use that as your storage medium as it is the easiest mass storage that you may have on you at any given time. The GoStudio can play back the recordings through its internal speaker built-in …read more

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Who said the digital music market is just iTunes? Apparently, Activision wants to see if they can shake things up by making their own online music store. Now, what would a gaming company have to do with music downloads? Well, not much… Until you consider the fact that Activision is the publisher of Guitar Hero.
“I don’t think there have been a lot of credible alternatives to iTunes, but Guitar Hero certainly has that potential.” -Bobby Kotick, chief executive of Activision Blizzard
Well, you keep thinking that Bobby. I agree that Guitar Hero has potential in the online market, but …read more

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On another b5media site (and my previous home), High Def Delight, Christopher Swenson wrote an article essentially saying that it is time to ditch MP3. MP3 is quite the ancient file format (approved in 1991) yet it is the prominent file format in the digital music market as almost all digital music players are referred to as MP3 players because, well, they all play MP3 players. While I agree with the post that we should start to transfer to other codecs like AAC, I believe MP3 is here to stay for quite some time.
MP3 files are dominant, as I mentioned, …read more

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For all two of you who can’t play music on your phone in some method, you now have yet another choice of phones, though it may come with a catch. Nokia’s 8208c is set to be released to China for sure and, possibly, “elsewhere.” Running on CDMA and EV-DO Rev. A networks, both of which are featured in China, this phone seems like a candidate for a stateside release (or possibly even our friends to the north) as both Verizon and Sprint (as well as other regional carriers) run on CDMA.
The 8208 has a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, 3 megapixel …read more

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You may remember Rhapsody as the people who brought you the $15 unlimited music plan where, as long as you paid $15 every month, you could download as many songs as you wanted. Well, that plan had DRM (digital rights management) so iPod users and users of MP3 players who didn’t have a Plays For Sure-player were out of luck. They have no seen the light and changed their ways to become more like the highly popular iTunes Store.
For just 99 cents you can buy an individual song and $9.99 will land you most complete albums. This is really …read more

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