Amazon.com not only has an outstanding collection of digital downloads in their music section (as covered by Martin in his insightful article “Amazon DRM Free MP3 Store“), they offer a completely cross-platform tool to make this process simple. The Amazon MP3 Downloader is a very simple (as well as required) tool that enables you to purchase music from Amazon.com and use it at your leisure. And since the files are DRM-free, you aren’t limited to putting them on one device and only one device. Instead you can download your music, burn it on to CD, copy it to your device, copy it to your friends device…what have you.

But in order to take advantage of this service, you MUST have the MP3 downloader installed. That’s where this tutorial comes into play. Here you will see how to install and use the Amazon MP3 Downloader on your Linux box.

Getting and installing

Point your browser to the download page and download the proper file for your distribution. As of this writing you have the choice of files for the following distributions:

• Ubuntu 8.10/9.04
• Debian 5
• Fedora 10
• OpenSuSE 11

Yes, Amazon is a bit behind the times, but you can get around this (at least on Ubuntu 9.10). Below you will find the steps to install the Amazon MP3 Downloader on Ubuntu 9.10.

Download the .deb file for Ubuntu.

Open up a terminal window and issue the command (from within the directory the file was saved) sudo dpkg -i amazonmp3.deb.

You will see a bunch of errors that will end with the warning: Errors were encountered while processing: amazonmp3.

• Issue the command sudo synaptic.
• You will get a warning that you have 1 broken package.
• Go to the Edit menu and select Fix Broken Packages.
• Click Apply in the new window.
• Close Synaptic when the packages have been fixed.

Using Amazon MP3 Downloader

There are two ways you can use the downloader. The first is to start up the application by clicking on Internet submenu of the Applications menu. From within this menu click on the Amazon MP3 Downloader entry.

When you first launch it your default web browser will start up with a “congratulations” page informing you that the Downloader will launch the next time you download a song from Amazon.com. You also will get the chance to download a free song. When you click on the button (on Amazon.com) to download a free song you will taken to the Amazon.com login page. Log in and then you will have the chance to download your free song.  Go ahead and download your free song.

What you will download is an .amz file that links to your download. Your browser, by default, will ask you what to do with the file. Go ahead and let the Amazon MP3 Downloader open that file and the download will being.

But where did that file go? The Downloader will, by default, download all files to ~/Music/Amazon MP3/. If you open up that directory (after you download your file) you will see the sub-directory containing your new download.

Figure 1

Another way to use the Downloader is to open up the tool and click the

Configuring the Downloader

There aren’t many options in the Downloader’s preference window.  From within that window you can click the button “Shop Amazon MP3 Store”. This will automatically open your default browser to the store.

In order to configure the tool click on the File menu and then select Preferences. From within this window you can configure the following:

• Download directory.
• Automatically check for updates.
• Proxy settings.

And that’s it. But what more would you need to configure for such a simple tool? The only option I always change, by default, is the Download Directory. I tend to change this to the directory used by my multimedia player so I don’t always have to add the new media to the player when I download something. Of course, in order to have this work you have to have your media player set up to automatically scan for new files.

Final thoughts

If you are a Linux user, and a purchaser of digital music, you should do yourself a favor and give the Amazon MP3 Downloader a try. If for another other reason, all Linux users should give it a go in order to show support for Amazon’s support for Linux.

Related posts

• Get To Know Linux: Live CD (6)
• Use SoundJuicer to rip mp3 directly in Linux (4)
• Thoughts on Linux migration (16)
• Should you upgrade your Linux distribution? (2)
• My first day with Ubuntu (22)

The reason for Google is that they are only number two in the search engine market in China. Baidu is first there and offering music downloads as well albeit without a similar deal. The reason why the Music Industry agreed to the deal is simple: Money. The majority of Chinese do not pay for music but download it from the Internet. And so it was decided that sharing some advertising revenue with Google is better than fighting illegal music downloads.

Google is restricting file downloads to Chinese users according to Mashable who were the first to publish the story. The search interface on the other hand is available for everyone.

Definitely an interesting progression especially for Chinese users who can now download music legally while everyone else in the world cannot.

Related posts

• The HD war is not over yet (6)
• Zune does not allow to share all songs (3)
• Need Another Reason why DRM is bad ? Here it is ! (1)
• HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray Next Round (5)
• DRM Free Songs come to iTunes (0)

One grouse that people might have is if they purchased a song or album online only to discover that another store was offering the same track for a lesser price. That’s where the Mp3StoreGuide can be a real boon. The brainchild of the Mp3Tunes creators, the site is basically a way to check online store prices and find out which store if offering the best rate.

Stores are grouped into three categories; those that carry major labels, minor labels, and stores offering subscription services. Each store has information like average price, song bitrate, country of service, whether the store offers free tracks, etc. Mp3StoreGuide offers users the option of searching each site individually or doing a comparison search.

To test the website, I did a search using both popular and indie artists. A search of U2’s ‘New Years Day’ yielded 67 results while a search for ‘Heaven’ by Hail Social threw up 25 results of which some results were of other songs. Not bad, if I might say so.

For buyers of music online, Mp3StoreGuide is a gem. It’s fast, easy to use, and gives results. The bonus is that the site displays only DRM-free song results. Moreover, the source code is freely available to users who might want to modify it to suit their tastes.

What do you think of the Mp3StoreGuide? Do you like it? How do you think the site can be improved? Let me know in the comments.

Related posts

• Get Free, Legal Music at RCRDLBL (2)
• The Trouble with Nokia’s Music Service (4)
• Semsix Music Player Finds And Plays Music Albums Online (4)
• RIAA Boycott (1)
• Pennywise Reason to Believe Album Free at Myspace (2)

Torrentvalley is different from other BitTorrent services in that it’s not a file tracker like Pirate Bay. Instead, it’s a torrent indexer. That means Torrentvalley does not host any torrents itself. Rather, it acts like a search engine and attempts to locate the torrent across different trackers.

Another interesting fact is that Torrentvalley’s servers are located in Bulgaria, a country not particularly noted for targeting file-sharers. Unfortunately, that hasn’t lasted very long. Acting on the advice of the Bulgarian Association of Music Producers (BAMP), the Cyber Crime Unit raided Torrentvalley’s premises and shut down its servers.

The charge laid against Torrentvalley was copyright infringement. To quote Ina Kileva, the executive director of BAMP: “Torrentvalley was a major international source of copyright infringing material. This site was a gate towards more than 5 000 torrent-trackers from all over the world. The decisive action by the authorities shows that Bulgaria is no haven for copyright abuse in Internet and makes efforts to protect the rights of those involved in the creative industries.”

Torrentvalley certainly wasn’t the largest BitTorrent network out there. They had about 150,000 registered users but a fair number of people probably used the indexing service without registering. This does reinforce the fact that the authorities are always on the lookout for those that share copyrighted content.

Have you ever used Torrentvalley.com? What do you think about the site being shut down? Who do you think the next target will be? Let me know in the comments.

Related posts

• EZTV Allows BitTorrent Streaming (8)
• A New Vulnerability Discovered in μTorrent (10)
• Youtorrent Alternatives (9)
• Youtorrent 3 takes over where Youtorrent left (5)
• Youtomb tracks taken down videos from Youtube (0)

Now imagine this scenario: what if you paid a yearly or monthly fee to an online store and in return you could download an unlimited number of songs. Not only that but these songs would be DRM-free so you only need to download a song once and you can play it anywhere you want and burn it to a CD multiple times.

A service like this is in the works from a site called Datz Music Lounge. Datz claims to offer unlimited music downloads in mp3 format for just 100 Pounds a year. That works out to around $160, based on the current exchange rate. As far as offers go, this sounds pretty good.

It’s not all hunky dory though. For starters, you need to be a United Kingdom resident to use the service. Other caveats are that you’ll have to have a special USB drive with the Datz software on it plus the software will work only on Windows for now. In addition, the site is currently only offering music from the Warner Music Group and EMI catalogues.

While on the surface of things it appears as if this is a win-win situation, I wonder how many people would be willing to pony up such a big amount as an advance payment. Also, with the plethora of free music sources available, does someone really need to buy music?

What do you think of the Datz Music Lounge concept? Are you in favor or against these kinds of services? How much money do you normally spend on purchasing music? Let me know in the comments.
Via Mediamemo

Related posts

• Yahoo Music will Refund its Customers (3)
• Yahoo Movie Search for your Ipod Video (0)
• XNJB: Transfer music to and from a MTP MP3 player on a Mac (0)
• Winamp iPod Plugin (0)
• Winamp iPod Plugin (5)

Amazon also shows associated artists which are useful because once you start following links you can be on there all day discovering new artists.

Wikipedia is great for finding out the background and biography of bands and Last.Fm is sometimes useful as well. I know it should be the most useful of all, but for me personally it rarely recommends anything that I a) either haven’t heard before or b) like.

This week Amazon and IMBD joined forces and launched the oh-so catchy SoundUnwound online database for music (trying typing that in the address bar fast). Oh and it’s a beta, but that’s a given right?

What I like about it is the fact it’s dedicated music database, it’s hardly original but it differentiates itself from Wikipedia somewhat. It’s still editable by anyone and includes a number of other interactive and fairly cool features such as the discography timelines for artists below.

The sit also has the safeguard in place of all edits made by users first being approved by Amazon employees. I think this is a good idea as long as it’s prompt.

From having a bit of look around however there isn’t a huge amount here not already available on other sites like AMG or Amazon’s main site itself. In fact the best thing about Amazon was even included on UnwoundSound – the user reviews.

I have absolutely 0% interest in reading someone’s “shout-out” to the Beatles, but I would like to read their review of them.

Incidentally someone needs to invent some ‘genre-standards’ for music. Frankly as they are right now they’re useless, if we could decide on a specific set of genres and then use them across all music software and databases perhaps they could actually be useful.

Related posts

• MySpace Music Venture (2)
• YouScrobble A Last.FM And Youtube Mashup Service (6)
• Windows Media Player Import for Winamp (1)
• Winamp iPod Plugin (5)
• Winamp Auto Tagger (8)

Enter Cloud Speakers, a music business news aggregation site that offers more than a slightly unusual layout and choice of color. Cloud Speakers displays music business news on their pages. It has a vast database of artists and labels which can be followed on page, by email or RSS news feed.

They collect news, reviews, audio and video and make it available on their website. The user can filter the four main categories, if he is only interested in reviews he can only display those. The audio category is a very appealing category on the website. Users can play the music that is listed in that category. The frontpage of Cloud Speakers is offering an mp3 player that is showing and playing the latest mp3 as well. (A similar feature is available on individual artists pages)

A source is provided next to each news item to read the complete news article or review on the original website. Although there are a few reasons why using Cloud Speakers might be a good idea there are some that stick out. The first is that it is possible to follow artists by RSS news feed or email update. That’s indeed a nice feature if you are a hot blooded fan and crave for news on your favorite artists.

The second is music discovery. It is possible to play music on the website which might give a user the opportunity to find new artists that he likes.

It is interesting to note that Cloud Speakers is missing many of the social news portals features like commenting on news, rating music or making friends. That’s a refreshing change for some users while others will probably miss those features dearly.

Related posts

• Riaa is sueing Allofmp3 (0)
• Listen To Music Online With Vastfm (3)
• Giggle Music and Event Recommendations (1)
• Find Songs from bands and artists (3)
• Favtape (0)

The internet has made it very easy to get access to music. You can stop by the innumerable music blogs, online radio stations, etc. for your daily fix. Plus, you can transfer music to your mp3 player or hard drive so that you can take your music with you.

The internet has also raised an ugly monster in the form of DRM or digital rights management. Users who want to support the record industry often find themselves having to fork out a hefty sum for songs that are crippled so that you cannot listen to them on more than one device.

That’s why sites like RCRDLBL are a breath of fresh air. The site, whose name is ‘Record Label’ without the vowels offers up a plethora of legal alternatives for music lovers. The best part? Their music is completely free.

RCRD LBL is actually a collection of music blogs and online record labels. It’s been formed to give artists a platform to display their music and allow listeners a money-free audio experience. RCRD LBL encourages people to download music from their site and share them with friends.

All the music on the site is DRM-free so you can transfer it to your iPod, CDs, cell phone etc. Artists are paid by the ad sponsorships on the site so you don’t have to pay anything for songs. While anyone can download songs off the site, only registered users can get music updates, post comments, etc.

RCRD LBL is extremely gracious about sharing music. They have widgets you can use to post tracks from the site onto your own blog or website. RCRD LBL is also available on Twitter and carry regular podcasts. In addition, every artist has their own RSS feed so you can keep track of your favorite artist’s goings on. You can also submit your own music directly to them if you’d like it to be included on the site.

Most of the artists here are emerging talents and those that are signed to small or independent labels. There are also some big names like Moby. I found a lot of artists I’d heard before as well as new ones. Overall, RCRD LBL is a great place to scout for upcoming musicians and basically discover music you might not have heard otherwise.

What do you think of RCRD LBL? Do you enjoy listening to music online? What other legal, DRM-free, music sites do you know of? Let me know in the comments.

Related posts

• Find the Cheapest Music at Mp3StoreGuide (1)
• Semsix Music Player Finds And Plays Music Albums Online (4)
• RIAA Boycott (1)
• Pennywise Reason to Believe Album Free at Myspace (2)
• Jamendo distributed one million albums (0)

Muxtape provided a great way to upload mp3 songs to their website creating a mixtape like song collection on the website. It had some limits like a maximum song size of 10 Megabytes and only one mixtape per account but what made it great was the ability to share the mixtape with friends.

The music collection was publicly accessible which was probably the main reason the RIAA stepped in although I cannot find a difference between listening to music on a website and listening to music on Radio or Youtube.

If you open Muxtape right now you notice only one sentence and no way to access any of the services of the website: “Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.”

Related posts

• Riaa is sueing Allofmp3 (0)
• Music Industry Thoughts (3)
• Winamp Auto Tagger (8)
• What Type of Music Am I listening to ? (2)
• Validate your mp3 collection (4)

Before you go ahead and make use of the methods described in this article I would like to remind you that those methods are legal in some countries but not all. You still have to check if it’s ok in your country before you download 1000+ songs a day using the methods listed below.

The chance that you get caught ranges from slim (Music Search Engines) to virtually impossible (Internet Radio) though and is way below the chance of getting caught trading music in P2P networks.

The methods are listed alphabetically and I only described a few services and programs to download music. If you do some research you will find many more applications and services.

Free Music:

Free music has a bad reputation on the Internet. That is undeserved and can be mostly attributed to spam and malicious software. If you look around a bit you find massive amounts of free music that can be downloaded to the local hard drive.

Jamendo is surely one of the top locations for free music on the Internet. Jamendo is currently offering more than 11000 albums on their website. Direct download and Bittorrent downloads are available and the whole site concept deserves a larger userbase than they currently have. It pretty much works after an “if you like the artist visit his website and buy some merch or CDs” system.

Jamendo is not the only way to get your free share of music. I have collected a large list of possibilities called the music list some time ago. Most if the websites and services are still in existence these days.

Internet Radio:

That’s probably one of the easiest ways to download music from the Internet. Thousands of Internet Radio stations cater to the music listening taste of almost everyone. From metal over gospel to christian, there is a good chance that you find a station that is playing exactly the music that you like.

One of the best tools for recording Internet Radio is Streamripper in combination with its frontend Stripper in my opinion.

That’s a combo for super-easy recordings of multiple Internet Radio streams at once. The advantage of this method is that it runs automatic after pressing the start recording button. Just sit down and relax while the software programs download song after song to your hard drive.

Another advantage is that you pick the stations which means that you can include factors like bitrate in the selection process. Each station plays usually between 15-20 songs per hours. That’s between 360 to 480 per Internet Radio station and day. Imagine recording multiple stations simultaneously. The only real limit is your Internet connection.

Streamripper tries to save songs correctly if the Internet Radio Station sends those information. You end up with music that uses the song and artist as the name and some proper tags.

A great directory to start looking for interesting Internet Radio Stations is the Shoutcast directory.

Music Communities:

Music communities, like Last.fm and partially also MySpace, offer a vast amount of music that can be listened to online. They also lack direct download features but the usual tools work pretty well to download music from those websites.

The Last Ripper is for example an excellent tool to Save Last.fm music. Grab++ and Download Helper should also work wonders on most sites.

It is usually not a problem to download the songs. If nothing helps a direct audio recording tool like Audacity does the trick. That tool can record all sounds that the user can hear, a last resort so to speak.

Music Search Engines:

Music Search Engines like SeeqPod or MP3zy crawl the Internet for audio related content which gets added to their vast database. The results are presented like any other search on regular search engines like Google with the difference that they can be played directly in the browser window.

They usually do not offer ways to download the music that can be played directly. It is however usually not a problem to download the streams that are offered directly to the computer. A good combination is using the software Grab++ which is part of Orbit Downloader, a free download manager that supports downloading from many media sites directly.

Youtube:

If you search on Youtube for artists, albums or songs you will most likely find a video with music that you are looking for. After that it is only a matter of downloading the Youtube video and ripping the audio from it.

The combination of Download Helper, a Firefox extension that can download videos from Youtube and many other video websites, and Audio Extractor does the trick.

Just load the downloaded Youtube videos into Audio Extractor, select an output format and wait until the audio has been extracted. The only problem of that method is the audio quality which differs tremendously.

Related posts

• The Pirate Bay introduces Playble (1)
• Free Music List December 2005 (85)
• Using Streamripper to save Internet Radio tracks (11)
• Songbeat another music downloader (8)
• How to download blocked songs from myspace (16)

Last week, Martin posted about how Yahoo was planning to shut down its Yahoo! Music store on 30^th September, 2008. The store would take its DRM servers offline on this date, in effect stranding all those people who had paid money for DRM-labeled music.

Apparently, Yahoo have realized the foolishness of their decision and the impact it will have on present and future customers of their services. They are now offering refunds to the people who bought music from the store. Another option being considered is to replace customers’ music with DRM-free MP3 versions of those same songs.

In addition, Yahoo! will transfer customers to the RealNetwork’s-owned Rhapsody service. This is for those people who have a subscription to the service. All these are far better than Yahoo!’s original suggestion that consumers burn the tracks to a CD and then rip that CD to get DRM-free versions of their tracks.

Yet again, problems have cropped up because of DRM. If the music from the store was DRM-free, shutting down the servers wouldn’t have affected anyone. Thanks to DRM, not only is Yahoo! going to lose a lot of its revenue but also lots of people are going to be inconvenienced.

I for one am waiting to see just how much Yahoo! will have to refund its customers. And whether Microsoft is going to follow its example. The real winner in all this is probably Rhapsody, who’s subscriber base will increase just like that. Let’s see what’s next on the DRM agenda, which seems to be falling apart. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Related posts

• Yahoo, sick of them yet? (4)
• Yahoo! Messenger Buddy Spy (6)
• Yahoo vs. Google vs. Msn, Search commands compared (4)
• Yahoo to offer unlimited Email Storage (8)
• Yahoo Terminating Geocities (6)

No, I won’t reveal my methods to you or anyone else. The evidence is solid and you have to take my word for it, and remember, I’m in high standing and trusted. My commercial interests do not play a role, I work thoroughly..

While this could look like a joke it is unfortunately reality in several parts of the world. Last to join the party are users from the United Kingdom who will receive warning letters send from their Internet Service Providers who received the information from the British Phonographic Industry who do not disclose the process of gathering the data in first place.

Scientific studies have shown that the data gathering process of most organizations that send out DMCA notices is flawed and provided access to several methods that explained why. One of the methods was to actively frame other users and they managed to get DCMA takedown notices for one of their network printers to prove the point.

There is definitely a problem with the system if the British Phonographic Industry has the unchallenged might and right to notify the Internet Service Providers of copyright infringements and make them send out warning letters to their customers.

Related posts

• Why some ISPs turn against their own customers (5)
• The industry fights some unnecessary battles (2)
• RIAA sues all Internet Providers (5)
• Riaa is sueing Allofmp3 (0)
• RIAA is becoming desperate (2)

Microsoft backpedaled quickly after it became apparent that the public was not that pleased with their decision and decided to keep the servers up and running for another three year period. The huge problem that arises when DRM servers are taken off the Internet is that the verification process will fail which means that users who want to move the music from an old to a new computer – where they had to verify the music again – would realize that they could not do so because of the server being offline.

Yahoo apparently did not pay attention to the media fiasco and decided to close the Yahoo! Music Store and take the DRM servers offline on September 30, 2008.

Yahoo is giving users of their music service the advise to burn the tracks to CD and rip those tracks on the new computer so that they would be able to listen to the music on a new computer as well.

If you needed another reason why DRM is bad then you got it. And it’s not that some small companies decided to turn off their servers, it’s two huge global corporations that decided to do it. (And Google did it as well before with Google Video)

Related posts

• Why DRM is not consumer friendly (3)
• Walmart To Shut Down DRM Servers (2)
• Walmart Decides To Keep DRM Servers (0)
• The industry fights some unnecessary battles (2)
• New Trend: Raise Music Prices by offering DRM Free Music (2)

Now the interesting question that arises is why they would want to educate their customers. My first assumption would be that they, as a cable provider, want to reduce the average bandwidth usage of their customers in an effort to maximize the profits from their infrastructure. Usually filesharers have a much higher bandwidth demand than the usual Internet user with the exception of video portal junkies maybe.

Reducing the amount of filesharers that are their customers would definitely reduce the bandwidth bill of the ISP. Cable is a shared connection as well which could increase the speed of all customers as well.

The interesting question will be how they will pick the customers that will receive the warnings. Will they actively monitor P2P networks, will they only react when the BPI sends them a list, will they verify those lists ? What about false positives ? Someone who is download music from Jamendo using the Bittorrent protocol. Will he receive a warning as well ? What about secure Usenet connections ? IRC, FTP, file hosts. How the hell will they be able to determine that a file that is being transferred is indeed a copyright violation ? Filenames alone are without doubt not the safest way of determining that. So, how will they do that ?

My second assumption would be that Virgin Media could have some ties with the BPI or a company that is a member of the BPI. I really do not have enough time to research this so if anyone could help me out it would be appreciated.

Related posts

• You Are Sharing Files (4)
• Why I wont be using Qtrax (7)
• What’s Your Take on Downloading? (17)
• uTorrent 1.7 beta (6)
• Test if your ISP is throttling Bittorrent Traffic (3)

This is another classic case where the industry is punishing their legit customers and not the ones who copy and download the media. It’s the same case with copy protections and DRM. The only ones who have to cope with those things are the customers who purchase the products, never heard of any copy protections or DRM in movies, games or music that were available in P2P networks.

The commenters at Boing-Boing write about 3-6 random sound drops for a few seconds. Now that would really make me angry and I would definitely ask for a refund on my way out. What’s their next ingenious move, blank out a few scenes ? The cinemas themselves do not seem to have a say in the matter.

I would bet that the movie that is available on P2P networks does not have those sound gaps. Wanna bet ?

Related posts

• ZML is for movies what Allofmp3 was for music (18)
• You Are Sharing Files (4)
• Tired of fake torrents ? Block the sources (8)
• The industry fights some unnecessary battles (2)
• The HD-DVD vs. Blue-Ray war confuses consumers (6)

I’m feeling like the protagonist in Orwell’s 1984 only that we do not have a though police yet. The so called Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was leaked to the Wikileaks website yesterday which would expand the role of Canadian border guards to search electronic devices for copyright infringing material. This includes searching notebooks, PDAs, mobile phones and mp3 player. I’m not yet sure how someone would be able to judge if a song was copied from an illegal source or legal source to the mp3 player but those that proposed this agreement surely think that this would be possible.

This new agreement is not practicable at all. Besides the problem of identifying copyright infringements in the first place this would also mean a serious delay for everyone travelling to Canada carrying an electronic device. I find it unbelievable that the music and movie industry is pressuring politicians into making such laws and that politicians are giving in to these demands.

Related posts

• You Are Sharing Files (4)
• The industry fights some unnecessary battles (2)
• RIAA sues all Internet Providers (5)
• Riaa is sueing Allofmp3 (0)
• RIAA is becoming desperate (2)

Everyone who’s ever experienced music with DRM knows just how frustrating things can get. You buy a great new song and then realize you are bound by really dumb restrictions. That too on something you paid good money for. Still, the DRM wall is collapsing slowly but surely thanks to music stores willing to offer DRM-free music.

Back to Napster. The store has two main listening options. You can either opt for a monthly listening subscription which works out cheaper or download individual songs for 99 cents. Oh yeah, you can also download a full album for $9.95. Apart from being DRM-free, the songs are encoded at a reasonably high quality bitrate of 256 kbps and come with album art.

Why is Napster doing this? SImple. They’re looking to compete with iTunes. Apple has pretty much been the music retailer to beat for anyone looking to dominate the online music market. They seem to have started on a good note. Napster claims to have 6 million songs in their store songs from both major record labels and indie artists.

I’m going to wait and watch how Napster does before I pass any final judgments on their service. What do you think of Napster’s strategy? Would you be willing to purchase songs from their store? How do you think they’ll do against iTunes and the rest? Let me know in the comments.

Related posts

• How to remove the DRM from iTunes music (2)
• Winamp iPod Plugin (5)
• Walmart To Shut Down DRM Servers (2)
• Walmart Decides To Keep DRM Servers (0)
• The Complete Media Player Review (Part 1) (15)

There’s nothing wrong in wanting to beat iTunes. However, the way Nokia is going about things, you’d think they were trying to scare away all their customers. It’s a case of how do I frighten thee? Let me count the ways.

Let’s start by getting to the site. I accessed the site using Firefox and was told that the music store does not support the browser. You can only get to the site using IE6 or higher. That’s strike one. To transfer the music to your phone, you need to have Windows XP or Vista. That’s strike two since it shuts out all the Linux and Mac users.

Assuming you fulfill the first two criteria, the fun doesn’t stop there. Music on the site is only available in the proprietary ‘wma’ format, so your phone needs to have Windows Media Player to play your tunes. At $1.70 a song, it might interest you to know that the songs are DRM enabled as well. So, you cannot play the song anywhere else except for your phone.

In my first para, I mentioned Nokia was looking to topple iTunes. Their most brilliant strategy to do that? The songs cannot be played on iPod. That’s right, the most popular portable media player will not play any of these songs. Brilliant marketing strategy isn’t it?

To quote Andre Yoskowitz at Afterdawn, “I’m not sure who at Nokia thought that offering expensive, DRM-crippled music that cannot be played on iPods was a good idea but they should not have a job.”

How many of you would be willing to purchase music like this? What do you think of Nokia’s marketing strategy? What’s your opinion on these kind of arm-twisting tactics? Let me know.

Related posts

• Walmart To Shut Down DRM Servers (2)
• Remove Identifying Information from Rhapsody MP3s (5)
• Remove DRM from your iTunes library (0)
• Remove DRM from WMV (19)
• Now You Can Buy Music On YouTube (6)

What made me turn away back then is slowly becoming a problem for those users who did not turn away, who did purchase music and videos on those Internet stores. DRM is dependent on that store and license servers. If those stores and servers are gone, be it because the company ceases to exist or because it makes the decision to close the online store, then guess what ? The user is left with DRM files that cannot be transferred to a new computer or retrieved anymore. Without a licensing server there is no way to activate the music and videos legally.

How does that sound ? Some users defended DRM by stating that smaller companies would probably run into those problems but if a user would buy from big companies, like Microsoft, Apple or Yahoo they would not run into them. (Was not Google involved in something similar last year?) This can be easily refuted right now by pointing to the announcement that Microsoft made:

As of August 31, 2008, we will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers.

So, if you did purchase music from MSN Music you better start burning the music to CDs and DVDs and rip them again to get rid of the DRM so that you can keep the music that you did purchase for a lifetime.

I do not feel sorry for the users who made the purchases. If no one would buy music with DRM the companies would sooner than later start online shops without DRM. Not that it protects anything either.

via [Download Squad]

Related posts

• Zune does not allow to share all songs (3)
• Yahoo Does A Microsoft (3)
• Windows Live Messenger 8.5 beta 2 (4)
• Watch Arrested Development on MSN (0)
• Walmart To Shut Down DRM Servers (2)

Pennywise is the latest band to release a music album for free. Their album Reason to Believe is available at Myspace at a bitrate of 320 kbit/s including the pdf booklet and jpg cover. All that needs to be done is to add the user Textango as a friend at Myspace who will send a message that includes the download link. The music is DRM free.

Textango seems to be a mobile music distributor according to Wikipedia. Pennywise is a Punk-Rock band in case you have not heard of them before, comparable to Bad Religion in many aspects.

The album Reason to Believe will also be sold in stores in Europe and America.

Related posts

• Nine Inch Nails’s Music Experiment Successful (1)
• Artists are leaving the sinking ship (24)
• Riaa is sueing Allofmp3 (0)
• Music Industry Thoughts (3)
• DRM Free Songs come to iTunes (0)