The MP3 player, bane of the RIAA and friend to commuters everywhere, was first unveiled in 1998. The first device with built-in MP3 decoding and dedicated storage was the SaeHan Information Systems’s MPMan F10, debuting at Cebit (see this post from a couple months ago). Boasting an impressive 32MB, the machine could play back files loaded via an included serial cable. I remember the first MP3 device I bought was a generic model I found at a pawn shop for $40. They weren’t sure what it was, but it was mine after I talked them down to $25. I had to get a $40 64MB MMC (not SD!) card via eBay to make it work. It would hold about 5 albums (I compressed well) which I ripped myself. The AA batteries lasted about 16 hours, not bad for the day. Now, of couse, we have iPod and Zune and iPhone and a million imitators. Our phones, picture frames, and even cars play MP3s now. But nostalgia is awesome, so I must ask: what was your first MP3 player? And what was the first MP3 you downloaded? Let’s share! → Read More
Genuinely funny, last night’s episode of The Office (Hulu link) showcased the gravity of the situation between Apple and NBC. The long and short of it is, Michael wanted to create a mix CD using “M3Ps” for the office’s new human resources guy, who’s actually a girl; Michael falls in love with her immediately, or “love at first see with my ears.” Rather than download the songs from iTunes (or BitTorrent), he used AmazonMP3! The humanity! via The Apple Blog → Read More
If I owned a car anymore I’d probably take one of Sony’s two new Xplod decks for a ride in my whip. Both the GT920U and GT620U feature support for USB flash media and pump out 52Wx4 output. The 920 has a fold-out face plate, rear USB input and it can be customized in three different colors depending on your preference. Unless you’re Matt Hickey, of course, because he can’t distinguish between red and green, but I’m pretty sure he can see blue. The 620 only illuminates keys in blue but it has a front USB input. Both feature an auxiliary input up front, wireless remote and Sony’s Quick BrowZer. You can playback tracks that are non-DRM via CD and USB. The 620 retails for $170 and is available now while the 920 launches next month for $250. → Read More
Lest you all think I’m a nefarious, profit-hating music pirate , I bring word of Beatport’s latest innovation in online music distribution. The music site has developed an Adobe AIR download client that brings the fun of clicking “download now” from your Web browser to a stand-alone program. (If you use twhirl, and follow our sorry lot on Twitter , then you already have AIR installed.) Aside from allowing you to change the downloaded songs’ file-naming conventions (who doesn’t just re-tag everything in iTunes anyway?), there doesn’t seem to be any real advantage to using the new AIR downloader other than novelty. But what a novelty! Adobe AIR is sorta what Java was supposed to be, a multi-platform development language. Something like that. I just bought Couture’s “Afterglow (Tom Neville’s At Your Feet Vocal)” and everything went smoothly, aside for that fact that it cost $1.50 and no one in America listens to progressive house. Look what I do now, buy music. → Read More
I remember seeing a prototype (or something similar) of this kind of device maybe a couple of years ago and thought it was a pretty good idea. For those of you who have old cassette decks (or new ones, even) in your car but have gone all digital as far as your music is concerned, this might be a doodad worth looking into. It’s basically a cassette tape that holds an SD card loaded up with MP3 files. You can use it on its own as an MP3 player or pop it into a cassette deck and play the files as though they were on the tape itself. ThinkGeek has it for $39.99, while Chinavasion has it for $22.45. I’m not quite sure how you’d skip about tracks while it’s in your cassette deck but Chinavasion says “Use like a normal cassette in a car cassette player or cassette player,” so I’m guessing that might mean fast forwarding and rewinding just like the good old days. → Read More
Seems nobody wants to let Michael Robertson help people back up their music online. First it was My.MP3.com which, as you may or may not remember, was a very cool service where you placed one of your CDs in your computer’s CD-ROM drive, the MP3.com software scanned the disc, and a few seconds later all the tracks from that disc were available for you to stream from any internet-connected computer in the world. That was back in 2000, too — light years ahead of its time. Robertson went on to run MP3tunes.com, a similar service that allows you to synchronize all of your music tracks up to the MP3tunes.com servers and then re-synch them down to your computer and/or stream them via iTunes, Windows Media Player, WinAMP and a bunch of other software players. Recently, EMI has gone after MP3tunes.com, even though the service consists of copying music files “to a personal, password protected, secure music locker” where “they can only be accessed with the required username and password,” according to a blog post by Robertson back in January. The full case is available here as a PDF. → Read More
You would never be able to tell, but Ars Techina has obtained documents (read: an e-mail sent to its employees) proclaiming iTunes as the largest music retailer in the U.S., passing even Wal-Mart. As of January 2008, iTunes now accounts for 19 percent of music sales here, to Wal-Mart’s 15 percent and Best Buy’s 13 percent. (AmazonMP3 is fourth.) Those numbers include online stores, too. You may remember that Apple jumped into third place only last summer. Remember? Some other interesting notes from the relevant NPD numbers: 48 percent of American teens didn’t buy a single CD in 2007 (38 percent didn’t in 2006). The last CD I bought was Above & Beyond’s Tri-State when Tower Records went out of business. I think I payed $8. Also, music downloads accounted for 30 percent of all music sales in January. In short, expect a press release from the RIAA shortly claiming that artists starve when you don’t buy CDs. → Read More
This video showing off the Samsung YP-S3 has started floating around the Internet, and we’re not not above embedding it here. The brief introduction to the diminutive portable media player tells us a few things. For one, and most troubling to me, personally, is the inclusion of touch-sensitive buttons. Real buttons make better buttons (unless it’s haptic, then never mind this complaint). Other than that, it seems fairly standard, with a 1.8-inch screen and capacities of 2GB, 4GB and 8GB. Dapreview points out that it’s essentially a smaller T10, which is essentially an updated K3. And if you understood that last sentence, you may need to get out more. Samsung shows off the YP-S3 [Dapreview] A Tech Digest Production → Read More
[photopress:colomp3.jpg,full,right] For only $21.99 you can own this cutting edge, state-of-the-art portable media player, Colossal. Your definition of “portable” would have to be a little more flexible than mine, however, since, judging by the photo, you’d need one hell of a bag to fit it in. Its specs are, shall we say, a little on the unimpressive side as well, being powered by two AA batteries and mustering only 256MB of storage space. (I hope it’s flash!) Standard-issue Chapstick has more storage than that. Gawker, true to form, points out that hipsters—hipsters are the annoying Brooklyn people who wear stupid, tight clothes and make it a point to be ironic even though everyone already ignores them—would eat Colossal for breakfast. (Then they’d purge; hipsters are allergic to food, too.) They feed off “irony” like Biggs feeds off sausage. Could this be the iPod killer? Colossal MP3 Player Spotted at Walgreens! [geeksugar via Gawker] → Read More
[photopress:ningetsit.jpg,full,center] As if you already didn’t know, Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails’ frontman, also “gets” it. “It” meaning that the music business, as we once knew it, died some time ago. Also, he thinks Radiohead’s In Rainbows was a stunt more than anything else. Reznor, in speaking with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, called out Radiohead for releasing its latest album in “MySpace-quality.” He’s referring to the genuinely subpar audio quality of the digital download, which was only a collection of 160kbps MP3s. Compare this to Nine Inch Nails’ latest album, Ghosts, which he’s made available in all sorts of formats, including FLAC, Apple Lossless and 320 kbps LAME MP3. That’s $5 for an entire FLAC album—that’s foresightedness. Basically, Reznor is saying that Radiohead half-assed it and undeservingly benefited from the hype. (We probably got caught up in the hype, too. What happened to my trademark cynicism last fall?) Note that Radiohead still depends on a record label, while NIN has completely divorced itself from the “inept.” Let’s not forget that NIN also released the first volume of Ghosts on popular BitTorrent trackers, no doubt winning the band (or however you want to classify it) some brownie points with “elite” music fans. Good on Reznor. Reznor: Radiohead offering was insincere, industry is inept [Ars Technica] → Read More
[photopress:sxswrhap.jpg,full,right] It’s amazing. Ever since the music industry declared war on its customers a few years ago those of us who spend entirely too much time online have debated back and forth on message boards, modern day salons. How dumb is an industry that sues its own customers? (Answer: Very.) What compels people to pirate music in the first place? (Answer: Immediacy. Ease of use. “Good enough” (or better, especially on What.cd and the like) quality.) Does the industry recognize that its role will never be what it was in preceding decades? (Answer: No.) You know who does “get” all of this, though? Rhapsody, the online music service. Probably not who you were thinking. Well, the headline gives it away, but you know what I mean to say. In speaking to a director of product management earlier today, I came away with the impression that Rhapsody, out of all the non-iTunes music services, knows exactly what its role in the music business should be, and needs to be. → Read More
[photopress:p2150.jpg,full,center] The Samsung P2 portable media player usually retails for around $200 but Buy.com has it now for $150. The 4GB model, that is. The Windows-only pmp is constantly evolving. Samsung periodically updates its firmware, adding new features with each update. So if you buy it you’re not getting merely what’s in the box. (In fact, if I remember the PowerPoint presentation correctly from the P2′s launch, a new firmware is due sometime this month.) As you know, though, I’m exclusively a Mac guy, so the P2 doesn’t really help me out at all. Samsung P2 [Buy.com via DAPreview.net] → Read More
Ah, the return of the MP3-playing watch. This time, without the ridiculous headphone cord running up your arm. The GoldLantern Bluex Bluetooth MP3 Watch comes with 1GB of storage and a pair of Bluetooth 2.0 headphones. The watch is good for 12 hours per charge of its lithium-ion battery and will play either MP3 or WMA files. I’m not much of a watch man myself, so I asked our resident watch fanatic John D. Biggs what he thought of this doodad. I’ll give you the first part of the quote and then you can finish it off in the comments section. → Read More
[photopress:usenethow.jpg,full,center] If and when the **AA have Usenet shut down after the piece appears, feel free to blame Biggs. He’s making me write it. I occasionally mention Usenet when talking about piracy here, but I’ve never really explained what it is or what it does. I’m still not going to explain what it is, technically, (that’s what Wikipedia’s for), but I will put it in layman’s terms. Think of Usenet as a big, unregulated, uncontrollable message board in the sky. The Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy even logged onto Usenet when he needed to know the star of Radioactive Man! The key difference with Usenet is that users can attach files to their messages. That’s the gist of it, at least. And since you can attach a file to a message you can, conceivably, attach many files to many messages. That’s what people do. You’ll find these file-laden posts on something called binary groups. And that’s where the piracy aspect comes into play. Literally thousands of groups devoted to literally thousands of categories, each one filled with all sorts of pirated content. Entire albums, entire movies, entire video games—getting 0day DreamCast games back in the day was top-notch—et cetera. Basically, Usenet rules and is what all the cool kids use. Hopefully you’ll be able to use it, too, after this. → Read More
[photopress:itunesno1.jpg,full,center] iTunes is on track to become the largest music retailer in the U.S., pipping Wal-Mart to the title. (I’ve never known anyone to buy popular music from Wal-Mart. Clearly I’m out of the mainstream.) NPD said yesterday that iTunes had in fact overtaken Best Buy and Target to become the second biggest music retailer, but its projections show iTunes claiming the number one spot before the end of the year. Digital music sales were up last year while CD sales fell, as you know. And if CD sales continue to decline, why should brick and mortar retailers still devote so much shelf space to them? So, CD sales go down, retailers stop stocking them, people buy their music online. It’s a reinforcing cycle. Though I do wonder exactly how often you guys use iTunes to buy music. When I buy music, nine times out of ten it’s off Beatport.com, but that’s merely a reflection in my taste in music. I don’t even think I had an iTunes phase; I think the last song from there I bought was a The Knife song during the summer. But if it’s the biggest music retailer (or soon to be) then surely some of you are heavy users. When will iTunes replace Wal-Mart as No. 1 music retailer? [Cnet.com] → Read More
[photopress:jbshorts.jpg,full,center] Dear John Biggs, This pair of Pearl Izumi Microsensor Bib Shorts reminds me of you. I don’t know what it is about them. Maybe it’s the form-fitting Spandex, maybe it’s the straps that remind me of that thing you wore that one time, who knows. I shouldn’t have brought that up, I know. What I do know, however, is that it has a built-in flash-based MP3 player that holds about 16 hours worth of music. The sounds is apparently pretty decent too. Never having used it, I can’t vouch per se. Price does seem steep to me, but I’m not the type of person to buy Spandex bike shorts anyway. That’s all you, John. She costs $499, but $100 of that will go toward a group researching Parkinson’s. Product Page [Pearl Izumi via Gizmo Watch] → Read More
The PS-LX300USB is one of the most exciting new inventions to come down the pike in a long time. See, it’s a record turntable that connects to a computer. Records are disks encoded with music or spoken word and these records spin. A needle touches these disks and transmits the audio electronically to a digital sound thingie that puts it on the USB cable and then into your computer. If you have a lot of vinyl records — and you didn’t transfer all of them to lossless audio 10 years ago — then this is just the thing for you. It will cost $150 and comes with Sound Forge Audio Studio and a big steaming bag of WTF. Product Page → Read More
[photopress:rezzzz.jpg,full,center] Microsoft has said that video games from its XNA Game Studio will make their way to the Zune. Being the ambitious young man that I am, I thought to myself, “Well why stop at XNA games? What if Microsoft were magically able to strike deals with publishers, letting it port over other games to the Zune?” Perhaps the biggest problem is figuring out just what kind of games would work on the Zune—you’re probably not going to be able to effectively play an MMO or an RTS on the it. With that rather large restriction in mind… Rez Sega made, I think, 12 copies of Rez for the PS2 back in 2002; anxious, intrepid gamers could find the DreamCast version on eBay for outrageous sums of money (or you could, say “find” it online, like I did). Recently released in high-defintion on Xbox Live Arcade, the game is now being enjoyed by a new generation of youngsters. Rez could work pretty well on the Zune. The center touchpad/button would be used to control the hacker, while the two other face buttons would shoot. Nothing to it. And considering Rez focuses on trance, it’d fit thematically on the Zune—a music game on a music player. It’s almost poetic. The only thing you’d be missing out on is the rumble function provided by the provocatively named Trance Vibrator. To be fair, though, it’s probably not socially acceptable to be on the subway (or other public place) with a little, shall we say, device purring ever so emphatically; it’d be weird. And yes, I did have “Rez” blaring as I wrote this piece. → Read More
[photopress:sonya820.jpg,full,center] New Sony portable media players for your viewing pleasure. The NW-A820 series was just announced in Japan, where it’ll be released on March 20. (No release date for the U.S. has been announced. Sony hates us.) Two versions have so far been spotted, a $350ish 16GB model and a $260ish 8GB model. Now, then, what does it do? First, what it doesn’t—there’s no Mac support, which makes me wonder why I should even care about it. That aside, you’ve got Bluetooth (for wireless headphones) and some sort of built-in noise cancellation feature. The screen is a generous 2.4-inches, which is only a little smaller than the iPod Touch’s. That’s about it; it’s just a simple media player. Aside from the built-in Bluetooth, I really don’t see anything to get too worked up about here. There’s nothing particularly innovative (maybe Apple has spoiled us?) about the player. And who knows, it could well end up being Japan-only, just like the A910. Sony NW-A820 Walkman [AV Watch (Google translation)] → Read More
[photopress:handy_mp3_player.jpg,full,center] At 128MB, I’m not sure if I’d call this an acne-fighting MP3 player or an acne-fighting gizmo with MP3 capability, but it is what it is, sort of. See, you hold it to your face for ten minutes with it set to “negative” and it shoots your pores with negative ions. Then do the same thing set to “positive” and it does it with positive ions. This is apparently they way to decrease acne, who knew? And at only $184, you can maybe finally get a date. If you’re in Japan, where this thing comes from. Go and get one. MP3 player claims to fight acne using positive and negative ions [Coolest Gadgets] → Read More
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