Results for DRM

The New York Times reports on Apple’s announcement of removing anticopying restrictions on all of the songs in its iTunes Store, last tuesday at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco.

Beginning this week, three of the four major music labels — Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group — will begin selling music through iTunes without digital rights management software, or D.R.M., which controls the copying and use of digital files. The fourth, EMI, was already doing so.

In return, Apple, whose dominance in online music sales gives it powerful leverage, agreed to a longstanding demand of the music labels and said it would move away from its insistence on pricing all individual song downloads on iTunes at 99 cents.

Instead, the majority of songs will drop to 69 cents beginning in April, while the biggest hits and newest songs will go for $1.29. Others that are moderately popular will remain at 99 cents.

The music companies are hoping that their eagerly awaited compromise with Apple will give a lift to digital downloads. They will be able to make more money on their best-selling songs and increase the appeal of older ones.

Anybody excited about this? Anybody think it’ll make a difference?

Some interesting things I found on July 31st, 2008:

# Omega Orion: analog synth as designed by Stanley Kubrick

Music Thing reports on the Orion Galaxy:

An Omega 8 – the $4,600, 38lb mother of all modern analog synths – in a great looking new skin.
Design is by boutique guitar amp builder Tim Caswell and someone called Antoine Argentieres.

More info on the Studio Electronics Orion Galaxy here.

# DJ Motion Capture – Made with the Vicon Motion Capture system housed in space 5, Culture Lab (Newcastle University, UK), the aim of the project was to magnify performance gestures to provide unique insights into how a DJ overcomes the fixity of recorded materials.

# Plastinkus DJ scratch pad – It’s a scratch pad the size of a credit card. Plastinkus produces sounds like a real disc. There is a wide variety of color combinations available.

# Gakken Analog Synthesizer SX-150 – Battery-powered, stylus driven fun.

RJ, a Japanese MAKE magazine reader, posted a guide to create a MIDI interface for the Gakken SX-150 a few weeks ago (even before it was released…). More info here: SX-150 synth MIDI mod

# Yahoo Music to offer refunds, what about MSN? – Yahoo Music is offering refunds to anyone who bought songs from the service. Is it time for MSN Music follow Yahoo's lead?

Some interesting things I found on July 29th, 2008:

# Yahoo Music to offer refunds, what about MSN? – CNET News reports that Yahoo Music is offering refunds to anyone who bought songs from the service.

Yahoo announced last week that it would no longer issue authorization keys for the digital rights management, or DRM, software on its songs. This meant that anyone who bought songs from the service would still be able to hear their songs through its service but would be unable to move them to other devices or computers.

So now Yahoo Music plans to issue refunds (did they really think they’d get away with ditching DRM without compensation?!). They’re also looking for a way to give the customer copies of the purchased songs in the DRM-free MP3 format.

# radiohead @ Google Code – Processing source code and Lidar scan data from House of Cards video, and CSV point cloud data of Thom Yorke singing "House of Cards".

# Electric Nomad by Luke Klinkenberg – The Electric Nomad is a standard sized electric guitar that features all the usual features, usability and playability of a normal electric guitar; however, it is designed so that it collapses in on itself down to an easy to carry size.

# Vacuum Tube Ring Modulator – Based on Eric Barbour’s designs, with a separate sine/square wave oscillator and an input jack on the front of the ring mod for input of any carrier signal.

# DIY MS-DOS Sequencer – A 286 PC with a 40 Mbyte harddisk running MS-DOS 6.22 with Cakewalk installed. It has a build in keyboard, 9" screen and a midi interface.

Some interesting things I bookmarked on del.icio.us on December 3rd, 2007:

• Bicycles That Carry Powerful Beats, and Even a Rider or Two – Bicycles outfitted with elaborate stereo systems installed by the youths.

Guy with big sound on his bike (photo by Tyler Hicks/The New York Times)

• Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft – This classical music recording giant that’s owned by Universal Music Group, launched its own DRM-free online music store.
• Dollar Store Parabolic Microphone – A folding plastic umbrella hat on a paint roller handle.
• Boex Pencil Bench, – Pencils + bench = pencil bench!
• Flickr: Photos from Phillip West – Amazing paper sculptures of animals and Star Wars figures.
• Jason Hackenwerth – Wonderful balloon sculptures.
• Futurama Vol. 5 – Heads In Jars – Iconfactory icons by Gedeon Maheux. Famous celebrity heads from the Futurama TV series (16 icons).

Some interesting things I bookmarked on del.icio.us on November 29th, 2007:

• Digital Music, Universal, and Why Water is Thicker Than Coke – Peter Kirn reflects on Doug Morris (Universal’s CEO) saying in an interview with Wired:
  

  “Really, an album that someone worked on for two years — is that worth only $9, $10, when people pay two bucks for coffee in Starbucks?” Morris sighs. “People never really understand what’s happening to the artists … If you had Coca-Cola coming through the faucet in your kitchen, how much would you be willing to pay for Coca-Cola? There you go,” he says. “That’s what happened to the record business.”

  HijiNKS ENSUE posted a comic in relation to the interview here.

• Beijing restaurant Engrish menu items – Stir-fried wikipedia with pimientos, and Steam eggs with wikipedia
• An Entirely Other Day – Complete Receipt Defeat – Breakdown in inches of a Toys R Us receipt, a foot and a half in total length.
• Arduino NES to MIDI Project 1.0 – Hooking up MIDI and a NES controller to the Arduino.
• Wii Strum – Patryk Laurent’s Air guitar for Wii remote + Nunchuk, a Wii strumming app free for Mac (uses Java).

Native Instruments and Beatport have released Beatport SYNC, a powerful free audio player featuring basic DJ functions.

Based on the award-winning TRAKTOR 3 technology, this free software for Mac and PC lets you mix tracks like a DJ using the two virtual decks, a crossfader and auto beat sync function. Beatport SYNC offers powerful track management, access to DJ radio stations, plus an integrated Browser to instantly buy and download the latest tracks from the comprehensive Beatport Online Music Store.

Beatport SYNC interface (click image to enlarge)

Beatport SYNC features

• Two playback decks with automatic crossfader.
• Automatic tempo detection and automatic track sync.
• Pitch faders for both decks and high-quality time stretching.
• Powerful track browser inherited from Traktor.
• Easy to use advanced meta data editing functionality.
• Direct access to selected high quality dance music radio stations.
• Archive or backup playlists and folders on external hard drives and CDs.
• Integrated access to Beatport.com.
• Super slim mini-view.
• Professional audio-quality based on the high-end TRAKTOR 3 audio engine.
• Direct access to files on external devices (e.g. iPod™, USB drive, etc.)
• CD import (converted to Wav) including automatic import of artist name, album, titles, etc.

Beatport SYNC is available for Windows PC and Mac, and supports MP3, MP4, WAV, AIFF, Audio-CD, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, non-DRM WMA and AAC formats.

Visit Native Instruments for more information and a link to download Beatport SYNC.