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HP, Napster and iTunes
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Re: Re: napster != napster
Um, no.
1) The "software" of Napster is fairly thin, but generally revolving around P2P. While there are *some* P2P aspects remaining in the Napster client, the Music Store does NOT use it. You download your songs from Napster's servers, not from a "peer". The P2P aspects, last I heard, were limitted to playlist suggestions (the songs still coming from the central server, but the playlists sent around P2P IIRC).
2) The "songs uploaded to the servers" ... Napster 1.0 never had songs on its servers, just an index of which songs all its users had on their computers. The Napster software brokered the P2P connections; once brokered, the two computers talked with each other only.
3) Even if Napster *had* had songs on its servers, those were mixed-quality and illegal copies of songs. Roxio would still have had to re-rip them from RIAA sources to a common format (wma instead of mp3) with DRM and quality controls in place.
Um, no.
1) The "software" of Napster is fairly thin, but generally revolving around P2P. While there are *some* P2P aspects remaining in the Napster client, the Music Store does NOT use it. You download your songs from Napster's servers, not from a "peer". The P2P aspects, last I heard, were limitted to playlist suggestions (the songs still coming from the central server, but the playlists sent around P2P IIRC).
2) The "songs uploaded to the servers" ... Napster 1.0 never had songs on its servers, just an index of which songs all its users had on their computers. The Napster software brokered the P2P connections; once brokered, the two computers talked with each other only.
3) Even if Napster *had* had songs on its servers, those were mixed-quality and illegal copies of songs. Roxio would still have had to re-rip them from RIAA sources to a common format (wma instead of mp3) with DRM and quality controls in place.
Re: Re: Europe launch
From The Register (so use the usual pinch of salt)...
Wippit CEO Paul Myers burst a few of the bubbles about online music services and cast some doubt over just why it is that Apple iTunes and Roxio are having trouble tying up European rights with their record labels.
"If I can do it, and get world-wide online rights, then I don't see what's holding them up. It's certainly not the red tape and bureaucracy of individual European countries, like they say it is."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/35646.html
I must say however, that visiting wippet.com shows quite a difference between what is mentioned in the Reg article and what is actually available on the site.
From The Register (so use the usual pinch of salt)...
Wippit CEO Paul Myers burst a few of the bubbles about online music services and cast some doubt over just why it is that Apple iTunes and Roxio are having trouble tying up European rights with their record labels.
"If I can do it, and get world-wide online rights, then I don't see what's holding them up. It's certainly not the red tape and bureaucracy of individual European countries, like they say it is."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/35646.html
I must say however, that visiting wippet.com shows quite a difference between what is mentioned in the Reg article and what is actually available on the site.
i don't know how they expected to make any large profits?! when the most successful online music service (itms) doesn't make very much. it's a whole lot of effort and risk for not much profit.
This last minute HP descision explains why they only had thay god-awful looking greyish blue iPod. They are probably working on a better design, as hp has been known to release some cool looking products (media center pcs, iPaq).
Branding and Napster
I'd be amazed that they even hired a brand consultant for the re-launch of Napster.
But hey, no one ever said that CEO's listen to branding experts anyway. So maybe they can't blame their branding agency.
I agree with you. It certainly is a tough position to go from "free" to "pay" and how to advertise that that is a good thing. Look at how many others have failed at that. (Like nearly every .bomb that gave it away, then expected brand loyalty. Um, hello?
Cheers!
I'd be amazed that they even hired a brand consultant for the re-launch of Napster.
But hey, no one ever said that CEO's listen to branding experts anyway. So maybe they can't blame their branding agency.
I agree with you. It certainly is a tough position to go from "free" to "pay" and how to advertise that that is a good thing. Look at how many others have failed at that. (Like nearly every .bomb that gave it away, then expected brand loyalty. Um, hello?
Cheers!
And roll on the month of April when all the HP/Compac PCs start hitting the shop shelves around the world (with HPs market share) with iTunes preinstalled.
An interesting question, why doesn't IBM have iTunes on all of their PCs? Wouldn't that make sense, given the alliance between Apple and IBM?
RealPlayer is able to play protected AAC files... it seems that Apple has added hooks to QuickTime that allow other programs to play FairPlay-protected DRM.
See this article for the information.
Competition is good but the technology is so new that we are not sure yet if AAC will fly. I see this report as a bit more of a head start for the AAC clan to establish themselves. We need all the head start we can get before MS come in the arena to add tremendous weight for WMA adoption as the gold standard.
P.S.: I'm one of the short-sighted peeps who voted positive on this ^_^
edited for typos
P.S.: I'm one of the short-sighted peeps who voted positive on this ^_^
edited for typos
I use LAME average VBR max quality settings @ 256kb/s , it sounds better than any other mp3 encoder and also AAC and WMA. Ask any experienced mp3 user and they will say the same.
Well, the current version doesn't allow it. And, anyway, I'm not worried. Most of the Mac users I know (myself included) really dislike RealOne Player. I keep it around for the occasional must-have occasion, but I'd hate to have to use it on a regular basis.
I actually got my local public radio station to switch their default streaming format from .RM to .M3U. Also, they list iTunes as the cross platform player for the .M3U stream, at my suggestion...
Long Live iTunes!
Yes, Quicktime allows access to Protected AAC on Mac OS X only. Quicktime for Windows does not however.
I'm not surprised. Many software companies have had let the tail wag the dog, where the advertising and spin docotors create a brand around a piece of polished turd. That's why I love Apple, they don't let that happen to them.
i dislike napster, i am sooo happy for apple to be ahead with iTMS and soo far ahead of the game , its such a great thing to see them doing it right and profiting.
The latest RealPlayer 10 on Windows uses AAC. However, it doesn't seem to be standards-compliant AAC, because QuickTime and iTunes won't play them, and neither will RealOne for Mac.
Quicktime & iTunes creates AAC audio in an MPEG-4 container. It appears that Real encodes AAC audio (at least from their music store, possibly from other sources) in their own proprietary container. The audio data is the same, but since the container is different you would need some way to determine where the audio is in the file.
Pepsi under the cap
Flip the bottle. Mygod get with the times. Why do I Have to read it on CNN I should read it here first. You are so behind the times.
Flip the bottle. Mygod get with the times. Why do I Have to read it on CNN I should read it here first. You are so behind the times.
I thought it was because Real used their own 'Helix' DRM instead of FairPlay or do they also use a different format for non-DRMd AAC files?
That would be mad as then other players like WinAmp or QCD wouldn't play them.
I've tried playing a regular (non-DRM) RealAudio AAC file on the Mac, and I couldn't get it working at all. I tried QuickTime, iTunes, RealOne, VLC, and MPlayer. The files have an .rm extension.