Yahoo Online Music Service

[fatfish]

Huh? Apple encodes songs at 128 kb/s, and presumably Yahoo etc use a similar rate. That means that you can listen to the song in real time if your connection is 128 kb/s or faster. The vast majority of DSL connections are faster than this.

Your signature displays your total confusion with numbers. Yes the x-box has 3 core 3.2Ghz PPC chip, but it is only good for one purpose it is totally stripped down of other functions, it would be no good in a computer for example.

Think of it as a dragster. Fine for doing 300 mph for 5 seconds in a straight line, but it won't even take you to the shops.

 

[~Shard~]

Think of it as a dragster. Fine for doing 300 mph for 5 seconds in a straight line, but it won't even take you to the shops.

Good analogy. 😎

 

[Nermal]

Your signature displays your total confusion with numbers.

I didn't write it, which is why I attributed it to Matthew Goeden. I saw it somewhere and thought it was worth sharing.

512 Kb connection probably gives most users about 55 KBps d/l speed and that's max, during the d/l it might drift to less than half of that and that's presuming the server isn't all that busy

A 128 kbit/s AAC file uses 16 kbyte/s. Until last year, I had a 128 kb/s connection, and it could stream 128 kb/s AAC/MP3/RealAudio etc without any problems (other than a few seconds of buffering at the start). If your 512 connection can't keep up with a file encoded at a quarter of that, then there's a serious problem with it.

 

[barneygumble]

Good analogy. 😎

imagine trying to park the damn thing 300 inch chassis and 7 foot wing assembly

 

[beatle888]

I wouldn't worry about Apple too much, judging by the latest iteration of the iTMS sales chart:

Tulse, my girlfriend would like to see the source on that chart. can you give it up please.


thanks

 

[bit density]

I have a couple of points.

My actual point was I don't think it will have very much impact on Apple. Yes I had a rant about owning my music, but that's what I want, each to his own and all that, the fact that you prefer to rent or a mixture of both actually doesn't make much difference and rather supports my point. I prefer to buy, I will continue to use ITMS, those that prefer to rent can't use Apple anyway, so those that are going to rent from Yahoo are going to stop using someone else, but it won't be apple because they didn't use them in the first place.

As for not caring whether you lose your music and have to pay for it all over again, I rather suspect you are in a very small minority there, but again each to his own, I'm sure some people enjoy poking themselves in the eye as well.

Now, to the poking a stick in their own eye. This is hardly fair. Lets take TV for example. I subscribe to DirectTv, Blockbuster Online, and I get free OTA television as well. They each do three different things, and I use all three.

With music, I have Free OTA, the Music I have purchased, and now the music I rent. I do not subscribe to satellite radio because it has nearly no value to me. Between the Internet and OTA I get enough of music on somebody elses time schedule. What the Yahoo model gives me, for a price point where I get value, is I get access to music on my time, and my list, and I don't have to pay the extra price for owning it. over 10 bucks is too much for that. 5 bucks and under pushes the value.

Now for the second point...

APPLE CANNOT PROVIDE THIS SERVICE. The existing portal player device (iPod) does not have ANY DRM AT ALL, or rather it has a universal key. It does not have a protected clock, and in no way can it expire music.

This means that a significant feature in my enjoyment of music is not, and will not be available to iPod owners, ever, unless engineered into a newer Ipod, and not available to older owners, and I just do not think that Apple will bite off the PR disaster that will cause until too late.

I am currently a 1st gen/3rd gen 15 gig ipod owner. And an Ibook owner. Because these were the best at the time, and I was a switcher. By this time next year... There is a serious chance that I may switch back. Given a operating system that will instant-on, have significantly reduced malware vulnerabilities, and music files that have the right balance of drm and quality restrictions that it does not get in the way of the enjoyment of my music.

But today, apple still wins. But I am not a fan boy. I am totally fickle. I like the best value and solution for the money. And just as I switched due to complacency on one side and innovation on the other, I can just as easily switch back. We shall see.

 

[fatfish]

I didn't write it, which is why I attributed it to Matthew Goeden. I saw it somewhere and thought it was worth sharing.



A 128 kbit/s AAC file uses 16 kbyte/s. Until last year, I had a 128 kb/s connection, and it could stream 128 kb/s AAC/MP3/RealAudio etc without any problems (other than a few seconds of buffering at the start). If your 512 connection can't keep up with a file encoded at a quarter of that, then there's a serious problem with it.

Don't wriggle

You were the one who tied the bitrate and d/l speed with each other, I was the one that pointed out it didn't work the way your post suggested, now you seem to be telling me I got it wrong, you brought the numbers into it.

The point is; follow the thread of the discussion and we were actually talking about a specific model were the service was used to play different tunes all the time.

Whilst your 3 minute tune, will theoretically d/l in slightly under a minute, it is often nearer 2, even on iTMS, and this from a service were the average user might d/l one tune every 2 days. In the model we were discussing were the user is playing different tunes all the time, the demand is likely to be 20 or 30 tunes a night, add in the time it takes to choose your tunes and a further slowdown while your browsing the store and any other organising you have to do and I suggest you will be playing them faster than you can d/l them.

 

[fatfish]

Now, to the poking a stick in their own eye. This is hardly fair. Lets take TV for example. I subscribe to DirectTv, Blockbuster Online, and I get free OTA television as well. They each do three different things, and I use all three.

With music, I have Free OTA, the Music I have purchased, and now the music I rent. I do not subscribe to satellite radio because it has nearly no value to me. Between the Internet and OTA I get enough of music on somebody elses time schedule. What the Yahoo model gives me, for a price point where I get value, is I get access to music on my time, and my list, and I don't have to pay the extra price for owning it. over 10 bucks is too much for that. 5 bucks and under pushes the value.

Now for the second point...

APPLE CANNOT PROVIDE THIS SERVICE. The existing portal player device (iPod) does not have ANY DRM AT ALL, or rather it has a universal key. It does not have a protected clock, and in no way can it expire music.

This means that a significant feature in my enjoyment of music is not, and will not be available to iPod owners, ever, unless engineered into a newer Ipod, and not available to older owners, and I just do not think that Apple will bite off the PR disaster that will cause until too late.

I am currently a 1st gen/3rd gen 15 gig ipod owner. And an Ibook owner. Because these were the best at the time, and I was a switcher. By this time next year... There is a serious chance that I may switch back. Given a operating system that will instant-on, have significantly reduced malware vulnerabilities, and music files that have the right balance of drm and quality restrictions that it does not get in the way of the enjoyment of my music.

But today, apple still wins. But I am not a fan boy. I am totally fickle. I like the best value and solution for the money. And just as I switched due to complacency on one side and innovation on the other, I can just as easily switch back. We shall see.

Not disputing what you say, infact it just supports my point.

You don't use iTMS, the fact that you will be subscribing to yahoo from now on will have no impact on Apple.

Whilst I'm an owner not a renter, I do not disagree that others would have it the other way round, it would be a drab world if we all had blue ford fiesta's. I still find it difficult to accept there would be many who would happily pay for their music twice, I think whilst your point is valid it is not quite the scenario that was discussed, which is were the user had paid for a subscription service on the assumption they would be able to play the tunes they had d/ld as long as they continued to pay only to find the service had gone bust.

I believe those that what will actually happen is that those that own will own and those that rent will rent and there will be a few like yourself that do both. And in reality if your rental service goes bust, you'll simply chose another with the only drawback being that you have to redownload everything you had.

But 2 points, 1. you said that you would be happy to buy something after paying to rent it, I don't think many others would. 2. Yahoo will on the whole only impact on other subscription services because people are mainly in one of 2 groups.

 

[rickag]

...
Now for the second point...

APPLE CANNOT PROVIDE THIS SERVICE. The existing portal player device (iPod) does not have ANY DRM AT ALL, or rather it has a universal key. It does not have a protected clock, and in no way can it expire music.

I'm no expert, actually I'm quite ignorant of this technology. But would it be possible to require owners of older iPods to update the firmware on their older iPods before being eligible for a subscription service.
🙂

 

[bit density]

I'm no expert, actually I'm quite ignorant of this technology. But would it be possible to require owners of older iPods to update the firmware on their older iPods before being eligible for a subscription service.
🙂

The device does NOT have a protected clock (which is as much hardware as it is software) and is critical for this form of DRM enforcement. There is a reason that this is only supported by a small subset of the windows media devices, and it is not just because of a firmware upgrade.

This could be added in future Ipods, and it would also have to change alot about fairplay so that the new files wouldn't play on the old ipods, and the old Ipods would not be able to subscribe to the subscription services. A tough problem as there are now MILLIONS of users out there.

 

[AppleFoussa]

This is great! More competition = better for customers! 😀

Now bring on iTMS Subscription! 😀

I hope not. Subscription based music store stinks. I like to keeo my songs and not have to pay regularly to keep them over time that will be one expensive song. My view...

 

[Orlando Furioso]

I realize this is old news, but it might be noteworthy in light of the recent iPod addition.

The following is a link to Yahoo pushing it's online music service during my regular email reading. (A screen-cap is provided at the end of this post). Although the subscription service idea still bothers me, a service at $5 a month is extremely inviting. Too bad about the wma files. though.

Most posters see Yahoo as competing with Napster, but this ad compares their service side-by-side to iTunes (which I think we are to assume is iTMS). According to their comparison, iTunes cannot "transfer my music to a compatible player without extra charge". Im not sure how they reason around that one. But their other phrasings are slippery/biased enough to be true. Such as, "access to saved subscription music from multiple pc's". Although, iTMS allows multiple accounts and access from different computers (albeit limited), the keyword "subscription" makes their claim true as iTMS has no subscription offerings.