photo credit: markhoekstra
How sad it is that the biggest news to come from the Zune front in the past few months is anything but positive: Word is out that Gamestop has stopped selling Zunes.
Honestly, I’m surprised it took this long, not because the Zune 2 is a worthless player (despite what some other news reports seem to love implying), but because it was a dumb idea to sell the Zune 2 in a freaking video game store in the first place. I’m sure some genius marketing drone figured it was a good spot because 1) Gamestop fit the target Zune demographic, 2) they could easily market it as a companion product with the Xbox 360, and 3) they didn’t have any iPod competition. The rest of us saw the futility in that move from the very beginning.
I can only assume that the Gamestop deal wasn’t a large part of Microsoft’s Zune strategy, if only because it would be truly dumb if it was. And let’s not forget the fact that the Zune is still readily available in major stores.
But come to think of it, I haven’t heard much regarding the Zune 2 ever since Microsoft launched Zune Originals program, a service which lets you customize your Zune 2 with artwork by famous hipster types. While it’s certainly cooler than the bland metallic backside of the iPod, it’s certainly not a feature that will convert the iPod faithful or lure away first-time customers to the portable music player scene.
The Zune Store is finally beginning to shape up by adding some television content, but it’s still playing a desperate game of catchup with Apple’s iTunes Store. While MS has always had the $14.99 monthly music subscription model to lord over Apple, it’s simply a matter of time before Steve Jobs decides to implement something similar.
So I suppose the question to ask now is clear: What the heck is Microsoft doing with the Zune? Read the rest of this entry »
All this talk about the HD DVD and Blu-ray format war being over has reminded me of a similar situation involving two other competing media formats. Not many people realize that the current format war was not the first “high-definition” war between Toshiba and Sony. The battle for high-definition audio supremacy has actually been going on for some time now, long before we ever caught word of these new-fangled HD video formats.
Toshiba’s DVD-Audio format, along with Sony’s Super Audio CD, both fought to be the evolutionary high-definition standard from the now ubiquitous CD. Sporting support for higher resolution audio quality, surround sound, and a wealth of features that would make any audiophile woozy, they were both fitting contenders for the next great audio format.
But don’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of them.
Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve grown very fond of eMusic lately. In a world where online music retailers have only recently begun to offer DRM-free tracks eMusic lies ahead of the pack. Their claim to fame is that they shun DRM completely with high-quality DRM free MP3s. Not only was it a wise business move to forgo DRM (it made them one of the few online music stores compatible with iPods), it was also an extremely rare pro-consumer decision in a business that often treats consumers like thieves. Offering higher quality tracks than the iTunes store’s 128kbps AAC tracks is just the icing on the cake for eMusic users.
Of course their anti-DRM stance has ensured that they wouldn’t be able to offer some tracks from the big music labels (although this is changing slowly). But thus far their selection has been more than adequate for my needs. I have a fairly eclectic taste in music, just check out my Last.FM page to see for yourself, and I’ve been able to find most of what I’ve wanted on their site without much fuss.
So they have high-quality DRM-free MP3s along with a fairly wide selection–I technically shouldn’t have anything to complain about right? I thought as much myself, until I realized a crucial problem with their billing plans.
Although they’ve given up on their “all you can eat” pricing scheme from previous years , they’ve settled on some reasonable monthly and annual subscription ranges. I’ve chosen their low-end scheme since I wanted to test the service for a few months before committing serious funds to the site. Said low-end plan is $10 per month for 30 tracks.
I was quite happy with this plan until a month passed by when I hadn’t purchased anything from eMusic. Fully expecting to have an extra 30 credits waiting for me when I logged in the month afterwards, I was surprised to find that my credits still sat at 30. A quick glance at my credit statements showed that I did in fact pay for the previous month’s service, but apparently eMusic resets your download credits every month regardless of how much you’ve actually used. Read the rest of this entry »
This showed up a few days ago, but I just noticed it today as it was mentioned on This Week in Tech. Apparently quite a few students from UMASS are suing the creator of i2Hub because they were targeted by the RIAA for sharing music on the Internet 2 P2P network. Absurdity like this is possible now because of the dangerous precedent set by the Grokster fiasco–a P2P company can now be held liable if the court determines that the company was promoting their illegal filesharing aspects.
What is there to say? These students obviously can’t deal with the fact that they were caught red-handed, and they’re now playing ignorant as a way to distance themselves from their responsibility. Given the litigious frenzy of the RIAA these past few years, I think it would be extremely unlikely that these college-aged students were completely unaware of the legality of their actions.
From comments I gather around my campus, which is just down the street from UMASS, students are more interested in knowing how to download safely. This leads me to believe that many students are well aware of what they’re doing, they just don’t want to get caught. These i2Hub users probably deluded themselves into thinking they were completely safe by sharing on Internet 2, which is a seperate network from the general internet and pretty much inaccessible for people outside of academia. In their shock at actually being targeted by the RIAA, they decided to go after the creator of i2Hub instead of accepting that they were at fault. Somehow, I find this scenario far more likely than plain ignorance.
Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh. I still don’t agree at all with the RIAA’s sue-happy campaign, I’m just more annoyed that these students are trying to blame someone else by playing dumb instead of owning up. There were times when sharing data used to be completely safe, but those days are gone. I’m not a stranger to the world of file-sharing, neither are most of the people I know, but it is certainly a more dangerous game now than it used to be. Until the MPAA and the RIAA stop their blindly ineffective lawsuit campaign, anyone using P2P will just have to be careful; you’re still technically at fault, even if the lawsuit is unfair.
WSJ.com – Students Want File-Sharing Site To Pay for RIAA Settlements
