The Beatles are coming to itunes! Who doesn't already own them on CD?

Paul McCartney has signed a $400 million deal, which will see the Beatles catalog make its way to iTunes. I would say "WOOT", but I'm not buying the Beatles catalog again.
I'm not.

Really.

OK, maybe if it ends up on Amazon. I might drop for a few tracks...

read more | digg story
someaudioguy some audio guy beatles music itunes mp3 download store catalog voice over voice acting

Antitrust lawsuit against Apple?

Well, when one company occupies such a large percentage of the online audio/video market and hardware market, it's bound to come up eventually...

Information Week is reporting on Plaintiff Stacie Somers who filed suit on Dec 31 (Happy New Year?), claiming Apple maintains an illegal monopoly on the digital music market.

Apparently the major point of contention is Apple's unwillingness to support protected media from sources other than iTunes.

The complaint takes issue with Apple's refusal to support the Windows Media Audio format. "Apple's iPod is alone among mass-market Digital Music Players in not supporting the WMA format," it states, noting that America Online, Wal-Mart, Napster, MusicMatch, Best Buy, Yahoo Music, FYE Download Zone, and Virgin Digital all support protected WMA files.

The suit goes on to claim that even though the iPod is physically capable of playing protected media from sources other than iTunes, this feature is deliberately crippled in the player's software.

What I'm unclear on, and what the article doesn't really elaborate on, is the injury to the consumer.

As for the injury to consumers, the complaint says that Apple's pricing is "monopolistic, excessive, and arbitrary," citing how a wholesale $5.52 price difference between 1-Gbyte ($4.15) and 4-Gbyte ($9.67) NAND flash memory modules results in a $100 retail price difference between 1-Gbyte iPod Nano and a 4-Gbyte Nano.
If the complaint is with the software, I don't understand what the price inflation of the hardware has to do with that, other than the obvious claim of collusion with memory makers.

Another interesting point (briefly touched on) is the recent popularity of DRM free music (Sony recently caving for example), and it's unclear what impact that might have on the suit.

Apple of course has no comment.

Read the whole article here @ Information Week

News Sound Bites

Blu-Ray BD profile 1.1, any good? Only two players can use it right now anyway...

Sony sees the light, and drops DRM, is the last major label to do so!

Sirius denied merger, in the red $1.3 billion, subscribers up 38%, good year?

Chuck D wants Def Jam, has 4 point plan to fix it!

Variety: Hollywood discovers Voice Acting more than just "talking"...

CNet slams Washington Post for not correcting RIAA story.

Guardian delivers HUGE collection of niche music sites!

Upgrading your computer monitor might cause DRM conflict in Vista, block Netflix, invalidate other legitimate purchases, only bother paying customers...

Deaf Porn? (via Wired, links on following site might be NSFW)

Avoid "Red Sauce" on your iTunes, buy the real thing instead...

News Sound Bites - Whole ton-o-stuff coming back from XMas

Yeah I gotta bunch, so lets jump in.

Jalopnik told me that Plantronics thinks you look stupid with that BT headset. Put it in the new Plantronics car charger when not in use.

Nokia's crushing on Apple, wants to make sweet music iTunes downloading babies.

Speakers = Sexy? AudioJunkies thinks so, has list of top 15 speaker sets with the curves to compete with your girlfriend.

Blizzard, your favorite WoW/Starcraft developers, are starting a podcast on game development.

In other BT Headset news, Engadget has the scoop on the Adtec AD-HSM10, one of tiniest headsets I've ever seen. I shall call it "the button" (instead of the nonsensical string of letters and numbers - Come on people! Consumers buy NAMES, they buy iPods and Zunes and ROKRs and Walkmans not "AD-HSM10's"! HOW DO YOU EVEN SAY THAT‽‽‽), and be mad that we'll probably never see it stateside.

FreewareGenius lets us know about Tunestor, a free Firefox plugin that automates downloading an mp3, and putting it right into iTunes. I don't use iTunes, so this is useless to me. I'm only writing about it for you, my faithful readers. I'm teh selfless!

Was my post about SpokenText not enough to sate the Text to Speech beast in you? DownloadSquad gives us another TtS to satisfy that "read it to me" urge.

Toon Zone interviews the original Speed Racer and Trixie!

ay-dee-ache-es-em-tenza ... nope still sucks... it's "the button" now ... I've decided!

News Sound Bites - Vox in Second Life, Bionic Ears, iTunes add ons, your web security

Vox Daily has an interview with Ari Ross, a trailblazer voice over artist using Second Life as a springboard for his voice over career. It's a pretty interesting read on an example of where this business is going (like everywhere). You might recognize him from the CSI/NY episode about SL.

Engadget's got the scoop on the Carina hearing aid being developed at Envoy Medical. doodoodoodoodoo (lame attempt at writing out the bionic woman ear noise)...

Lifehacker has their list of the 23 best iTunes add ons. Some cool stuff, like album art plugins, automation tools, and digital radio.

Are you paranoid (like I am) about your web security? Me TOO! Good thing Google has these handy videos up on Youtube about protecting your web privacy!

iTunes Hack for FREE RINGTONES

Just posted up on Engadget...

If you read my last story on this, it's just ridiculous to me that ringtones should cost extra on the iPhone. It's another example of them fundamentally missing the market.

If Apple had said "Those other companies make you PAY for ringtones, with Apple the music IS your ringtone!" or some other such nonsense, he could've driven so much more business to the iTunes music store. Instead Apple/AT&T are trying to shear a sheep that's already been shorn (I know that was meta).

The fact that music costs about .99 a song anywhere you go (except eMusic!), and ringtones cost about $1.99, is retarded (and I mean that in the classical sense of the word as in "to retard progress of the music/cellphone industry").

Anywho, there's a story up at Engadget telling us how to get around their 99 cents extra charge:

To get this to work, we hear you only need to rename an AAC track to .M4R, then double click it and iTunes
will automagically load it into iTunes for you. Next time you plug in
your iPhone to sync up, just check off the song in the Ringtones tab
and voila, instant tone gratification.

Read the rest here @ Engadget!

***EDIT***

Having read this over now, it doesn't look like this will work for music purchased through iTunes (which has copy protection on it, but should work fine for unprotected songs (like the ones you rip off CD's).

Also while I'm schilling for Engadget, they've posted a story up regarding your rights, and what protections you have when it comes to making your own ringtones.

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS: Is it Illegal to Make My Own Ringtones @ Engadget

Apple Adds iPhone .99 Ringtone to iTunes ... Kinda Lame ...

So this iPhone thing can hold GIGS of music, all available at a flick of a finger, and ringtones still cost .99 EXTRA. If I purchase a song on iTunes, I have to spend twice as much to use a crappy version of the same song as a ringtone.

Why can't this phone use the same audio file?

Why do you need to take up more storage?

Why does it cost extra? It's the same song!

Would I get charged extra if I bought a song and played it really loud on crappy speakers? That's what a ringtone IS!

I'm really frustrated with Windows Mobile right now, but at least I can use WHATever media I want, HOWever I want...

Here's Engadget's write up!

And Here's Gizmodo's!

The Perfect iTunes EQ Settings! ... ... ... or not ...

I'm rocking the Grey Album right now. It's a fun one to keep coming back to, as it's just really well done, and really raises the bar for mashups. That and being as handi-cappable as I am I never realized track 11 was supposed to be reversed.

*sigh*

Anywho, this story, linked to on 43 folders (where I caught it first), has been floating around about building the perfect EQ setting for listening to music in iTunes.

Open the equalizer, and from the pop-up menu, select “Make Preset.”
Call it “Perfect,” because it is, and set the following levels, from
left to right (skip the Preamp section):
db +3, +6, +9, +7, +6, +5, +7, +9, +11, +8 db

Which looks like this:


Which I get, as supposedly MP3 strips info out of your music, specifically really high, and really low pitched noises. The reason being that we shouldn't be able to hear those noises, but I believe they do affect the sounds we can hear. The smaller the file (or lower the bitrate) the MORE information is cut out.

Well this post over at Idolator has a really well written response to the "smiley face" EQ setting:

"The perfect setting equals no setting, just good quality rips and good speakers. People work HARD to get stuff sounding the way that they want it to--we don't just mix any way we want. I think bass and treble knobs are plenty. Put it this way: If you don't like the colors in a movie, you don't adjust the tint in your TV. You just don't like the color. It's not totally analogous, but it's the choice of the director--or the musical artist--however misguided, to make that sound the way it is. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Admittedly not all speakers are made the same, so compensations can be made. But a perfect setting--theoretically--is a flat one."

Which looks like, well, this:


Now this is major! If you dont go slumming with really low quality mp3's (so you can fit more songs on your 80GB ipods), then you shouldn't really need EQ per se, that is if you're interested in the sounds that the musicians intended for you to hear. I tend to rip to 320Kbps, with high quality (read slow) and with a really high thread priority on CDex. I've never had any issues listening on my Senny CX300's, and I do tend to leave the EQ flat...

Here's the 43Folders Story I found.

Here's Idolator's response.




It still really bothers me that people try to measure mp3 players by number of songs. That measurement is usually derived by squashing music to within an inch of its life.
I mean the first ipod had a 5GB hard drive and held "1000 songs". By comparison, today's 4GB Nano holds (wait for it ... wait for it) "1000 songs"!?!?!?
Even though it's 20% smaller??? What happened with that extra gigabyte of space???

*Sheesh*

10 Sites For Free and Legal Music

Man I am a sucker for top ten lists, and this is a good one.

FREE MUSIC BIZZ-NATCHES!!!

I've been a big fan of Archive.org for a while (ever since I found a DVD quality copy of Night of the Living Dead on there, such a great flick), and eMusic is pretty much the best service for music on the web (even though the catalog is a little limited).

The others I wasn't really aware of. I don't use iTunes or Amazon, so I might check out their free tracks, and I'm trolling the rest of the sites on the list.

If you're just looking to shake up your music collection this is an excellent list to start with!

read more | digg story

Podcast Website Traffic - Where to go for Listeners!

So where do YOU go for listeners/viewers?
Since iTunes wont give up ANY kind of stats on podcast listener-ship, I picked the next 5 services that I know about and pumped them through Alexa. If you know of any other major players here, please drop a comment.

So if you've got a podcast, and want to attract as much people as possible, dont forget these services (as well as setting up an itunes account .. stupid friggen itunes).

Podcastdirectory.com
From March to July, there's been a gradual yet steady decline in page hits at PD, but from July to August a sudden up tick occurred. Currently the site is averaging a reach of about 33,000 hits a week and 1.7 pages per user per day.

Podcast.net
This is the service I started with WAY back in the early days of Podcasting. It's ranking has stayed pretty consistent from March to now, with a one week average of 85,000 hits and 2.5 pages per user.

PodcastAlley.com
Sadly Podcast Alley's days of being one of the big boys on the block is sort of over, averaging just under 30K, so why bring them up? Because their users are pretty freakin loyal, and consume a lot of content, with an average of 4.5 pages per user.

Odeo.com
Another one of my favorite services, Odeo is also on the decline with a weekly average of 12K, and 2.8 pages per user. They'd better hurry up and get sold or there wont be any users left.

Podomatic.com
A service I was thinking of dropping, seems to be on a three month rise. They're little, with only about 8,000 weekly hits, but users average 3 pages per, and their community is growing (just about the only service up that is showing consistent growth over the last 3 months).


Of course, not knowing what iTunes is pulling in traffic-wise, we can't be entirely sure how these 5 compare, but why deny yourself easy distribution to over 100,000 potential listeners?

Other services to check out.
Yahoo Podcast Beta
So new Alexa has NO ranking for it.

Digg Podcast Beta
Digg is social news at it's finest. Right now weekly averages are only in the hundreds (ok just A hundred), but given a little time, this could become a great place to discover popular content.

Be on the Look Out Aug21! Google and Universal Partner up to Fight iTunes

Just read off of Gizmodo.
Google will be teaming up with Universal Music to offer DRM free tracks at .99 cents. This will undercut iTunes on copy protection free tracks, and will give Universal access to Google's advertising might. Just image Google's adwords linking directly to a song at a buck. This could be the first real competition for iTunes, and will work across ALL music players (including the iPod).
I'm all for MORE competition. KEEP THE PRICES LOW!

Here's Gizmodo's write up.

Here's Forbes' story.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Yet Another YouTube Clone: VideoJug

YAYC?

This one is kinda neat though! Rather than be another bucket site for collecting vids of ... well ... anything, the whole point of the site is "how to" videos. A couple clients are already narrating videos on the site, and the general vibe is pretty fun.


Just for kicks here are two iTunes related vids about podcasting:


VideoJug: How To Subscribe To Podcasts In ITunes


VideoJug: How To Submit A Podcast To ITunes


Enjoy!

Led Zeppelin Finally Coming to iTunes

Veteran rockers Led Zeppelin, who have sold more than 200 million albums worldwide, are to enter the modern age and offer an album of specially selected tracks including 'Stairway to Heaven', 'Whole Lotta Love' and 'Dazed and Confused', to download on the internet. If you know much about Led Zep, you know how protective they are of their songs and have seldom allowed them to be licensed and have long opposed digital music...

read more | digg story

Apple Store to Begin Charging Entrance Fee

Really? REALLY?!?!

"If you want to see the iPhone at an Apple store, be sure to bring some cash. Large crowds flocking to see the iPhone and next generation iPods have forced Apple to begin charging a $5 entrance fee for Apple stores. Many analysts anticipated the move, and expect a positive response from customers."

Who, WHO is "positive" about PAYING to get into an Apple Store???

read more | digg story

Help! Normalizing MP3's during playback?

What can I say? I'm a Luddite.

I still use WinAmp for all my mp3 playing goodness. Though lately I have to say I've been getting really tired of constantly adjusting volume. I tried looking up normalizing plugins, but they all kinda suck. I did find this article from Ars Technica in 2002 (where the pic is from), and I'm trying out it's recommendation of Audiostocker (which apparently got rolled up into Octimax or something), but I'd rather just have the capability natively.

Anyone with a little insight? Am I going to DJ software? Will I finally have to give in to iTunes?
Any help?

10 Alternatives to iTunes for managing your iPod

This overview details the features (with screenshots) of 10 different programs other than iTunes to manage your iPod. Tutorials are included for every program, and they’re all either free or Open Source.

I've been using WinAmp for the last year, and really see no reason to use iTunes, other than iTunes is prettier ... I guess...


read more | digg story


***EDIT***

No sooner do I post this then the server goes down for the site.
So here's a Wiki with even MORE info!

No Copy Protection = Increase in Sales!

I TOLD YOU SO! I did.

Anyway here's a brief examination of EMI dropping DRM. Initial reaction has been VERY positive:

"The initial results of DRM-free music are good." Increased sales of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon were singled out. That's true. Digital sales of Dark Side of the Moon have averaged over 3,600 units since the launch of iTunes Plus and the availability of unprotected AAC files. In the 11 prior weeks, average sales were 830 units per week. That's an increase of 272%. In the week iTunes Plus was released, digital sales of Dark Side of the Moon jumped 350% that week alone."

Read all about it here.

Download iTunes Content at 10X Normal Speed with Swarmcast

From Digg: "Swarmcast said its technology can help a viewer download movies, music or television episodes to their computers up to 10 times faster than usual. Such technologies are viewed as key to help Internet media proliferate, by making it easier for viewers to access entertainment off the Internet."

I can't really say I've ever had any problems with plain broadband downloading music. Is this really a big deal? Are people really getting held up, or is this more for video downloads?



read more | digg story

Don't Torrent that Music From iTunes

Well don't Torrent music from anywhere really, because it's prolly not legal...

Just a friendly reminder from TUAW.com, the new higher quality, DRM- free tunes on iTunes will be watermarked with your user info. That means if this music is traded/torrented/ shared/ whatever, Apple will have a much easier time finding out who gave it up.

This, IMHO is a MUCH better plan than locking content down. Are you really concerned with stopping "piracy" (hell yes I put it in quotes), then stop treating the paying customers like criminals, AND FIND THE ACTUAL "PIRATES"!

Read the article here.
someaudioguy some audio guy music voice over demo production audio books voice acting auditions

I'm Gonna Buy an Album JUST BECAUSE I CAN: iTunes DRM free ready to go next week?

Apparently EMI is ready to go.
I might actually have to buy something from iTunes. That just feels weird...

"The seeming delay for introducing the new tier of content has been primarily attributed to a desire to offer the entire catalog at once in the unprotected format rather than a gradual rollout. The companies' technicians are simply in the later stages of encoding and hosting the files before they go live, the contact says."


Read the rest here.
someaudioguy some audio guy itunes iphone ipod nano voice over demo production voice acting auditions audiobooks narration