Sep
28
Briefly: Hearing dangers, Apple vs the labels pt.125, Cingular’s music download service, BitTorrent raises VC, Mounting the Nano in your car DIY
- Play it loud, and you may pay for it. A warning to all about those earbuds. Digital devices reproduce music so cleanly, listeners are less likely to turn it down (another article that urges us to lower the volume on those headphones, but this one comes with a tip, among other advice: “Sweetow, who once served as audiologist to the Grateful Dead, believes that a five-minute rest period for every hour of listening is a good idea. “Five minutes away an hour may not seem like a long time, but it has tremendous recovery benefits for your ears,” he said.”) [via]
- Apple, record labels to face off over pricing (the licensing agreements between Apple and the major labels regarding the distribution of their catalogs in the iTMS expire next spring; on the one hand we’ve got Jobs calling them greedy for wanting “flexible” (sic) pricing on the tunes, on the other hand we’ve got Edgar Bronfma, Warner Musci Group chief executive, claiming that not all songs are created equal; some they’re willing to sell for less (right), while for some others “consumers would be willing to pay more”; this is the same guy who said they’re entitled to a piece of iPod’s profits: “We are selling our songs through iPod, but we don’t have a share of iPod’s revenue” [via])
- Cingular to launch music download service in 2006 (tunes would cost “slightly higher” than on iTMS; they hope they can launch this in partnership with Apple; this was hinted by de la Vega during the ROKR presentation three weeks ago) [via]
- BitTorrent raises venture capital, plans to create a marketplace for dispensing digital goods (and “will include any copyright protection technology that rights holders want to use” for that goal; they’ve raised $8.75M—I remain skeptic about this)
- DIY: Mounting the Nano in your car (uses the Nano’s box, and apart from the hot glue gun, all other ingredients should be handy) [via]
Before leaving the site, have a look at our most popular entries:
- Review: FixTunes (September 14, 2006)
- Apple Lossless offerings from the iTMS not likely—for now (June 28, 2006)
- Review: Datasafe oomi (June 7, 2006)
- HOWTO: Move your iTunes music while preserving library data (May 11, 2006)
- Batteries 101 (May 8, 2006)
- Presentation: iPod Hi-Fi, plus a few thoughts (March 2, 2006)
- Presentation/Review: Creative Zen Vision:M (December 9, 2005)
- Review: Alegria Audio Ling bookshelf speaker system (November 9, 2005)
- HOWTO: Put together a $3K audiophile CD player for $555 (October 20, 2005)
- HOWTO: Build the CMoy pocket amplifier (October 16, 2005)