Last week I got a 16GB Creative Zen V Plus, the first flash-based MP3 player to move past the 8GB mark (aside from players with microSD card slots). And we’ll be seeing a 16GB iPod nano before the holidays. Aside from simply holding more songs, more flash means those tiny players can hold bigger and better-sounding digital files, which is right on time for the glut of DRM-free 256Kbps digital downloads from online sources like Wal-Mart and iTunes — and now Universal and Google’s brainchild gBox — not to mention the increasing popularity of lossless compression formats.
Signs are pointing to mainstream listeners’ demand for better sound, so why are music player makers still cheaping out on critical sound quality helpers like headphone jacks and lossless compression codecs? A few companies were on the right track in the past — Apple even once proved that better audio quality doesn’t cut into profit margins much. What gives?
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Copy protection is leaking out of the digital music industry like water from a cracked snow-globe. The latest developments continue to point toward a DRM-free future in which you’ll buy music from different online stores for use anywhere, much like buying CDs from different physical shops like Virgin or Sam Goody and having them work fine in any player or computer. But if digital music is inching toward total compatibility and accessibility, which could actually help even out the lopsided MP3 player market, why are companies like Microsoft, Creative, and Samsung sabotaging their own swipes at the Apple pie with utterly useless restrictions?
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Radio gives you two important things: It keeps you from getting in a musical rut, and you don’t have to make any decisions about what to listen to next. Now that customizable Internet radio services like Last.fm and Slacker are all the rage, the time has never been better for Apple to let iPod users get a piece of the action. I smell an iPod + Slacker partnership now that Apple got GooTube to hop on the iPhone train….
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Next year, portable wireless audio is finally going to stop sucking. With the advent of the next generation of Bluetooth and improvements in miniaturization techniques, not to mention ever-increasing efficiency in power consumption, we’re going to see some pretty hot ear candy in ‘08. Finally, Bluetooth audio will relinquish its crown as the world’s most annoying sound to this cartoon bird.
(Turn down your volume a bit before clicking that link above.)
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This week: Computers, set-top boxes (like AppleTV), and AV
receivers are battling to be your household hub, streaming music and
movies back and forth across your pad until you become sterile and
glow in the dark. All this gear is versatile, but it’s hard to know
which one to pick — especially when hefty sums of money are involved.
Sonos and now Denon seem to have the most promising solutions, but
life is passing their equipment by while gadgets like the iPhone and
Archos’s 605 WiFi threaten to swoop in and take all.
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I was riding my bike the other day, when I got a call from Apple. I pulled over to the curb, and by the time the light on the corner changed, an iPhone was on its way to my apartment. I hadn’t even requested one, yet 36 hours later, it arrived.
Sure enough, within an hour I was compulsively checking email and surfing the Web on it, like a kid picking at a mosquito bite.
I did pretty normal stuff with it: checked out the features, loaded it up with music and vids, and found a few things to gripe about. But some people out there are interested in doing more than just the basics with the iPhone.
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Satellite radio is in the toilet, and the government and the recording industry are trying to squeeze Internet radio for more dough — unsuccessfully for now, according to today’s news. Meanwhile, social networking sites like Imeem and Last.fm (and MySpace, of course) are continuing to blow everyone away in the digital music scene, thanks in no small part to their focus on community as well as music discovery.
It’s crystal clear that the Internet holds the future of radio. But there’s no reason social networking sites, Web radio, and music subscription services shouldn’t all be part of the killer app for music discovery, but mobility is still a major limiting factor. Now that we’re in the iPhone era, the hardware exists for removing mobility as an obstacle.
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On Valentine’s Day, as I was perusing Time Out New York looking for something lame romantic to do, I came across a roundup of music-activated sex toys that you can plug an iPod into. It got me to wondering: Just how far does the iPod’s reach extend into our lives? I decided to see how many different ways one can incorporate the iPod into a typical day, and I admit, I was shocked.
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The music industry should be in a state of panic right now, but not because of piracy. The confusion surrounding digital music and the future of DRM was compounded this week by Steve Jobs’s open letter to the recording industry. And if the responses from the Norwegian Consumer Council and the RIAA were graded like reading comprehension questions on the SAT, neither group would make it past high school.
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