This can't be good:



http://www.ajc.com/busine...29038.html

Apple Inc. is in advanced talks to buy online music retailer Lala.com, a Silicon Valley startup that has threatened "the end of the MP3" with its fast song-streaming application.

.
.A person familiar with the matter confirmed the talks with The Associated Press but was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

In October, Lala co-founder Bill Nguyen demonstrated to the AP a working model of an application the company had developed for Apple's iPhone.

The app, which is not available to the public, allows users to buy the right to stream songs from a digital locker for an unlimited time on their iPhones for just 10 cents each.

Nah. I don't like streaming music unless it's something rare or unreleased on Youtube. I like owning my music. This is no more the death of mp3 than mp3's were the death of CDs.

Interesting technology.

However, as long as the mp3 format allows sharing between individuals and mobility for free (after the fact), it will remain alive & well.

They're trying to re-attach some level of monetary value to a commodity that a segment of the population has already deemed worthless (i'm willing to bet even at the paltry sum of 10 cents). That horse left the barn long ago.


FREE < .10




Music for adventurous listeners


tA

Tribal Records

theAudience said:

That's the problem.

I hope this is the wave of the future. The horse may be on the range but that's what lassos are for.

Art has an instinctive value that is immeasurable, and it is sad how artists are struggling while kids are rocking out and enjoying the fruits of their labor all the while not giving a shit about the ones who worked their ass off to create it.

It always brings a smile to my face when some little punk complains about an inability to listen to Prince on Youtube. Until better safeguards are in place to protect artists work, Prince should hold firm.

.
[Edited 12/6/09 19:01pm]

violetblues said:

I like that.


I wholeheartedly agree when it is work that is created with respect for music as an art form first and a commercial commodity second.



Music for adventurous listeners


tA

Tribal Records

Actually the acquisition was confirmed on December 4th.

violetblues said:

On some level, it's always been this way. "Kids" aren't screwing artists nowadays any more than record companies have been doing for years. Furthermore, it's the greed of those same record companies that has put artists in the situation they're in now.

Anyone who has used Spotify knows that streaming IS actually killing MP3's.

Check out this article:

http://blogs.telegraph.co...lesharing/

Illegal downloading has been on the decline since 2007 and streaming has been on the rise. It's good for the artist because each stream is logged and the correct royalties paid to the artist.

Perfect example - I bought the new Marilyn Manson album, "The High End Of Low" when I was in Canada on tour earlier this year. When I got back to my place in the UK, I sat down at my computer, set down the album, looked at it, then put on my shelf, saying to myself - "I'll just listen to it on Spotify".

I mean, why not? Spotify streams the music instantly with no buffering at great sound quality, and the MP3's aren't taking up space on my hard drive.

On the iPhone/Android/Symbian mobile apps of Spotify, you can sync as many tracks as you want for 'offline playback' as well, so if you're somewhere without a data connection, you can still listen. That shit is sick.

I'd be using the Spotify mobile app all the time, but right now it's £10 a month (Spotify is free to use on computers) and I already pay quite a bit for my cellphone plan. Recently, though, one mobile carrier in the UK is including a premium Spotify subscription on the Android phones that they sell, which is a great idea and I expect more mobile networks to do that very soon.

Artists should do full album streams and leave the mp3s to older music.

MP3 ain't dying lol

Militant said:

But how many people use Spotify? Lots of people use Pandora too. mp3's allow people to take a lot of music with them and listen to them on demand, with or without internet, with or without cell service. All you need is a device capable of playing them back.

Superstition said:

And that's why I can't even take these articles seriously yet. lol

Apple doesnt use MP3 compression for its lossy crappy sounding iTunes music.

LALA will be for subscription based future of the iTunes MS so that you can stream music without downloading it with the iPHone and even your PC... Macs are PCs you know.

More like downloading bought files will end for the iTunes Music Store. Mark my words - datestamp and bookmark this reply.

Well Spotify hasn't yet launched in the US. It will next year.

Here in the UK and other countries in Europe, there's a TON of people using it.

And Spotify and Pandora are not comparable. Pandora is streaming internet radio.

Spotify is on-demand streaming. Whatever music you want, whenever you want, instantly.

Militant said:

How is the delivery method different from a system like Rhapsody?



Music for adventurous listeners


tA

Tribal Records

I haven't used Rhapsody, but I think you have to pay for that, no?

Militant said:

Yes you do. I subscribe to the SuperPass each summer for Big Brother (I run a Big Brother blog). When you subscribe to the SuperPass, you get $10 in free music each month, so I always grab 10 songs I've just never had, or I find new music to download. They're 320k MP3s, so not bad, per se.

Rhapsody does have a regular pay service. It's a bit clunky in the navigation, but not horrid. In general, they're $0.99 for a download, and some newer songs are $1.29. They have freebies almost every day too. Song of The Day or Download Of The Day. Of course every Tuesday, iTunes puts out a couple of free songs for download, and there's always a TV episode, and other goodies that are free ("goodies" being defined by what one likes and doesn't like).

The day MP3 goes out is the day PCs are no longer built and that ain't happening any time soon.

Timmy84 said:

Exactly. Let's also remember MP3 is an offshoot of what is now the MP4 (iTunes calls it AAC) format, which is superior to MP3s (and yes I know there are formats superior to MP4). It was a break away format, while mp4 was still being developed. That's why there's a lot of problems with mp3s in compression and sound, and why people have developed better ways of containing a wave, like FLAC, APE, SHN, AAC, OGG, etc.

Mp3s will always be around. However, their popularity will waver, as a format. Out of my 20K+ songs in iTunes, 6132 are AAC (Mp4) iTunes format (a few protected, most are my CD collection ripped), and 14749 MP3 format. I coulud go back and re-encode all of those into AAC, but it'd be pointless. Once a WAVE is compressed, you cannot ever get the quality back that was lost in the compression. Even if you re-encode a 128k mp3 back to a WAV, it'll still sound like a 128k MP3.

Well that's the difference then. Spotify is free and ad-funded.

You can pay for it, but that just removes the ads, which are completely unobtrusive. And you have to pay if you want to use the mobile app. But the desktop app is free.

Trust me - when it launches in the US in 2010 you guys are going to love it. I really missed it when I was in the US for a few weeks in October!

Militant said:

I pay a yearly subscription fee that allows me to listen to any track (full length, unlimited number of times) in their "database".

The "width" of their database is the only drawback for me personally.



Music for adventurous listeners

tA

Tribal Records

Once Spotify hits in the US I guarantee you will cancel that Rhapsody subscription.

And Spotify's database is huge. I first started really taking them seriously when, over the course of 3 days, 250,000 new songs were added to their database.

The database is insanely big. Very, very rarely have I not been able to find something on there that I've been looking for, including some fairly obscure shit.

Militant said:

Would that include some fairly obscure Jazz shit?


Music for adventurous listeners

tA

Tribal Records

I don't think it'll be the death of the mp3's but if it's anything like Pandora, we may have to put them on life support. Pandora is free for the listening, up to 40 hrs. per month. After the 40 hours, it's only .99 for uninterrupted access until the month rolls over or you can buy an unlimited subscription for like 36.00 per year. I love my Pandora stations. I have one for every musical mood I think I might ever be in.

It's getting quite popular too. AT&T and Sprint already have phones capable of streaming it and as soon as they can figure out a way to put it in my car, I swear I will NEVER listen to regular radio again.
[Edited 12/7/09 15:34pm]

I don't understand any of that shit y'all are talking about.

All I know is, I don't want to listen to my music on a computer, I want it thumping from a stereo loud enough to disturb the neighbors. Hell, I like to feel my music vibrating up underneath me till by big toe shoots up in my boot.

Yeah, I've got plenty of songs in the computer, both downloaded and scanned into the computer by CDs, but I can always burn them onto CDs and play them on the stereo (which is where they are supposed to be played) at any time. Life would be miserable if the only way you could listen to music is through some little computer speakers.

If music ever becomes art again, then I will agree with you 100% but as long as shit hop dominates most of the scene like it does today and for the last 15 years, then I'm all for kids downloading it for free and encourage them to make copies of it for their friends also. Every free download is less money in the monopolized record labels' pockets and the shit hoppers' pockets. Hell, you gotta drive shit hop out of style some kind of way so I see it as an appropriate death. They killed music with computers and now computers are killing them. Sounds fair to me.

vainandy said:

Tell me about it.

It trips me out how people are satisfied with "little things" these days. I see all these kids walking around listening to those little ipods with the headphones and music all in their cell phones and things. Many of them don't even own a stereo these days, just strictly those little small devices. I guess if they throw a party, everyone will gather around the headphones. Hell, I didn't even like Walkman radios back in the day. And when they made the jam boxes of the late 80s much smaller than the ones of the early 80s, the media raved about how with newer technology, they were able to make things smaller. Well yeah, but the damn things weren't near as loud as the huge ones and didn't have the power in them either. Hell, I'm gay so size matters. I want something big with some power that's gonna throb.

vainandy said:

I'm 25 but I can't stand little things, I rather have my CDs in my stereo. I'm old fashioned anyways. Even when I did get an iPod I didn't use it that much because the sound wasn't as popping as it would be if you play it on a stereo.

You know these days people do have big ass stereo systems hooked up to their computers playing uncompressed high quality audio right?

You can even have wireless speakers and use your phone as the remote control.

Having a good sound setup has nothing to do with the storage medium.

And this business model will only really take flight if people spend nearly as much or more renting music than buying.

There will come a day in the not-to-distant future where every single thing ever recorded can be accessed instantly for a small fee (so long as you can gain access to the Internet). And I think that’ll probably be very appealing to millions of people.

But I want to own my music. I listen to music far too much for this to not ultimately be dramatically more expensive, even if some of my least-appreciated music would in fact be cheaper to rent when the mood strikes.

But maybe these streaming services will be cheap enough that they will become my new "try before you buy" -- a kind of portable, Wi-Fi capable, personal listening station.

And storage is so cheap now it really isn’t much of an issue for anyone that can afford a computer, with the exception of those that have massive collections (roughly 4,000 albums can be stored in Lossless quality on a Terabyte drive).

I just bought a terabyte backup storage drive (a trillion bytes, that’s a 1,000 billion) for my music collection for $89.99. In very short order we’ll have cheap drives that can even store everything for those who house their music collections in warehouses or museums . In 15 years time that’ll be the same price for a quadrillion bytes (1,000 trillion). And that’ll hold 100 times more music than one can even assimilate in a lifetime.

But I’m totally cool with the concept, especially in the future where you’ll be able to access the Internet from anywhere at anytime.

And this technology will all be incorporated into stereos. And computers can very easily be hooked into home theaters with incredible speakers, and many have incredible speakers themselves already.

But I’d still rather own. That way I can do everything under the sun, whenever I choose (and, yes, there will be (already is) illegal software that will capture the rented streams). And it’ll be a constant battle between protecting the stream and finding ways to sip from it.