It’s hard to disagree with anyone that says iTunes forever changed the way we buy music. Their simple $.99 per song pricing made it cheaper than ever to buy just the songs you like. It didn’t matter if the song was brand new or three decades old, $.99 was the price. Unfortunately starting next month that will no longer be the case. If you’re looking for a current chart-topper, expect to pay a premium.
According to sources, Apple has begun telling record labels that on April 7 they will introduce the new $1.29 premium price for popular tracks. This has been discussed off and on for some time, but this is the first we’ve heard of a date for the new pricing.
I won’t pretend to know all of the inner-workings of the record industry, but I’m pretty sure their business model is to bend potential customers over a table and attempt to extract cash rectally. I mean, it’s not like we’re going through a recession or anything. Oh well, looks like we’re just going to have to listen to music the old-fashioned way. Speaking of which, I believe we can look forward to a ruling on the big RIAA vs ThePirateBay case just 10 days after this new pricing scheme goes public.
I’m spending today at the ETech Emerging Technology Conference, and I just got back from a talk by Aaron Koblin. You might remember Aaron from his Sheep Market project, where 10,000 people were paid two cents each to draw “a sheep facing to the left” via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, a service (that you can participate in!) that lets humans perform crowd computing in exchange for money. If you haven’t seen this project, it’s awesome, especially if you like sheep.
In his talk today, Aaron showed two other crowd sourced projects… One was an image of a hundred dollar bill composed of 10,000 individually drawn pieces. The other, in the video above, was a rendition of Daisy Bell, the first song ever sung by a computer and made famous in 2001 (the movie, so in 1968). Aaron’s version of Daisy Bell was sung (and accompanied) by a mix of 2,088 people singing one syllable each, when they had no idea what they were contributing toward, just that they would get paid six cents. It’s pretty remarkable.
Last year Harmonix announced that they had acquired the rights to create a game based around The Beatles. Naturally this caused quite a commotion, as they are one of the most sought-after bands for rhythm games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Unfortunately details were scarce, and we’ve been forced to wait for another major announcement regarding the title. Thankfully the wait for more info is over, as Harmonix has not only released specifics on the game, but a launch date and pricing as well.
You might think that gerbils have no innate musical talent. You’d be wrong. Maybe. The real problem is just that we don’t give them the opportunity to express themselves with little tiny guitars and keyboards and drum kits. Sega Toys has come through with the Live Dream (”No Music No Live!”) rock band stage, featuring tiny little instruments on a tiny little stage complete with speakers and coordinated lighting effects. The instruments include guitar, bass guitar, keyboard, and drums with the rock set, or sax, bass, piano, and drums with the jazz set. You select what song you want to hear with the remote control, and then decide what instruments you want to play when by placing them on the sensor enabled stage:
Each set comes with a bunch of songs on an SD card (in a proprietary format, of course) including classics such as Eye of the Tiger and Ghostbusters, and more are downloadable over the internet if you just can’t get enough. I honestly have no idea what the appeal of this is or why you would want one (unless you have pet gerbils), especially for the price of $307.
For those of you who didn’t get all of your music for free when Napster was around and instead bought a bunch of CDs that you never listen to anymore comes a website called Bopaboo. It’s basically a marketplace for “used” MP3s, whatever that means… You can upload an MP3 (DRM free, of course) to their website, and then sell it to others. For real money. Bopaboo acts as a broker and takes a percentage of the cost of the song, which you can set yourself but starts as low as $0.25.
The sketchy part is that since there’s no DRM on the MP3s, nothing really stops you from being an uberl33t haxorz and making a copy of the file for yourself while selling the original on the site. Nothing really stops you from doing that over and over and over, as far as I can tell. Oh, well, one thing will stop you, I guess:
If You sell any Used Published Item, you represent and warrant to the purchaser that your copy of the Used Published Item is a digital copy of the original work that You purchased directly from the applicable publisher or agent of the publisher or from another person who was authorized to sell that copy to You and that You have not previously sold any copies of such work. You further represent and warrant to the purchaser and to Bopaboo that, upon the completion of such sale, You will delete any remaining copies of the Used Published Item that may exist in your possession, custody or control. You agree that any transaction you make is final and you agree to indemnify and defend Bopaboo against any and all claims arising out of any transaction…
Sure, I’ll delete ‘em! Pinkie swear!
My guess is that Bopaboo is going to argue that the selling of MP3s is the responsibility of the users, and it’s not their fault if the user doesn’t destroy the CD or has stripped the DRM from the file. And since selling used CDs isn’t illegal, I suppose there isn’t anything inherently wrong with selling the data off of them when you’re done with it. But at the same time, I can’t imagine that the Man is going to let this service last very long. In any case, it’s now in beta, and you can apply for an invitation to buy and sell here.
Back on April 1st (that would be, April Fool’s Day) we posted about a Personal Soundtrack Shirt from Thinkgeek.com. The shirt had a speaker embedded in the front, and would play music and sound effects as you went about your daily business, making your boring life that much more exciting.
It was, of course, a joke.
Or maybe not.
Thinkgeek got such a crazy response to the joke that they’ve decided to make an actual product out of it, and it’ll be on sale in limited quantities starting on Friday. Just like the April Fool’s Day prank, the shirt has a big speaker embedded in the front. A wired remote control allows you to choose the appropriate soundtrack or sound effect to play. If you don’t like the included sounds, you can add your own on an SD card, or even wire an MP3 player directly into the speaker. The electronics are removable so you can wash the shirt if you’re into that sort of thing.
The Personal Soundtrack Shirt is only $40 and is guaranteed to make you awesome forever. Or as long as you’re wearing it, anyway. Video after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Everyone is familiar with the common kitchen kettle, right? Fill it up with water, set it on the stove and it will whistle when the water begins to boil. It’s really not a complicated piece of kitchenware, that is until someone decides to change the tune of that whistle.
This Harmonica Kettle is, as you might imagine, a kettle with a built-in harmonica in place of the whistle. Rather than hearing a high-pitched scream, you’ll be greeted with a soft melody from your kettle. Is that worth $265? Not to me, but then again I don’t even own a kettle, so what do I know?
This post is syndicated with permission from GamerFront.net
If I stop to think about some of the most influential musicians and bands in the history of Rock, The Beatles are certainly high on the list. Unfortunately the British musicians have been slow to license their music in the digital age. I believe they are one of only 3 bands in the entire world that don’t have their work for sale on iTunes. Despite their apparent fear of modern music distribution, they have decided to allow Harmonix to develop their own music game.
One would be quick to think that this was a Rock Band title, however, this is not the case. It is apparently a completely unique game, though it does draw on the Rock Band platform in some ways. Very little is known about the project at this point, though we do have a few tidbits. One, it will follow the Beatles career from their first album all the way up to their last release. It will also feature a lot of “visual imagery”, though specifics weren’t mention. One good piece of news is that it will be compatible with current Rock Band instruments.
If you’ve spent much time around drummers (and I’ve had way, way, WAY more than my share), you might take a look at this drum kit shirt and ask yourself why on Earth anyone would want to go and give a drummer yet another way to make noise. Please, Thinkgeek, have mercy on the rest of us. Yes, it’s cool that your shirt has integrated touch panels and a speaker that can loudly reproduce seven different sounds. It’s also cool that all of the electronic components removable so that the shirt can be washed. But why did you have to put drums on it? Why not something a bit gentler, with less potential for public abuse… Something like, I dunno, bagpipes? Yeah, bagpipes. Now THAT would be awesome.
The electronic drum kit shirt takes 4 AA batteries and will run you about $30 from ThinkGeek. Migraine medication sold separately.
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By Evan Ackerman
