Now that Sony's on board, all four of the major music labels are selling DRM-free music on Amazon's MP3 store. Amazon's giving Apple a real run for its money here.
Amazon has launched their mp3 music store. Files are in mp3 format, no DRM, high bitrate (high quality), and songs are mostly 89-99 cents. A compelling alternative to Apple's iTMS.
Apple and EMI jointly announced earlier this week that the iTMS would offer EMI's music without DRM and at a bitrate of 256 kps instead of 128 kps. Twice the bitrate = twice as good, yeah? Not so fast...you might not even notice the difference.
Apple will begin to sell DRM-free songs from EMI via the iTunes Music Store in May. The songs are higher quality but will cost slightly more ($1.29 vs $0.99 for the DRM version). It'll be interesting to see how many people choose to buy the non-DRM stuff at the higher price. My feeling is that typical consumers won't care that much...lower price will win out over slightly higher quality and some nebulous future flexibility. I bet EMI is even half-hoping for failure on this thing: "see, customers *want* DRM..."
Paper Thin Walls is offering an mp3 mix tape of their favorite music writers' favorite songs of 2006...that's 31 mp3s for free. (via art fag city)
This is old news, but I missed it while I was gone, so apologies if you've seen this. Banksy replaced copies of Paris Hilton's new CD in stores around the UK with his own copies containing doctored album art and a 40-minute song by Gnarls Barkley's Danger Mouse. Banksy made a video of himself pulling off the stunt. Copies of the CD are on eBay for $180-1,300. An mp3 of the song contained on the doctored CD is available.
The International Dialects of English Archive has a ton of mp3 files of people speaking English from all over the world. "All recordings are in English, are of native speakers, and you will find both English language dialects and English spoken in the accents of other languages."
Audio versions of dozens of New Yorker articles. Perfect for the long morning commute (if I had a long morning commute). The same site also has audio versions of several other publications, including Wired, The Atlantic Monthly, and Scientific American. What a great resource. (via rw)
Update: Get them all at once, instructions here.
Listen to three tracks from Thom Yorke's new solo project, the eraser. Radiohead it ain't, and I'm not sure I like it.
MP3 audio of notable moments in history, including Apollo 13's "Houston, we have a problem", Albert Einstein explaining e-mc^2, and, uh, Al Pacino from Scarface. (via cyn-c)
The Edge has a transcript and an mp3 recording of an event called The Selfish Gene: Thirty Years On. The speakers include Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins.
iTunes Signature Maker analyzes your iTunes collection (in the browser via a Java applet) and creates a short sound collage of the music that you listen to most frequently or have rated highly. Here's the signatute it created for me. (thx, paul)
Starting on Monday, Dec 5th, Ricky Gervais (of The Office and Extras fame) will doing a 12-episode series of podcasts for The Guardian. (thx nicholas)
The sounds of Asia
Since recording the walk signal sounds in Hong Kong, I've been a bit slack in documenting the sounds as I travel around Asia (because frankly the iPod is one more thing I don't want to lug around with me all day). Stuff I've missed:
- Bangkok river taxis are manned by two people, the driver and the guy with the whistle. When the boat nears the dock, the whistle guy -- who stands at the back of the long boat -- sounds a short burst to signal to the driver to cut the engine. Then a few other bursts to help the driver back into the dock in such a way that a gentle reverse keeps the boat close enough to the dock so that passengers can get on and off. A final whistle signals that everyone is on/off and the driver can go. It's a neat system, if a little ear-piercing if you're standing near the back of the boat.
- The cover band at Saigon Saigon, the bar on the 9th floor of the Caravelle Hotel in Saigon. The woman was almost screeching during a rendition of Alanis Morissette's You Learn. (Re: the bar...the view is awesome, but I thought the bar was really cheesy, which is unfortunate for such a great location.)
- When trucks back up here, they don't annoyingly go "beep beep beep" like they do in the US. Instead, they play music; it's like backing-up ring tones. The first one we heard played Happy Birthday, the rear of a delivery truck belted out It's a Small World After All, and there was one yesterday afternoon that played some classical tune I couldn't place.
In lieu of hearing any of those things, check out Quiet American's field recordings from Vietnam. (via np)
Hong Kong walk signal
The streets of Hong Kong can be a hectic place, but one of the first things you notice is that the pedestrian street crossing signals have a very clear audio signal (one would assume, for the blind and/or very nearsighted). Some American signals has audio as well, but very few, they're not very loud, and they generally kind of lacking. Anyway, I made an audio recording of the signals (30 sec, 240 KB mp3). The sound is kind of blown out (it's my first experiment with the iTalk) and the signal doesn't sound that loud IRL, but you get the gist.
Tom Coates fills us in on the Annotatable Audio project he worked on at the BBC. Basically, you select a timed section of an audio file (music, newscast, etc.) and then you write a little something about it, Wikipedia-style.
An index of mp3s of old TV theme songs. Would-be DJs take note: a friend of mine was DJing a party back in college and he threw on the Knight Rider theme song and people went bonkers. (via rw)
Update: Sound America also has an extensive collection of TV themes in WAV format. (thx josh)
IT Conversations will be streaming presentations from PopTech 2005 live...Windows Media Player required. :( From Etech to the AIGA Design Conference to Web Essentials 05, more and more conferences letting those of us who can't attend listen in anyway.
The NY Times Magazine has launched The Funny Pages, their comics+ section. PDFs of the comics are available online...here's the first Chris Ware strip. They're also podcasting and the first episode is an interview with Ware by John Hodgman, assisted by organist and radio-man Jonathan Coulton.
Apple introduces the iPod nano, which, wow, it's like a baby iPod. So cute.
Announcing the world's smallest mp3 player: the iPod Flea. Love the Flea collar.
The first five mp3s of Beethoven's symphonies are available for download on the BBC site. The site is really slow though...does anyone have a mirror or a BitTorrent available?
BBC Radio will be offering mp3s of all nine of Beethoven's symphonies. "All the symphonies are performed by BBC Philharmonic, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda."
Apple says the iPod shuffle has captured 58% of the flash memory mp3 player market already. That's kind of astounding.
