Thursday 6 August 2009

On-Line Music

If you're new to the world of getting music on-line rather than buying it on CD, listen to this podcast, which describes the current state of play with on-line music, both for purchase and free.



Download MP3 File

Broadly, there are two ways to listen to on-line music
  1. Acquisition: download audio files and then listen to them
  2. Access: stream audio from the "cloud"
The trend appears to be moving from the traditional ownership (acquisition) model to access model.

Useful Web sites

Digital Rights Management: Technology that punishes legal fans!



4 comments:

Chris said...

The Times is reporting that the record industry plans to launch a new digital album format dubbed "CMX". In addition to audio tracks it will include cover art, lyrics, liner notes, ring-tones and other goodies. There's no mention of whether CDX will include baddies such as DRM. Apparently, the record companies invited Apple to be involved but Apple said it wasn't interested. Apple has subsequently started work on its own digital album format named "Cocktail".

ChrisP said...

Great tip from an avid listener:


I make a point of annotating the music in the metadata in iTunes if we download music offered for free legal download (e.g. from sources such as the ABC's TripleJ new music) with the site downloaded from, and that it was a free legal download. Helpful to be able to justify it if ever asked.

ChrisP said...

Contrasting approaches taken by Nokia and Spotify (iPhone App) regarding mobile music. Time will tell whether the download (acquisition) or streaming (access) model will prevail.

Chris said...

According to TechCrunch, Google are about to launch a music download service in collaboration with LaLa/iLike.