Category: Digital Music
Gibson releasing free limited edition high-def guitar album online
Gibson Guitar has announced that it’s releasing a music album, featuring performances by some of the world’s best guitarists, exclusively for download from HDTracks.com.
Gibson Presents: Hot Tones in High-Definition will be available for just sixty days from 6th October (yesterday, by my calculations, though the web site still lists it as “available for download soon”) in a variety of high quality audio formats including uncompressed AIFF and FLAC and 320kbps MP3, all DRM-free…
Vodafone extends entertainment portfolio with exciting new "books" option
Vodafone has teamed up with GoSpoken.com to sell books on your mobile, through Vodafone Books on Mobile. It will offer books for between £5 and £15, which seems quite a lot, to be honest, seeing as you’re basically paying to download an audio file.
Vodafone reckons that, if you’re using an HSDPA network, a three-hour audio book will download in three minutes. Then you’ll have £5 or £15 or maybe £7.99 added to your bill, as that’s what it’s all about…
Nectar Music Store opens – buy songs for sandwiches
I’m sitting here thinking of all the years I’ve turned my nose up at Nectar Points, all the food I’ve bought, all the electricity bills I’ve paid and I’m cursing. I’m cursing because there’s finally something I’d like to use them for now that the loyalty card company has launched the Nectar Music Store…
The lowdown on Comes with Music – not unlimited, comes with DRM
The finer details of Nokia’s “Comes with Music” service have just been revealed to us here at Tech Digest. “Comes With Music” is the latest in a long line of digital music services which have been billed as the saviour of the music industry…
Carphone Warehouse announces unlimited download Nokia PAYG 'Comes With Music' phone
The big news may be about the Tube but the Carphone Warehouse and Nokia have packaged together a rather intriguing proposition for those of the pay-as-you-go persuasion. The deal is they sell you a Nokia 5310 XpressMusic handset for £129.95 and you get not only the phone,but also unlimited access to the Comes With Music service for a year…
UPDATE: Stroppy Apple threatens to close iTunes in MASSIVE SULK over royalty payments
There are two very important financial rulings being voted on today. One is something to do with banks and mortgages and the world not ending, which we couldn’t care less about and certainly don’t intend trying to understand.
The other is to do with Apple and the amount of royalties it pays to record labels in return for selling their music on iTunes. Three Copyright Royalty Board judges are meeting in Washington today, to decide if Apple should be forced to boost its royalty payments from 9 cents a song to 15 cents a song for each track sold via iTunes – a 66% increase.
Apple has, incredibly, threatened to CLOSE iTunes…
UPDATE: Oasis teasing new album 'Dig Out Your Soul' for free via MySpace today
Guess what, everyone? MySpace is still going!
And guess what, everyone? Oasis is still going! The two dinosaurs of social networking and 1990s pub rock have teamed up, with the Manchester band dumping the entire content of its new album “Dig Up Your Soul” for listening to on MySpace right now. I am, at this very minute, listening to a turgid reinterpretation of some Beatles songs, much to the anger of everyone within earshot.
The new album’s not officially released for traditional “buying” until next Monday…
NOISE GATE: Why music subscription services will eventually work
This is the second installment of Noisegate, my weekly column on digital music. If you’re interested, then you can find last week’s, as well as future weeks’ columns right here.
This week I’m going to talk about subscription services and mobile phones. With the launch of Nokia’s “Comes with Music” expected this Thursday, and Sony Ericsson’s “PlayNow” service expected soon, too, I thought now would be a good time to muse on whether subscription services will ever really work in the long term.
RUMOUR: Microsoft to merge Zune and Xbox Live
As a Zune owner, I got an email late last week telling me that the Zune store was going to be down for 48 hours, starting today. Not a problem for me, given that I don’t use it, but a bit of a pain for American Zuners, I would have thought. It would be like the iTunes Store going down for two days.
ATTENTION TWEAKERS: Rockbox version 3.0 is out, adding OGG support to iPods and more
If your ideal evening is installing something, realising it doesn’t work very well, trying to reinstall it again then taking it all off and putting the original version back on before eventually getting to bed with very sore eyes at 3.47am, you’re well within the target demographic of Rockbox and its custom MP3 player firmware.
Upgrading older iPods (up to fifth-gen, but not the Touch) and numerous models by Creative, Sandisk and the likes of Archos and iRiver, Rockbox 3.0’s main boast is adding OGG and FLAC playback support to these common players, also opening up locked devices for easy use as an external HD…
