Jazz Odyssey

The first all-podcast radio station will be launched on May 16 by Infinity Broadcasting, the radio division of Viacom. According to Wired, "Infinity plans to convert San Francisco’s 1550 KYCY, an AM station, to
listener-submitted content. The station, previously devoted to a talk-radio
format, will be renamed KYOURadio…. the station’s producers will screen submitted content to [...]

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Wal-Mart has announced that it will begin selling customized CDs. Customer’s can go to the Wal-Mart website and put together a custom CD compilation, with pricing set at $4.62 for the first three songs and then 88 cents per song for each additional track. Shipping costs $1.97. This makes the price for [...]

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I’ve posted often about the frustrations with interoperability, and after attending yesterday’s Real Networks event that unveiled the new Rhapsody 3.0, the issue has once again reared its ugly head.  CNET has an article on this in which they say "RealNetworks has quietly renewed its iPod technology battle with Apple Computer".  The sad truth of [...]

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A new virus that wipes out MP3 files on hard drives is working its way through P2P systems. The Nopir.B worm is hidden in a DVD cracking program that can be downloaded from P2P networks. Once the file is run, it deletes all MP3 files on the hard drive along with a number [...]

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Buzzsonic reports that P2P pioneer Ian Clarke has launched Indy, a collaborative filtering enabled search service designed to help people find indie music that they like. All of the music list is available for free download. According to Clarke:
“Everything it plays is from online indie music freely available on the web and you [...]

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In today’s Wall Street Journal, Tim Hanrahan and Jason Fry offer their take on whether hybrid MP3 phones can topple (or at least significantly challenge) Apple’s stronghold over the digital music space. Who will be the big winner? Could be both parties, with the “swiss army knife” device that handles both communication and [...]

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“When Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs walked into the suites of top record label executives in 2002, iTunes software in hand, he was welcomed as a trailblazer to a digital music future.
Now, nearly two years after Apple’s iTunes launch, record executives have become worried that they have inadvertently ceded too much power over their [...]

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“On paper, carriers have plenty of strategic reasons for wanting to sell songs. It beefs up their revenue per subscriber and might well help them sell other services. Ultimately, though, many will end up embracing Apple and its ilk. That way, they can cut the losses they’ll have racked up trying to build their own [...]

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According to this article in Wired, P2P has pushed global bandwidth demand to new heights, with demand for bandwidth growing 42% in 2004. The primary focus of the article is on how ongoing P2P usage and the increase in video trading has fueled this bandwidth consumption, as video files are much larger than MP3s. [...]

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AOL and XM Satellite Radio have announced a partnership to share content for their respective platforms.
“Web surfers will be able to access 20 XM channels on AOL’s radio section, along with its current roster of about 130 stations, for free. A new version of AOL’s “premium” radio service will have 70 XM [...]

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According to this article a recent congressional hearing tackled the interoperability issue. Representatives from industy and consumer groups were quick to voice opposition to government involvement in this issue, claiming that government should stay out of the format war and let competition in the marketplace be governed by existing antitrust and intellectual property laws. [...]

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"Unless you live in Boys Town, Neb., or work in education or family services, you likely haven’t heard of Boys Town Press, the publishing arm of the youth care organization founded by Father Flanagan and made famous by the Spencer Tracy movie.
Boys Town Press, an 11-year-old company that publishes parenting and educational materials, generated sales [...]

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Robert Capps over at Wired gives his dissertation on the death of the disc format, trumpeting the oft-heard mantra that digital delivery will ultimately win the format war. He’s ultimately right, but there’s a good deal of real estate between where we are now and a world where digital delivery has completely replaced the [...]

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No, it’s not militant DRM or ridiculous interoperability issues, but something far more basic–batteries. Battery technology has evolved as a snails pace, and it hampers our abilities with several near-ubiquitous devices such as cellphones, laptops and portable entertainment devices. But there is hope on the horizon. This article over at ExtremeTech discusses [...]

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"More than 22 million American adults own iPods or MP3 players and 29% of them have downloaded podcasts from the Web so that they could listen to audio files at a time of their choosing. That amounts to more than 6 million adults who have tried this new feature that allows internet “broadcasts” to be [...]

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An unexpected and stunning development has raised the hopes of the struggling music industry. In a landmark strategic decision today, all 4 major labels have announced a deal to distribute content freely through a new P2P company.
The new P2P software system, Shyster, works by taking the currently centralized royalty accounting systems at all the [...]

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