Barenaked USB Drive 519
CryptoKnight writes "The Barenaked Ladies are releasing their next album via a reusable 128 MB USB flash drive. From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer article: 'Rather than distribute via CD, DVD or download, the Barenaked Ladies are making their newest selection of songs, videos and exclusive material available on a USB flash drive. Nettwerk Music Group is releasing Barenaked on a Stick beginning today, says the Hollywood Reporter. It plays on PCs, Macs and any other audio product with a USB port -- like some car stereos -- and costs $30.'"
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
'Lossy' is what I meant to say (Score:4, Informative)
Preview is a good thing!
Re:DRM? (Score:5, Informative)
This 128 reusable drive contains 29 songs, including the band's 2004 "Barenaked for the Holidays" album, in MP3 format along with live tracks, in-concert spoken quips, album art, photos, videos and more.
MP3 format == non-DRM'd format. Now, the article could be wrong, but that's what it says. I have no reason to doubt that it will be MP3 format though, as BNL has been making MP3s of their concerts [werkshop.com] available for years now. Say what you will about their music (though I happen to really like them), but they've stayed true to keeping their music unfettered with DRM crud.
Re:What about the music Quality? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Full credit for trying something different... (Score:5, Informative)
From another article [canada.com]:
However, that last paragraph isn't exactly accurate. What you could download was the whole song, but into it was spliced (and not mixed, so it was easily undone) several of the band members encouraging people to go out and buy the album. One segment was an outgoing answering machine message...
And in 2003 they put instrumental versions of most of the songs on their then-current album on the P2P networks. Not that encouraging karaoke is that great a thing to do, though...
No SD please, we're British (Score:2, Informative)
Secure Digital cards support the SDMI copy-protection spec [sdcard.org] (secure from you, not for you), thus opening "a Pandora's box of new marketing possibilities".
Stick to MMC (MultiMediaCard), which is essentially SD minus the copy-crippling mechanism.
Re:Music industry listening? (Score:2, Informative)
It's been done before... (Score:2, Informative)
The German punk band WIZO [www.wizo.de] did this a while ago. They claim to be the first to do it.
From their site:
"WIZO-STICK-EP" is the first USB-Memory-Stick from a band, that comes already packed with songs and lots of other data for the use on your computer. You' ll get:
- five brandnew Songs as high quality MP3s,
- one exclusive "live in Japan video clip" (only available on the "STICK-EP"!),
- loads of funny WIZO pics,
- the lyrics to all songs, including chords for guitar,
- one great photo contest (sorry, only in german!),
- cool multimedia menu for your web browser!
The price is 15.90€. I don't know the current USB-stick prices but that doesn't sound bad, especially since it has the band's branding which is relevant to their fans. A more detailed page can be found here [www.wizo.de] (in German).
Re:If I had a million dollars... (Score:3, Informative)
Why? By using FLAC, you can fit more into the same space than if you use WAV files. Being a lossless codec, FLAC allows you to uncompress/convert back to WAV at will, if that's what you want.
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Very forward thinking, sell whole concerts in MP3 (Score:4, Informative)
The MP3's are really decent too, 192k.
The great thing is the concerts are not just the songs, but also the extras (like the impromptu raps) - which are really the whole reason to go to BNL concerts in the first place.
Nettwork is also the company that came out proclaiming something along the lines of them never using DRM on any CD's released by the artists under them.
Re:Marketing (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, to clarify a bit as someone who is in advertising and knows a fair bit about how publicists are paid...they typically don't get paid based on the specific hype they generate, since its really a crap shoot. Rather, there services are retained for what is usually a set fee (which may or may not include performance incentives).
I know you were just using a figure of speech, but just though I'd give an insightful little nugget about them. So yes, a Slashdot story is a good hit, but the publicist won't be getting a bonus just because of Slashdot.
Re:If I had a million dollars... (Score:4, Informative)
MP3 was great when you could use your modem and download a full (Stereo!) song in less then 10 minutes, but I've always hated the heavy distorted sounds with cymbals and guitars. Have you listened to the radio lately? All the big music stations in my area have converted to these digital juke box things - which I'm sure are great for them but it's very obviously low quality 128Kbps encoding and I hate listening to it.
In the end though I guess I'd rather have 128Kbps MP3's then higher quality VBR 384K WMA's or HQ iTunes songs with DRM.
Re:Full credit for trying something different... (Score:4, Informative)
Where did it say 128Kbps? (Score:5, Informative)
Barenaked Ladies' previous album Maroon contains 12 tracks at about 47 minutes of music. I ripped the CD to MP3s with a bitrate of 192Kbps resulting in about 65MB. That's just over half the available space on a 128MB USB drive.
Just for the sake of argument (this is Slashdot after all) let's say that they release an even bigger album on the USB drive--a full hour of music. That gives us:
That is not bad at all. Considering that 192Kbps is very good quality and 256Kbps is considered to be at least CD quality audio (there should be no noticeable artifacts even to the most astute listener), this sounds like a good deal.
If I were to guess, I'd bet they encode the files with a constant bitrate of 256Kbps. Using this bitrate they could fit about 65 minutes of music on the 128MB USB drive.
more (Score:1, Informative)
- A satisfied customer.
Re:If I had a million dollars... (Score:4, Informative)
Yep, so I can honestly say, SHUT UP! You are going after the same old arguments that every audiophile (or audio-dope) uses. The fact is analog has its great number of problems, including more artifact issues. I am sure you know of what I speak, all those popping type sounds you get from your cassette or record. Real nice analog audio. Copying analog repeatedly obviously has its problems as well because analog has more susceptibility to interferences, which goes back to your sound artifacts.
To answer your question about the video, the sibling to this has it right. It has to do with the way video is drawn on a CRT versus the way video is drawn on a standard television and why video game consoles still typically run at 30 fps and computers run video at 60 fps and up. DVD audio is mostly a dumb idea to sale items multiple times, though it has added the ability for, get this, multiple channel audio.
On the line of video, are you going to contend that VCR or Laser Disc look better then DVDs. I love the age old argument but my analog sounds better argument, the audio-phile constant fall back that they swear it sounds better. I will guarantee that most everyone would not be able to tell the difference in the audio signals or would choose the digital ones as superior. If you have a specific example, it is quite possible that the specific example is one of those aberrations where someone did not properly do their sampling. For some reason I am reminded of a video about being emo...
Re:Dude! You gotta stop buying Britney Spears CDs! (Score:5, Informative)
I'll (probably foolishly) assume this is a serious question.
Audio "wars" happen for a variety of reasons, but mainly because it's in the interests of so many people to "stretch the truth" about sound.
From the makers and sellers of audio equipment (500 watts per channel!!!!) to the goldenears who run mastering studios (gotta have NS1s, dude, anything else is, like, seriously shit) to amateurs who want to justify the fact that they paid $70 for 7 cents worth of copper cable (most of the quality loss comes betweent the amp and the speaker, you know).
All those people -- the first two categories, you'll notice, could be referred to as "audio professionals" -- are lying, or at the very least being very casual with the truth in an effort to either sell more product, book more business, or not seem like a schmuck.
Your original post, and your confusion about what "compression" actually means wrt mastering techniques is a classic example of a classic misunderstanding that's been banging around in pro-audio circles for a long, long time, and has its origin in the "tape wars" of the 1960s. That war was started by the proponents of the two different ways of aligning the magnetic bits on a section of tape.... needless to say both ways worked, but there were two competing sales teams at work.
The article you linked to suffers from a combination of diseases: the "good old days" virus combined with a heavy dose of the "misunderstanding basic physical principles" 'flu. Someone else, in other words, wanting to sound like an "expert" on sound so they can "we don't do that shit here" in their sales pitch and grab a few more customers.
Please, don't think I expect you to believe me! I only worked fixing the computers in one of the world's top mastering studios for 4 years, and kept my ears open, so what the f*** do I know? You gotta bi-wire _everything_ dude, it's the only way...