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.'"
Way to stick it to the man. (Score:2, Insightful)
Psst - I went to the web site and there are no naked ladies in the band
Let me get this straight... (Score:2, Insightful)
-Nick
What about the music Quality? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow only $30... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not enough bits (Score:5, Insightful)
I would hate to see situations like this, where albums are only avialable in a lossy format, become the norm
Re:If I had a million dollars... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
They're charging $30 for an album with compressed audio? No thanks.
No, they're charging $25 for a USB memory card and including a double album of compressed audio for $5.
Re:Wow only $30... (Score:5, Insightful)
iTunes is DRMed. Also, according to TFA it has 29 songs plus extras (videos etc).
Full credit for trying something different... (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case the sum of the parts is greater than the items. Sure the music can be delivered cheaper and a memory stick is cheap. But the willingness to try something a little bit different just to see what happens is worth some applause.
By the way, these guys produce good music. They are worthy of support.
Everyones complaining... (Score:5, Insightful)
Album Art (Score:2, Insightful)
Let me get this straight... (Score:2, Insightful)
The audio's lower quality
It doesn't work in my car
That's only slightly more practical than releasing your album on the first 600 meg of a 500 gig drive, for $200 each.
I like this not (Score:3, Insightful)
This fits in well with plans [arstechnica.com] to make Windows Vista only play DVDs at full quality using the aforementioned Trusted Output Devices [tm]
Re:If I had a million dollars... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ebay plain 128 MB USB drive sells for $15 - $20 US
Average BNL cd sells for $14 to $15 US on amazon, shipping extra..
So, it's not an absurd price.
Oh, and a few details from the amazon page:
# 128mg Flash Memory USB drive (2.0 technology, also maintains compatibility with USB 1.1)
# Contains nearly 30 tracks of music (in MP3 file format), PLUS in-studio video snippets, live concert excerpts and more
# Reusable drive can be used for any and all file types (limited to capacity of flash drive)
# MP3 files included are completely DRM-free
Also, it's 29 songs, cost you $29.00 on itunes for the works.
It's not out of line, an interesting way to attract attention!
Getting it straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
The audio's lower quality
You get about 3 times as many songs as you would on a CD.
You can burn it to CD.
This is like them releasing it as an iTMS exclusive, except:
It's not DRMed.
They throw in a 128M flash drive for free.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow only $30... (Score:3, Insightful)
"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."
I think if you are a BNL fan, this would be well worth it
Re:What about the music Quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called answering a question without being a jerk, try it.
Re:If I had a million dollars... (Score:5, Insightful)
How much for the 1gigabyte version with the flac songs?
Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
We seem to enjoy missing the point, so we start arguing about whether other bands will follow. I will put this in for kicks:
Some might, but upping the distribution costs that much is not profitable long term since consumers wont pay $30 for the same thing everytime.
Re:If I had a million dollars... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not seeing the usefulness? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If I had a million dollars... (Score:2, Insightful)
So in reality, $15 for the album and $15 for the drive and the price is pretty reasonable. That's the point of his post. Feel free to agree or disagree but flame at your own risk.
Re:Way to stick it to the man. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not enough bits (Score:3, Insightful)
It did happen. It was the switch from analog to digital. All digital formats are inherently lossy. So the question is, what is the critical bitrate?
Ultimately, all analog formats are lossy too, since there's a limit to the fidelity of a given format which limits the amount of information that can be stored on a given medium.
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, you get a free USB flash drive when you buy this thing, but seriously, it's not worth the price difference. One store chain here just had a sale on 512 MB flash drives for 20 EUR - that's 5 EUR for 128 MB, which is nowhere near the extra 15 USD you'd pay for the flash drive here compared to the CD.
What you *do* get is music in a lossy format, which is a genuine disadvantage over a CD. Why didn't they use FLAC instead? Sure, they might have used a larger drive then, but at least then it just *might* have been a good deal when you compare the price to what a USB flash drive and a CD cost, together.
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no way to respond to that except to say, "No, it's not." And it's not. Maybe if you had fewer CDs, you'd have more scratches. Not that scratches, themselves, actually pose much of a problem until your sister tosses it in the back seat of your car and leaves it there for a few days while her friends sit on it. USB drives are safe from that. And while it's unlikely that that will ever happen again, it's still a check in the USB column.
Sure, you get a free USB flash drive when you buy this thing, but seriously, it's not worth the price difference.
There isn't a price difference. 29 songs = 2.2-ish CDs = 30 bucks.
What you *do* get is music in a lossy format, which is a genuine disadvantage over a CD.
People download songs all the time and feel fine about it. I, personally, can't tell the difference between 128kbps MP3 and a CD, which is why I'm pro-this. And again, if you don't like it, don't buy it. Nobody will hurt you for it. I'm sure CDs are going to be around for at least another week or two in any case.
Re:Getting it straight... (Score:1, Insightful)
I can make my own crappy MP3s from the CD if I want (wait no I can't, there is no CD avilable). I can also make much higher quality mp3s or wmas or oggs or ??? from it or I can play the original content which would sound absolutetly stellar compared to what they are distributing on those flash drives. Except since I can't buy the CD, I have no choice but to listen to utterly crap sounding material. SCREW THAT!
Well, this sucks! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If I had a million dollars... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry for posting as an AC, but I've already modded on this story.
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:3, Insightful)
yes it does, and has twice as many songs, and extra content. I have been arguing for a while that if the labels want to sell recording, they need to follow the lead of movies on DVD and have bonus content. Anyway, there are ways to lower the total cost.
The audio's lower quality
Yes, and I suppose that you are one of those that believe the average $200 home system or car stereo can accurately reproduce the high frequencies and other detail that one loses when one compresses. In any case, the bitrate is probably reletively high, and thier, like most music, is quite simple. Popular recorded music tends to be simple because even though we have the technology to faithfully record it, most people simply do not have the equipment to replay it. Clearly this is not something one would buy for a $1000 system, but would you be playing BNL on the $1000 system?
It doesn't work in my car ...
This is the same problem we had with vinyl and CDs. Cars, at least at first with CDs, couldn't play either, so we had to make copies. Foprtunately the labels did not sue the auto manufacturers for promoting piracy. It is much simpler to do this now than 20 years ago, though one has to have a CD burner, which almost everyone has anyway. For instance, download iTunes and import the music. Create a playlist and burn the CD. Leave the copy in the car to protect the original. If the car does not have a CD player, or there is no CD burner available, hook up the cassete recorder input to the speaker output of the computer and record. This is what we used to do. Never noticed any difference. And it safer as well.
And if everyone released music like this, I'd have 128Meg USB drives laying around my house all over the place.
Ah, I have a storage closet full of albums, tapes, and CDs. If only I had a storage closet full of something as useful as USB drives.
Stupid audiophiles ... (Score:1, Insightful)
seriously? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not enough bits (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If I had a million dollars... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even CD's are compressed down to their sample rate. Of course, they're also compressed to maximize volume thus destroying their dynamic range. [georgegraham.com]
I'd rather have a cassette that was mastered well than a modern CD that has been smashed up against the noise ceiling. A 256 kbps VBR MP3 in the hands of someone who cares will sound a lot better than a studio producer in a Porsche mashing 100 years of audio engineering in a misguided attempt to be louder than Howard Stern.
Re:Don't be so down on it (Score:3, Insightful)
USB? great i can use it on a computer or a laptop, maybe one model of mp3 player, maybe some digital camera out there... there might be some pda out there that supports usb... sure, not everyone has a pin thru for compact flash to ide, and sure not every modern pc has flash card readers standard... but they make a SD card + 'thumbdrive sized' usb sd card reader at least with that the memory card would be usable in Any device that used SD memory/has a usb port instead of just the latter...
Make Up Your Mind (Score:3, Insightful)
Damn, folks. Make up your minds.
If you like the music, $30 for better than two albums is a pretty fair price. If you would rather purchase a different format, maybe suggest it to them in a constructive manner. You might be suprised.
Dude! You gotta stop buying Britney Spears CDs! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Compression" -- ie lossy data stuffing -- is a totally different thing to "compression" -- ie fiddling the freqs to make a CD seem "louder". I can understand why you'd be confused, since they use the same word for both. Kinda like "bad" meaning "bad" - but also, if you're Michael Jackson, meaning "really really good". English is a bitch like that. "Bitch" as in "bitching" -- it's a vital feature of all languages that words can mean more than one thing.
And far from being a common thing, the misuse of the kind of compression you are wailing about is usually limited to the worst of the worst of throwaway pop music.
Most artists, labels, studios, and mastering engineers are, literally, psychotic about maintaining sound quality, which is one of the reasons a CD that's even just averagely mastered will beat your "well mastered cassette" any day of the week and six times on Sunday.
Simply _playing_ a cassette stretches the tape and starts scrubbing away at the data. And that's not even to mention the difference in dynamic range. From the article that you linked to yet obviously didn't read:
"[with CDs] consumers could purchase a recording in a medium whose dynamic range exceeded that of $20,000 professional tape machines."
Not their new CD (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Well, this sucks! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If I had a million dollars... (Score:1, Insightful)
this will be commonplace soon (Score:2, Insightful)