Barenaked USB Drive

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.'"

Re:Wow only $30...

[Kelson]

A USB stick is more expensive to make than a CD, whcih you can just stamp. Either is more expensive than just sending bits over the wire.

For a one-album set of songs, I don't see this working except for the novelty, unless it's billed as "128 MB USB stick (with Barenaked Ladies songs)" instead of "Barenaked Ladies songs (on a USB stick)." It reminds me of school fundraisers where you're selling tickets to an event with candy. It's always easier to sell people candy with a ticket as a bonus than to sell them a ticket with candy as a bonus.

On the other hand, for 29 songs, the cost should really be compared to a 2-CD set. At that point, $30 isn't that much more than $25.

FTFA

[otis wildflower]

RTFA:
"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."

Reusable. MP3 format.

I may actually get it. Granted, 128MB isn't nearly large enough for my BNL boot collection (~2gb or so), but I could use a memory key and $30 isn't too bad a price.. Here's hoping _McDonald's Girl_ and/or _Lovers in a Dangerous Time_ are on there...

OK, big BNL fan here, but...

[TuxBeej]

This sounds like a unique idea for releasing an album and if they pack it with goodies, I certainly won't complain. Including in-concert banter is a great idea, as that's always one of the things I've missed when I listen to a recording - there's less energy in the studio than there is live. They do offer downloads or CDs of most of their live concerts, for a price, which is a fantastic offer I've yet to actually *try*.

What worries me is that it'll be a little too easy to *lose* your music from that drive. Maybe that's a small worry, since you'll *probably* be able to back the music up on your own. Still, it just means that now I have to create a CD of it in order to listen to it in my car. Too many "ifs" to make me feel totally comfortable with purchasing this (even though I totally will). Plus, it'll look like hell on my CD rack. ^)_(^

Heh. I suppose what would've been an even better gimmick would be if they had released this USB drive in a package that includes a blank CD with artwork specific to this album. Then you could record it yourself, or even use the disc to record your own mixes. Include a little album artwork on the USB stick (front/back covers) and you can print out a pretty CD for your shelves if you wanted.

"Compression"

[tepples]

If I am paying for music, I want to get all the bits

Are you getting all the bits even when you buy a CD? Nowadays, most pop music is mastered through a limiter and a saturator to make it sound louder on portable CD players. Sending the signal against the -1 and +1 rails discards almost all the information during a drum hit, making the end result much less natural and less "punchy". See also loudness race [google.com].

Here's why not

[Anonymous Coward]

I think its a brilliant step in the right direction, backwards. The move back to a point where some tangible artifact represents the product is essential for the music business to survive in its present form. My band were doing almost the same thing, except it would be worth the twenty quid;). For a couple of years now I've been playing with Knoppix remixes, particularly spinning ultra small stick distros. Point is that you can make the whole thing bootable into any system you like, put your own media player on there, include video, whatever. The answer to the myriad fragmentation of formats, all encumbered with rights restrictions and incompatibilities seems do just this, make your product _an_operating_system_, something that takes 30 seconds to boot a cramfs filesystem, setup the audio and video and start playing the show. And you can make it really interactive too. Well after this Sony scandal I realised that it's a wrong move, and decided to use the project (basically an interactive album on a usb stick presented through PureData) as a showpiece for promotion only. It's not good to encourage people to accept data in unknown formats. You see, the music business have demonstrated they cant be trusted. Putting a CD containing just data into your machine is one thing, allowing them to run code on your machine is bang out of question from here on, so imho as someone who has with enthusiasm explored this idea quite deeply I say its an attempt to roll back the clock. Keep your music as data only, so you know what it is. USB sticks _could_ be useful to deliver full bandwidth .wav files however.

A glimpse of the future (sort of)

[Devil's Avocado]

This is interesting to me because I think it's a glimpse of music distribution in the near future. No, I don't mean that USB sticks will be the medium of choice in the near future, I mean that music will be released *without* CDs or even DVDs. There's a certain camp of DRM apologists who say, "but I can always just buy the CD and rip the songs myself if I don't want the DRM from the iTunes music store/Napster/whatever, therefore the DRM on those services is OK." Those people don't seem to understand that in a time when CDs are painfully hard for music companies to control (just ask Sony), their sales are plummetting, and iTMS has shown that people are willing to buy DRM-infected music online in large numbers, the days of getting new releases on CD are numbered. If I were a music exec (eew, slimy!), I would be just itching for the day I could do a full-DRM release without releasing CDs at all.

By the way, I *do* understand that in TFA the tracks are unencumbered MP3, but my point is about the limited future for CD distribution. No slight against BNL is intended, though I'm not thrilled that they're only distributing lossy encodings.

-DA

Oh, and by the way, here are a few stores where you can buy unencumbered music electronically:
www.magnatune.com (lossless even!)
www.bleep.com (lots of great electronica, including Boards of Canada)

Let me make it clearer

[tepples]

Are you sure you're talking about the same meaning of "compression?"

I know there are two different kinds of audio compression (as evidenced by Wikipedia's disambiguation page [wikipedia.org]), and they can sit at various points in the production chain:

• Level compression before mixing: Good, as it helps the instrument stay at a consistent level in the mix
• Level compression after mixing: OK
• Harsh level compression and saturation after mixing: Lossy
• Psychoachoustic data compression after mastering: Lossy

They just can't do anything right, can they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot crowd has moaned and moaned about DRM since day one, in every single thread about MPAA/RIAA, music, TV , movie and etc. Everybody complained that they treat us geeks as potental criminal. How everything will be better and world peace will come only if they treat us as customers instead of criminals and allow us to copy our songs/conetent however we want it. Oh, and don't forget how we love to complain that we don't want data on an audio CD.

So what does the lot of slashdot crowd does when some non-indie band release their albrums on mp3, which doesn't have the dreaded DRM, bundled with extra stuff, on a USB memory stick that you can reuse? A whole bunch of slashdot (Not all, but some far alot) wants to complain about how they dislike MP3s or how the memory stick is too small? So what will make the slashdot crowd happy? Free music on ipod shuffle give away? Gimme a break. Some parent post already worked out that they are not making extra on the USB keys, so how about some common sense and be grateful?

It's about time...

[aqfire]

This represents a milestone in consumers getting what they want. 1) This may be the first time a major band sells copyrighted mp3s without DRM 2) This is the first album on media that can be rewritten to since the tape deck 3) I convert them to mp3 to play in my car anyway I only hope this will be a hit and more bands follow suit.

Tech Front Runners

[DNA Beast]

The Barenaked ladies have always been at the forefront of using tech to get their music out there.

I've bought their last three CD's online (including a solo project by Steven Page) with great ease and little expense. The last two were available in flac format so no lossless problems there. They even came with all the album artwork and lyric sheet info available in PDF format.

When 'Maroon' was released they were one of the first bands to provide dummy versions of the song on file sharing networks. (You could download a 40 meg uncompressed file where the song started up but then to band members came on and started shilling their CD in a good natured way over the top of the tunes)

When 'Everything to Everyone' was released a few years ago, I recall trying to get a copy of it from a file sharing network because here in Australia I couldn't get my hands on the CD for months. They flooded the network with all the tracks from the new album without the vocal tracks, so I had to wait. Now, because of their embracement of selling on the web, I don't have to.

Re:If I had a million dollars...

[seasleepy]

The summary is actually wrong -- this isn't a new album. It's been out on CD [amazon.com] for over a year. The concert recordings are likely from last year's holiday tour [werkshop.com], which has been available in mp3, FLAC, or on CD, basically since the shows happened.

So, you can get most of the music, but it'd cost ~$30, and you don't get the extra stuff or a USB stick out of the deal. (Buying on your own though, you get a CD and a full show in perfect quality, so I guess it's a tossup which you prefer.)

Re:Don't be so down on it

[SeventyBang]

I think it's a cool idea - definitely new & creative. They'll get a lot of free publicity.

Keep 128MB? As in recycle it? What for?

Someone totes a 128MB stick?

I must be getting lazy. Right now, I only have 2 USB 2GB sticks[1], a USB WiFi on-a-stick, and a Cross Ion pen on my lanyard. I'm shopping for a laser pointer, but I haven't found the right one yet.

I've thought about getting one of the green ones which melts styrofoam cups from across the room. Think Geek used to have them, but now, I only see them on eBay.

It might liven up boring meetings.

_____________________________________
[1] $99 total (retail: $199 each), thanks to a Best Buy sale + rebate + luck. They format to NTFS well (original FAT) and the only things I keep on one of them permanently are my cover letter, resume, and the small drivers for the Wi-Fi stick.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:If I had a million dollars...

[Agelmar]

Yes, but if I had my choice I would take at least AAC -audiophile (with no DRM, obviously). A typical 3:30 song is about 7.3MB, so I could still fit around 17 songs. And if space is tight, then just bump it to a 256mb thumbdrive. That would still be economical at the $30 price point, and 256mb is the smallest thumbdrive that I will actually carry anyways.

Re:Don't be so down on it

[karmatic]

If you're going for a green laser pointer, may I recommend:

http://megalaser.com/ [megalaser.com]

Or, for the REALLY serious laser pointer enthusiast:
http://www.wickedlasers.com/products.php?var=ok&co ntent=elite [wickedlasers.com]

Nothing like a 125mW green compared to a puny 3mw red pointer :)

Re:Don't be so down on it

[name*censored*]

Right now I have about 20 racks full of CDs I've since digitized. A CD takes up WAY more room than a puny nerdstick. So if the choice is between a rack full of CDs which are completely useless (since I have a copy at my fingertips, and they can't be re-used) and a semi-useless-and-smaller nerdstick (which can be used for trafficking data from work to home without the fuss of emailing it, or worrying about losing an expensiveish memory stick), then I'd choose the nerdstick.