MP3 Winners and Losers for 2003 408
An anonymous reader writes "Richard Menta over at MP3newswire.net just posted his annual winners and losers list in digital music for last year. The big winner is Apple for dominating MP3 portable player sales and the dramatic success of its iTunes service. Napster savior Roxio and the small independent record labels also made the winners list. The losers list include SonicBlue and MP3.com. Interestingly, Ogg Vorbis made the losers list, not because of the codec per se, but because iTunes has both catapulted the AAC format to number two and stimulated Microsoft to pour more of its efforts ($$$) into WMA and the iTunes clones, leaving little room left for the open source alternative. The 2001 and 2002 winners list are worth a look too and each have links to that year's losers list."
MP3.com.co (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Die, Vivendi Die (Score:5, Interesting)
Elsewhere in this discussion somebody said they wanted to just pay a monthly rate for unlimited downloads. Vivendi is why that's a mistake. People sign up for cable TV mainly because they can get lots of shows that aren't available over the air. These shows used to be spread out over a lot of independent cable channels, but these channels got bought up by various conglomerates, of which Vivendi was probably the biggest. When Vivendi ran short of cash, they started cutting back on their programming. That's why the SciFi channel shows so many reruns of Tales From the Crypt. Of course, viewers didn't get any money back because Vivendi was spending less money to entertain them -- they were locked in.
If cable TV programming allowed you to just pay for what you want to watch, people could vote with their feet and it would be harder to screw them. But when it's an all-or-nothing service, you take what they give you.
Same with flat-rate online music services, like EMusic. Except there's even less competition in that marketplace, so the overall quality is especially low.
Re:MP3.com.co (Score:2, Informative)
True to a point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, because we now have MP3, AAC, and WMA, all becoming popular, that means that instead of hardcoded support for 1 format, any company that's serious about making music software or hardware is probably going to want to support a plugin style architecture, which means that supporting a 4th, 5th, 6th, etc, format becomes much easier, so things like FLAC and Vorbis have one more barrier to entry removed from their paths.
Re:True to a point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:True to a point... (Score:5, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with the popularity of mp3. mp3, like everything else, is more popular simply because it is more popular. It came out 1st, has hardware decoders, and people know what you mean when you say mp3 (a free/cheap music format for my computer, hardware player, etc). People just dont know or care if ogg is better. Also, mp3's were around for _years_ before there were online stores for them.
Consumer's don't "demand" codecs (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:True to a point... (Score:2, Informative)
Magnatune [magnatune.com]
and
Audio Lunchbox [audiolunchbox.com]
Provide drm-free ogg vorbis files for purchase.
Re:True to a point... (Score:5, Interesting)
Any particular codec could be 0% of sales and still have high demand for players. Remember: a few years ago, no music was sold in MP3 format (and even today, very little is sold in that format), but there was (and still is) a huge demand for MP3 players.
Whatever codec that most people use to encode CDs, is the "must have" format for players. Right now, that is MP3. Some day, it could be Vorbis (though I don't see a trend in that direction). But one thing's for sure: it will never, ever be DRM-wrapped AAC or WMA. Those are guaranteed dead ends.
(*) IMHO, this is likely to remain the case for a very long time. It requires an above-average amount of foolish short-sightedness for a person to be willing to buy in a lossy format, unless the precision is extremely high (making the files nearly as large as using lossless compressors). It has to be possible to transcode to tomorrow's formats w/out adding significant artifacts, otherwise the format is "unsafe" in the future-proofing sense. Thus, the only serious competition that CDs face, is from codecs like FLAC.
Re:True to a point... (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no such thing as a non-lossy digital encoding of analog data. You have to start throwing away data that comes below a certain threshold. CDs are just a lossy format which isn't well tuned to what humans actually hear, so there's a lot of room to throw away data.
In any case, people bought seriously lossy formats for the first 90 years of music, and they still buy a lossy format for
Re:True to a point... (Score:5, Insightful)
The term 'lossy', in regard to information storage, refers to any format that intentionally discards existing data in a particular manner in order to fit into the medium more easily. Non-lossy digital formats would include tiff (I think), rle and bmp (both picture formats), or shn and wav (audio formats). You can convert between non-lossy formats, and get back identical data each time. Just because something is digital doesn't mean it's 'lossy'. Jpg, mpg and mp3 are all lossy because the codecs intentionally fudge data in order to make it fit into a smaller data file. When they're doing a good job, you lose less information than you would when making an analog copy. CDs aren't 'lossy'. They simply have a dynamic range and sampling rate that is narrower than the best analog recording mediums. In the analog world, you can do a lot worse than CD audio.
By your argument, VHS or Betamax would be a better quality than the digital projector systems that George Lucas and others are trying to get theaters to adopt. Or that a 6 megapixel camera is worse image quality than an SLR with bargain basement film and crappy lens.
Proposition for a portable device (Score:5, Interesting)
I have an idea. How much sense would it make for a company to make a Vorbis-only (or perhaps Vorbis/FLAC-only) hardware player? Before you all scream, here is my line of thinking of why it might be a good idea:
* Primarily, no expensive license issues.
* Vorbis-decoding can be done using only integers (FLAC too?), which must save some hardware costs.
* It popularises the Vorbis/FLAC formats.
And for the burning issue of "what 99% of the population with music in other formats?". I would propose that the software frontend to this be able to transparently transcode your music from any format (using any software plugin available) to Vorbis (or FLAC if you don't want to lose quality), before copying to the device.
Benefits to consumer:
* Supports pretty much any format of music they might have.
* Would be very cheap to buy.
I don't think the loss of quality in transcoding will be so important, because after all this is just a portable device, not a portable studio. The only inconvience I could see to a consumer would be a slightly longer delay as audio is transcoded and copied, but at a suitable quality level, I don't think it could make that much of a difference. Of course, there wouldn't be any such extra delay if you were copying a Vorbis or FLAC file to begin with.
Saving on the hardware costs like that, and using software to handle all the numerous different audio formats sounds like a good idea to me, and so the manufacturer could probably sell it for a lot less than other players. And of course, we all know that Joe Average quite commonly picks the cheapest electronic device that does what they want, rather than worrying about its technical specs.
Any comments?
Re:Proposition for a portable device (Score:5, Interesting)
As much as I like and use Ogg, an Ogg-only player isn't feasible in the current market. I personally like iRiver's method, when there's limited room in the firmware, give the user choice. With the iFP-300 and 500 series players, they give you a choice between MP3+Ogg and MP3+WMA firmwares.
Re:Proposition for a portable device (Score:3, Insightful)
Primarily, no expensive license issues.
If you have software that transcodes from MP3/WMA/Whatever, you'll need a license to decode these anyways so the expensive license issues are still there.
Vorbis-decoding can be done using only integers (FLAC too?), which must save some hardware costs.
Again, while Vorbis and FLAC can be decoded with intergers only, so can MP3 (http://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/mpeg/
Re:Proposition for a portable device (Score:3, Insightful)
The MP3/AAC licensing costs are miniscule compared to the cost of the rest of the components. It's probably in the range of 50c - $1 per device, or less.The cost of the RAM/HD is 100x any licensing costs.
The file transfers would be disgustingly slow because of the overhead required to transcode every file to the machine. And it would need proprietary software to put music on it (to do the transcoding) which is one of the few complaints people have about the iPod.
Re:Proposition for a portable device (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't remember the numbers, but MP3 licensing costs are insignificant. It's like less than a dollar per decoder.
Vorbis-decoding can be done using only integers (FLAC too?), which must save some hardware costs.
MP3 decoding can also be done with only integers [mars.org]. Cheap players already do this, so doesn't save you anything.
So you'd be offering a player with no real advantages except a miniscule price decrease, and some major disadvantages (transcoding). As much as I lo
Re:True to a point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:True to a point... (Score:2)
Quicktime is just a means of sequencing frames. It is not a format let alone a proprietary one. I don't see why people continue to think it is one. AAC wasn't developed by Apple. Read their own webpage [apple.com] no it. Also, note there is a difference between AAC and an Apple DRM'ed AAC. The iPod plays A
Re:True to a point... (Score:2)
Re:True to a point... (Score:3, Informative)
Though they over look all of the proprietary Apple formats that are attempts to lock comsumers into Apple. Quicktime, Apple's AAC, their restrictive iPod and iTunes, and just about every product they put out
Well to be fair, Quicktime and AAC are not proprietary formats. Quicktime is rather open, it's the individual codecs that may or may not be free/Free (such as Sorenson). You can stick pretty much any ol' video or audio stream in a Quicktime file that you like. AAC also is not proprietary to Apple, it
Re:True to a point... (Score:2)
Re:True to a point... (Score:3, Informative)
Yes you can.All of the music files are contained within those directories. Copy away. It even works for DRM AAC's.
Re:True to a point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:True to a point... (Score:3, Insightful)
IMHO, the only reason why AAC and WMA are gaining in popularity is that there are end-to-end solutions out there promoting these formats. Once people realise the superiority of these next-gen formats over MP3, they will probably start migrating over in droves.
Although, this is going to cause some nasty format wars. iTunes can't play WMA e
big losers (Score:5, Funny)
Re:big losers (Score:2)
Never mind.
NAPSTER? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not surprising that OGG was turn down. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, we'll all start to whine and complain but there is no way to stop it.
Without DRM to whole business chain of the entertainment industry is fucked. So they'll enforce it.
With this background fact, you won't wonder that OGG was turned down. The encryption shemes will make sure that the song only play on certificated players. However a player which supports formats which can be used to illegal copies will never get such a certification. So the manufacturers will avoid these formats at all cost.
When you watch this development the original movitivation of the OGG development team seems to very naive and economically clueless. While there might be some niche applications for OGG, it will be useless for the downtrodden masses. Basically the development of OGG has merely an academic value.
Re:Not surprising that OGG was turn down. (Score:5, Funny)
DRM can be used with Ogg. Oops. There goes your whole argument.
Re:Not surprising that OGG was turn down. (Score:2)
Formats like MP3, you mean?
Re:Not surprising that OGG was turn down. (Score:2)
It's already out there and too prevalent.
But... the businesses have no interest in distributing mp3s, they want proprietarty, drm-laden formats that guarantee profit.
So, for most sheep-like consumers, ogg has no importance.
For opensource and free software, OGG is golden.
Re:Not surprising that OGG was turn down. (Score:5, Interesting)
Take four star mary, I got interested in them back in 2000. I listened to one of their tracks that came on a compilation album. I liked it, so I downloaded a track or two more. Still, I liked it, but wasn't happy with the quality. Knowing they are a small time band, I went out and bought an album. I now own both the albums, and some merchandise, and have seen them live. I'm sure this rings true with other too. Downloading one or two tracks doesn't harm the artist or the industry, downloading an entire album when you like their music and could have afforded buying the CD DOES. It's down to the guilt of the involved party on whether they should contribute or not.
It's all about what people deserve, and if the recording (and indeed, movie) industry want to force us to pay through the nose for it all, they're going to have egg all over their collective faces when users start looking for alternatives. iMusic only works because it's cheaper than buying CD's, and doesn't force you to commit to one format - Microsofts way would more than likely commit to WMA.
To go back to my original point, with the right word of mouth techniques, OGG could go far. Really far, especially as it can't be stifled like WMA. You know what I mean, and you know it makes sense. It's not bad business, it's good business. Trust your customer, and they're more likely to make a return visit!
Re:Not surprising that OGG was turn down. (Score:2)
While there might be some niche applications for OGG, it will be useless for the downtrodden masses. Basically the development of OGG has merely an academic value.
Some niche applications? From this and the responses to it, it seems like most people vastly underestimate the amount of applications that use embedded compressed audio (for example, video game soundtracks). Every one of these people/companies stands to benefit from OGG because it's as good as anything else out now quality-wise, but is totally
a surprising runner-up!! (Score:3, Funny)
A Missing Loser? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A Missing Loser? (Score:2)
Define "little room" (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, I get it. You mean little room left in the commercial, RIAA endorsed online music store field.
What has that got to do with an open source solution? Is there "no room" for Linux because of all the money Apple and MS are pouring into their operating systems?
Open Source means will continue to serve very well for Open Source ends.
KFG
Re:Define "little room" (Score:2)
Re:Define "little room" (Score:5, Interesting)
You've contributed to the local economy and supported the contiued viability of the used CD market.
Now you have a CD, a piece of property with attached rights that's worth. . . $5. You've reduced your liquidity but maintained net worth. You have acquired the music for free.
Rip it to whatever format you like and put them on whatever devices you like. All legal like so long as you don't trade them or the original CD. If you only listen to rips store the CD safely as a backup source.
Now, if you download 1000 ACC songs you've spent $1000 bucks and have a license. Not property. If things go badly for you in the future and you spend a year or two laid off you can sit around hungry and listen to your music.
$70 gets you the same number of songs on used CDs. If things go bad for you in the future you've got an extra $930 in the bank and property which can be liquified fairly quickly to get another $50 bucks if you want.
Whether or not you erase your rips is left to your own sense of ethics, so maybe you're sitting around still listening to your music too.
If you don't mind old vinyl you can do even better. It's about 50 songs for a buck if you shop garage sales.
KFG
Re:Define "little room" (Score:2)
Now, if you download 1000 ACC songs you've spent $1000 bucks and have a license. [...]
$70 gets you the same number of songs on used CDs.
Yes, that's all well and good if you're interested in buying complete albums (in fact I have no problem shelling out $10-12 USD for new CD's). Where iTMS and its ilk excel is at buying individual songs.
Sorry, but paying even $5 for a bunch of songs I don't want (and possibly a used CD in questionable condition) just in case I have major money problems down the roa
mp3.com (Score:5, Interesting)
They were having a talent show there, and I expected to see some of the thousand of bands they had signed up performing. Unfortunately, it was the employees themselves who were the talent. With the bosses performing their own poems and so on.
I feel sorry for the guys working there, as you could smell the money being burnt everywhere you went, and they probably had no idea they were already dead.
This was almost 3 years ago, and back then they had already been working for six months on the next generation music-selling tech that they are currently advertising on their site.
The point to all this is: Don't employ 400 people unless you are generating huge amounts of cash.
Re:mp3.com (Score:2)
Wow that does sound like a cut above!
Re:mp3.com (Score:2)
Every 6 months they mailed me a nice MP3.com laptop type bag! I ended up with *3* of them and gave them all away (sure wish I had one now though).
Don't feed the trolls! (Score:5, Funny)
Ok, just so it's put down, please select your Ogg/Vorbis argument from the following menu:
1) Ogg/Vorbis is supported by (obscure mp3 player). Why should I get that (*drool*) new, affordable iPod?
2) Ogg/Vorbis can work in a DRM-based business model! Here is how: Step 1: Get five candles and a live goat.
3) Ogg/Vorbis is the best. Me and my four friends will not buy anything that won't support that. I'm sure Apple will be shaking in their boots from this ultimatum delivered from my parent's basement.
4) Hey! Why don't I just convert the mp3 collection to Ogg/Vorbis?
(Followed by: "Idiot: those are both lossy mediums."
Ok, I'm done.
Joe
In God we trust. Everyone else keep your hands where I can see 'em.
Re:Don't feed the trolls! (Score:2)
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit!
Re:Don't feed the trolls! (Score:2)
you forgot the free argument. (Score:3, Interesting)
The fact that ogg is free is what convinced me to encode my music that way. I don't have to pay for an encoder. I don't have to compile LAME. I don't have to worry about DRM screwing me out o
Re:Don't feed the trolls! (Score:5, Informative)
Neuros Digital Audio Computer [neurosaudio.com]
Rio Karma [digitalnetworksna.com]
iRiver iHP-100, iHP-115, iHP-120, iGP-100, iFP-3xxt, iFP-5xxt [iriver.com]
Kenwood's Music Keg [kenwoodusa.com]
And a bunch of others [xiph.org].
IMO, the Neuros [neurosaudio.com] is much better then the iPod. Is cheaper and the battery replacement is from $0 - $12 depending on if it is in warranty or not, which is much cheaper then Apple's $50 or so. Umm, Ogg/Vorbis is an Open Source codec released under a BSD style license. You can wrap it in any proprietary DRM you want and save tons of money from not having to a) write your own codec or b) pay royalties to use someone elses.
Re:Don't feed the trolls! (Score:3, Insightful)
---------
It's also very large. My iPod slips discretely into my pocket, while the Nomad Zen (which is smaller than the Neuros by a good bit) makes an uncomfortable bulge. The Rio Karma is similarly unpocketable, because it is wider and thicker than the iPod. And I refuse to wear cargo pants!
As for price, the iPod is well
Re:Don't feed the trolls! (Score:3, Insightful)
In that if you can't afford the build, design, usability, and style, then saving some money is probably worth it. You can get more features at less price!
Re:Don't feed the trolls! (Score:2)
MS tried to fight that trend. Linux is starting to bitchslap them. Long live Linux. It will be a beautiful day when the argument isn't whether or not to install Windows or Linux, but rather, which version of Linux.
Joe
Never enter into a gun fight with a handgun that does not begin with ".4"
Re:Don't feed the trolls! (Score:2)
Re:Don't feed the trolls! (Score:3, Insightful)
It will be a beautiful day when the argument isn't whether or not to install Windows or Linux, but rather, which version of Linux.
I would disagree with you for practical and philosophical reasons.
From a practical standpoint, Linux doesn't support ACPI very well, especially on laptops. Windows XP has elevated power management to a very useful place and will remain on my laptop, however grudgingly, until ACPI is truly supported under Linux.
From a philosophical standpoint, I don't want Windows to go awa
Ogg? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ogg? (Score:2)
I know who loses... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I know who loses... (Score:2)
IRiver (Score:5, Informative)
ogg has a special place in my heart (Score:5, Interesting)
OGG VORBIS (Score:5, Funny)
the *real* winner (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple chose to buy into the RIAA distribution model when setting up iTunes, and as a resul, is only breaking even on selling music and making its money back on selling iPods.
Instead of buying Universal and being able to bundle a few dozen albums with each iPod free and sell tracks for .25 each at a profit and use their ownership of content as a tool with which to club the rest of the content industry when negotiating per-download proces, they chose to pay bridge toll to the entire record industry and by willingness to pay all of their net income after expenses to the RIAA, reinforced the RIAA's business model and boosted the net cap of each RIAA company.
If they'd managed to leverage their content ownership into much lower download prices, they'd be selling all the downloadable tracks from other companies at a profit, and other computer companies would be using this to beat down prices when they bought their own major labels.
The RIAA labels are very definite winners because their net caps went up. Their attempt to prevent independent competitors from using the Net for promotion via P2P and Internet Radio is a lot less important in the short term.
Instead of spending some of the money they had in the bank, Apple turned digital downloads into a game nobody is going to be able to profit at legally.
Apple belongs on the winners list... at #8. They could and should have been #1, the major consumer electronics players would be on the winners' list, the general public would be on the winners' list, and the suits at all the major labels could have been on the top of the lus3rz list.
Will Apple stay a winner? How long can they sustain the iPod at the current inflated margins? If they can't subsidize iTunes because of shrinking margins, iPod turns from a win to a money-loser.
All it takes are some good competitive products, and Apple hardly has a monopoly on good or even visionary consumer products designers.
If Apple has to cut iPod prices to commodity levels to keep selling them, there go their margins and their ability to keep iTunes alive at a break-even or money-losing basis, more product sales mean more money-losing downloads and more red ink.
If this happens, and I think this inevitable, their short-sightedness will have cost them not only money, but a chance to turn the downloadable music market into a benefit for everybody not an RIAA label executive.
Apple could have made the consumer electronic industry a hell of a lot stronger and boosted their bottom line at the same time.
Instead, there's a pretty good chance that iPod + iTunes in a couple of years will make Steve Jobs look like a dickhead, not a hero.
Re:the *real* winner (Score:2, Interesting)
What they did is they created a market for their hardware, which pretty much makes them a winner. Sure they won't maintain marketshare, but in the meantime make money while the mo
Re:the *real* winner (Score:2)
Instead of buying Universal and being able to bundle a few dozen albums [...]
Instead of spending some of the money they had in the bank, Apple turned digital downloads into a game nobody is going to be able to profit at legally.
Instead of spending some of their money? How about all [com.com] of their money? They only had $4-5 billion in the bank at the time, and Vivendi was asking $6-7 billion for the music division. Assuming Steve was able to talk them down to $3-4 billion, that would leave Apple with litt
Ogg Vorbis lost the day they chose the name (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ogg Vorbis lost the day they chose the name (Score:2)
The best name is one attached to a hit (Score:3, Insightful)
"Motion Picture Experts Group Audio Layer 3"
It just rolls right off the tongue...
Codec wars have _started_? (Score:2)
Ogg Vorbis a loser? (Score:2, Informative)
I ain't buyin (Score:3, Insightful)
Napster savior? (Score:2)
Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads (Score:4, Informative)
For example, iRATE Radio [sourceforge.net] is a free (as in speech) downloader that fetches MP3s from websites that provide free, legal downloads. It uses collaborative filtering to learn your tastes and select songs based on the ratings of other users who like the same kind of music you do. iRATE's database of MP3 URLs has 46,000 tracks registered.
My article has a Creative Commons license. I urge you to copy and distribute it. In addition, I'm looking for help in translating it to languages other than english. The first such translation, to Romanian, was performed by an incredibly helpful fellow named Ciprian Mihet: Legaturi catre Zeci de Mii de Download-uri Legale de Muzica [goingware.com].
The article also discusses what you can do to make peer-to-peer filesharing of music legal [goingware.com]. That's a realistic possibility, considering that more Americans share files with p2p apps than voted for George Bush in the last election.
That's why I want to get every US p2p user to read my article before the upcoming US elections, in November of this year. I want copyright reform - meaning much more than just the repeal of the DMCA - to be a central issue in the upcoming election.
SqueezeBox anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
WMA? I must be out of the loop. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ITMS is the true winner (Score:3, Funny)
Re:ITMS is the true winner (Score:2)
Re:ITMS is the true winner (Score:5, Insightful)
The big winner is Apple for dominating MP3 portable player sales and the dramatic success of its iTunes service.
The dramatic success is Apple using its iTunes service to promote its iPod. iTunes has made a miniscule amount, purely a leader for the iPod. The iPod was here before iTunes, iTunes was envisaged as a way to make iPods more successful. iTunes was as much as a breakthrough on the music distribution scene as MP3 players were on the musical device scene were, but iPod deserves the praise, if iTunes weren't here another would have filled the gap, iPod and other MP3 players created the inertia and it is them that should get the praise.
Re:ITMS is the true winner (Score:4, Informative)
Of course the player back then would have been a Rio for sure. In fact if you remember, Diamond pioneered the idea not only by releasing the product, but by fending off an RIAA lawsuit [wired.com] that challenged the legitimacy of such products! (Of course the iPod is DRM'd so maybe it doesn't really owe to this legacy).
Re:ITMS is the true winner (Score:3, Informative)
The iPod is just a firewire harddrive that plays whatever files it find in its iTunesDB. I don't really see how they could even do any DRM with that setup.
Re:ITMS is the true winner (Score:3, Funny)
Now when I want a piece of music, I have it, and with my computer, my laptop, my MP3 player, my computer at work, and all my friend's and coworker's computers, I can listen to it wherever I go, with no worries!
Re:ITMS is the true winner (Score:2)
Re:Sorry - WMA has won. (Score:2)
Or if your MP3 player is just that, a MP3 player. That having been said I use WMA on my portable player.
NO! (Score:3, Funny)
Remember: choice, freedom, open source.
And if
Sorry - YOU have lost. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why?
Because Microsoft isn't a team player. There is no real technical benefit to WMA or WMV: All the 'next gen' codecs are better (ogg, wma, aac) than mp3, so the only real advantage to WMA is secondary.
Do you trust Microsoft? I don't. By using WMA, you give them more power and more clout, and like any big organization with the power to dictate international and national standards... I don't trust them. Unless of course you *like* paying taxes. Instead of money, though, Microsoft collects in marketshare and power.
Anyway, I hope you like living in a Microsoft future... I'm trying to avoid that, myself.
Re:Whereas you aren't even competing. (Score:2)
Re:Sorry - WMA has won. (Score:2, Insightful)
Huh? If you're married to Linux, you probably go the whole open-source, patent-free hog and go with OGG. And if you're married to MacOS you probably like iTMS and AAC.
disagree (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sorry - WMA has won. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the only reason to use WMA is if you're married to Windows. You won't get much use out of it outside that little circle...
Re:Sorry - WMA has won. (Score:2)
Re:Sorry, but anyone paying $300+ for a music play (Score:3, Funny)
Right, and I'M the loser.
Re:Sorry, but anyone paying $300+ for a music play (Score:2)
And honestly... You think half my money went for those posters? They're four colors and a silhouette! Sixty-eight cents, max!
Re: (Score:2)
Oh come off it :P (Score:3, Insightful)
Any and all Linux users can use the full suite of Apple software under Mac OS X; all you need is a Mac. Sure, that forces you to run OS X, but at least you can run OS X under Linux through MacOnLinux.
And the BSD folk will have to settle for OS X itself, which is a flavor of BSD...
The desktop software produced by Apple isn't free, as in beer, or free, as in liberty, but free as in concession: You give and they give, and both win.
Or you can run Windows under VMWare...
App
Re:Once again, Apple fucks the OSS community. (Score:2)
On the other hand, isn't there other proprietary software in the world that isn't out for Linux? How is this different?
There are some pieces of software for Windows that just isn't available for Mac (for example, MS Project). Those are the breaks. Boo-fucking-hoo.
Re:Once again, Apple fucks the OSS community. (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, it's such a shame that nobody can build an open source, interoperable quicktime library [heroinewarrior.com]. Damn Apple and their closed, proprietary formats [apple.com]. *rolls eyes*
Re:And the winner is ... (Score:2)
Re:i can't concentrate today (Score:2)
No one will know, if you return to the office pink cheeked and cheery they'll just think you got that stubborn post-christmas constupated faeces out.
--
What do I care, it's karma-burn Friday!
Re:I have an iPod - In My Mind (Score:2)
They'd like you to stop posting their articles [theonion.com] on Slashdot.
Re:I have an iPod - In My Mind (Score:3, Funny)
You owe us for 7500+ song playback licenses. Also, cease and desist the use of your mind.
Thanks,
The RIAA legal team
Re:ipoding on the cheap (Score:2)