Posted on 12/19/2004 11:51:15 AM PST by SamAdams76
On a short subway ride, Katie Braggs, 20, reached in her purse for her source of entertainment.
MusicWashington, D.C. - Scripps Howard Foundation Wire - Inside what looks a pack of cigarettes or a small deck of cards, Braggs has her lifetime music collection - some 500 songs - literally at her fingertips.
"Oh my gosh, I love it so much," the 20-year old college student said of her new Apple iPod, a sleek digital music player wildly popular among young people. "It's perfect for me."
Braggs has transferred most of the music on her CDs to her iPod, and she uses Apple's iTunes Music Store to download new music for 99 cents a song. To her, songs exist not on CDs or records, but in cyberspace - as digital files.
Spurred by the growth of the Internet, digital music will eventually usurp CD technology, fundamentally changing how music is distributed and stored, industry experts agree. Like records and tapes, CDs will retain some usefulness, but they'll largely be relics.
"If you're looking ahead, the CD is basically dead," said James V. DeLong, a Washington lawyer who directs the Center for the Study of Digital Property, an offshoot of the Progress and Freedom Foundation. "It's really impractical to be putting bits of information on pieces of plastic and then sending them all over the country in trucks."
Even with exponential growth, the digital music industry is in its infancy. The most glaring question is how the recording industry, which has spent millions of dollars fighting online piracy in courts, will adapt and profit from it, DeLong said.
Despite the recording industry's effort, unauthorized file sharing continues to grow. In November an average of more than 5 million users were logged onto unauthorized networks, more than double November 2003, according to BigChampagne, a company that tracks online file sharing and legal download stores.
Eric Garland, BigChampagne's chief executive officer, said for every song downloaded on iTunes, there are 100 swapped on unauthorized networks.
"Paid downloads are still a very small market," he said.
Nothing spurred the movement to digital music more than the explosion of file sharing on the Napster network in 1998, when millions of teenagers swapped their music collections online to the chagrin of the recording industry.
Its trade group, the Recording Industry Association of America, sued the network, which operated on a central server, out of existence in 2001. No Napster-like Utopia for file sharing has emerged since, but several alternatives have surfaced, most of which RIAA has sued.
Today's file-sharing networks are decentralized. Called "peer to peer," users connect only with other users, not with a central server.
To eradicate P2P networks, RIAA would have to disable the software on every individual computer, Garland said.
The recording industry has turned to suing thousands of individuals who make large quantities of copyrighted material available over file sharing networks and to going after the makers of the software that allows for the activity.
Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to take up one of those cases, in which lower courts ruled that makers of programs like Grokster and Kazaa are not liable if their software is used for copyright infringement.
Even if the courts side with the record companies, Garland said unauthorized file sharing will always be around. Software developers are constantly working on stronger P2P technology that will soon be available, he said.
Garland said it's simply a generational divide: Teenagers who had the world's music catalog available to them on Napster simply expect that kind of access, and they'll keep switching computer programs until they get it.
"The people who did not experience that, they just think it's 'stealing music,'" he said.
Laith Mosley, 27, an avid iPod user, said he's downloaded music on unauthorized networks before, but since the RIAA has sued thousands of individuals, "It's not worth the risk."
Now Mosley uses iTunes. The service controls more than 70 percent of the market.
About 54 million songs were downloaded on paid services in the first half of 2004, up from 11 million in the last half of 2003, according to Nielson's SoundScan.
iTunes has sold more than 150 million songs in its three-year history.
"People with iPods are definitely buying music from iTunes, and by contrast with recent history, are buying more digital music than ever before," said Jeremy Horwitz, editor-in-chief of the independent iPodlounge.com.
Though there about a dozen cheaper digital music players, the iPod, which costs $250 to $600, depending on the model, remains dominant. That's partly because it works with the iTunes store, but also because the iPod has a sleek, elegant design and is practically effortless to use, Horwitz said.
"And no one else has been able to duplicate or supercede it," he said.
In the last three years, a subculture has developed among iPod users. Horwitz said interest in iPodlounge, a niche online publication, has soared to 1.7 million readers in November alone.
"It's definitely a fad," said Steven Kyle Joseph, 24, a professional actor from New York and an iPod owner.
Braggs, who attends Catholic University of America in Washington, said, "You walk around campus, and you see people with them everywhere. It's like everyone has one."
Braggs owns an iPod mini, which stores fewer songs than the standard iPod. Like cars and cell phones, iPod-minis come in several colors. Braggs chose lime-green, which she said reflects her personality.
Although the iPod is the digital music player of choice, there is no uniform way that users acquire music. Some, like Braggs, buy from the iTunes store or share with friends. Joseph still buys CDs, transferring the music to his iPod for when he travels or exercises.
The success of iTunes shows there is a viable market for pay services, Horwitz and Garland said.
To take the digital music movement mainstream, Apple would need to lower the price of the iPod and expand iTunes' catalog of about a million songs to 20 to 25 million, roughly the amount of music available for sale, they said.
Garland said Apple could also do better by allowing users to buy into a subscription service so that they only have to pay once. The thought of adding another dollar to the credit card tends to keep people from spending more than an average of $20, he said.
Horwitz said, "If Apple can attract enough mainstream consumers to the iPod platform - people who aren't familiar with tools for online piracy and prefer not to risk being sued by the RIAA - they can grow the legal market for music even further."
I just de-liced my daughter's XP-based PC. The worst offender of all the mal-ware was a P2P file sharing program. It was hogging most of the machine's bandwidth.
Better wait til they have millions of spanking songs to download. If RIAA stopped its stupid lawsuits and saw the cash cow its sitting on, it would tell Apple to please hurry up and c'mon. They're never going to legally put the P2P networks out of business through legal bullying and extortion.
Ipods are also great for listening to recorded books. I listen to them when I'm in the car, working out, working in the house, etc. That things going all the time.
BTW, Sam...
Don't you think Handel's Messiah beats the Brady Bunch and the Chipmonk Christmas CD's?
The free programs are all malware ridden. As the old saying has it, nothing is truly free. The funny thing is, the paid versions of the same programs seem to actually give you what you paid for. Caveat emptor!
I bought a collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury from iTunes. Haven't listened to it yet, but am looking forward to it.
I actually don't mind paying for music if I get the quality I want, and don't download malware with it. I've been pretty happy with iTunes, and am ripping my favorite CD's and addint them to my iPod.
You can get a 4GB (soon to be 5, maybe 6 GB) iPod mini for $250. Rumors say a sub $200 flash player is coming soon.
I think Apple won't ever break the $150 barrier with anything they sell. They do a good job of staying out of low profit margin commodities. (Airport Express - a wireless basestation that hooks into your stereo, may be the sole exception, at $129.)
Thank you - that answered one of my questions about the technology. I don't have an Apple computer and don't plan on getting one any time soon, but was going to look into this Ipod thing.
I must say that the docking station attached to my home stereo is awesome. Definitely CD quality and I can blast it throughout the whole downstairs with no distortion. I rip at 128 AAC and 160 MP3.
The portable speakers at work to have distortion at high volume but in the workplace, I always have the volume low so the problem never materializes.
The FM transmitter is marginal. Lots of static and interference. I find that 87.9MHz is the best frequency to use but when I get close to a major city, there is usually a college station at that frequency and I have to switch to something else. I have a Sirius receiver in my car and only use the iPod occasionally for that purpose. But it's only about $20 to get an iTrip (FM transmitter) so for that price, I can't complain too much. There may be more expensive devices on the market that perform better.
Yes, they are pricey. I paid $399 for my 40GB model. But I listen to music so much that it is worth it over time now that I don't have to contantly get up to "swap out" CDs and lug them all over the place. It's worth it just to have your entire music library at your fingertips at all times.
You don't have to connect your iPod to a CD player to rip a song. You just download iTunes (for free) and rip your CD's on your computer. Next time you connect your iPod, all the songs you ripped will automatically get to your iPod (in a matter of a few minutes at most).
Your 200gig desktop will hold enough music for a lifetime. My entire collection of 7200 songs only occupies some 25.3 gigs. My advice is to start ripping your CDs now as it is quite time consuming. I spent most of the past year ripping my CDs in preparation for the iPod.
I reckon that the 40gig model will be down to $299 by April. By then, the 60gig model (with photos) should be $399 with an 80gig model probably getting released around that time at the $499 pricepoint. That seems to be the modus operandi anyhow. You might be able to get the 20gig model for under $200 at that time.
Battery life hasn't been a problem at all. I get about 10 hours off a single charge. I put it on the dock at night so that each morning, it is fully charged for the day.
How sad that public schools "don't do Christmas" anymore. We used to setup a tree in class and everything. We had lots of Jewish kids and they didn't seem to mind at all. After all, we included Chanukah as well. People weren't so uptight back then.
Advice noted and to be taken...
Supposedly a lot of people have had problems with the batteries and there is no easy way to replace them (they are I guess propritary).
I have a lot of CD's so I'll get the iTune app and start ripping them...
20 gig notebook hard drives ae getting real cheap.
I am very happy with the songs I purchased off iTunes. They sound phenomenal. And the licensing restrictions aren't as restrictive as the critics make them out to be. First thing I do is back them up to CD just in case my hard drive crashes. Though even in that situation, there are ways to recover the songs from your iPod by downloading some "unauthorized" software that Apple winks at.
I am 100% Windows with my computers and I haven't had so much of a hiccup with my iPod and iTunes.
Tell me about it. I paid $100 for a 20 GB HD for my IBM 600E laptop. I had to reinstall Windows XP Pro and everything but I've got plenty of room. My old 5.6 GB HD seemed pitiful by comparison.
I dropped my iPod on my driveway one morning (totally my fault) and the thing stopped working. After panicking, I took a deep breath and went to the Web for some advice. I found out that if I plugged my iPod into my dock, it would work, so that the problem was that my battery became dislodged (because of the fall). So I pried open the case with a small screwdriver and reseated the battery and all was good again. So when I do have to replace the battery, I know that it is no big deal - I can do it myself.
On the Web, battery replacement kits are being sold from many sources. Most kits even include the screwdriver. So don't let that deter you. Replacing the battery is a piece of cake.
OK, well that's that then.
My thing is that I know I won't be able to figure it out until I actually buy one.
And at almost 400 a pop, that will have to be some time in the not so near future.
At least I can get started for free right now...
With iTunes and CD's.
"Before getting the iPod, I checked out the other MP3 devices. They aren't even in the same ballpark.
I think that depends on what you are looking for. I don't think IPods will work for me until they can offer a better alternative to a 8-hr lithium battery. Who wants to baby sit their power supply all of the time. If your in your car or at an office all the time, that may be fine but I prefer something that only needs an occasional battery change. Seriously, I'd love a 20-40Gb digital player for all of my music, but not at the cost of constantly monitoring the power supply.
Also, I will never pay to download music where I have to give up my privacy to do so (like at WWW.music.msn.com). In terms of a basic credit card transaction, I'm o.k. with that. But I don't want to be forced to download software so some entity can have access to my computer to approve and monitor my usage . I will pay for downloads when like a CD I can purchase the music and then have the freedom to do what I want with it. I don't want to infringe upon anybody's copyright, but I do want privacy and fair use.
I'm not an expert here so if anybody knows differently please let me know.
And the cool settings to use are 128 AAC and 160 MP3.
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