Digital Podcast» Digital Podcast | Music

Support Pandora – Call Congress Now

Alex Nesbitt — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 21:36:04 +0000

If you like Internet radio and Pandora then It’s time call your Congressman, to tell them you want them to vote for HR 7084.

Here’s the notice from Pandora’s blog. If you want more background on Pandora, check out our interview with Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora.

CONGRESSIONAL EMERGENCY!!!

Listeners we need your help… NOW!

After a yearlong negotiation, Pandora, artists and record companies are finally optimistic about reaching an agreement on royalties that would save Pandora and Internet radio. But just as we’ve gotten close, large traditional broadcast radio companies have launched a covert lobbying campaign to sabotage our progress.

Yesterday, Congressman Jay Inslee, and several co-sponsors, introduced legislation to give us the extra time we need but the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), which represents radio broadcasters such as Clear Channel, has begun intensively pressuring lawmakers to kill the bill. We have just a day or two to keep this from collapsing.

This is a blatant attempt by large radio companies to suffocate the webcasting industry that is just beginning to offer an alternative to their monopoly of the airwaves.

Please call your Congressperson right now and ask them to support H.R. 7084, the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2008 – and to not capitulate to pressure from the NAB. Congress is currently working extended hours, so even calls this evening and over the weekend should get answered.

The central congressional switchboard number is: (202) 225 3121

Or to look up your representative, visit: https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml

If the phone is busy, please try again until you get through. These calls really do make a difference.

This is a fork in the road. Only massive grassroots opposition will keep us from another 50 years of top 40 radio. It’s time to take a stand and break the stranglehold of broadcast media on radio.

Thanks so much for you ongoing support.

Tim

Founder, Pandora

UPDATE: Pandora is reporting that the house bill passed. Now we need to start thinking about calling our Senators.

We’re thrilled to let everyone know that the House bill passed! Thanks to your incredible support we were able to overcome the NAB’s efforts to derail us. Phone calls rained into the congressional offices over the past 36 hours. Just amazing.

We’re not done. We still need to get the bill through the Senate, which looks like it will be voting on the bill on Monday.

UPDATE 2:The U.S. Senate on Tuesday approved the Webcaster Settlement Act, which passed in the House over the weekend and was introduced to allow webcasters to continue to negotiate new royalty agreements with copyright owners while Congress is busy with the elections.

Digital Podcast 35: Pandora’s Tim Westergren

Alex Nesbitt — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 11:30:34 +0000

As part of our Super Fan series, we interview Tim Westergren, founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Pandora, about how Pandora works and what they are doing to engage and activate their community.

Pandora is a popular music recommendation service built on the Music Genome Project. It’s a fantastic service for discovering music and well worth a try if you have not experienced Pandora.

We discuss the importance of having a good product and connecting with fans. Tim speaks about how he has traveled the country to learn from Pandora’s fans and how he uses Town Hall meetings to get feedback directly from the fans. They started small with just six people in these Town Hall meetings and now have meetings where as many as 400 people show up to meet with Tim.

The lesson learned is that the effect of proactively communicating personally and sincerely with people is an incredibly powerful force in turning people into evangelists.

[tags]Tim Westergren, Pandora, Super Fans[/tags]

Social Media Star Kina Grannis Wins Super Bowl Contest

Alex Nesbitt — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:18:42 +0000

Kina Grannis, a big Digg fan, used social media and some great content to win Dorito’s Crash the Super Bowl Contest. She just appeared on the Super Bowl in a 60 second music video and has won a recording contract with Interscope Records.

If you want to see more you can go to SnackStrongProductions.com to watch behind the scenes footage and download Kina’s winning song. And you can buy her winning single on iTunes.

Congratulations to Kina!

Here’s her video

[tags]Kina Grannis, Super Bowl, social media[/tags]

Kina Grannis One Step Closer to Crashing the Super Bowl

Alex Nesbitt — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 05:06:24 +0000

Kina Grannis, who I interviewed just before the New Year, has advanced to the final three contestants in the Crash the Super Bowl contest. On the line is a record deal and a 60 second video promotion of the winner during this year’s Super Bowl. I was looking into what was going on around the web when I ran into a post about Kina. Kina sprang to fame at Digital Podcast after a post at Digg for a song called Gotta Digg skyrocketed her to the top of Digg and generated over 289,000 views on YouTube.

Here’s a new video from Kina. Do what you should VOTE FOR KINA to Crash the Super Bowl.

[tags]Kina Grannis, Crash the Super Bowl, music, social media[/tags]

Digital Podcast 30: CEO Trey Shelton on Music Interactive

Alex Nesbitt — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 21:18:19 +0000

As part of our ongoing quest to examine the intersection of media and monetization, I met with Trey Shelton, Founder and CEO of Music Interactive, to discuss the company’s new service that allows viewers/listeners to trade their time and attention for free content.

Trey founded Music Interactive in 2005 with the express purpose of creating new opportunities to bring together the advertising and music worlds and I think he’s found a nice way to mix the revenue opportunity of advertising with the rich media of music.

The service works like this. A major site, like MySpace, and a major advertiser, like Microsoft, want to run a promotion involving music. They line up an artist who also wants a lot of promotion and Music Interactive to provide the infrastructure for offering fans a free download in exchange for their watching a short video about the Zune.

Now we have a five way win. The consumer gets free music, MySpace gets some advertising money, Microsoft gets lots of attention, the artist gets huge promotion and Music Interactive gets a share of the ad spend.

Here are some screen shots of the service in action. In the first, I’ve added a big red arrow pointing at the ad for a free Jon Forman mp3 in exchange for “checking out the Zune”. The next two shots show the pop-up that plays the video and the download of the mp3.

It’s great to see this kind of innovation that creates win-win solutions for everyone involved.

In addition to MySpace, Music Interactive is working with Dodge, Hyundai and Ray-Ban on interactive music promotions.

[tags]Music Interactive, Trey Shelton, monetization, music[/tags]

Digital Podcast 28: Will Kina Grannis Crash the SuperBowl?

Alex Nesbitt — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 22:33:36 +0000

Kina Grannis, an aspiring singer songwriter, caught my attention along with a lot of the tech community with a post over at Digg. The post linked to Kina’s YouTube page and had a song called “Gotta Digg”. The Digg fans went crazy for Kina and voted over 10,000 times for collection of posts linking to her blog and to the video at YouTube. Kina’s YouTube traffic skyrocketed up and “Gotta Digg” has gone over 180,000 views.

Kina is trying to win a contest and NEEDS YOUR VOTE. The contest is called Crash the Superbowl and the winner gets a recording contract and their video played on the Super Bowl broadcast. Kina was kind enough to spend some time with me on the phone discussing her career, the contest and the impact of her most recent experience with social media.

If you want to hear more of Kina’s music you can visit her YouTube page, KinaGrannis.com or sign up for voting reminders at a site she set up for video blogging about the contest called Two Weeks for Kina.

Kina also has some CDs for sale on iTunes including One More in the Attic, sincerely, me and In Memory of the Singing Bridge

Gotta Digg Video

The Myspace Video

So GO VOTE FOR KINA.

[tags]Crash the Super Bowl, Kina Grannis, MySpace, Digg, YouTube, social media, social media marketing[/tags]

Warner Music Now DRM Free at Amazon

Alex Nesbitt — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 16:51:12 +0000

Wired is reporting that Warner Music Group began selling music on Amazon in the MP3 format without digital rights management protection. Amazon has added all of WMG’s digitized music catalog to the store.

Amazon’s store now contains over 2.9 million tracks, all in the unprotected MP3 format and including music from three of the world’s four major labels. EMI and Universal are already providing music to the DRM free store.

This should be a great benefit to consumers who are confused about DRM and frankly don’t want to know about it. Hopefully it will also help Amazon build a stronger competitor to iTunes and drive innovation.

[tags]Amazon mp3, music, Warner Music Group, DRM[/tags]

Christmas Traffic Jump Means Lots of iPods and Zunes

Alex Nesbitt — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 07:45:26 +0000

I just checked Google analytics for the daily stats at Digital Podcast and I saw the biggest one time increase in daily visitors and page views. Digital Podcast’s traffic jumped up by 80% on Christmas day. I looked at the distribution of search terms for some anomaly, but it wasn’t there. Search terms remained consistent in their distribution.

I think that people got lots of iPods, Zunes and the like for Christmas and went looking for content.

I also think that Christmas day has probably become the biggest day ever for the music industry thanks to iTunes cards. I know for sure that’s the case in my home as my daughter spent her $30 iTunes gift cards before noon and my son spent his by 4pm. That’s the first time either of them has bought music online and it didn’t take long.

No wonder Apple’s stock almost hit $200 per share.

[tags]ipod, Apple, iTunes, Zune, Microsoft[/tags]

Can Social Media Marketing Break a New Artist?

Alex Nesbitt — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 16:21:07 +0000

There’s a contest over at MySpace. It’s called Crash the Super Bowl and it’s a contest to win a record contract and a 60 second video to be played at the next Super Bowl. The contest is down to 10 artists and the clock is ticking down in this round of voting.

Kina Grannis, one of the 10 artists still in the running, is working hard to win. She has her blog, Two Weeks for Kina, going full steam and she has made a play to get out the tech vote using social media marketing. With the help of Digg, TechCrunch and Robert Scoble she seems to be breaking out with the tech fans. The Cute Girls Sing Awesome Song About Digg post at Digg has over 4000 votes as I write this and is the top post of the day. TechCrunch has picked up the story, Scoble has added the post to his shared feeds and Kina should get a lot more support from the tech fans. In the time it took to write these few lines the post at Digg has climbed to 4,185. The views at YouTube have climbed to over 36,000.

Here’s the video Gotta Digg

And the lyrics:

When Iâ€™m feeling lazy, at school or when I work
I sneak to my computer, and then I like to shirk
I donâ€™t go online shopping, I donâ€™t email with my mom
I open up my browser, and go to digg-dot-com

Chorus: Gotta digg, gotta digg, gotta digg
Gotta make this story big!
Did you hear that awful sound?
Another serverâ€™s down!

I always dig up Apple, and I bury Microsoft
But when I said I was a girl, all the diggers scoffed
And when I see those stories about Senator Ron Paul
I don’t even RTFA; I just digg them all!

Chorus: Gotta digg, gotta digg, gotta digg
Gotta make this story big!
Did you hear that awful sound?
Another serverâ€™s down!

The fanboys can be tiresome, they always are outspoken
And if youâ€™re listening Kevin Rose, the comment systemâ€™s broken!
I know digg isnâ€™t perfect, but be thankful for what weâ€™ve got
Itâ€™s just like daddy always says: “At least itâ€™s not Slashdot!!!”

Chorus: Gotta digg, gotta digg, gotta digg
Gotta make this story big!
Did you hear that awful sound?
Another serverâ€™s down!

So why not, vote for Kina.

[tags]Kina Grannis, social media, digg, social media marketing, crash the super bowl, discovery, music[/tags]

Comes With Music – Is it Total Music?

Alex Nesbitt — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:22:35 +0000

Nokia announced Comes with Music that will provide for free music on Nokia’s music phones for up to one year. The company said that it has agreed with the Universal Music Group to offer free 12-month access to Universal artists’ music for buyers of Nokia’s music phones.

Once the year is complete, customers can keep all their music without having to worry about it disappearing when their subscription is over.

“We set out to create the music experience that people are telling us they are looking for – all the music they want in the form of unlimited downloads to their mobile device and PC,” said Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Multimedia, Nokia. “Even if you listened to music 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you would still only scratch the surface of the music that we’re making available. Comes with Music fulfils our dream to give consumers all the music they want, wherever they want it, while rewarding the artists who create it.”

The company is eyeing similar deals with other labels before the offer starts in the second half of 2008.

“We are in talks with all major labels. The response from labels has been very, very positive,” said Nokia spokesman Damian Stathonikos.

To my knowledge, there has been no announcement of cost or what limitations there will be on how much music you can hold on to.

This deal sounds like Total Music but rebranded and announced by Nokia. Under Total Music, Universal Music was working to allow people to use unlimited music bundled with devices. Speculation at the time was that the cost would be $90 added on to the device.

While Total Music was met with skepticism, Comes with Music seems like it’s getting a warmer reception. Maybe the outcry will come when we know how much it will cost.

[tags]Comes with Music, Music, Nokia, Universal, Total Music[/tags]

RCRD LBL Uses Ads to Provide Free Music

Alex Nesbitt — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 00:03:42 +0000

I came across RCRD LBL today on my stroll around the net today. RCRD LBL is a network of ad supported online record labels and blogs offering completely free music and multimedia content from emerging and established artists.

All the music is released in DRM-free MP3 format and will work on any personal computer or portable digital music player.

They support the site by selling sponsorships to advertisers that want to help hook you up with good music.

They even have a podcast that shows off some of their favorites of the week.

[tags]music, free music, ad support music, rcrd lbl, rcrd-lbl[/tags]

French Downloaders May Lose Access to the Web

Alex Nesbitt — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 23:41:53 +0000

Reuters is reporting that

Internet users in France who frequently download music or films illegally risk losing Web access under a new anti-piracy system unveiled on Friday.

The three-way pact between Internet service providers, the government and owners of film and music rights is a boon to the music industry, which has been calling for such measures to stop illicit downloads eating into its sales.

Under the agreement — drawn up by a commission headed by the chief executive of FNAC, one of France’s biggest music and film retailers — service providers will issue warning messages to customers downloading files illegally.

If users ignore those messages, their accounts could be suspended or closed altogether.

I wonder how they will monitor this and know who is downloading illegally. The ISPs are signing up for a major headache if they want to try and keep track of all this. And how will they get paid for doing this extra work? Probably, higher fees for internet access in France.

I’m glad I don’t live there.

[tags]music, file sharing, France, piracy[/tags]

Gracenote’s Jim Hollingsworth Talks About Powering The Digital Media Experience

Alex Nesbitt — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 23:18:21 +0000

Jim Hollingsworth, SVP of Gracenote, met with me at Digital Hollywood. Jim was kind enough to go through interview twice, as it appeared our first take didn’t seem to record. It took some work, but I was able to recover the first interview session and I’m glad because the first take is almost always the best. Jim told me about each of the major Gracenote businesses.

Gracenote is a fascinating company with an incredible database of information about the music we listen to. Metadata about the music, artwork, lyrics and popularity information all get used to provide music retailers such as iTunes and digital device companies like Sony with the platform to provide information to the music consumer. The company supports over 2 billion searches for music every month and as a result knows what music is popular right down to the neighborhood level.

The service powers music search, play list creation, music discovery on the web, in digital devices and even in the cars we drive.

Gracenote also powers the Yahoo service that allows you to search for lyrics. If you to go to Yahoo Music and search for a song you will see the lyrics below the song. I put a red arrow on the screen shot to highlight the lyrics.

In addition to music, Gracenote has entered the video marketplace with a similar database about video and is rolling out new products in that area. Jim tells me to stay tuned as they have some exciting news ahead in the video area that they plan to announce at the Consumer Electronics Show.

[tags]Gracenote, Digital Hollywood,Music[/tags]

Universal’s Total Music May Not Play Well

Alex Nesbitt — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:55:52 +0000

Business Week is reporting that Universal chief Doug Morris is enlisting other big music players for a service to challenge iTunes and the iPod.

The world’s most powerful music executive aims to join forces with other record companies to launch an industry-owned subscription service. BusinessWeek has learned that Morris has already enlisted Sony BMG Music Entertainment as a potential partner and is talking to Warner Music Group. Together the three would control about 75% of the music sold in the U.S. Besides competing head-on with Apple Inc.’s (AAPL ) music store, Morris and his allies hope to move digital music beyond the iPod-iTunes universe by nurturing the likes of Microsoft’s Zune media player and Sony’s PlayStation and by working with the wireless carriers. The service, which is one of several initiatives the music majors are considering to help reverse sliding sales, will be called Total Music.

While I like the idea of a service that could compete effectively with iTunes and create a more compelling solution for the other device makers, it’s hard for me to see how they will get past the DOJ antitrust issues relating to companies who control 75% of the market joining together to offer a bundled product.

Even more problematic are the issues relating to the economics of the deal.

The big question is whether the makers of music players and phones can charge enough to cover the cost of baking in the subscription. Under one scenario industry insiders figure the cost per player would amount to about $90. They arrived at that number by assuming people hang on to a music player or phone for 18 months before upgrading. Eighteen times a $5 subscription fee equals $90.

Even if they can get past the DOJ anti-trust issues relating to Total Music, it does not seem to me that the economics of a bundled $90 subscription per player would work for either the device or recording industry. Adding $90 to the price of a player would surely depress player sales and probably still not be enough to cover the royalties required for a service that will let you play anything any time.

Is this idea destined for a pileup somewhere along the digital media highway?

Via Techmeme

[tags]Universal, UMG, TotalMusic, Total Music, iPod, iTunes[/tags]

eMusic to Offer Audiobooks in MP3 Format

Alex Nesbitt — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 16:37:00 +0000

eMusic, the music service that has given Appleâ€™s iTunes the most competition in the song-download arena will now offer audiobooks in mp3 format, too.

The biggest selling point for eMusic is also its biggest point of controversy: the site uses the MP3 format, which works on any digital player but lacks digital rights management technology, that protects copyrighted material from unlimited duplication.

This should provide some really interesting competition between iTunes, eMusic and Audible.

NOTE: Digital Podcast is an affiliate of eMusic and if you use the link above to purchase eMusic we will get some money sent our way.

Universal Playing Hardball with Apple – UMG to sell DRM Free Music

Alex Nesbitt — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 05:05:35 +0000

I think Universal Music Group is starting to play hard ball with Apple. They refused to renew their iTunes contract and now they have announced that they Universal Music Group will sell a significant portion of its catalog without the customary copy protection software for at least the next few months.

According to the New York Times

Universal, the worldâ€™s biggest music conglomerate, said it would offer albums and songs without the software, known as digital rights management, through existing digital music retail services like RealNetworks and Wal-Mart, nascent services from Amazon.com and Google, and some artistsâ€™ Web sites.

The offer of Universalâ€™s music under the new terms is being framed as a test, to run into January, allowing executives to study consumer demand and any effect on online piracy. A Universal decision to adopt the practice permanently would put pressure on other record companies to follow suit.

Apple however won’t be so lucky as UMG will not offer the DRM free music through iTunes.

Microsoft caved and gave UMG a cut on the Zune player revenue and UMG has been working to get a cut of the iPod revenue. This seem to be in line with the strategy of putting as much pressure on Apple as possible.

It will be interesting to see who blinks first given the importance of iTunes in digital music sales.

Universal Music invests in Loud.com

Alex Nesbitt — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 17:26:15 +0000

The Universal Music Group said on Wednesday that it had acquired a stake in the operator of the urban social networking Web site Loud.com, which operates the www.loud.com and www.battlerap.com.

“Universal’s strategy is to become actively involved in all areas of media where our artists and our music are present,” stated UMG Vice Chairman/CFO Nick Henny. “Loud.com has created an incredibly vibrant and growing online hip-hop community that features not only compelling user-generated content, but also the means for users to create their own music and compete for a record deal. Loud.com is quickly emerging as one of the leading new online ventures that successfully reaches the new generation of international and multicultural youth.”

“We are delighted that UMG is joining the Loud.com family,” commented Loud.com co-founder/CEO Joseph Safina. “When Steve Rifkind and I started Loud.com, our hope was to create a virtual home for hip-hop fans around the world. To our delight, it has quickly evolved into an online community, competition, A&R site and marketing company all rolled into one. With UMG now on board, we’ll be able to offer even more compelling services to our members.”

The company, a unit of Vivendi, based in Paris, did not disclose the size of its investment in the Web site..

The ad-supported site caters to hip-hop fans, who can upload their own raps and compete for a record deal with SRC Records, a label distributed by Universal.

The Web site also sells audio files of hip-hop beats for 99 cents.

So far this year, Universal has made an equity investment in Alliance Trace Media, which owns Trace-TV, based in Paris, and acquired companies that have record labels and operate merchandising, touring and artist management businesses in Spain, Britain and Brazil.

Will Nokia launch a music download service?

Alex Nesbitt — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 15:19:36 +0000

The Register is reporting on rumors that Nokia will jump on the music download bandwagon.

Nokia is on the verge of launching its own iTunes-like music downloads service, if rumours are correct. Online reports suggest the handset vendor is to unveil the service later this month, alongside two new music-oriented handsets.

Speculation has it that Nokia will unveil the service on 29 August at the Ministry of Sound nightclub in London. The unnamed service could allow users to download songs, and potentially games, onto their PCs and then transfer them to their mobile phone or other music player.

Nokia already offers a podcasting capability on some of its phones and offering an iTunes competitor that works seemlessly with Nokia phones would be a good addition.

Youtube to offer access to EMI Music Videos

Alex Nesbitt — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 18:33:02 +0000

Youtube users will now be able to access and use EMI music videos legally. This is some great news for music video fans.

EMI, Google and Youtube have announced an agreement which will give YouTube users access to authorized videos and recordings from EMI Music artists, including those featured in user generated content.

YouTube users will now be able to enjoy music videos from EMI Music artists including David Bowie, Coldplay, The Decemberists, Fat Boy Slim, Gorillaz, Lily Allen, Norah Jones and YouTube Video Award winners, OK Go and Sick Puppies. EMI will make authorized video content available to YouTube for the first time.

EMI Music has agreed to work with YouTube and Google to develop business models in which the YouTube community will be able to access user generated content featuring EMI-owned and copyrighted audio and video works.

DRM-Free Tracks Launched on iTunes

Alex Nesbitt — Thu, 31 May 2007 13:30:30 +0000

Apple has followed through with an earlier announcment about launching DRM free MP3s from EMI.

Apple announced the launch of iTunes Plusâ€”DRM-free music tracks featuring high quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for $1.29 per song. iTunes Plus is launching with EMIâ€™s digital catalog of recordings, including singles and albums from Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Frank Sinatra, Joss Stone, Pink Floyd, John Coltrane and more than a dozen of Paul McCartneyâ€™s classic albums available on iTunes for the first time.

iTunes will continue to offer its entire catalog, currently over five million songs, in the same versions as todayâ€”128 kbps AAC encoding with DRMâ€”at the same price of 99 cents per song, alongside the higher quality iTunes Plus versions when available. In addition, iTunes customers can now easily upgrade their library of previously purchased EMI content to iTunes Plus tracks for just 30 cents a song and $3.00 for most albums.

Amazon to launch DRM-free digital music store

Alex Nesbitt — Thu, 17 May 2007 03:15:40 +0000

Amazon.comÂ announced it will launch a digital music store later this year offering millions of songs in the DRM-free MP3 format from more than 12,000 record labels. EMI Music’s digital catalog is the latest addition to the store. Every song and album in the Amazon.com digital music store will be available exclusively in the MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) software.

“Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO. “We’re excited to have EMI joining us in this effort and look forward to offering our customers MP3s from amazing artists like Coldplay, Norah Jones and Joss Stone.”

“Amazon.com is known around the world for the unique experience it offers music customers through features such as customer reviews and personalized recommendations,” said Eric Nicoli, EMI CEO. “They have been an important retail partner of ours, and we are delighted they will be offering consumers EMI’s new premium DRM-free downloads in their new digital music store. We think having a trusted destination like Amazon.com offer a high-quality digital music product that will play across a number of devices gives consumers more options and will be a significant boost for the overall digital music market.”

Music lyrics now available on Yahoo Music

Alex Nesbitt — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:27:54 +0000

Yahoo has added Gracenote’s music lyrics to Yahoo Music. For each artist, they have listed out the songs and you can select a song to read the lyrics. Just don’t try to copy them, as Yahoo has added some sort of copy protection to the site.

Higher bit rates may not make better MP3s

Alex Nesbitt — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:16:36 +0000

MaximumPC decided to test out whether higher bit rates make for better MP3 sound quality. It seems that bit rate can make a difference, but allowing the bit rate to vary over the track that seems to be most important, not the absolute level

The summary of their results:

With the possible exception of the USB Key that survived a washing and drying cycle, no other Maximum PC Challenge has ever surprised us as much as this one. Itâ€™s downright humiliating, in fact, that in many cases, we were unable to tell the difference between an uncompressed track and one encoded at 160Kb/s, the bit rate most of us considered the absolute minimum acceptable for even portable players.

Some follow-up testing confirmed our suspicions: variable bit rate encoding makes a tremendous difference in the audio quality results, certainly enough to justifyâ€”many times overâ€”the slight file size increase. Capping the bit rate at 160Kb/s in MP3 files can be pretty harsh on a track, but allowing the bit rate to wander upwards during more complex passagesâ€”as variable bit rate encoding doesâ€”and throttle down during quieter sections captures an astonishing amount of complexity while keeping file sizes down to an impressive minimum

Top Ten Desktop Music Applications

Alex Nesbitt — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 15:28:06 +0000

1. Windows Media Player
2. RealPlayer
3. iTunes
4. RecordNow
5. MusicMatch
6. Winamp
7. MSN Music Assistant
8. Nero
8. Rhapsody
9. Creative MediaSource
10. MTV Urge

Source: Digital Music News