Are you familiar with iDTV? It is a television set with an a digital tuner built in it. It is for DVB-T, DVB-S, DVB-C, ATSC or ISDB. It is also capable of allowing analog signals such as PAL, SECAM and NTC to be received. Thoughtworthy Media happens to be one of those that has released an iDTV platform. The technology allows viewers to connect to whatever products, advertising, et cetera that they see on tv.

Thoughtworthy Media has recently released a way for music lovers to get the most of iDTV and music. They have an iDTV music engine. Some of the features being boasted by the service includes:

• Contextual content
  You will know the music and other such media on your favorite tv shows and movies. It will not just be a list but it will also allow tracking. If the song is used in different shows, and episodes, you will find out.
• Powerful search engine
  Different categories for search. Commercials are included.
• The social factor
  You are not limited to voting. Feedback through forums is available.

Aside from the launch of the music engine, they also now have podcasts. These podcasts feature bands and artists featured on the popular tv shows. The series of podcasts has been kicked off by Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin.

The idea of Thoughtworthy Media is interesting. There are many venues where fans converge and talk about the music but connecting it with the entire iDTV experience could be seen as one step up indeed. On the Thoughtworthy site, you do not only get to check out all these different information but you could also purchase the music that you like either through purchasing the CDs or getting them from iTunes. This way, you can find out what the title is of the song that you keep hearing on one of your favorite tv shows and listen to it and maybe share your thoughts about it.

Categories: Downloading Legally, Music, Videos

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Valence Media has accused Robert Anderson of being a hacker and that he was paid $15,000 by the MPAA. According to a written statement by Anderson, he did offer to give information about Torrentspy (which is under Valence Media).

Apparently, there is an on-going legal battle between Valence Media and MPAA. MPAA has been on the lookout for directories that seem to make illegal downloading of copyrighted movies easier. Torrentspy is one of the search engines used to locate movie downloads.

According to Valence Media, MPAA has paid $15,000 to Anderson for emails, financial and technology information and such. The deal supposedly happened in June 2005 and the money was wired in July of that year. The MPAA official who is allegedly involved has not been contacted yet for any confirmation.

A problem with this entire thing is that Anderson actually had done marketing work for a different company associated with Bunnell. He even admitted this in a statement. Aside from that, he mentioned that he was upset with Bunnell.

There are difficulties in this situation. One is that Anderson had a business relationship with Bunnell. It ended around April 2005 and then the issue with MPAA came out in June that year. Then he took everything back by siding with Torrentspy. What adds to the complexity is that MPAA hired a hacker. There are legal issues with that, and because they had a contract with Anderson, what would that imply.

On the Internet, search engines make it easier to get different kinds of information. Just a few keywords and then you can download music and videos to your computer. It is best to be aware of what tools are considered legal. Else, it could be something to be used against you later on.

Categories: Downloading Legally, Videos

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iMesh is a legal P2P service. And guess what? It is free. You need to download it then set it up. You need to register for it . Some of the things that they say about it is that it is spyware-free.

Kind of media files in iMesh
It has copyrighted tracks, as well as free ones. If you see a gold file designation, that is copyrighted. There are 15 million tracks or so.

As for file formats the following ones are available:
Windows media files: asf,asx, avi
Windows media Audio files: wmv, wax, wm, wma, wmd, wmx, wmz, wvx
Movie files: mpeg, mpg, mpa, mpe, m1v, mp2, mp2v
MP3 audio files: mp3

Software and hardware requirements
You can get iMesh from the site. Note that you must have Windows 2000 or XP. It is not supported on the other variants of Windows, as well as the Macintosh. The software would use around 13Mb of space on your hard drive. Also you need Internet Explorer 6.

Legal concerns
iMesh is concerned with legal issues. Even on their forums page, they explicitly say so. They encourage everyone who uses iMesh to do the same.

Local communities in iMesh
There are different sections in the forums page that every iMesh user would like. FAQs are there. Announcements are also posted there. Aside from that, there are local music communities from different countries.
Spanish
French
German
Italian
Polish
Dutch
Portuguese
Norway
Hebrew

If you are part of the demographics listed above that is good for you. You will get the chance to interact with them. These local communities are separate from the general music and video groups on the forums.

Artists and iMesh
If you want to share your music with others, you could do it via iMesh. You could check out the sign up page and see if you could join in.

Categories: Downloading Legally, Music, Videos

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Need music? Check out download.com’s music download section. The layout is neat. Everything is so straight-forward. You have the sidebar with the listing of the genres to check out. The main section of the page contains the day’s headlines. It could be the latest music from particular artists. There is also a section for new releases.

Living in stereo is one of their blogs. It is not updated very regularly but you could see some reviews. Maybe you could try helping them out in that section (if you would like to, maybe try sending an email to them about it).

If you want to see the latest releases, you could check out the “new releases section.” You could see the latest music releases are sorted by date, the statistics, the ratings. If it has not been rated yet, you could be the first one to do that. There are a number of Indie Rock artists on that section. You would see from the listing whether or not a free download of the song is available or not. If you see CNet’s green download button, just click it.

You could try joining CNet to become a member of their music download section. The perks of joining them includes the following:

• a watchlist of your favorite artists
• a chance to submit your opinions
• newsletters from the site
• participation in the discussions of the community
• a profile page where you could manage all of these things

Note that you have to be at least 13 years of age to join the community. This is in compliance to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998. They are quite conscious of the regulation and that is something quite good.

Hopefully you will find music you like. Having a personal collection of music on the computer makes it a little bit more personal. And if you join their community, it makes it interactive for you as well.

Categories: Downloading Legally

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On Digital Music News, a report says that MyCokeMusic has posted an FAQ about their closing down at the end of July this year. To quote the report:

According to a recent ranking from XTN Data, MyCokeMusic retained a market share of just 6 percent in the region, above MSN Music but trailing Apple, AllofMP3, Napster, and Wippit.

The store has been opened in 2004 but it has not been very successful in capturing a large market share when it comes to music downloads. As such, there is that dilemma of maintaining it or leaving it. Currently, they have mentioned that this will only affect the British market, not all of the MyCokeMusic stores in other countries.

For those of you who have accounts on MyCokeMusic, you have already been assured in the FAQ that if you so choose to move your account, your data will be secure. You have that option to move it to another OD2 powered store. Else, your data will be erased and then you do not have to worry about it anymore. The choice to move on to another similar store is there.

One of the difficulties that MyCokeMusic might have had in capturing the market is that it is a cola brand. People will still think of it primarily as a cola brand and not music-related. As such, the association might have hurt their music store. Especially because this is music in digital formats. On the other hand, other download sites might be more well-known because of the association. Take for example the association with Apple. Apple is a name that you associate with computing, with the digital lifestyle. It would be easier for it to be successful in such business ventures.

Categories: Downloading Legally, Music

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During these times that business models have to change when it comes to dealing with music, it looks like there is now MLM for it. As someone blogged on Digital Music News, BurnLounge seems to want to be the Amway for digital music.

As usual, the program would want to give back something to its members. To quote a blog entry on the IT Toolbox:

The revenue that would normally be spent on advertising is shared among the site owners in terms of a 50cent profit share per album sold- and a finders fee for those that bring other members into the burn lounge family. 50 cents may not seem much- but compare that to some royalties that artists are awarded from their respective record labels- burnlounge retailers share per sale could actually beat the signed musician.

So how much do you need to shell out for your own BurnLounge site? $29.95. And there are even three tiers of membership.

Tier 1: You merchandise your own store and you earn points for sales made.
Tier 2 and Tier 3: You earn money from sales and people who sign up under you.

That is why you have to make sure that you would have people sign under you.

As with a lot of MLMs, there are people who seem to be lucky and some of those are the ones who signed up early in the program and have many contacts who are willing to check it out. Maybe if you have the charisma to get others to sign up with you, after you, then why not? Then again, it makes one wary that it might just be the ones on the top of the tiers that are making the most out of this.

Would this really be the way to do business with digital music? Maybe, maybe not. Each of us will have to just wait and see for the next couple of months how this would fare. It might be something akin to get-rich-quick things. Remember, you will be investing your money on this. There are still some legal aspects to deal with. In any case, you could check out some information about BurnLounge here.

Categories: Downloading Legally, Resources

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Have you been a loyal iPod user? Like you have been through the different variations and incarnations of the iPod? Engadget has reported that there is an iPod killer and its existence has already been confirmed. To quote Engadget:

Reuters is reporting that “sources familiar with the plans” have confirmed that Redmond is indeed working on a portable media player, along with an iTunes-like service to feed it content

Killing off the iPod in terms of popularity is going to take quite a while. After all, the marketing success of Apple especially when it comes to iPod is too awesome for words. However, Microsoft is already known for its software and it powering handheld devices. Why not a mediaplayer that would ‘dethrone’ iPod from its place? Microsoft and Apple both might have started with software for computers but in this day and age, multimedia (like music and videos) and gaming are other segments of the market they could compete in.

What is the advantage of Microsoft?

It already has a nice marketing strategy itself. This is a boon for the company. Aside from that, a lot of people use Microsoft products already. Maybe if they could neatly integrate the service similar to iTunes, it would be beneficial for them too. Here’s the thing, if Microsoft could also offer a ‘lifestyle’ — it might be the ‘end’ of the iPod. But it might be something temporary as there are other mp3 and media playing gadgets available.

Or who knows? Maybe by that time there would be such portable computers that it wouldn’t really matter. iPod or whatever media playing gadgets there are, there might be better ones in the future. It’s not just a matter of what is the iPod killer. It’s more of what kinda of innovations are upcoming.

Categories: ipods

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What is your favorite media playing device? Maybe your iPod, be it the iPod mini, the iPod shuffle or the iPod nano. No matter what its shape, size and capacity is, a lot of us enjoy using iPod. The convenience of having music, photos anytime and anywhere is just awesome. Apple has not just been into the business of giving consumers great computers, they have also invaded the multimedia scene through these gadgets.

This past week, there has been news that Apple has sweatshops in China. Who has been making your iPod? Ever wondered about that? Sometimes consumerism has made us only concerned with the specs and the quality of the products we enjoy. Nick Webster supposedly exposed Apple’s secret: it has sweatshops in China. According to his report:

• there are more than 100 people in the dorm rooms
• the dorms are single-sex
• there are military-like drills in one of the factories
• workers are required to work 15 hours a day and they get paid only $50 a month

However, there has also been a report later in the week regarding Apple’s investigation of the conditions of the factory employees. To quote an article with Apple’s said response:

Apple stated it “is committed to ensuring that working conditions in our supply chain are safe, workers are treated with respect and dignity, and manufacturing processes are environmentally responsible. (we are) currently investigating the allegations regarding working conditions in the iPod manufacturing plant in China. We do not tolerate any violations of our supplier code of conduct posted at apple.com/environment. That code says, among other things, that a work week should be restricted to 60 hours and that suppliers “may not discriminate against any worker based on race, color, age [or] gender…”

More than the quality and brand of media player we use everyday, sometimes we need to also look beyond these details and find out what goes on before we get our gadgets. For now, we have yet to wait and see what else Apple has to say about the practices in the factories by the company subcontractor Foxconn.

Categories: ipods

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The Swedish police was able to force Pirate Bay to go offline when it confiscated the servers in the headquarters of PRQ. Actually, it was not only Pirate Bay that was forced to go offline but the other sites too. A report has been said that the Swedish Justice Minister Thomas Bodstrom was forced to shutdown Pirate Bay because of the pressure from the US government.

Interestingly enough, there is a lot of support going to Pirate Bay (Check out their blog here.). There was a survey in Sweden and it showed that 75% of those who answered support file sharing.

Piracy and philosophies

It is difficult to stop piracy all of a sudden because what we perceive as sharing could be perceived as piracy. Sure, there are legal downloads online but the materials that are available for legal download are not always the ones we would like. More often than not, we want more variety and we want certain commercial material to be readily available for download.

Sometimes it is a matter of perception. Culture would dictate a lot of how we view things. However, the legal aspects would be trickier. On the Internet, sharing files crosses borders and that is when things get very difficult to crack.

Pirate Bay has been moving around and their goal is to spread their operation all over the world. This would make it even harder for them to be tracked by the police and this would make policy making tricky. With people to support Pirate Bay, shutting down would be tougher than some lawmakers would think.

Categories: Downloading Legally

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Looking for music downloads that are legal is not easy all the time. From the homepage of singer-songwriter Tom Fox is a link to Foxtunes, a place where you could download mp3s of songs from his albums “Slowly” and “Midnight Rain.” Not all tracks have downloads but there are substantial amounts of downloadable tracks.

A little bit about Tom Fox
Tom Fox produces his albums independently and has collaborated with artists like Maurice Johnson and Martin Williams. His music is said to be a blend of soul, pop, rhythm and blues, disco, smooth and acid jazz.

Check it out
If you like this kind of music, why not check out all those songs available for download? Who knows? It might suit your taste.

On free music downloads
Some artists already give away some of the tracks in their albums for free. It gives listeners a chance to decide whether or not they will not buy the rest of the album. Also, it is good for promotion. Think about the opportunities for people to go to a site simply because it has free downloads. Not just of little bits of the songs but complete copies of the songs.

Smooth jazz plus plus
Not everyone might like smooth jazz but nevertheless this is a good way to figure out if it really is not your kind of music. And the good thing about it: it is guilt-free downloading, so to speak. Download them, store them on media, share the music. No hassles too.

Categories: Downloading Legally, Music, Resources

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