Quiz: Ice Cream or MySpace Band?
A fantastic quiz I found on metalfloss.com. Are these ten items names of a canceled Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream or a music band that is probably only known on MySpace?
No cheating…
My Result: 3 out of 10… 
Beatles coming to iTunes
It’s not often I spew Apple rumormill there are much better sites to get it from, but I’ve been thinking about this latest release that people have been posting about from Apple with a closing sentence that read:
And the beat goes on
That was also the closing sentence in the Beatles’ last press release. I think this is a good indication that we’ll see iTunes carrying Beatles songs now.
Oh and NBC just kicked to the curb for trying to muscle Apple into increasing the DRM controls on the iPod… not just for attempting to raise the price of TV shows to $5 an episode. Puhhhleeez. Five bucks for something I get free off the air (or torrents)?
Update: Okay, missed this one… that’s what I get for spooling up the rumormill.
Apple embeds account info in music files
Arstechnica brought it to my attention that Apple has been embedding my account information in the files I download from their iTunes music store.
On one hand, that’s understandable given that the encryption key is linked back to my account on iTunes music store. The very same reason you must authenticate when playing a encrypted music on a new installation of iTunes.
But why couldn’t they have just embedded an arbitrary account number associated with my account? Did they want to make it easier for the mafiaa to track down music sharing folks? I wonder if this was a strong arm tactic and why didn’t Apple protect our privacy better?
I cracked open a couple of files (pre-drm free itunes) with notepad and in the first page of code was my name and email address in plain text. And this is only in plain text, no telling what else is embedded in there.
DRM’s Disappearance May Spur Amazon Music Store
DRM’s Disappearance May Spur Amazon Music Store so says ecommercetimes.com. Amazon, one of the 800 pound e commerce gorillas has been quietly hedging its bets that DRM free music downloads are worth waiting for.
Watching WalMart, Napster, and Microsoft get their proverbial asses handed to them by Apple’s iTunes music store and wildly popular iPods has been refreshing and ironically saddening for me. I cheer when a small company like Apple can hit the market so hard, everyone else stops what their doing – looks around – and exclaims “where the hell did that come from?!”. But there is a slight evil attached to the iall current legal music downloads from the major labels… imposed by the mafiaa (RIAA and MPAA folks…) that prevent copying the music freely.
And while preventing copying – the manufactures took the opportunity to lock buyers into their own hardware. So Microsoft’s Play-for-sure encrypted media would never be played on an iPod. Likewise Apple’s FairPlay music format would never work on a Microsoft Zune.
Well, time has come and the market has spoken. People with iPods don’t want to have to buy another one just to continue playing the music they paid for – if something should happen. And folks with Zunes want to be able to jump ship and take their tunes with them. So EMI has taken the first step, with some prodding from major market players like Steve Jobs, and announced they will allow people to download their music without DRM – for a slight higher price.
Amazon is betting on that popularity and is rumored to have a music store in the works to pounce on this new offering. No longer will retailers have to pick one platform to support – with DRM free music – there are no barriers.
Now, if the rest of the mafiaa would pay attention.
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Update: I was right.
