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Cellphones Music

Will You Stream Or Download Your Mobile Music? 175

Posted by timothy from the because-streaming-is-perfectlly-reliable dept.
mikp writes "In a David-and-Goliath style fight, small music companies are battling it out with established behemoths to see who can own the future of mobile music. Spotify, the Europe-based music streaming company, is about to launch its iPhone app and has plans to develop it for other mobile platforms soon. In a preview, Spotify shows how you can cache songs to your iPhone so that you don't always need a connection but the songs don't remain on your iPhone permanently. Nokia, on the other hand, has just announced two more music phones that will feature Comes With Music, an unlimited music-download service that involves a one time fee, which is part of the price of the CWM phone, and lets you download music for free (and you get to keep it) for a year. The question remains, are people more likely to stream or download music on their mobile phones?"
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Will You Stream Or Download Your Mobile Music? More

Will You Stream Or Download Your Mobile Music?

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  • I'll take what's behind Door 3, Alex. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by natehoy ( 1608657 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2009 @02:50PM (#29289309) Journal

    I'll continue to buy it on CD and rip it to MP3, thanks. :)

    • Re:I'll take what's behind Door 3, Alex. (Score:5, Funny)

      by papershark ( 1181249 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2009 @02:59PM (#29289473) Homepage

      Hey common guys. surely those companies that charge 20pence to send a 160 character message must be working their hardest to put together a great deal for those kids.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Graff ( 532189 )

      I'll continue to buy it on CD and rip it to MP3, thanks.

      I agree that keeping it in an easily-readable format is key. I don't mind buying online so long as I can buy it or easily convert it to a DRM-free form that I can be sure of being able to be in control of my purchase in perpetuity. What I won't do is rent my music. Yeah with streaming you get access to more music and more flexibility but the minute the service goes under or you stop paying the fee you lose all the cash you've spent so far. At least if I own my music I'm not out everything when I stop pa

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Killer Orca ( 1373645 )

        Maybe some sort of mixed service would be nice. Pay $10 a month or whatever, listen to any music you want, every month you get to permanently keep so many songs. It'd be kind of a rent-to-own situation. I dunno if I'd go for it but it's better than paying to own nothing.

        Hmm, sounds familiar http://www.zune.net/en-us/software/zunepass/default.htm [zune.net]

        • Doesn't mean it wouldn't work. Microsoft trying at nearly anything results in some sort of failure, which is probably what happened with Zune.
      • Pay $10 a month or whatever, listen to any music you want, every month you get to permanently keep so many songs.

        Like emusic.com used to be. $14.95/month, all you can download. Regular mp3s.
        Of course, their catalog is a bit...eclectic. I think now it's 40 tracks/month.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by wcb4 ( 75520 )

        I have a huge mp3 collection that comes from ripped CDs, saved podcasts, eMusic from back when they wre unlimited downloads, etc. I own this music. I was also a member of Yahoo music unlimited until the day they stopped the service. When I had access to Yahoo, if I wanted to hear my music again, I would just DL them from Yahoo and drop them on my Zen and away I go. Listen for a month without a sync. Sync and get another month. No, I did not own it, I was merely renting it but......

        I paid $7/month for YMU. I

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Omestes ( 471991 )

          that is the advantage of owning, and I am sure that some folks had the same argument back in the 80's with movies. They wanted to own them in case they could not rent them when they needed, but video rentals became ubiquitous.

          And sadly it still is problem for people who don't have mainstream tastes, or like strange and obscure movies from the past. Go to your local Blockbuster, and look at the selection some time, its only best sellers from the last 10 years, current movies, or movies with huge followings

      • >> I'll continue to buy it on CD and rip it to MP3, thanks.

        > I don't mind buying online so long as I can buy it or easily convert it to a DRM-free form that I can be sure of being able to be in control of my purchase in perpetuity.

        I agree with both of you. I buy the CD online (always at a discount, used if possible), rip it and then put it in the big rubbermaid tub with all the other CDs, where it becomes my long term backup in case of disaster. The only real difference between buying CDs on

    • Re:I'll take what's behind Door 3, Alex. (Score:5, Funny)

      by griffjon ( 14945 ) <GriffJon&gmail,com> on Wednesday September 02, 2009 @03:02PM (#29289541) Homepage Journal

      But streaming/rental frees you from burdensome "ownership" responsibilities; you are as free as a bird to listen to whatever tracks the service provider lets you while they let you listen! Who wants to be able to keep things, or have unpopular music, anyhow? Ownership is slavery. DRM is freedom. Open access takes a lot of work and thought.

      Hold on, let me go grab my Kindle so I can polish my "1984" references.

      Hey! Where'd it go???

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by jollyreaper ( 513215 )

      I'll take what's behind Door 3, Alex

      You think the choices are between lady and tiger but it's really between lawyer and patent troll!

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • I'll continue to buy it on CD and rip it to MP3, thanks. :)

      Lossless Flac here.

      I stop paying my subscription, I'm left with nothing. It's as simple as that. Because of the internet, I no longer have subscriptions to magazines/newspapers. I already yanked off my cable bill for online programming and trying to get rid of the landline phone/fax via various means. Why would I want to go in reverse and acquire another ongoing cost/subscription?

      A subscription sounds great for exploring music. But Pandora is a

    • Yes, I'll also take option C): Not pay exhorbitant data fees for A) or B), and just provide my own damned music -- and keep it indefinately.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sukotto ( 122876 )
      I'll keep ripping CDs until I can do all the following with one of these services:
      1. Seamlessly copy between any of my devices and the devices of my family & friends
      2. Play any song in my library at any time
      3. Pause
      4. Rewind as much or as little as I want

      What about music that's only available via a service? Too bad. That artist is going to miss out on my money...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pieroxy ( 222434 )

      I actually buy now from Amazon. 256kbps MP3, properly tagged even with the cover in the ID3 tag.

      That's pretty much all I need.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mikeiver1 ( 1630021 )
      Now lets see. We buy the highly compressed music that we can only play on our phone and can't move around. We can't burn a backup copy, We don't get the original PCM media file for backup. We don't get the sleeve. UH, YAHH, I am so not all over that. I am with this guy, rip and compress my self. I rip all my CDs at 256Kbps and DVDs are stripped of all the jibber jabber languages and the BS warnings about copy and the like and stored as MPEG2 files with no transcoding. They are then stored on a large
    • I agree, only I'm ripping to FLAC...

      MP3 was the shizzle when drives were expensive, but I just bought a 1 TB drive for $112 this afternoon. It will hold my entire CD collection (1104 CDs) as FLAC file easily, with room to spare.

      The CD is critical, because EVEN THOUGH I back up my drives, the CDs are perfect as last resort data sources.

      RS

    • I'll continue to buy it on CD and rip it to MP3, thanks. :)

      In theory you can buy the CDs, rip to MP3, and then use shout cast to stream them your phone!

  • Neither (Score:3, Informative)

    by oldspewey ( 1303305 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2009 @02:51PM (#29289327)

    I'd rather buy music on physical CDs, rip it to my hard drive, and then load and play it on the device(s) of my choosing.

    But then I'm old-school that way.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      I'd rather buy music on physical CDs

      And pay how much for shipping when your local record store doesn't carry a given artist?

      • Well that depends - if it's a cool indy artist I'm willing to pay more for both the product itself and the shipping. If it's mainstream label music, I generally won't bother unless the CD itself is pretty darned cheap and the shipping is free.

        YMMV

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jedidiah ( 1196 )

        >> I'd rather buy music on physical CDs
        >
        > And pay how much for shipping when your local record store doesn't carry a given artist?

        The local record store probably can't compete on price regardless of how much shipping costs.

        Also, music that's going to be expensive to acquire in hard copy format will likely not even be available online.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          Also, music that's going to be expensive to acquire in hard copy format will likely not even be available online.

          I was mostly thinking about indie artists who use something like TuneCore. They're not going to get their products into the major record stores (which carry mostly Sony/UMG/WMG/EMI) any time soon.

      • I'd rather buy music on physical CDs

        And pay how much for shipping when your local record store doesn't carry a given artist?

        There's a point the media companies don't seem to grasp somewhere in here.

        I have bought several CDs from the UK or from the US, and paid postage (and import duty & taxes on the US CDs) to get them to Finland. This was because they were "not available" from the distributor with the Finland monopoly on importing the label in question, even though the CDs were in production. So, visiting several local music stores, I could not even order the CDs I wanted, despite having the full catalog information inclu

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by baomike ( 143457 )

      They still have radio where I live, nice classical station (KWAX),
      I let them take care of it.

      • The classical station, CBC, I listen to has created an iPhone application that I use for streaming now. It is actually a reasonably slick little app, you can choose between listening to the live off the air feeds for different regions of Canada, on demand shows, or just stream by genre. It also contains their news feeds for reading while you listen. I found the best part of it last night, a sleep timer so it doesn't stream all night long.

        I am not affiliated with CBC I just wound up being pretty impressed

    • Vinyl baby!, seriously though, I too want the physical media. It produces higher quality and I am not at someone else's whim. I have vinyl from the 70's, CD's starting in the 80's and quite likely will adopt blu ray for the highest quality. I picked up the Jewel concert on BD and the sound was fantastic. (I spose if you don't like Jewel you probably would not agree here)

  • I stream what I own (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kalpol ( 714519 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2009 @02:51PM (#29289333)
    I use Ampache to stream my CD collection. The fact that I own it, and can choose what I want to listen to, beats streaming where the right to listen at any given time can be revoked.

  • Its Radio vs. Records all over again. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cutecub ( 136606 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2009 @02:54PM (#29289389)

    There are times and places for each. Streaming lets you discover new music with little risk. Downloading lets you listen to specific music any time and any place, without regards to network conditions.

    Surely, there is room in this world for both models.

    -Sean

    • I'll most likely be getting an Android phone this fall and I plan on using the Last.FM client to stream music to it. I used to buy CDs all the time, but I found I only listened to them a few times (if that) and it's just easier with Last.FM to select a tag for the style of music you like and stick with that.

      I did rip all my old CDs to FLAC about a year ago... I've listened to a few songs, but overall it's just eating up space on my array (which I really don't care.)

      • I haven't tried the Last.FM client, but I do get music spitting out of my phone almost constantly via two avenues; If I feel like random stuff I get shoutcast streams with StreamFurious and if I want cream-of-the-crop I listen to mix podcasts with BeyondPod. Both are extremely high quality, I couldn't wish for more!

        Note, if you're gonna get podcasts, get a bigger SD Card! I have a 16 gig card and wish it was 32

    • No. One will dominate. Streaming shall reign supreme.

    • Streaming lets you discover new music with little risk.

      So true. I've found new music I didn't know I liked off Pandora that I had never heard before and bought it at a later time.

    • There are times and places for each. Streaming lets you discover new music with little risk. Downloading lets you listen to specific music any time and any place, without regards to network conditions.

      Surely, there is room in this world for both models.

      -Sean

      I beleieve there is. I've had a subscription to Rhapsody for over 5 years. I have the same songs on all three of my machines (work, home, and laptop). I can use a web interface to play music on other machines, no install required. I don't have a massive music collection to keep backed up or synced across other machines. I can try out all kinds of music that I'm not sure if I'll like or not, and that helps me make purchasing decisions. There's also the side benefit that I can go hunt down comedy album

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tikkun ( 992269 )
      But you have to download something to stream it. Why not just let the end user keep what they've already downloaded?

  • ComesWithMusic ... Not in the U.S. It Don't (Score:5, Informative)

    by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohn@noSpAM.gmail.com> on Wednesday September 02, 2009 @02:55PM (#29289405) Journal

    Nokia, on the other hand, has just announced two more music phones that will feature Comes With Music, an unlimited music-download service that involves a one time fee, which is part of the price of the CMW phone, and lets you download music for free (and you get to keep it) for a year.

    Am I the only person that went to the CWM page and slid the "Please Select Your Location" bar up and down for about 5 minutes? The United States of America does not appear to be on the list. Is this music going to be restricted by what region you live in? Because when I click UK they say they asked the best in the music industry to sign a deal with them and they all said yes ... are they talking UK only? How did they handle royalties and copyright fees? Is that why there's no US?

    • Re:ComesWithMusic ... Not in the U.S. It Don't (Score:5, Informative)

      by amicusNYCL ( 1538833 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2009 @03:15PM (#29289751)

      Am I the only person that went to the CWM page and slid the "Please Select Your Location" bar up and down for about 5 minutes?

      Dude, there's only 10 items in the list, and they're alphabetized. Did you read each one for 30 seconds to see if it said "United States"? If you click on "Can't Find Your Location" you go to the regular Nokia store where there's another location dropdown with more options, but still no US. It also has a section titled "Available In These Countries", still no US. There's also a box to enter your email to get notified when the store becomes available in another country (the US is listed in that box).

      So yeah, there's no US support. They don't bother to explain why.

    • From working with "people" from the media reproduction and musician extortion industry, I can tell you, that that industry is extremely regional.

      Global licensing does not really exist. There are czar-like "people" controlling their regions for their company (one of the four), and you have to personally talk to them and kiss their asses, to get anything done in that region. Which usually involves hookers and blow. And I'm not even exaggerating. It was actually expected, at those meetings.

  • If it's DRM free, like iTunes (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wiredog ( 43288 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2009 @02:58PM (#29289457) Journal

    I'll continue to download. Which doesn't mean I won't also stream. I listen to an iPod, and to XM/Sirius. One doesn't preclude the other.

    • I've got an iPhone, which has that convenient iPod function. I have many, many gigs of music that I downloaded from Napster in it's heyday/ripped off of CDs, purchased by me or by friends/purchased off iTunes.

      I also have the Pandora App.

      Honestly, Pandora wins most of the time. I use the music in the iPod app when Pandora is unavailable, like when I don't have 3G coverage (metro tunnels), when using other apps (Turn-by-turn navigation), or when I want to pick and choose tracks. So, while Pandora is my fi

  • Mu. Yes and no are both right and wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2009 @02:58PM (#29289469)

    an unlimited music-download service that involves a one time fee, which is part of the price of the CMW phone, and lets you download music for free (and you get to keep it) for a year. The question remains, are people more likely to stream or download music on their mobile phones?"

    If it's DRMd with a time bomb, then it's not really downloading, is it? It's just streaming, albeit with a large buffer (say, gigabyte-sized) whose contents are deleted after a year, rather a small buffer (e.g. a few megabytes) whose contents are deleted when it is full.

    I would prefer to download music, neither of the two solutions offers downloadable content; merely different implementations of ephemeral/disposable content (that is, streaming).

    By the time either of these solutions comes to market, you'll be able to just upload existing MP3s to a phone with open firmware, and use the phone's CPU to decode the MP3s for playback. My answer, therefore, is Mu [wikipedia.org].

    • By the time either of these solutions comes to market, you'll be able to just upload existing MP3s to a phone with open firmware, and use the phone's CPU to decode the MP3s for playback.

      You mean, like, TODAY?

      Well, ok, last year? My Moto W490 plugs into a mini-USB, looks like a USB stick, I drag mp3's onto it, and then I play them.

      I can even have arbitrary mp3s as my ringtones. Even old time radio shows. When someone calls me, my phone doesn't "beep" or "braaaap", it goes "I was a communist for the FBI..

  • I don't know about the rest of you... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by swanzilla ( 1458281 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2009 @03:07PM (#29289633) Homepage
    I, for one, will continue to steal my media. My ISP's idle threats are well worth the calculated risk.

  • If you're downloading a cache of songs then your still downloading songs. They might not stick around long, but then a lot of tracks that end up on my phone don't stay there for that long.

    Thinking about it, streaming is a form of downloading, so really, downloading wins as everything except CD Ripping is downloading.

    Of course, I still prefer ripping CDs to FLAC format (I rarely download, and when I do it's usually from somewhere I can get FLAC format files), but each to their own.

  • I'm an iPhone user. My Music solution was simple

    1) Leave all my music on my server(I have a bigger music collection then my phone holds)
    2) Create an MP3 stream using an open source streaming server
    3) Install a streaming app on my iPhone
    4) Control my music selection using the web browser on the phone.
    4) Enjoy the tunes!

    Of course, my phone is jail broken so I can quite easily bounce between my streaming app and Safari without the music app closing.

  • A few years ago AOL came out with Music Now. For $10 @ month I could download my fill of DRM'd WMA files. I didn't really mind the DRM that much because I had access to so much music. AOL sold Music Now to Napster. Napster changed what was available. I used to be able to get a lot of Japanese music. Jpop, Enka, etc. OK I could still download music and use it with my DJ application (Virtual Vinyl) Still not a bad deal for $10 @ month. Napster got sold to Best Buy. No more downloads. Streaming only.

    • Although your point is a very good one, what if they change their policies or no longer offer certain tracks, you happen to be incorrect on one point: they still offer DRMed WMA"s.

      They are now calling it "Napster to Go". It's $14.95 a month. It's the same old Napster service as was offered under the old owners. (I don't know about your Japanese music, with the new addition that WMA-compliant players can play the music. (This excludes Zune. But Creative and many others make players that are compatible.)

      Napst

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by t0qer ( 230538 )
        I just checked it out... This is WORSE than what music now was. Music now was unlimited DRM WMA downloads. This is 5 unrestricted downloads? The DRM doesn't really bother me at all.

  • I've handled a few cell phones. Some newer, some older. Sound has generally been pretty shitty. Are phones suddenly sporting real speakers capable of decent music playback? They now have stereo? How about SurroundSound? I'd sure like to see one of those!! Why are people bothering to pay for music to be played on those crumby little speakers? Earbuds aren't any better. Few laptops have sound worthy of playing music - for that you need an add on sound card and external speakers.

    This looks like much

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by greyhueofdoubt ( 1159527 )

      In my car and in my house, my computer or phone get plugged into real speakers. While the little speakers on the phone might be lacking in fidelity, the codec is just fine and decent-quality mp3's or m4a's sound great played over a system.

      When I can wear a quality set of headphones, I use them. They sound great.

      And yes, every now and then I want a little music while I'm gardening or working in the garage, and the iphone's speakers are good enough that I can set the phone down and hear the music just fine. I

  • Which costs less? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pla ( 258480 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2009 @03:43PM (#29290129) Journal
    Will You Stream Or Download Your Mobile Music

    I will, of course, download it, regardless of what the vendor wants to call it. But if it costs less for them to use the magic word "streaming", then by all means, they can do so.
  • I have had several generations of iPods, with the iVideo being the last one, and now just carry an iPhone. I use both streaming and storing.

    When I go running, I often go through areas with bad coverage, plus I have a "Running/Workout" Playlist with music of the right tempo, aggression, etc. So I'm using music stored on my iPhone in those cases.

    At home and in the car, I use a combination. Sometimes I want to listen to specific tracks and so it's my list (or MP3 downloaded on iTunes and ripped to CD) fro

  • Everyone with a Crackberry or iPhone at my work just listens to Pandora streaming over 3g... Although I would love an hour or so cached, because on my commute I pop in and out of 3g zones (since I live in a rural suburb)... Really I just listen to old fashioned FM in the car when I run out of audiobooks.

  • Physics lessons again needed by the masses (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cdrguru ( 88047 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2009 @03:52PM (#29290309) Homepage

    OK, so you have a cell phone. It communicates with a cell tower based infrastructure where there are a (relatively) fixed number of maximum connections that can be maintained at one time. A cell phone communicating (voice or data) occupies one of these connection ports while communicating.

    The cell phone tower also has a physical connection to a data network with a maximum bandwidth inherent in such connections.

    It is my understanding that for data connections today a cell phone does not have a constant connection to the network but switches on and off as needed. Thus, the cell tower can accomodate a lot more data connections than voice connections. But still there is an obvious upper limit.

    So there are two basic limitations on the use of cell phone data connections: a maximum connection limit per cell site and the maximum bandwidth available to the cell site. These two limits are important for the future because they are not trivial to change. By far, the maximum bandwidth available for data connections can be (somewhat) trivially increased up to the limit of the radio system. Beyond that, you need to either add channels, change frequencies or change the entire infrastructure. Not trivial.

    I do not know how far we are away from reaching these limits, but we have already seen what happens when the voice channel limit is reached. It isn't pretty and is rather disruptive. This limit has been sidestepped (with microcells) and worked around by changing to new frequencies with more channels. But there are still hard limits. And sidestepping or working around the current limits may not be practical to do, especially if it so people can listen to music streamed to their phone.

    Streaming music to a cell phone is great for early adopters, because the bandwidth is sitting their idle. Changing the entire cell phone infrastructure to accomodate streaming music should it be adopted by the masses seems, well, incredibly idiotic. Why would we want to do something like that?

  • How the different delivery plans fare will depend on what music/etc is available from them and the price. Presumably the vendors will make sure ease of use is comparable.

  • I want AT&T to feel the strain I feel every time I look at my monthly bill.

    Might as well get my monies worth.

  • What's the difference? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Hurricane78 ( 562437 ) <deleted&slashdot,org> on Wednesday September 02, 2009 @04:24PM (#29290761)

    They are both downloads. the only difference that with one, it stays longer on the computer. So the question should be: "How long do you (want to) keep your music?". Which of course is dependent on the music itself.

    I listen to Shoutcast radios, for which I happen to have made a StreamRipper extension to decide to only keep what I want to keep, before or after I listened to it. With remote control, and Amarok integration. It's working well for me, but feel free to do with it whatever you like: http://navid.radiantempire.com/pub/armSR4amarok&listen.stream.tar.bz2 [radiantempire.com]
    The only rule — apart from the GPL license — is, to tell me when you improved it, or found a bug. :)
    (There. That is the power of Linux! Have an idea? Let it grow! Let it grow around you. Yeah, that should be the Linux slogan: "Linux: Let your ideas grow!" Or something alike. :)

  • Right now I have songs off ripped CD's, purchased from iTunes, emusic, amazon and more. I play them all on my desktop via Songbird and stream them to my Windows Mobile phone via Didiom. I bought the music...I will do whatever I want with it.

  • Already have streaming... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ranzear ( 1082021 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2009 @04:58PM (#29291301)
    I already have a streaming mobile device.. its called an FM radio. Oftentimes, however, the station's selections suck and I pop in burned CDs instead. Whats to say any G3/G4 based music streaming service wouldn't suffer the same issue without some upstream control.

    • I already have a streaming mobile device.. its called an FM radio.

      You're confusing a streaming, music-on-demand service like Spotify with an Internet radio station.

      With Spotify you search for the track, album or artist you want and hit play. Mostly, it contains complete albms. You don't rely on anybody's selection (unless you want to listen to somebody else's playlist).

      One thing I've noticed about Spotify, though, is that people are using it who you would not expect in a million years to download music (e.g. my 80 year old dad, work colleagues who only listen to classic

  • I normally do not know the names of half the songs I like anyways, so Pandora is great for me. Even better - its free. Then I can use my iPhone for what is important - APPS!!!!!

  • Download music to my PC, then stream to my phone. They've even had an iPhone app for a while, but you'd never catch me with an iPhone.

    Orb is Windows only, but I'm sure there are other similar open source programs for Linux/OSX that work pretty much the same as Orb.

    Advantage of something like Orb is I can stream pretty much anything, my music collection, live TV, YouTube, Internet radio, all the movies on my PC, etc...

  • I went to the spotify home page and there was a link to "find out why spotify is not available in your country" I didn't click it, but I'm pretty sure it would just link to a picture of Bush or would take me straight to the RIAA's homepage.

     

    • Re:spotify (Score:5, Informative)

      by icegreentea ( 974342 ) on Wednesday September 02, 2009 @08:15PM (#29293595)
      Spotify is working on North American licensing rights. It's the same up here in Canada. Basically, our licensing is sufficiently different from European models and such that its just extra work that takes more time. Their a Europe based service, makes sense Europe gets all their shit first.

      Of course, you can spoof it's location detection right now by using a UK (or other suitable) based proxy.

      And don't bitch about it. Fucking Hulu still hasn't reached Canada. And I can't watch all of Colbert Report and Daily Show on their websites either.

  • I guess it all depends on the definition, but when you start listening to spotify, it will instantly start downloading the file to a large cache locally. There are programs that can decrypt these files (ogg format). Spotify is mainly just a P2P service that somehow got accepted by the music industry.

  • I like to have a choice in how I store my music and what quality I store it at if I have it online.

    Professional Audio CD's are sampled and encoded at a much higher rate than MP3's - thus if I want to store my music in a lossless or a lossy format, I can.

  • ...until I got hooked on Pandora. Then they cut off my free service after 30 hours in a month, and I forked over for a year of full service, which is fairly astounding... I'm a cheap bastard. I have a huge collection of mp3s, but even putting the whole thing in shuffle it just gets old and stale. Pandora throws in new stuff every now and again, and does a good job (for me at least) of predicting what I'll like. Have discovered all kinds of new music this way.

    No, I don't work for Pandora, or have any sta

  • "For the life of me,

    I can not

    n-n-n-not remem

    ber

    ...

    What made us th

    th think that we were wise"

    Yeah, downloads please. Streaming over cellular service is not interesting.

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E = MC ** 2 +- 3db

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