February 28th, 2008 ecoli
Reviews of 2007 sales show that through iTunes, Apple, Inc. is now the number two music retailer in the country, beating out Best Buy and Target, but still lagging behind Walmart. 10% of legally obtained music is now downloaded, a 6% jump from last year. Meanwhile, the average American spends $4 less per year on music and approximately 1 million Americans stopped purchasing CDs.
These statistics speak volumes about the way the music industry is changing. Apple, originally a computer and software company found a niche in the market for portable music devices, in the way other companies were developing slimmer cell phones and digital cameras at the beginning of the 21st century. Apple was able to successfully advertise the iPod and its accompanying software, iTunes, and still largely commands the market on portable music devices.
However, portable music players are nothing new, so why is the iPod revolutionizing the music industry? What separates the iPod from the Sony Discman, and the Walkman before it, is that the iPod is completely dependant on computers in order to function. The rise of the iPod has coincided perfectly with the rise of the internet. People are getting used to transmitting information and communicating through the internet, so transmitting music is the next logical step. Completely digital transmitted music is cheaper, more efficient and less wasteful than CDs.
Through iTunes, Apple has 50 million customers and has sold 4 billion songs - and that is just music obtained legally through one music purchasing program.
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Posted in business, musings, news, technology | 9 Comments »
February 22nd, 2008 ecoli
For those of you who do anything with any musical/audio editing inclination, go and download this open source program: audacity.sourceforge.net
I create computer ‘electronic’ music, and I use it to mix all my tracks and add effects. It works superbly and the user has an extraordinary amount of control.
One of the best effects on it, is changing tempo, without altering the pitch of the notes. This is important for me because I play a lot of Eastern European folk music. There’s not a lot of sheet music and I mostly learn tunes by ear from recordings. For particularly difficult or technical pieces, I can slow down sections and catch exactly how the notes are played (I’ve been doing this all morning because my exam was canceled due to snow).
It also lets you record sounds directly off of your computer’s sound card… which means you can rip the soundtracks off of music videos from Youtube, or similar such things (of course, I expect everyone to obey all copyright laws).
You can download a small extra plugin that allows you to convert your audacity files into mp3s, .wav files come standard.
So even if you’re not a composer or musician, it’s handy to have, and it’s completely free. So what are you waiting for?
Posted in technology | 3 Comments »
February 15th, 2008 ecoli
The nations top retailer, Walmart, has officially chosen sides in the ‘Blu-Ray’ verses HD-DVD debate, according to this AP report.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Wal-Mart-Blu-ray.html?_r=1&ex=1360818000&oref=slogin
Netflix, Blockbusters, Target, MGM, News Corp, Fox, Disney and Time Warner have also chosen Sony’s Blu-Ray over Toshiba’s HD-DVD. Personally, I think because ‘Blu-Ray’ was a cooler sounding name, and thus more marketable to consumers.
Posted in business, news, technology | 1 Comment »
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