Tuesday, March 30th, 2010
Did you know that MP3 format of music dates back to 1987, developed by a German company called Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, which obtained a patent in 1989 ? Did you know that the first MP3 players were introduced in 1999, which marked the start of a new music revolution? Since then, MP3 has become the preferred format of for music files owing to its wide range of compatibility and smaller file sizes when compared to other formats. Many such interesting facts about MP3 are listed on this page, that you might want to check out !
Monday, March 15th, 2010
A latest article by Paperless Media notes how online music revenues are on a high in UK. The study by PRS for Music indicated in this article talks about how the online revenues have had an annual growth higher than the fall in revenues from CD or DVD sales ! Also the royalties that UK songwriters and music composers get from online sales are growing faster than ever.
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
By 2013, only 20% of Sony’s music business will come from sale of CDs, down from as high as 60% today. This future trend was echoed by Thomas Hesse, President of Sony’s Global digital business, at the recent Digital Music forum in New York city. According to all speakers at the forum, more people will be giving up their CDs to go for music subscriptions and downloads. As reported by betanews, analyst firms are also predicting a huge surge in music downloads in the next five years !
Monday, February 22nd, 2010
The UK people seem to have huge amounts of assets in the form of digital music – a staggering 1.3 billion pounds worth digital music has been downloaded in UK. The average online music shopper has spent around 85 pounds to buy music, although around a million consumers says they have purchased music worth 250 pounds.
And now it gets interesting. People are starting to realize the need to get their music collection insured. Yes, you heard it right – there are insurance companies covering you for your digital music collection, but they few and far in between. The recent report by TotallyMoney states that only 5% of these downloaders are sure about their insurance policies covering their music assets. About a quarter have a vague idea and more than half don’t have any clue about these insurance policies.
For those sitting on heaps of purchased digital music, this might be a food for thought.
Saturday, February 20th, 2010
…that you will be willing to pay for it? A recent article by News Center talks about a survey that was done across 13 countries with over 8000 adults to find their passion for digital music. The results of the survey indicated that as much as 63% respondents were “passionate” for music – with Brazilians at the top and Australians at the bottom. While only four of every ten people would buy a CD, more than two thirds of respondents claimed to have paid for music downloaded from internet. Music streaming also emerged as a top favorite, with every one in five respondents preferring it over other digital music listening options.
Music lovers are more than willing to get their hands on their favorite tracks and to get the “extra services” like information on their favorite artists, performances etc. This should be good news for the creators of Music DNA service, about which we wrote sometime back.
Friday, January 29th, 2010
The world might see a new revolution in digital music soon. For all of us who were wondering what will succeed MP3 in digital music, BACH technology (a London based company) might have an answer. As reported recently by Wired, the company is planning to release a new music file format called the MusicDNA. This format will have additional content like lyrics, news updates and images embedded into it. We will be able to play these new format music files on any mp3 player. Also, music labels and bands will be able to send updates to these music files whenever there is something new.
It could turn out to be a great move to kill piracy, as the illegal music download sites will not be able to provide such rich content on the music files.
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
Last month we wrote about the rise of digital music over other music formats. As recently reported by Paid Content UK, the last decade saw some major transformation in music buying and listening habits. Around 98 percent of the 153 million singles sales in UK were digital last year. Also, the digital sales overall increased from 10 million to 16 million. What does this mean? That digital music has become more popular than ever.
Similar trends were seen in Sweden, where sales grew 10 percent after a decade of decline. Out of the total 861.4 million Swedish crowns worth music sold in 2009, digital music was the one that grew by a whopping 99% ! And the clear winner amongst digital music services were streaming services, growing from 17 percent in 2008 to 46 percent in last year.
Exciting times for digital music, indeed.
Friday, January 15th, 2010
Everything is cool about music streaming, with the ever so convenient access to all the music you want. But what about the gazillion CDs lying in your closet? Now either you can play your CDs on your hi-fi system that can also connect to network and stream your PC music and internet radio. Or, you can simply copy all your CD songs on your PC (which is called “ripping”) and stream away to glory on your music player, e.g. Streamium.
Here is a quick tutorial by Tutcity.com on how to “rip” your CDs using the windows media player. It is as simple as inserting your CD, selecting format and quality from rip settings and clicking on the “Rip CD” button in the now playing mode. If you rip while connected to the internet, you can even add information about artist and title to all the tracks.
So rip your CDs and let let them R.I.P, as music streaming is the way to go !
Thursday, December 31st, 2009
The digital music revolution has brought with it a wide variety of choices for us to access music. And all these different choices have a single aim – to provide the utmost convenience to listeners. But how to decide which site is the best? How much does it cost? Do I need to download the music or I can play from the website itself? A recent story by Guardian, aims to answer these questions. Today you have the choice to download your favorite song on your computer, the price for which starts from as low as 29 pence per song. You could visit Amazon, HMV, play.com or any other site to find the best price for your song. But sometimes you might not want to download music and still have access to an unlimited collection, for instance while hosting a party, you might just want to play a variety of music without “owning” it. For this you could subscribe to an online music streaming service and get access to millions of tracks by paying a monthly subscription fee.
And then of course there are the illegal music download sites, which are looking to inject viruses in your computer. So you want to stay as far away from them as you can.
So go ahead, download or stream all the music you want and enjoy on your music player (e.g Streamium) !
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
Q: How many times have you spent money on a whole CD of your favorite artist, and listened to only one or two songs?
A: Probably, all the time
Thanks to digital music, you don’t have to do that any longer. Today you subscribe to an internet digital music service or download and listen to the exact track you want to listen, without paying for unwanted music.
According to what Martin Tolbot tells Guardian, “The explosion in the singles market has been nothing short of astonishing this year”. This “astonishing” explosion is backed by a whopping 117 million single digital tracks being already sold in this year against the last record of 115 million in 2008. Digital downloads are overtaking sales of CD singles and cassettes to dominate the scene, says Geoff Taylor in the report. He continues, “That singles have hit these heights while there are still more than a billion illegal downloads every year (in the UK) is testimony to the vibrancy of the download market” (more…)
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