andPOP - Pop Culture With Substance

This past week, Sony Canada unveiled three new Walkman series (B, E and S) MP3 players. These new Walkman devices are designed to cater to the specific needs of different kinds of users.

The Walkman S-series provides users with more options for storing MP3 from multiple sources, including many download stores and personal music collections. The S-series Walkman is also the MP3 players with Sony’s unique SensMe Channels function, which automatically creates channels to match the user’s mood. The SensMe Channels function allows the MP3 player to analyze a user’s music collection and suggest channels based on each song’s speed, mood and rhythm.

The E-series Walkman combines high-quality video and audio capabilities to create a device designed for viewing photos and video clips. The B-series Walkman devices connect directly into your PC’s USB port for easy drag and drop file transfers, and features a light that pulses in time with the music when the new bass button is pressed. The B-series also has an FM radio and a voice recorder.

All of Sony’s new Walkman devices will retail between $60 to $200 depending on the model series of the MP3 player.

Simply Audiobooks is a company that specializes in the modern version of books-on-tape – audio books on CD, MP3, or WMA format, all of which are downloadable from the company’s website. Simply Audiobooks boasts that the guiding principle of their company is that ‘both time and money are precious’, and these audio books do save you both, but also delivered quality story-telling that was presently surprising.

There are two options of ‘book clubs’ that you can join on www.simplyaudiobooks.com: the Unlimited Rental Club and the Monthly Download Club. The Rental Club allows you to rent audio books for a particular period of time – you don’t download the books, but instead have them sent to you via mail by the company.

Once you are finished with the audio book (on a CD), you send it back to the company and they send you the next book on your rental list, which you create online. Simply Audiobooks pays for the shipping both ways. The rates for the rental plans vary between $15/month for an Annual Plan to $37.98 for a monthly option. The rates increase with the number of books a user wants to rent at once (up to three books). As standard practice with most Internet purchases, all of the subscriptions must be paid by credit card.

The other option, the Monthly Download Club, is the one I used. The rates for the download club are substantially cheaper than its counterpart. For example, a 1 Book/Month monthly plan comes in at $14.95, while a Monthly Plan for the rental option costs $17.98. The download club allows users to download Audiobooks to a computer, and is yours to keep once it’s saved to your hard drive.

I chose to download The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, a novel about a boy growing up and returning to Afghanistan after the invasion of the USSR in the late 1970s. I saw the movie last year and have wanted to read the book for a while. It did, however, take some time to come across this title. There is an American, UK and Canadian option for this website, and it seems that Americans have a much wider selection of non-fiction books to choose from. I’m not a huge fan of non-fiction when it comes to pleasure reading (I read enough textbooks for school), so I found this a bit disappointing.

After a quick and painless download process, The Kite Runner opened automatically in Window’s Media Player. The author of the novel narrates the book, which I thought was amazing. The narration was very clear, entertaining and engaging. The book, written in English, has numerous Farsi words throughout it and the narrator pronounced every word perfectly, which was very refreshing (although expected, as it was the author himself reading!) The narrator had a slightly Afghani accent, but not strong enough to make listening difficult.

The best aspect about The Kite Runner audio book was that it sounded like the narrator was telling a story – not just reading from a text. I have always steered away from audio books because I didn’t want to feel like I was being read to. The Kite Runner, however, sounded like someone had recorded their memoir and I was just lucky enough to listen.

But, before downloading anything from Simply Audiobooks, you must keep in mind the size of the files. They’re huge – for audio files, anyways. The Kite Runner came in at 131 MB and took up at least 60 tracks on my Media Player. The entire book runs over 4 hours (keep in mind the book is almost 400 pages long) and it’s not easy to ‘bookmark’ where you left off if you want to listen to the book in multiple sessions.

Overall, I was impressed with the quality of the Simply Audiobooks product, and would suggest the website to anyone who is looking for audio books. I still, however, prefer to read my novels, but I will be syncing The Kite Runner to my iPod when I go on two long train rides this summer to Quebec City and Nova Scotia. Simply Audiobooks have offices in Toronto, Canada, Buffalo, NY and Las Vegas, NV., where audio books in CD format can be purchased.

A US Supreme Court has ruled file sharing networks are liable for copyright infringement performed by those using their services.

Monday’s court decision in the MGM vs. Grokster case states file sharing software encourages users to illegally distribute copyrighted material on the internet.

“We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties,” said Justice David Souter.

As a result, services such as Grokster and Limewire can be sued for copyright infringement.

In earlier cases, programs such as Grokster were compared to VCRs, something that provides a medium of exchange.

The entertainment industry sees this announcement as a major win in its fight against illegal music and movie downloaders.

However, the ruling comes as a blow to groups who support peer-to-peer file sharing.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Parliament is working on its own law to address digital copyright issues – Bill C-60. If passed, the law calls for users, not service providers, to be liable for copyright infringement.

Look for more news on Bill C-60 after the Parliament’s summer recess in the fall.

Apple will cut prices and add colour screens to all full-size iPods, the company announced today.

Both 20 GB and 60 GB models will feature a 65,536 colour 220×176 pixel display, letting users see photos and album art on their iPod.

The special edition U2 iPod will also feature a colour screen.

Apple’s announcement comes days after the launch of Gigabeat – Toshiba’s portabable media pleyer. Featuring a large 2.2-inch colour screen for displaying pictures and text. Gigabeat players are slightly pricier than iPods.

Toshiba currently supplies Apple with hard disks for the iPod.

Apple announced earlier this week its iTunes store in Europe has sold over 50 million songs since its opening back in June of last year.

“We’re thrilled to have sold and delivered over 50 million songs in our first year,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Applications in a statement. “We’d like to thank European music fans for making iTunes such a success.”

iTunes Europe has a catalog of more than 1 million songs from major labels and independent labels. The store is available to users in France, Germany and the UK.

In total, the iTunes Music Store has sold over 430 million songs. The Canadian version opened earlier this year, however, no statistics have been released yet.

Software giant Microsoft is said to be investigating its foray into the subscription MP3 download market after announcing its MSN Music service last year that competes with Apple’s iTunes.

The new service would offer users a subscription model, similar to how Real’s service and Napster’s service work.

“We are actively investigating the subscription model, but we don’t have anything to share today,” Christine Andrews, lead product manager of Microsoft’s MSN Internet division told Reuters, “Once we are ready to talk more, we’ll let you know.”

The latest player to enter this market was Yahoo, who introduced their own subscription service at prices much less than that of their competitors.

The subscription model allows users to listen to unlimited songs each month, however, a fee must be paid if they want to burn the track to a CD.

Apple today announced it is opening four new iTunes stores in the following countries: Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. This brings the total number of countries to 19.

The stores feature 1.5 million songs from the four major record labels and over 1000 independent labels.

“The iTunes Music Store has revolutionized the way we discover and enjoy music, and is now selling more than half a billion songs per year,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Applications. “With iTunes Music Stores now in 19 countries, music fans around the world can enjoy the number one online music service in the world.”

Alongside the announcement, Apple and UBS are giving away a free song to every Swiss citizen over the age of 13 as part of their “UBS Generation” and “UBS Campus” packages. UBS will be selling song cards to be used at the store instead of credit cards.

The new European stores include featured songs from Kent, Stereophonics and The Cardigans. In addition, the iTunes Music Stores today added downloadable music videos to play on your Mac or PC with the purchase of albums or tracks from Dave Matthews Band, Gorillaz, Morcheeba and The Shins. iTunes 4.8 may be required for certain features.

The most popular mp3 player is about to get even better as Apple prepares to launch the next generation iPod MP3 player early this week.

The July 26th Newsweek cover includes a picture of what looks to be Apple’s next generation iPod player, featuring a similar look to the iPod Mini. The new unit is said to be slightly smaller than its current form.

More information, including available sizes and price will be posted upon official release of the product.

The company everyone loves to hate has done it again, this time posting a third quarter net profit of $61 million dollars, more than triple their profit at the same time last year. Apple Computer’s stock soared as much as 13% Thursday as the company announced increased demand for both its iPod and Computer products. Revenue for the quarter was $2.014 billion, up 30% from last year.

3rd quarter Macintosh shipments jumped 19% based on strong growth in Europe, while iPod sales soared more than 160% over the same quarter last year.

“It was an outstanding quarter-our highest third quarter revenue in eight years,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Our Mac-based revenue grew a healthy 19 percent, and our music-based revenue grew an incredible 162 percent. We’ve got a strong product portfolio, with some amazing new additions coming later this year.”

“We were very pleased with our 30 percent year-over-year revenue growth and our operating margin expansion,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2004, we expect revenue of about $2.1 billion and earnings per diluted share of $0.16 to $0.17, including $0.01 per diluted share in restructuring charges.”

When Apple launched its European music store last month it launched without some of Europe’s most popular artists. Indie labels were upset with the deal Apple had proposed to them and refused to put their music on the iTunes Music Store.

However, it appears that this has now changed and the revised terms proposed to the indie labels are acceptable. This would bring such artists as The White Stripes, The Strokes and Travis to the store.

“Apple is in talks with the indie labels and it looks like they are hoping to sign a deal within days,” said an Association of Independent Music (AIM) spokesman.

“But a deal will not be signed unless it addresses the concerns that arose a month ago. Also the prices offered were lower than those some of the major labels were receiving.

“But we are quite close and hope that a standard indie deal will emerge from this which will help all indie artists.”

Europe’s independent labels hold a 22% share of the music market.