Insanity Part 2.0

So I’m wasting time looking at movie trailers, and here’s a bunch that I thought were interesting, in no order whatsoever.

Layer Cake
Saving Face
Millions
Melinda and Melinda
The Weather Man
Crash
The Ringer

I’m now hosting a copy of the Decemberists’ 16 Military Wives music video (open it with QuickTime or mplayer). It’s a fairly interesting one, and is also a really awesome song. It’s perhaps the most upbeat anti-war song I’ve ever heard (it’s not explicitly anti-war, but more of a satirical take on war). I don’t really have explicit permission to host this, but seeing as how they were distributing it on BT and there weren’t any seeds last time I checked, I think it’s safe.

Picaresque

So instead of getting sleep, I thought I’d write my impression of the various online legal music services out there, as I’ve tried a good few of them and no one else seems to do this on the Internet.

First up is iTunes. Everybody knows about iTunes, including your grandmother cause she watches TV and sees those ads every night. iTunes only offers songs on a per-track basis, which are always $0.99, or on a per-album basis, which vary in price (though originally the idea was that all albums were $9.99). Songs are encoded using 128kbps CBR AAC and are wrapped in proprietary FairPlay DRM (which can be fairly easily removed ). The software is available for Mac and Windows, and is probably the most crossplatform of any of the music services because of this. As far as I can tell the sound quality is fine, though I wish they would increase the bitrate by just a little bit (160 or 192 sounds good to me). The music library they offer is probably the largest, by way of the fact that they are the most popular music service. Aside from that, there isn’t really much special about it, or remarkable. So far there have been two major promotions where they have just given away songs, thanks to Pepsi, so in the future you might be able to try them out without shelling out too much cash. Probably the only reason I use iTunes is because I can rip out the DRM easily, and thus it takes little effort to transcode my tracks to something my Rio Karma can support (eg Ogg) without too much quality loss.

Next is Napster. They’ve been in the news a lot, as they make a lot of noise about the fact that they came out first with a Janus-compatible service (Napster to Go) and the first to start doing University programs, of which Cornell is a member. There are two plans available, a $10/mo which only lets you keeps songs on your computer (Napster Premium), and a $15/mo plan which lets you keep songs on both your computer or a Janus-compatible music player (Napster to Go).

Don’t know what Janus is? It’s the codename for Microsoft’s latest version of Windows Media DRM, probably version 10 or something stupid like that. You must have WMP10 installed to take advantage of it, and a supporting player. As of right now there are very very few players that support Janus, but I would expect most name brand players to support it from here on. Creative, iriver, and Dell have various players that do support it at the moment; the Rio Carbon supports it in theory, but it needs a firmware update (which has not come out yet). With Janus you’re supposed to download tracks to your music player, and then every month, once a month, you reconnect your music player to your computer to verify that you’re still a paying subscriber so that the tracks on your music player don’t deactivate themselves (an onboard clock keeps track). My Karma does not support this, so I have yet to try this out. Search Google for “napster to go” or “rhapsody to go” if you want to know how they work in practice.

Oh before I talk more about Napster, some of you might be wondering if they have anything to do with the Napster from 2000. Kind of. Here’s how it works: Back in 2000, that was the Napster we all know and love. They closed up shop sometime in 2001 or 2002. Somewhere along the way they were trying to get bought out by Bertelsmann (of BMG, or now Sony BMG, fame) and start a for-pay subscription service which obviously never got off the ground. They floated around for a little bit in bankruptcy, after which all their assets were bought by Roxio (of Easy CD Creator and Toast fame, formerly a division of Adaptec) including the logo and trademark. Roxio also ended up buying Pressplay (a horribly failed early attempt at music services, which sucked really really badly) and went to work combining the two. In late 2004, Roxio split itself up, selling off the CD burning divisions (still known as Roxio) to Sonic, keeping Napster and formally changing the company name to Napster Inc. In short, the new Napster has nothing to do with the old one.

So what do you get out of Napster? With either subscription plan you can either stream or download as many songs as you want, provided Napster has them available. Songs are encoded at 128kbps WMA both streamed and downloaded. In addition to the “all-you-can-eat” stream/download service/rental, you can also purchase songs at 99c each and “own” them, and transfer them to any secure WMA-supporting device (most anything nowadays), which is completely separate from the Janus/Napstertogo idea. Confused yet? To buy songs, you don’t have to be a Premium/to-go subscriber, you can just download Napster and buy songs, much like iTunes. They call this service “Napster Light.”

This doesn’t even get into the various quirks and shittyness of the Napster program. In my version, I have Napster set to not to automatically play the CDs when I insert them, but nevertheless everytime I start Napster with a CD/DVD in the drive or insert a CD/DVD while Napster opens, it freezes up for 30 seconds or so. There is absolutely no reason why Napster needs to completely freeze while a CD is inserted, especially if it’s not a music CD. Also, tracks that you download to your hard drive will occasionally be forgotten by the Napster library, so that Napster just won’t remember they exist and it won’t be in your Napster library anymore. They’re still on your hard drive taking up space though and you can still play them, but Napster doesn’t know about them.

Since I suspect that I rambled on quite a bit, here’s a summary of what Napster offers:

• Napster Light: Can only buy tracks at 99c. No radio, streaming, or unlimited downloading. Tracks can be saved, transferred to WMA players, and burned because you “own” them.
• Napster Premium: $10/mo for unlimited streaming and downloading. Tracks can’t be transferred or burned. You don’t ‘own’ anything.
• Napster to Go: $15/mo for premium + transferring tracks to WMA10 Janus players.
• Shitty client software

Finally, we’ve come to Rhapsody. Originally the first music service to get approval from all 5 major labels, it started life as a subscription streaming service from Listen.com, later bought out by Real, and now exists as a download/subscription service much like Napster.

The new version of Rhapsody solves many of my original complaints/concerns about the software. It’s still only available for Windows, but it now lets you download tracks to your computer so you can play them while offline (the only real benefit to being able to download tracks to your computer), and now lets you purchase tracks individually as well. Downloaded tracks are 192kbps WMA, Streamed tracks are 128kbps WMA. Purchased tracks are 192kbps AAC w/ Helix(Real) DRM.

The basic streaming/downloading service is Rhapsody All Access, at $10/mo for the unlimited streaming/downloading. Rhapsody to Go is also $15/mo and has the same caveats as Napster to Go, as it’s the same technology. There also exists a completely free option, Rhapsody 25, where you can play up to 25 tracks in a month for free, though you don’t get to download or keep them. It’s designed to whet your appetite for the paid versions.

For me, it was all the little things that made Rhapsody better than Napster. The software isn’t really pretty but is functional and not as quirky as Napster’s. Tracks that tend to be “buy only” in Napster are sometimes “stream only” in Rhapsody, which works a lot better for the subscriber consumer. I also found that Rhapsody just had the better selection over Napster, though they’re probably equalizing nowadays.

If I were to pick one to use, I’d rather use Rhapsody over iTunes and Napster. Subscription services make a lot of sense when you want to try out a lot of music with little expense (and in that respect they somewhat resemble the huge libraries of filesharing, though they’re still worse than what you can get out of those), but the iTunes model works better if you want to actually “own” the music (a misnomer, as you still don’t really own it and are at the whim of Apple’s DRM). To me, 99c is too high a price point per track (49c gets more to it though) when you don’t get the physical CD, liner notes, or lossless quality. However, iTunes does have the benefit in that its DRM has been cracked, which somewhat assures your file’s longevity as you can keep an unprotected AAC as a backup. In the end it comes right down to personal preferences. I like supporting the artists so I’m finding myself buying CDs fairly often nowadays, as well as buying them at concerts that I go to.

Screenshots:
iTunes

Rhapsody

Napster

Comment here, cause it may not work

Edit: To anyone who may have tried posting comments before and it didn’t work, sorry, I don’t know what was broken I think all is well now though. If you can remember what it is you were trying to say, want to try posting it again?

NPR : The Decemberists in Concert

I don’t think this needs any explanation. It’s pretty awesome, especially for being free. The only way it could be better is if there was video, I think

“We just wanted to provide you with some information as far as who are some of the major supporters of same sex marriages and the gay community at large.”
“Who are they? The Jews?”

“Are you against same-sex marriages?”
“Well, I wanna destroy it, yes.”
“Okay, that’s great to hear.”

Sadly I do not have the original article for this yet (I heard about it from d&d for those of you who have forum accounts). It sounds almost too over the top to be believed, but it’s still hilarious.

Edit: Apparently this showed up at Wonkette (second post here).

After seeing this on luke’s blog I gave it a try. Here’s what I got:

Looks like I’ve barely got any Southern in me