You might cut buying new music out of your budget, but still want to hear something new. You can only listen to old music so much. There are a ton of places to go to listen to free music when you are connected to the web, like My Space, Pandora, and YouTube. It can be harder to find places for music when you are off line. Here are my top legal free places to download music from.
Daytrotter is my favorite place to get free mp3s and my favorite place to discover new bands. To me, Daytrotter is indie rock heaven. Just about everyday there are four new tracks. Most of the time they are bands I never heard of before. Yes, you may not find your favorite bands there, but you might find your next favorite band there.
There are thousands of free content on no iTunes. This content ranges from news to music, from Comedy to drama, and everywhere in between. Yes, the music content can be random. You have little control of what you are getting. There is a lot of content that is really cool.
There are lots of songs in the SXSW archives. They are not easy to look through either. But it really is worth your time. I have found a lot of new bands here.
I am not sure what the problem with independent books sellers going out of business. It is not the same problem as small book store or large book stores. with large stores there is still a problem with how many books get on the shelves. With a company like Amazon that is not a problem. They can carry more books that all the small book stores in a city. I am not finding books in independent book stores I am not finding on the web.
I am also not so upset about Amazon going directly to the authors and cutting the publishers out of the loop. In a world where physical distribution changes from big print runs to print on demand and e-books, I am not sure what functions publishers play. You can cut out the publisher and the drag they have on the system. It is better for everyone in the end.
Right now the distribution part of the entertainment world are becoming more and more efficient. If you are part of that arm of the entertainment world, you need to find a way to also become more efficient. You need to rework your business models so they work. There are no guarantee that because your business model used to work it will still work now or in the future.
This week TiVo and Amazon announced an Unbox on TiVo. Yep, I have been working on this one. It is pretty cool. I cannot say much about it right now. I hope all my TiVo DRV using Friends check it out when it is launched.
I was going to write about Wal-mart getting into the video download business earlier in the week, but there has been too much stuff going on. Now I feel I cannot write about it because people will think I am only bad mouthing it because we are competing against it.
It would be nice if I lived in a world where I could blog anything I wanted without worrying that people might read it the wrong way and get me fired.
You can watch the movie at home or at the office, but the license agreement prohibits you from watching it in 'hotel rooms, motel rooms, hospital patient rooms, restaurants, bars, prisons, barracks, drilling rigs' and certain other locations.
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Sometimes it takes a new technology like video downloading to make old technology, like renting a DVD from Netflix (Charts) or Blockbuster, look really good. In comparison to Unbox, a DVD rental is faster, cheaper, easier, more flexible, and delivers more choices and a better picture.
The review talks about how it takes a long time to get the program, how the quality is not as good as a DVD, and how restrictive the DRM is. I think that this is going to be the problem with download services for a while. I hope that these drawbacks get figured out before illegal downloads break the market.
But I also inserted the DVD versions of the two movies in my laptop, and the difference was stark. The DVD versions, in both cases, were noticeably sharper. The lower video quality of the downloaded movies would have been especially obvious if I'd connected my computer to a big-screen TV -- a move Apple and many others see as the next step for online video.
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The few dollars I'd save with Unbox or iTunes movie downloads aren't enough to compensate for all these shortcomings. With DVDs, I can easily move from players attached to my home TV sets to the DVD-ROM drives on my computers to the $89 portable player I bought to keep my 6-year-old daughter Sara amused on long car trips
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The transition to digital downloads won't ``happen overnight,'' Jobs told the Wall Street Journal. ``It takes years of investment,'' he said.
I'm happy to let Apple, Amazon and others make that investment, as long as they don't expect me to help that investment pay off until downloads are faster, video quality is better and prices are lower.
I am not sure how much control the download services will have on speed or price. If the price is too low the movie companies will say no. Speed is all about your internet collection. I wonder how much Apple and Amazon will be able to effect these things.
Replacing CDs with iTunes was a no brainer. The iPod and iTunes made listening to music easier for most people. It looks like the movie services make it harder than a DVD to watch movies. I think this is going to be the hard thing to overcome.
I also think that Apple and Amazon need to get companies to allow movies to be ripped into people's collections. Right now this is a major problem. Maybe they should work with rental companies to make discs that cannot be ripped and the ones I buy from the store can. I think that will be a barrier for these services to take off.
I will admit that I love the Amazon suggestion engine. I am not sure why it suggested Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls for me. I will admit that this topic interests me, but I cannot figure out how it came up as a suggestion for me. Look at my Wishlist and tell me if you understand.
It is Christmas time and I have been seeing people post links to their Amazon Wishlists. Whenever I see someone post their wishlist, I look at it if I know the person or not. I am hoping that I can find something out about these people by looking at there wishlist. I am wondering what these people might reveal to me.
Most of the time I really do not get any more idea about them. I see what books they like. I usually think that I should read some of these books. I really want to see what Amazon thinks about these people. I want to see their Amazon Recommendations. When I have a slow moment at work I go and edit my Amazon Recommendations. I am just fascinated by the engine that runs those recommendations.
For all you Buffy The Vampire Slayer fans out there, here is the perfect reason to buy the Sixth Season when it come out on DVD. It looks like the sex scene between Spike and Buffy was a little too hot for TV. We can expect it on the DVD. Amazon is currently taking orders for the first season on DVD. I did not realize that the first season was only 12 episodes long.
I was shopping on Amazon the other day and I saw the new Barbie Video Game. I am not sure about everyone else, but I find it strange that Barbie has a Secret Agent Video game. It just does not seem to fit the other games in the Barbie catalog. I find a huge gap between, Barbie Pet Rescuer and Barbie Secret Agent. I know the secret agent game is to cash in on Spy Kids. It is just an odd thing to see.
PS. I to have an odd fixation on well developed imagery worlds.
