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Dolls, shrinks hint at airline entertainment to come
By Associated Press
Sep 16, 2003 - 08:41:00 am PDT
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SEATTLE -- It's not an IMAX movie screen, but a three- by five- inch screen showing an
episode of The Simpsons just may provide salvation on your next cross-country flight.
Or maybe you'll slip on a pair of headphones and listen to the soothing voice of Beverly
Hills, Calif., psychiatrist Carole Lieberman as she leads you through relaxation tips.
Or perhaps you'll be punching away at the buttons on a Nintendo video game, playing
Donkey Kong at 30,000 feet in the air.
Entertainment on airplanes has moved way beyond books and cards. At the conference of
the World Airline Entertainment Association in Seattle last week, companies exhibited
everything from high-tech massive network installations to low-tech dolls in a bid to win
some of $1.5 billion-plus business of in-flight entertainment.
Even in the severe commercial aviation downturn, airlines need to think about in-flight
entertainment, said Ray Neidl, an airline analyst with Blaylock & Partners. Even low-cost
carriers are offering passengers entertainment options, and airlines can use
entertainment as a way to attract and keep customers, he said.
For Alaska Airlines, the company benefited from the work of a baggage handler who
spent years developing the DigEPlayer, a portable device with a screen and headset that
will play movies, music, games and even destination-related advertising. The movies and
music will be refreshed ever 60 days, said Bill Boyer, president of Tacoma-based APS,
which built the DigEPlayer.
Alaska Airlines is offering the players for free to first-class passengers on many of its
transcontinental flights. It will rent them to other passengers for $8 in advance or $10 on
board.
Sometimes entertainment can be as simple as a new channel on the in-flight radio
system. Lieberman, the psychiatrist, narrates 45 minutes of relaxation and visualization
tips to keep passengers calm for airlines including Delta Air Lines.
Then there are the decidedly low-tech offerings, such as Stan the Exercise Man, a doll
with rubberband-reinforced arms and legs for children to use for stretching.
On the grander scale of offerings is the high-speed Internet access network from
Connexion by Boeing, a unit of Chicago-based aerospace manufacturer Boeing Co.
Through satellites and ground terminals, Connexion's service allows airplanes to offer
passengers e-mail, Web-surfing and eventually, TV programming, said Connexion by
Boeing President Scott Carson.
But it's not just about entertainment, he said. Airlines also plan to use the air-to-ground
connectivity for monitoring the health of the airplane, downloading weather and airport
information and otherwise efficiently sending information to cut down delays.
Seattle-based Tenzing Communications, partially owned by Boeing competitor Airbus of
Toulouse, France, offers air-to-ground e-mail over Verizon's airplane phones. Although
users cannot browse the Internet, they can receive some data in addition to
communication via e-mail, said Michael Pinckney, vice president of marketing. ------
On the Net:
http://www.airfax.com/airfax/default.asp
2003 WAEA Photo
Gallery
APS' Digeplayer, an
innovative personal VOD
player, debuted at the 2003
WAEA in Seattle.
AMC News (interview with Greg Crandall Duty manager ATL and Robert Bently DFW) as to probs with IFE retrofits
2 Plane Talk-August 2003
Crandall: “We ran into many
problems with the in-flight
entertainment (IFE) system
integration as well. The high
energy from the RF caused
aberrations in our flight schedules,
as well as IFE seat electronics box
(SEB) overheats. The IFE SEB
has caused much grief due to its
large size. It also has experienced
problems with its internal cooling
fan due to ingestion of debris. The
cooling issues lead to static, a
major complaint from our
customers and from In-flight. On
the B777, the electronics take up
so much space that there is
literally no legroom for our coach
passengers.”
SI WG: IFE cooling guidelines are listed in ARINC 628 Part 7 (Also a CEI developed
document).
The issues concerning true seat electronics box form factors will be tackled as part of the SI WG’s
3GCN work. As a stop gap measure, ARINC 628 Part 2 Supplement 3, nearing AEEC adoption, will
issue standard seat electronics box sizes in two classes. These classes of sizes will have tight
variances and will reflect current designs. At the 2002 World Airline Entertainment Association
(WAEA) Annual Conference, MAS, Rockwell and Thales were getting this message loud and clear,
as evidenced by significantly smaller seat components coming off the assembly line.
Crandall: “Moving away from the BusinessElite seat, we faced a challenge on the B767-400 first
class seat. The center console was developed by a third party for the seat supplier. The harness to
the in-arm seat video display has a disconnect. Half of the harness was installed by the IFE
provider, with the other half installed by the third party. The pin tolerance was so close, that
unless the plug was torqued to a specific value, we had flickering monitor issues whenever the inarm
seat video display was deployed.”
SI WG: ARINC 628 Part 2 Supplement 4 (now under draft) will include design and installation
guidelines for cable installation and routing within moveable seat structure. The SIWG’s work will
address the in-arm cable issue stated above.
Crandall: “Another favorite is the PC power system. The system has proven to be reliable, but
the system can be a shock hazard for the AMT if adequate precautions are not taken while
performing routine maintenance.”
SI WG: ARINC 628 Part 2 Supplement 4 will include guidelines for seat bonding, grounding,
and perhaps ground fault circuit interruption. It also clearly defines the additional levels of
protection needed for cables containing voltages = 30 Vrms.
AMC News
Bentley: Summarized: Our AMTs are having problems with the seat to seat cables in the B757
during HMVs. Seats on these aircraft have IFE, Telephony, Emergency Lighting, and a subset
include PC Power. Because of the different system topologies, there can be as many as 6 seat-toseat
cables between passenger seats in the most common B757 configuration (with feed forward
cables included). Can something be done? We roughly estimate our costs to be in excess of
$70,000 per year in labor for HMV seat-to-seat cable R&I in our current configuration (based on
48 hours per aircraft, 22 aircraft per year). Delta would benefit from additional revenue if seat
replacements were faster. With the improvement of seat connections, seats would be blocked less
because more seats could be replaced on through flights.
IMS launches digital prizzm™ and data loader (sure seems that the digEplayer solution is much simpler)
Anaheim, CA—December 13, 2002 - Innovative Media Solutions (IMS) and LightStream
Communications are developing a solution for content distribution called Digital
Prizzm™. The web-based tool provides the infrastructure for full content management.
LightStream provides the expertise in ordering and supply chain management while
IMS specialises in software and system engineering.
In addition, IMS is developing a terminal data loader to load content onboard aircraft.
IMS president and COO Rod Farley says, ‘We’re developing infrastructure and products
that reduce an airline’s cost to manage digital content.’
Farley thinks Digital Prizzm and the terminal data loader will accommodate the
proprietary systems and processes prevalent in the IFE industry. ‘All of those content
integration systems culminate in a digital image that’s moved to a portable content
loader, walked on to the aircraft via sneakernet, and dumped onto an onboard server.
It’s not standardized.’
Technologically speaking, there is no reason why digital images have to be created and
distributed by IFE supplier proprietary systems, argues Farley. ‘It doesn’t have to be a
unique system, so it’s a great opportunity for a third party to develop an infrastructure
that’s supported by the airlines, content suppliers, and the IFE system providers. Third
party involvement may be the quickest way to achieve digital content management and
content distribution standardization within our industry.’
Both Digital Prizzm™ and the terminal data loader are designed to handle large
amounts of theatrical and non-theatrical content, in the region of 9 gigabytes to 180
gigabytes. Compliant with the Motion Picture Association of America rules, Digital
Prizzm™ will manage the movement of content through post-production houses to
integrators who prepare the digital image that can be installed on an IFE system. It will
also include distribution of that digital image out to the aircraft or ‘the edge’ - the airport.
At the edge airlines can sneakernet the content onto an aircraft, using IMS’s terminal
data loader. Says Farley ‘It’s an evolution …until cost effective high volume wireless
connections are available, airlines are forced to use sneakernet. Our terminal data
loader offers the lowest cost and most easily managed solution for moving content from
the edge onto the aircraft."
Digital Prizzm™ will be made available to airlines through agreements with service
providers and/or IFE suppliers. It will be accessible to airlines through a portal, enabling
the airline to shape its options when managing content.
The terminal data loader is ‘a very inexpensive receptacle’ permanently installed on the
aircraft, consisting of a DVD/CD-RW and a removable hard drive bay. Says Farley, ‘The
terminal data loader is our attempt to solve the bulk distribution problem.’
Essentially it offers a substitute for current proprietary system-type portable data
loaders. Customers would buy DVDs, CDs, or hard disks off the shelf from the
commercial market, load the content onto these portable media, walk onto an aircraft
and insert the media into the terminal data loader. This approach to content distribution
closely matches the old SVHS tape distribution paradigm where someone walks onto
the aircraft, drops off some tapes, and leaves.
As a permanent fixture on board the aircraft, the terminal data loader would significantly
reduce the cost of ‘sneakernet’, where a person manually loads content during aircraft
turnaround times. ‘Do the math,’ says Farley, ‘everyone is trying to come up with a
permanently installed device to load large volumes of digital content. If your permanent
data loaders are expensive and you’re installing them on every aircraft in your fleet, the
cost is going to make it nonviable.’
For airlines with large fleets, the cost of permanent data loaders can be very high. Says
Farley, ‘If you’re spending $20,000 for each permanent data loader - that’s $1.2M for 60
aircraft. Our terminal data loader is the only commercially viable permanently installed
device I have seen to date.’
The terminal data loader is in the development stage and expected to be on the market
by the summer of 2003. IMS is in discussions with major IFE systems suppliers and
hopes to market the terminal data loader through them.
The loader also addresses the issue of content loading standardization. Currently
proprietary loading systems dominate the market. Although WAEA has been trying to
encourage industry to adopt open standards for loading content, the efforts have yielded
little results so far. The new terminal data loader from IMS could be the first real
breakthrough towards open architecture.
Farley points out that this would not compromise content security or encryption, since
this process is embedded far earlier in the content management chain. Whether the
content arrives onboard the aircraft encoded, or 'in the clear' (decrypted) is up to the
company transporting it. 'The requirement of ensuring the level of encryption or that it is
encrypted at all does not fall upon the terminal data loader. The loader is only a vehicle
for moving the information,' says Farley.
The terminal data loader is beyond the conceptual stage. IMS is in discussions with all
the major IFE systems suppliers. However, it could be at least six months before such a
unit is out on the market, once the development and manufacturing is complete.
Onboard decryption: IMS is going to run Secret Agent on the Terminal Cellular Bridge
(see November issue) which would ensure safe decrypting of content onboard. The
onboard TCB would remotely mount the terminal data loader, read the data, feed it into
the onboard IFE system and decrypt it. This will solve the vulnerability of moving content
in the clear onto the aircraft within the airport environment.
chwdrhed- I brought it up. Had no idea it would cause so much ruckus. Had no idea it had been discussed before.
OH well.....
Thanks for clearing that up...
Is there an agreement with Spirit Air and APS? I picked up on this through a "Google search" through an unrelated source.
1. APS Inc. has signed exclusive agreements with Alaska
Air, Spirit Air and Twentieth Century Fox for content
distribution based upon the Company?x2019;s proprietary and
licensed IFE system; All of these major public companies
will be issuing press releases outlining their business
relaitnships with APS and the ?x201C;to-be announced?x201D; public
entity upon successful completion of a vend-in agreement.
does anyone know why the name "digEplayer" was chosen?
good morning all- here's hoping we "blow the lid off" things today
increasing volume will bring more attention. A PR along with it could really add more fuel.
Alaska Airlines to Be Launch Airline for Revolutionary New Inflight Entertainment System
For Tuesday (September 9)
World Airline Entertainment Association's
24th Annual Conference & Exhibition
--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
SUMMARY: Alaska Airlines will announce that it will be the first
carrier in the world to offer customers a revolutionary new
inflight entertainment technology.
WHO: Dave Palmer, Alaska Airlines managing director of marketing,
and representatives of the company that developed this new
inflight entertainment system, will be available for
interviews and product demonstrations.
WHAT: The developer, a local Pacific Northwest company, will
unveil the system at the World Airline Entertainment
Association's 24th Annual Conference & Exhibition.
WHEN: September 9 from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Interviews and
demonstrations will be available by appointment.
WHERE: The Washington State Convention & Trade Center in Seattle.
CONTACT: Please call Jack Evans or Lou Cancelmi, Alaska Airlines
Corporate Communications, at 206-392-5101 to schedule
interviews and for exact exhibit location.
Media registration is required to enter the exhibition hall.
To register, stop by the WAEA Press Center in Room 401 of
the Convention & Trade Center.
http://www.digeplayer.com/PIC%20RESOURCES/dige3.jpg
check out the ALaska air logo
nice volume too.... 00.52 52 week high in sight
http://msn.zdnet.com/zdfeeds/msncobrand/reviews/0,13828,2912090-hud00025hwad,00.html
Hadn't seen this review yet
SHAREHOLDER ALERT
e.DIGITAL CORPORATION
ANNOUNCES DEPARTURE OF RAN FURMAN
(SAN DIEGO, CA - July 23, 2003) - e.Digital Corporation (OTC:
EDIG) today announced the departure of Ran Furman, the companyÆs
Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary, effective
immediately.
"While I have taken another position, working with e.Digital has
been a rewarding experience," commented Mr. Furman.á "There are
no material financial issues with the company and I stand by the
guidance I provided for the quarter ending June 30 as stated in
the July 1, 2003 webcast. I wish nothing but the best for the
company."
"We wish Ran well in his new endeavors" said Fred Falk, CEO of
e.Digital. "We have begun our search and expect to announce Mr.
FurmanÆs replacement in the coming weeks."
About e.Digital
e.Digital Corporation specializes in technology innovation and
applications integration through engineering partnerships with
leading original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) designing,
licensing, branding, and manufacturing digital audio, video and
wireless products and technology platforms. The Company also
sells its Odyssey 1000(TM) digital jukebox through selected
e-tail and retail outlets. Applications for e.Digital's
technology include delivery and management of open and secure
digital media with a focus on music, voice, wireless and video
players/recorders, automotive infotainment and telematics
systems, portable digital music players and voice recorders;
desktop, laptop, and handheld computers; PC peripherals;
cellular phone peripherals; e-books; video games; digital
cameras; and digital video recorders. Engineering services range
from the licensing of e.Digital's patented MicroOS(TM) file
management system to custom software and hardware development,
industrial design, and manufacturing services. For more
information on the company, please visit www.edigital.com. To
shop at the e.Digital online store, please visit
www.edigital-store.com.
Safe Harbor statement under the Private Securities Litigation
Reform of 1995: All statements made in this document, other than
statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements.
Forward-looking statements are based on the then-current
expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts
about the businesses of the Company and the industries and
markets in which the company operates. Those statements are not
guarantees of future performance and involve risks,
uncertainties and assumptions that will be difficult to predict.
Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially
from what is expressed or implied by those forward-looking
statements. Factors that may affect the CompanyÆs businesses,
financial condition and operating results include future
products and results, technological shifts, potential technical
difficulties that could delay new products and services,
competition, pricing pressures, the uncertainty of market
acceptance of new products and services by OEM's and end-user
customers, effects of changes in the economy, consumer spending,
the ability of the Company to maintain relationships with
strategic partners and suppliers, the ability of the Company to
timely and successfully develop, maintain and protect its
technology and product and service offerings and execute
operationally, the ability of the company to attract corporate
financing and the ability of the Company to attract and retain
qualified personnel. More information about potential factors
that could affect the Company can be found in its most recent
Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and other reports and statements filed by
e.Digital with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC").
e.Digital disclaims any intent or obligation to update those
forward-looking statements, except as otherwise specifically
stated by it.
# # #
CONTACTS:á
Investor Relations: Robert Putnam
ááááá (858) 679-3168
ááááá robert@edig.com
á
Good morning. Hopefully we will get some news that answers the questions to the headphone end user, IFE progress and Fujitsu roll out.
good stuff Maynard! Let's hope this dot connects.
very cool. good find. seems e.digital is popping up all over
good morning!
just shy of 2x avg daily volume
Exchange Quote
Last Change (%) Bid (size) Ask (size) Trade Time
0.30 0.019 (6.76) 0.29 (50) 0.30 (50) 15:59
Day Volume Last Size Open High Low
934,800 20,000 0.27 0.32 0.27
Latest Ticks
# of Trades
Avg Trade Size
VWAP
52 Wk High
+=-+
159
5,879
0.3002
0.80
52 Wk Low
Prev Close
Avg Day Vol
0.125
0.281
493,600
Been a long time since I have seen trades of 42.5k, 50k and 72.5k go off on EDIG lots of 10ks to boot.
E DIGITAL CORP - Nasdaq OTC BB: EDIG
Time & Sales
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good morning
just got my email also. good to see.
Hello Mary.
9miles...where did you find that quote? TIA
Apple Finds the Future for Online Music Sales
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/29/arts/music/29POPL.html
By NEIL STRAUSS
pple Computer seems to have the future of online music in its hands for the moment. Its new service, iTunes Music
Store, has been the first real success story in the long effort to sell music over the Internet. In just its first month of
operation the service, by the company's estimate, has sold three million songs online, at 99 cents each. This is an impressive
figure considering the limited access that music fans now have to the service. Less than 1 percent of the country's home
computers are Macintoshes that are compatible with the iTunes Music Store, and only a fraction of those have a broadband
connection to the Internet.
But it would not be an online success story without a complicating twist. That complication came this week when the specter of
the music industry, which has been publicly supportive of iTunes, began to loom over Apple. The success of iTunes, after all,
depends on cooperation from the music business, which controls the songs that iTunes wants in its collection. Apparently trying
to stay in the record industry's good graces, iTunes removed a service it had previously offered customers. Called Rendezvous,
the service enabled listeners and their friends to access one another's music and listen to it — but not download it — from any
computers. Hackers, however, had figured out how to download the music as well, creating programs with names like iLeach
and iSlurp. So on Tuesday Apple sent out an update for its iTunes software, disabling Rendezvous and limiting music access to
a user's local network at home or at work.
In a statement released yesterday, Apple said Rendezvous had been "used by some in ways that have surprised and
disappointed us."
"We designed it to allow friends and family to easily stream (not copy) their music between computers at home or in a small
group setting, and it does this well," the statement said. "But some people are taking advantage of it to stream music over the
Internet to people they do not even know. This was never the intent." A spokesman for Apple, Chris Bell, said the company
made the decision by itself.
The restriction makes sense: hackers are exploiting a loophole, so get rid of the loophole. But in offering music online, there will
always be a loophole. Nate Mook, who runs the online news site Betanews, said hackers were already finding a way around
this new restriction, writing software that would trick iTunes into thinking that an outside user's computer was on a customer's
local network. If Apple responds by limiting the functionality of the music it is selling every time that hackers find a way to trade
files, it could end up with a system as unsuccessful as the record industry's own attempts, like Pressplay and Musicnet.
Most of the uses for Rendezvous were not about illicit downloading. For example, Richard Yaker, co-founded — with a
friend, Christian Bevcqua, who is in the band Ditch Croaker — a Web site called shareitunes.com. His intention was to enable
iTunes users to see one another's song collections and then listen to the music (but not download it). Next to every song, Mr.
Yaker put links to the iTunes Music Store and to online mail-order retailers like Amazon and CDBaby, so that users had
options to buy the music. As far as he knew, his application was neither illegal nor even sneaky.
"The industry has never explored the idea of how people sharing and listening to one another's music helps sales," he said.
"We're all about selling the music once people find it and like it."
"But," he continued, referring to Apple, "they just closed everything down. I was totally disappointed. We were hoping that
traffic would continue to grow and we could quit our day jobs."
No one has ever doubted that there is an audience that wants to buy music online. And that audience hasn't asked for much:
just the permission to do whatever it wants with the songs once they're purchased. Apple Computer gave it just that. The music
store is a simple concept: after giving Apple a credit card number, a Macintosh user with an up-to-date computer and
operating system can click on a button and buy any song or album in the store. Buyers can then do what they want with the
music, except trade it online.
What is notable about the success of iTunes is that it has been achieved not by a music company but by a computer company.
And this makes sense, because it was a computer solution that was needed, not a music one. Even more impressive is that
Apple's coup has been accomplished relatively simply and cheaply. It owns nearly everything it is using: the Web browser
software (Safari), the computer media player (iTunes), the portable digital music player (iPod), the streaming technology to
play music videos (Quicktime), the software that creates the service (WebObjects), the computer itself (Macintosh) and the
operating system (MacOS).
"Apple is the new MTV," said Numair Faraz, 18, who has started several online service companies. "It is the new funnel for
music. When things moved from radio to video, MTV was the sole source of music. Now Apple is going to control the
distribution and the promotion of music. The entire ecosystem they are using is theirs." Mr. Faraz said he bought roughly $115
worth of music at the iTunes store last month. In comparison, he said, he spent no money on CD's in the last year.
On a recent visit to the studio owned by the pop production team Matrix — which has produced music for Avril Lavigne,
Ricky Martin and Britney Spears — Andrew Nast, the recording engineer, was working on his Macintosh. "I'm buying Paul
Simon's `Graceland' right now," he said.
He was asked why he is buying it rather than downloading it free of charge from a file-sharing service like Limewire. "Because
it's a pain," he answered. "It takes forever to find the track. Then once you find it, maybe you can download it. And then if you
download it, maybe it sounds cool. And if it sounds cool, maybe the whole track is there."
The iTunes Music Store is not without flaws. Its song collection is not only relatively small, but also limited to music from major
labels; independent labels are shut out. Another flaw is that it does not allow consumers to get more involved, as they did with
Napster, by promoting their favorite songs through instant messaging and other features of the open architecture of the Internet.
In fact, iTunes, doesn't even have an affiliate program, similar to Amazon's, so that other Web sites can refer customers to the
iTunes Music Store and earn a small portion of money from the sales. And of course the iTunes store is available only through
a Macintosh.
Mr. Bell of Apple said the company planned to add content beyond the major labels, was open to other innovations and would
have a Windows version by the end of the year.
Nice to see some volume and an upward price movement.
just tried but not on system yet....guess I will try later thanks
missed webcast....is there a summary post to read TIA
Associated Press
Music Biz Targets Cos. in Piracy Crackdown
Tuesday March 18, 11:30 am ET
Record Labels Target 300 Companies in Latest Effort to Crack
Down on Internet Music Piracy
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Major record labels have targeted about 300 companies whose
computers were allegedly used by employees to feed file-swapping networks in the
latest attempt to crack down on Internet music piracy.
Letters sent out in the last week by
the Recording Industry Association
of America informed the companies
of the alleged piracy and warned
that employees and employers
might be subjected to "significant
legal damages." However, the letters
made no explicit threat to sue.
The recording association declined
to name the companies that
received the letters, but said some
of them are the same ones who
were given warnings in October and
February about piracy. About 35
percent of the latest letters went to
technology companies, 20 percent
to health-care firms, 20 percent to
manufacturers and the rest to miscellaneous industries, the RIAA said.
The RIAA's action drew protest from the Information Technology Association of
America, a trade group representing Microsoft Corp., IBM Corp., and more than 400
other software and service companies.
"When corporations are trying to protect themselves from major hackers and terrorists
... trying to do serious damage to their networks, I don't know that they want to spend
their time chasing down a half-dozen employees who like to trade old Rolling Stones
songs," said the group's president, Harris Miller. "It's a matter of prioritization."
Miller said his group opposes piracy, but the labels erred in not coming up with a new
business model for the Internet age.
Copyright law experts said companies might be liable for piracy on their networks if they
know about it but don't do anything about it. It's unclear whether companies are
obligated to police their networks and remove unauthorized copies of songs before
they're asked to do so, said Mark Radcliffe, a lawyer in Palo Alto who specializes in
intellectual property.
"I think what they're trying to do is get people thinking 'Gee, I'm in this gray area, and I
don't want to be the guy who gets fingered for the test case,'" Radcliffe said. "As a
corporation, do you really want to be in the news defending the right of your employees
to have pirated music on your network?"
The letters point out the copyright owners can collect up to $150,000 per song copied
without permission, plus legal fees and profits earned by the infringer, and that the
equipment used to make illegal copies can be confiscated. In one case, the RIAA found
20,000 songs being offered by 70 employees.
The Internet as Jukebox, at a Price (NY Times)
By DAVID POGUE
efuddlement (n.): 1. Confusion resulting from failure to understand. 2. Loss of sense of direction, position, or relationship
with one's surroundings. 3. The state of the recording industry as it tries to sell music on the Internet.
THE only thing record companies know for sure is that they want to kill off the insanely popular Sons of Napster: free
music-sharing services like KaZaA, Gnutella and Morpheus. After all, the millions who use these services are in effect stealing
music, depriving the five major labels of perfectly good money. But watching the record companies as they try to find a formula
for a successful paid alternative is like watching five people play blindman's bluff on stilts.
At least they're generally crashing in the right direction. This is a busy time for improvements in the music-downloading services:
America Online unveiled its MusicNet service last week; Pressplay has launched version 2.5 of its software; Rhapsody has
unveiled a 49-cents-per-song special; and a new service called MusicNow, which offers a fresh approach to finding music, will
make its debut later this month. With each development, these companies (and another MusicNet affiliate, RealOne MusicPass)
are gradually lowering prices, filling the holes in their catalogs and loosening the restrictions on what you can do with the music
you've bought.
Unfortunately, one thing that has not changed is the complexity of their price plans, which make choosing a cellphone plan look
like child's play. Each company offers several degrees of freedom for the music it sells, each priced differently.
The most basic freedom is listening to songs while your Windows PC is online. It's a lot like one of those free Internet radio
stations, except that these "stations" are commercial-free and, in some cases, customizable.
The next level of freedom is the most bizarre. In some plans, you are allowed to download songs to your PC's hard drive for
playback even when you're not online. (Companies call these temporary, conditional or tethered downloads.) But you're only
renting these songs, not buying them. If your subscription to the music service expires, your music files expire too, turning into
worthless kilobyte carcasses on your hard drive. It's like having a landlord blow up your apartment if you miss a month's rent.
Finally, for an extra fee, most services let you download selected songs - called portable or permanent downloads - directly
onto a blank CD. At that point, you own them forever. You can mix and match songs from different bands, dictate the playback
order or build your own versions of hit CD's, minus the annoying songs.
You still can't move these files to another computer or e-mail them. Nonetheless, this approach is the closest the music services
have come to a compromise between what music fans want (flexibility to use what they have bought) and what the record
companies want (preventing file swapping).
Yet the music services don't mind admitting that if you have the time and the right music utility program, you can "rip" the songs
from the newly burned CD right back onto your hard drive. Presto: standard MP3 files that you can back up, share with others
or copy to a portable music player.
Most of these services are essentially giant databases. You search for a song, peruse the search results, and click on a song title
to hear or download it. Rhapsody, Pressplay and MusicNow spice up the service with articles and recommendations. Pressplay
2.5, in fact, includes audio versions of Billboard magazine best-seller charts going back 45 years - an intriguing way to study the
development of popular music.
Most of these services offer pretty much the same 250,000 songs because they have all struck deals with the same major record
companies. That's certainly enough music to cover, say, an aerobics workout, but it is by no means every pop song every
written. You'll encounter big holes in the Billboard Top 100 list, for example.
Worse, some of the biggest performers, or their agents, refuse to play the online-music game. You won't find much of anything
from Madonna, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Pearl Jam or the Beatles, for example. (Pressplay does list a rendition of the
Beatles' "Yesterday" - played on panpipes. The Beatles' agent sure has a funny sense of licensing priorities.)
Even if you do find the song you're seeking, the little "CD-burnable" flame icon next to its name is missing on about half the songs
in most services' catalogs. In other words, you can listen but you can't download it to own. Pressplay claims that "well over 90
percent" of its catalog is burnable, but even there, you can't buy anything from Britney Spears, 'N Sync, Aaliyah, Mos Def, and
other current hit makers.
Most of the differentiation among the services, then, boils down to their software design and pricing. The RealOne plan, for
example, comes with typical Real software: complex, cluttered and riddled with ads. It stocks only 100,000 songs-a fraction of
its rivals' libraries. It is also the worst deal, charging you without selling you anything that you can keep. The company says that
an overhaul is in the works.
AOL's new service, which like RealOne is a spinoff of the MusicNet library, is clean and extremely easy to use, and AOL
customers can savor the simplicity of being billed for music on their AOL statements. But the software design is spartan to the
extreme; you can browse music only by performer name, not by album or category. Worse, the $18-per-month plan buys you
only 10 burnable songs each month; it will take you two months to accumulate enough songs for a single CD.
Clearly, most people would prefer an unlimited, à la carte system without hassles or limits. That's the beauty of the plans devised
by Rhapsody and MusicNow: $1 each for as many songs as you care to download, on top of the monthly $5 or $10 fee.
MusicNow is designed more like a radio station than a spreadsheet. Instead of searching for a particular song, you begin by
choosing from a list of 40 channels: Indie Rock, Electronica, and so on. (Older listeners may be gratified to discover categories
like Film Scores, Show Tunes, and Holiday Music, all glaringly absent from rival services.) You can listen to these channels as
you would the radio, or, if you prefer the database approach, search for and buy individual songs for $1 apiece. All of the action
takes place within Windows Media Player 9, so you don't have to learn another proprietary piece of software.
MusicNow claims to be uninterested in the usual audience of young MP3-file collectors. Although its prerelease software is a bit
slow and wobbly, it may become a welcome, more grown-up alternative to the database-like services.
Rhapsody offers a similarly friendly software design, which includes a feature that lets you build a radio station that plays only
your favorite singers. Until March 31, CD-burnable songs on the $10-per-month plan cost only 49 cents each - a good
argument for making this the first music service you try. Its one significant liability is that none of the songs in Sony Music's
catalog are burnable.
Pressplay is similar, except that you have to buy your burnable songs in blocks of 5, 10, or 20. But in addition to well-built,
speedy software, Pressplay offers a huge, exclusive perk: You can copy your purchased songs straight to a CD, Sony Minidisc
or - and this is the big one - to many popular portable music players. (Alas, the best-selling Apple iPod is not among them; it
doesn't recognize WMA files, those in Microsoft's copy-protected music-file format.) This direct-to-player feature is a big
improvement over the burn-to-CD, copy-back-to-PC, transfer-to-player ritual required by the other services. (MusicNow says
that a similar feature will transfer songs primarily to hard-drive-based players.)
No matter which service you try, you'll almost always pay more for an album's worth of music than you would by buying a CD in
the store. Furthermore, none of these services exploit the virtues of the Web by including lyrics, tour dates and other news.
Nonetheless, these commercial music libraries would seem like amazing, groundbreaking inventions if only they didn't follow
other, more amazing and groundbreaking inventions: KaZaA and its ilk, sites where every song is available, burnable and free.
You never have to wade through the complexities of the prices and rights matrices. No wonder people have stayed away from
the commercial libraries in droves.
If the tide is finally starting to turn, as the record companies fervently hope, two forces are at work. First, somebody is poisoning
the well at the free swapping services, trying to waste music fans' time by uploading mislabeled, truncated and sonically garbled
versions of the most popular songs. (The culprits aren't identifying themselves, but unhappy music fans think they have a pretty
good idea who's at work here.)
The second force is the gradual refinement of the commercial music libraries. They're gradually filling in the musical holes,
simplifying pricing and stumbling toward a business model that isn't quite as repellent to consumers. Almost everyone expects
that they'll find that formula someday; it's all about defining the terms.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company / Privacy Policy
rstring...I got email also...
I want to buy a 128mb SMC for my Odyssey 100, any card better than the next or are all abou the same?
AOL Offering Music Catalog for Downloads (NY Times)
By SAUL HANSELL
n the strongest attempt yet to create a legitimate alternative to free music-trading sites, America Online will introduce a service
today that lets users download and listen to a large catalog of songs.
For $8.95 a month, users will be able to listen to a catalog of music, now at 250,000 songs and growing, on their computers. Moving
songs to CD's or portable players will cost more.
AOL is selling a version of a service from MusicNet, which is a consortium of RealNetworks; the BMG unit of Bertelsmann; EMI;
and Warner Music, which like America Online is a unit of AOL Time Warner. AOL refused to introduce MusicNet's first product
a year ago, arguing that it was too hard to use and did not have enough music.
Now AOL says that the service has improved enough to offer it to its 27 million members. That represents the most important test
yet for the concept of selling music as a subscription service rather than as discrete discs.
For AOL, MusicNet also represents a crucial part of its strategy to increase its tiny share of the market for Internet users who
connect over high-speed, or broadband, connections. AOL is already promoting its free music content, which includes hundreds of
songs, videos and original recordings of musicians.
In the next few weeks, AOL is going to introduce an improved $15-a-month service, with a bundle of content and services meant
for people who already buy broadband connections from their cable or telephone companies. That offering will include a limited
version of MusicNet that will let users download 20 songs a month and listen to another 20 one time. Others can buy this limited
version for $3.95 a month.
The standard $8.95 version of the service will allow users to listen to an unlimited number of songs on demand while they are
connected to the Internet through a technology called streaming. They can also download the songs to their computers for higher
sound quality and the ability to listen to them when not on the Internet.
Unlike music downloaded from Napster, the defunct free music sharing service, and its successors like KaZaA, a subscriber can
listen to MusicNet's downloads on no more than two computers. They also cannot be copied to other devices or sent to other
people.
But a premium version of the service, for $17.95 a month, gives users the right to burn 10 songs a month onto a recordable CD.
These will be in the standard, unprotected format used by all music CD's, and thus those songs could be copied, converted to a
popular format like MP3 and sent over the Internet at will.
So far, legitimate music download services have not been a success with consumers, not only because they charge a fee but also
because the first versions had very limited numbers of songs and even more draconian rules about what users could do with them.
MusicNet initially had songs only from its owners and some independent labels. Its main rival, PressPlay, was formed by Sony
Music and Universal Music.
By late last year, MusicNet and PressPlay each reached agreements with all the major labels and many independent labels as well.
An independent service sold by Listen.com, called Rhapsody, also allows users to listen to songs from all the major labels and to
burn some of them to CD's for $9.95 a month. Rhapsody is trying to attract attention with a limited-time offer that allows users to
download individual songs at 49 cents, half its regular price.
With its $8.95 standard tier, AOL is undercutting the $9.95 basic price of PressPlay, which is mainly sold by Yahoo and Microsoft.
The only other version of MusicNet, offered by RealOne, costs $4.95 a month for 100 downloads and 100 one-time streams.
So far, none of these services have attracted more than a few tens of thousands of subscribers. Somewhat more popular are online
radio services that let users pick the style or even artist they want to listen to but not the actual song. MusicMatch, for example, has
120,000 subscribers to its radio service at $2.95 to $4.95 a month.
Kevin Conroy, the AOL senior vice president for entertainment, said its version of MusicNet would be far more popular because it
would be integrated into the AOL service. Users will simply add the MusicNet fee to their existing AOL account and credit card
numbers. And for those who subscribe to the MusicNet service, AOL's music programming, which attracts 12 million users a
month, will be laced with links that will start songs playing.
Mr. Conroy added that he thought that even some users of KaZaA would be attracted because AOL's service downloads faster
and does not have the errors and delays of the free music trading services.
" Right now it takes 8 or 10 searches to find what you are looking for on services like KaZaA because so many files are mislabled,"
he said. "We have forced people to do illegal things because we have not offered an easy, convenient mainstream way for them to
do what they wanted."
AOL said that it had rights to another 80,000 songs that it would add to the service in coming months. This represents about half the
popular music that is now in circulation. Much of the most popular material, from artists like Madonna and the Beatles, has not been
made available on these downloading services, however.
But new artists generally sign deals that give labels the electronic rights to their works. For example, "Come Away With Me'` by
Norah Jones, which won the Grammy for album of the year on Sunday, is available on the service for listening and downloading, but
it cannot be burned to a CD.
The labels, artists and music publishers are paid a share of the monthly fees on all of these services in proportion to how much their
songs are listened to. They also get a share of the fee paid when songs are burned to CD's.
Paul-Jon McNealy, the research director for media at Gartner G2, said that with the latest releases of MusicNet and PressPlay, the
music industry has eliminated most, but not all, barriers to creating an online service that will attract music fans.
"This is close to what people will find palatable," he said. The MusicNet on AOL service, he said, will be a good introduction to
online music for a mainstream audience, but the limitations are still significant.
"People want to buy their music once and own it forever," he said.
Twilight of the CD? Not if It Can Be Reinvented (NY Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/business/yourmoney/23MUSI.html?th
By LAURA M. HOLSON
OS ANGELES
TONIGHT in Manhattan, rock stars, divas and rappers will descend en masse on Madison Square Garden, arriving at the
Grammy ceremonies in a parade of glamour and attitude. But the excitement they create will only mask the growing anxiety in the
recording industry about the future of its fundamental product, the CD, which is threatened with the same obsolescence that it
long ago foisted on the LP and then the tape cassette.
Introduced in the United States 20 years ago, the CD is losing its allure. From 2001 to 2002, some 62.5 million fewer of them
were sold — a decline of 9 percent to 649.5 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Online swapping of songs is growing at a
crippling rate, forcing almost every corner of the music industry to try to divine exactly what role, if any, the CD will play in a
future dominated by Internet delivery and competition from popular new technologies like the DVD.
Most analysts and industry executives agree that selling music online is the future. But they say it will take at least two years for
companies to devise a business plan for it that makes financial sense. In the meantime, the CD will remain the biggest source of
revenue for both music retailers and recording companies, who will try to squeeze as much profit as they can out of each and
every sale.
As a result, the CD is being rethought, repackaged and, in some cases, repriced.
Experiments to resuscitate this ailing product are growing. In January, Bon Jovi created a compact disc, with eight previously
unreleased songs, exclusively for Target stores. Priced at $6.99, it was intended to help bolster sales of other Bon Jovi albums,
including the newest, "Bounce."
Best Buy, the No. 1 electronics chain in the country, is selling prepaid cards good for 10 downloads that allow consumers to
create compilations to play either on discs or on computers. And last year, the Interscope recording label gave a DVD to the
first million buyers of "The Eminem Show" as an incentive to buy the CD.
All this is happening as the economic underpinnings of the CD continue to deterioriate, endangering the music business
altogether. With the rising popularity of online music, much of it available free, technology-wise teenagers, the industry's most
voracious buyers, can easily use CD-burning technology to make bootleg copies and sell them at school for as little as $1.
Companies are showing signs of cracking. Two industry veterans have recently lost their jobs: Thomas D. Mottola, the head of
Sony Music Entertainment, which lost more than $132 million last year; and Jay Boberg, president of MCA Records. The music
retailer Wherehouse Entertainment announced in January that it was filing for bankruptcy protection, partly because of lackluster
sales. And the EMI Group, based in London, the only major music company that is not a part of a media conglomerate, is
struggling with debt and is believed by analysts to be considering merger prospects.
"Large companies tend to wait until they feel pain to act," said Dan Hart, chief executive of Echo, a recently formed consortium
of retailers that hope to sell music online. "Now they feel pain."
DOUG MORRIS, chief executive of the Universal Music Group, said: "We are definitely in the middle of a transition. It was
always a packaged-goods business, but that is changing. We are slowly moving forward."
Compact disc sales have slipped for several reasons, not all of them related to piracy or online music swapping. Critics complain
that there is a dearth of blockbuster acts these days and that those with hits, like Britney Spears, often have short-lived careers.
And with the average price of a compact disc at $14.21, they contend that music is simply too expensive for frequent purchases.
But Hilary B. Rosen, chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, countered that a recent study by the
association found that only 3 percent of the consumers polled said they were buying less music because prices were too high.
Still, there is no question that other activities are taking up listeners' time, thanks to the growth of electronic games and
multichannel cable and satellite television. Perhaps most threatening is the popularity of the DVD, which emerged in the
mid-1990's. By 1999, DVD players had gained mass-market appeal, and they now cost as little as $50, about the same price as
a portable boom box. In some retail stores, DVD sales have surpassed those of CD's.
"The DVD is moving into the bedrooms of the next generation of young kids," said Gary L. Arnold, senior vice president for
entertainment at Best Buy, which announced in January that it was closing 107 stores. The next generation of young people has
no affinity for the compact disc. For them, he said, "it's about gaming and PlayStation."
TO thwart online swapping, several music companies, including Sony and Universal, have experimented with copy-protected
compact discs, much to the ire of paying consumers, who complain that they cannot listen to some of those discs on their
computers. The industry does not use a standard copy-protected format, so consumers do not know what kind of disc they are
buying. Fearing a consumer backlash, the industry has slowed down those copy-protection efforts.
Software makers are trying to come up with alternatives that address the needs of both consumers and recording companies. At
a recent music conference in Cannes, France, Microsoft said it had developed technology to allow music companies to record
two sets of identical songs on a compact disc, one that could be played on a home or car stereo and the other, called second
session, that could be copied to a personal computer. The second-session songs would have limitations, perhaps barring
consumers from sharing files or copying songs onto another disc.
Recording companies probably placed too much hope on super audio CD's, which are said to have superior sound compared
with regular CD's. The technology, introduced two years ago, has not taken off because super audio CD's cost nearly four times
as much to buy as regular CD's — and they require a special machine to experience the full impact.
And super audios, championed by Sony and Philips, are not alone in offering sound quality that surpasses that of the typical CD:
a dueling new technology in DVD audio, supported by Panasonic and Pioneer, is setting up a battle reminiscent of the
VHS-Betamax wars.
Until all these new technologies are sorted out, recording companies and retailers are betting on promotions and marketing deals
to increase sales. Bruce Kirkland, a member of Bon Jovi's management team, said the album that Bon Jovi put together for
Target had also increased sales of the "Bounce" album in its stores. In the first week of the promotion, Target's share of the
market for "Bounce" for all retail stores jumped to 26.1 percent from 15.9 percent, he said.
"I think the onus is on the retailers to take care of this because the recording companies always shoot themselves in the foot,"
Mr. Kirkland said.
Mr. Arnold of Best Buy said he believed that DVD's could well replace the CD in the future because they play not only music
but also video images. In the last 12 months, sales of DVD's have surpassed those of compact discs at Best Buy, he said.
But before they can become a new industry standard, he added, they will have to more adeptly meld music and video.
MUSIC distributors and retailers, battered by the slump in compact disc sales, are embarking on their own efforts to give
consumers more and easily accessible music. Last month, six music retailers, including major outlets like Best Buy, Wherehouse
and Tower Records, said they would form the Echo consortium to sell music on the Internet through their retail Web sites. As
recently as a year ago, that would have been unthinkable, as retailers and music companies were at odds about how best to
tackle online distribution.
In another joint effort, Anderson Merchandisers, one of the largest magazine and music distributors in the United States, bought
technology from Liquid Audio, an online music pioneer that distributes 350,000 songs through retailers, in the hope of exploiting
the growth in digital music.
"It has not been the norm that retailers should be the ones helping us rethink our business," said John Esposito, president of
United States distribution for the Warner Music Group. "But retailers are telling us the current model does not work."
Best Buy has been one of the most active retailers in this regard. It recently began testing a program in 30 stores that allowed
consumers to buy a card with a preset value that could be used to buy downloads to a computer or disc. Scott Young, vice
president for digital distribution at Best Buy, said the experiment had had limited success and was under review.
Mr. Hart of Echo said retailers would primarily seek to sell downloads over their Web sites that consumers could call up from
their homes. But as well as selling digital downloads, partners of Echo are likely to explore several options, including the use of
store kiosks where consumers can make personalized compact discs.
Such a venture, like any in the digital music world, is fraught with risk. In 1999, Sony Music Entertainment tried a similar strategy
but consumers did not respond, analysts said.
There are, of course, other problems facing distributors and retailers, most notably acquiring the rights to distribute whole
catalogs of music online. The music companies faced that issue early on, when starting their own Web sites. Competing
companies declined to offer all their music on both PressPlay, a joint venture of Sony Music and Universal Music, and
MusicNet, which was formed by Warner Music, EMI and BMG. It took months for them to begin sharing music, leaving
consumers disillusioned and frustrated.
For all of these ventures, companies will still have to grapple with why consumers would pay for music they can easily get free.
One major retailer, according to a music executive, has suggested to several recording companies that it might put a cap on the
price of any compact disc it sold in its stores. Only a store like Wal-Mart would have the strength the pull that off, he added.
"I think the biggest problem is, the industry doesn't know how to get started and take steps where you get an incremental gain,"
said Phil Leigh, a digital media analyst at Raymond James & Associates in Tampa, Fla. "If compact disc sales continue to drop
and there is no increase in online sales, then artists will be mad and your bosses are mad, too. There is an old expression that
pioneers are the ones with arrows in their backs. The one thing executives don't get paid for is rocking the boat."
DGW releasing O-1000 clone
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_news_search.cfm?NewsID=5882
Not only met their deadline but beat it. Good to see.
D.inkie....thanks for the post of the SRS ad. I appreicate your time and effort.