Starry Hope » Music

Sick of DRM

Jim — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 11:58:18 +0000

I’m getting sick of DRM. I’m switching to Emusic. I mean, I love Apple’s stuff, but I want some freedom of choice in my life.

iTunes Killer Plays the Web on Windows Mac and Linux

Jim — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 14:54:32 +0000

Here’s a screencast from our friends over at puddlegum.net demonstrating some of the features of the cross-platform media player Songbird. Songbird is built on the XUL framework (like Firefox) and works on Mac OS X, Linux and Windows.
[QUICKTIME http://www.starryhope.com.nyud.net:8080/screencasts/Songbird-Screencast-Puddlegum_600.mov 600 485 true true]

Trying Emusic Again

Jim — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 10:29:39 +0000

Today, I decided to try the emusic service again. I’ve tried the service a couple of times before (apparently, I tried it for the first time in August 1999 according to my account information). In the past, I never found the service worth paying for, but all that has changed now.

With a quick search of the emusic site, I found some of my favorite groups. I also found a lot of songs that I’ve already purchased through Apple’s iTunes Music Store. The big difference with emusic is that the songs are in high quality mp3 format without any DRM! This means that I can play the songs on all of my mp3 players and computers without any problems. With Apple’s DRM, I can’t play my purchased music on Linux or on my iRiver player, and that really stinks!

Emusic was nice enough to give me a new free trial membership (apparently my other one was so long ago that it doesn’t count). I was able to get the brand new album from Dashboard Confessional, The Rocket Summer’s first album, and 5 single tracks from some other bands I want to check out … all for FREE! You just can’t beat that deal.

I think I’ll go ahead keep my account with emusic this time. 40 tracks for $9.99 a month is just a great deal, especially since emusic’s catalog of artists is so huge.

The tracks are also much higher quality than those offered through iTunes. Emusic uses variable bit rate mp3 files, and all the tracks I downloaded were encoded at rates above 160 kbps. It’s also easy to re-download any tracks that you’ve purchased in the past, something you can’t do with iTunes.

Emusic is a winner!

iTunes Music Store Support

Jim — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 10:02:23 +0000

I was happy to see that the new Underoath album was released today in the iTunes Music Store. Unfortunately, when I downloaded the songs, there was horrible skipping in at least one track (haven’t listened to it all yet). This is the 3rd time (in 3 years) I’ve had this problem with the iTMS when purchasing new albums.

The thing that REALLY frustrates me is how long you have to dig through the Apple website in order to find a way to contact iTMS support! Every time I need to contact them, I spend 20 minutes looking for the page with the contact form! This is just crazy!

So, for anyone who needs it, you can contact iTMS Support on this page

http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/musicstore/buy/

Ice drift on April, 25th. St. Petersburg, 2006.

Jim — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 21:01:30 +0000

Ice drift on April, 25th. St. Petersburg, 2006.

Originally uploaded by vetkaa.

Beautiful picture!

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Blindsided

Jim — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 06:11:58 +0000

A few weeks ago, my brother brought me a stack of CDs when he visited me here in Europe. I was happy with some of them and disappointed by others. One of those CDs, however, has just blown me away. Blindside’s new CD “About a Burning Fire” is one of the best (hard) rock albums I’ve heard in a long time. Smart, thoughtful lyrics, rockin’ beats, and screaming guitars (even a special appearance from Billy Corgan) all add up to one seriously amazing CD. You won’t find any gimmicks or trendy fads here (no rap-core, scream-core, or glam-core), just good old-fashioned hard-rock music. I could go on about it … but just let me say that if you are looking for a CD that really ROCKS … pick up this new offering by Blindside!

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Favorite Songs

Jim — Thu, 22 Jul 2004 05:30:41 +0000

It’s official (again): “Island in the Sun” by Weezer is one of my favorite songs of all time. I’ve loved this song since the first time I heard it (in 2001). I used it a few years ago in class and heard it about 20 times in one day … and I still loved it. I used it again two weeks ago and heard it another 20 times in one day. It just came up on my iTunes and I still love it. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it … now, if I could just find MY island in the sun ….