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syganymede

Listed below are comments made by syganymede between Wednesday, 25th March 2009 and Saturday, 28th November 2009.

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The future of audio: the UK Radioplayer 2:48pm on 28 Nov 2009 manInTheShack --- I certainly did not forget the second "B" in BBC.

They are a broadcaster, but they are not a software company. Their duty stops at the point of delivery - an FM transmitter open to all, whatever radio receiver you use. But on the internet they are trying to go much further and control the program used for receiving the media. They should not do this, but simply make the audio stream and XML content guide available for anyone to create a receiving software.
Facts about file-sharing 09:02am on 28 Nov 2009 Most copyright in recorded music is not owned by artists, but by recording companies (artists own the copyright of songs, they contract them over to the labels for the recording).
The bodies against file sharing are the recording industry through Pub Assoc, Fed Against Copyright Theft, BPI and many publishers (Universal, Sony EMI...)
Artists want new and better ways to sell music on line, but this is not being done by music publishers! That's the problem.

Publishers want to keep the old business models, controlling the means of distribution, i.e. CDs, not create new ones. They also are insidiously clobbering all high qualtiy music distribution with DRM (SACD, DVD-Audio, Blu-ray...) in order to hold on yet again to the means of distribution. This is where they make their money, and why artists suffer under their control.

Labels are complaining because people share files - that is because people want them on their PCs/Mobiles not on CDs. Pirate networks attack the very raisin d'etre of the music business. And until the labels change their business models and make available on-line music, not disabled by DRM, in lower MP3 quality AND CD and HD quality the pirates will continue and people will continue to swap files.
The future of audio: the UK Radioplayer 8:27pm on 25 Nov 2009 The BBC has an overblown sense of its own importance. It is not a software company and so should stop all these silly developments like iPlayer, Radioplayer and Canvas.

The BBC must do what I pay my licence fee for, produce programs.

Other people, commercial organisations, will take care of the distribution in an open content market. Otherwise the BBC is acting just like the decaying music and publishing industries and believes that controlling the means of distribution is vital to its success, it is not, creativity is what they are there for.
Green shoots in the music industry? 3:14pm on 16 Jul 2009 There is another aspect of the problem of the music industry which has not been touched on. That of reproduction quality. The vinyl disk was replaced by the CD - and things got better. Then the CD was invaded by the MP3- worse, then the MP3 was supplanted by Streaming - much worse. So that today we have a music distribution system that is getting poorer and poorer.

What we need to see is a file download system which actually improves the quality of the music reproduction. Son smaller record labels (for example Linn Records) are doing this, making available downloads - without the dreaded DRM - of music that is at least technically two times better quality than CD and perceptually many times better.

Yet the industry does its best not to support this improvement, it has crippled both DVD-Audio disks and Blu-Ray audio with encryption and DRM.
Medical records via Google or Microsoft? 11:02am on 07 Jul 2009 I have said it and I say it again. The way to carry our medical records around is to use personal Smartcards - or even dare I say it the ID card? Technology is such that today you could easily make a card with enough memory to store all your medical records, and you could carry this around to any doctor or hospital who would have a low cost reader (e.g. just a PC with a card reader, or since they all have PCs, just a card reader - say $20 max)).
Save Our Sounds 08:00am on 20 Jun 2009 Who is paying fore the MP3 licence to create these upload files?
The battle over content 2:25pm on 13 Apr 2009 I suggest a business model based on the quality of the music reproduction you receive.

All streaming sites, and low cost download sites should be limited to a few kilobits/second and/or limited audio bandwidth music (say 100-8kHz).

Then for anything better you start charging more. CD quality at CD prices, HD quality a few % more. This is what variable pricing on iTunes and Amazone should be about. But the same quality for from a few cents to over a dollar, no thanks.

Manage the quality tree and you manage your income.

Many bands today are starting to realise this, and are introducing high quality downloads on their sites. Now is time for the majors to get in on the act.
Spotify versus last.fm 2:08pm on 13 Apr 2009 I think that an important point has been missed here. The music distribution and quality trend has been Vinyl 33 -> upto vinyl 45 -> upto CD -> down to downloads in MP3/MP4... -> down to Streaming... but we are starting, at last, to see a break in the downward quality trend and the start of higher quality HD downloads.

Record companies spend millions on the latest recording equipment and have stocks of wonderful recordings, unfortunately they have not yet discovered the desire, a way or the sense to deliver these to the public.

What we are seeing at the moment is a move, backwards, from reasonable quality CDs, to rather poor quality streaming and downloads. Whatever the business model the music companies are trying to pursue this has to be a step backwards for anyone listening to the music.

With the ever improving speeds of the internet, we should by now be looking forward to an improved CD standard quailty of music, not a step backwards.

Many small companies are responding to this challenge and offering HD download music, but sadly the main stream labels are not. Streaming is just another way of downloading junk music and anyone who does it is welcome to the result. But try an HD download and you will never look back. What we need is a mainstream supplier (iTunes, Spotify, Last.fm or anyone else) to combine streaming with HD downloads.
Network storage still not consumer-friendly 1:52pm on 13 Apr 2009 All these discussions are a bit in the past for me, NAS and for that matter all computer storage, needs major updating. Both the physical part, the software part and the conceptual part.

What I want is a virtual Library in which I keep everything, classified by subject. I want the system to keep it anywhere it wants, in any file name it wants and make it accessible anywhere I want.

No setup. Just do it.

So where do we go from here?
Apple playing catch up? 5:46pm on 25 Mar 2009 For me there are two big issues, one is in Apple's court the other the Telco's

1 Tethering was not mentioned but for me this is a big advantage. I want to use 3G tethering to connect my Mac to the internet - I do it today with a couple of Dongles or my Nokia mobile, but how much better to have this integrated in the iPhone

2 We must stop locking and roaming charges in Europe, we need to be able to move anywhere and use our phones at the same costs and with the freedom to plug in any SIM we like.

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