Before I started producing dance music I used to strut my stuff as the lead singer of an alternative rock band called the Fruit Eating Bears, who’s main claim to fame seemed to be the ‘unpredictable’ nature of the live gigs (ie: things tended to depend a lot on how much we’d been drinking that day). We also discovered another Fruit Eating Bears which meant we had to ditch the name as well.

In our rare sober moments we got a bit of a following in our local area of South Yorkshire, UK, played the legendary Bull and Gate in Kentish Town, London, appeared on Gary Crowley’s Radio London show, Demo Clash and even had (the then) Phonogram Record company A&R guy ringing us.

Getting to the point a little, we recorded a four track EP which never saw the light of day but which we have decided to get uploaded to iTunes to see how things go. So, starting today the ‘Uptempo Tantrum EP’ experiment begins. We decided to use the band name, the Buzzsonic seeing as its the only thing we could think of that hadn’t already been used for a band.

I got a contact to design the cover (which looks pretty neat) and am signing up for distribution using Tunecore, whom I also used for my 99th Floor Elevators remix project release.

So, step one. Encode hi-bitrate MP3s from my CD master using the CDex Lame encoder, add tags and upload to Tunecore as we speak. Now to put together some kind of readable PR sheet!

To help the project with some much needed PR, one of the tracks, ‘Remember’ has been picked up by an independent film company for usage briefly in the film, ‘Behind The Scenes of Total Hell’. BTSOTH apparently gets it premier at the Curzon Cinema in London sometime next month and is the work of film maker Andy Wilton. I think the film is going straight to DVD but there’s supposed to be a CD tie in which should be good.

Related Reading

Fruit Eating Bears (MySpace)
Get Your MP3 Tags In Order (Wired.com)
Bob Bakers Indie Promotion Blog (Bob-Baker.com)
Cyber PR (Ariel Publicity)

Back in the 90s when I self released my first twelve inch single the main problem I had was trying to physically distribute the product. I remember trailing around London’s (then thriving) network of vinyl stores with a box of white labels trying to drum up a buzz with retailers. Around London it was physically possible to leave ten copies of a single at each individual retailer. Problem was you then had to go back and chase up money from each and every one (if they actually sold any).

The easier alternative was to get your product on the vans of one of the many (at the time) vinyl distributors. If you had a track with a club buzz on it this was pretty easy, you’d drop off your boxes of vinyl at the warehouse and wait for the orders to flood in. Well in practice, at least. What happened to me (three times) was that I’d commit to a distribution deal with a company and then they’d go bust right before I’d ever get paid or get my product back. Great.

Nowadays of course everything has changed to the extent where there doesn’t actually have to be a physical product to distribute (no inventory to lose) and your customer/the consumer actually takes care of any physical manufacturing (CD burner).

So, where to start? Like it or not Apple’s iTunes is the biggest music retailer on the planet so if you want to sell downloads it pays to have your product in the biggest shop window. That is not to say that its the only shop window you should concentrate on but you have to go where the shoppers are looking. Much the same as I’d want my 12inch single in the hip little record store in London’s Soho, I also wanted it on sale in the Virgin and HMV megastores on Oxford Street.

A newer breed of distributor has flourished in the current music industry climate, a digital music aggregator, where the artist or label submits/uploads the content and the aggragator queues it up for placement with the main online retailers, which in mainstream terms means iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, eMusic (for DRM free indie music) and more recently AmazonMP3.

So. There’s a number of aggregators around now and they seem to be multiplying weekly so its important, nay, essential to choose a company with a nice ‘shiny’ reputation. That means a company that is reachable, reputable and accountable and of course, a company with some solid music industry background. I use Tunecore for digital distribution, though you can see a useful comparison of services here via Moses Avalon.

The biggest pull for me that made me choose Tunecore over CD Baby DD was simply one of percentages and control. CD Baby has a much wider list of stores it sends your music too, but you cant discern which ones you want your music on specifically. With Tunecore you can. CD Baby also take 9% of any money from each download. Tunecore take nothing. After iTunes (to give a specific example) takes its own cut I see 70c per download which goes straight into my Paypal account (if I choose that payment method). Bypassing any distributor cut or record label share.

Consider back in the 90s I had no concrete way of keeping track of what my distributor was up too. Now I can have data tracking each individual sale on a monthly basis.

Do remember though, that despite all the hype about download stores, they still only account for around 10% of music sales so having music available on iTunes is an ‘as well as’ rather than an ‘instead of’. People are still buying CDs, even vinyl.

The sign up at Tunecore (or CD Baby if you choose) couldn’t be simpler. There’s a sign up fee of around $25 for Tunecore, with an annual maintenance fee of roughly $20. Sign up at CD Baby is $35 with no annual fee. You’ll need a finished mastered copy of your release, which you can either upload or physically post in to the distributor. You’ll need CD artwork too, even if its only a digital release. Either diy, get a mate who’s a whizz on Illustrator or pay someone else (or here).

Your album, EP or single also needs a unique UPC (barcode number) and each track needs a tracking number for sales called an ISRC, (“International Standard Recording Code”). Tunecore take care of both these services free of charge at the moment, CD Baby charges $20 for the UPC barcode.

And a one (or two) final points to remember, the number one thing to look out for in a digital distributing partner is a non-exclusive licensing agreement. Make sure that you will continue to own all rights to your own music and also, don’t forget to promote your digital downloads!

For even more options you can get your own download store to paste on your website or MySpace page via companies like 7 Digital (in the UK) or Snocap (in the USA). Though take into account these services are separate options.

And yet another option if you’re without a physical release (CD or vinyl) is actually selling downloads at gigs using a download card service like Dropcards or Disc Revolt.

Related Links

Tunecore vs. CD Baby For Digital Distribution (CNet Blogs)
Digital Distributors-Choose The Right One For You (MosesAvalon.com)
Why Most Digital Distribution Start Ups Will Fail (CNet Blogs)
Tools For The Stay At Home Musician (Coolfer)
iTunes Store (Wikipedia)
Drive-By Truckers Founder Seeks Vinyl Glory (Boston Herald)
Apple Accused of Stifling Rivals with iTunes (Guardian UK)
iTunes No. 2 Music Retailer in the US (Business Week)
So, One Week Later is the Album Dead Yet? (The Seminal)
MP3 Cover Design (Simon Idol)
The Rise and Fall of Snocap – What Did We Learn? (Penny Distribution)

Other Distribution Services

If you want to add more services besides the already mentioned mainstream download stores.

SongCast Music (USA)
KJER (Scandinavia)
Artists Without A Label (AWAL) (UK)
Consolidated Independent (UK)
Wild Palms Music (France)

As a recording artist myself I’m always looking for new distribution outlets but so far I’ve been slow to exploit digital sales at all. Two mixes from my latest UK released 12 inch vinyl (yes they do still exist) single, ‘I’ll Be There’ are actually available at underground dance store Xpress Beats but with Apple’s iTunes store dominating 70-80% of the download market (depending on who you believe) its the one place you really want to be if you want to get in the online shop window.

I’ve been aware of digital music distribution aggregators for a while and have had a look around well known outlets like CD Baby and IODA so I was very interested in the news of newcomer TuneCore (tip via the essential Moses Avalon). Tunecore works much the same as most digital music aggregators in as much as they sign up artists and label content and place music on the all important download majors like iTunes, Napster and Rhapsody. The difference with Tunecore (FAQs here) is that there is no lengthy terms, no exclusivity and the killer for me, no percentage share of revenue (other outlets range from 8-15%).

There’s a very informative podcast interview with founder Jeff Price at the 75 Minutes blog which is well worth an hour of your time and needless to say Jeff is blogging about the whole thing here. I’ll be commenting further on this as we prepare to upload our first digital release to Tunecore very soon.

Founder Jeff Price is the owner of Spin Art Records other board members include the former head of RykoDisc, George Howard and Toolshed Inc. owner Dick Huey.

Related Reading

Digital Distributor Comparisons (MosesAvalon.com)
Back From Canadian Music Week (BradSucks.com)
Digital Music Report 2006-24 page PDF (IFPI.org)
Digital Music:Industry Answers (BBC News)
The Long Tail (Wired.com)
99th Floor Elevators (Floorelevators.com)
iTunes Outsells Traditional Music Stores (CNet News) Nov 21 2005
Apple Touts iTunes 80% UK Market Share (The Register) Sept 7 2005

I’ve mentioned the free iLounge iPod book download here before (when iLounge.com was still called iPodlounge.com). Well this week the iPod gadget website released the latest version of ‘The Free iPod Book’, (Version 2.2) which Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg recommended as the “free manual on getting the most from your iPod.”

The latest edition boasts 200 plus pages covering everything you could possibly imagine related to Apple’s iPod and iTunes and is available as a higher-res printable PDF or lower-res monitor friendly PDF download.

You can find a fuller description on the iLounge website here but its a rare thing on the internet, a freebie which carries more value than many paid downloads, whatever the category. Brilliant.
Download

The Free iPod Book 2.2 (hi-res 21mb PDF) Print Version
The Free iPod Book 2.2 (lower-res 13MB PDF) Monitor Version

Related Links

The iLounge Library (iLounge.com)
iPod Hacks (iPodhacks.com)
iPod Hackaday (Hackaday.com)
iPod and iTunes Product Guide (PlaylistMag.com)

Thanks to the Silicon Valley Good Morning daily newsletter for pointing us in the direction of this one.

There’s not enough people taking good humoured digs at po faced Apple as far as we’re concerned so it was great to see this parody mock-up ‘Apple Store of the Future’ on writer David McCandless’s homepage this week.

McCandless was previously responsible for editing the Seethru website, a big favourite here during its heyday actually and the interactive half of the BBC2 / World Productions drama series, Attachments.

To satisfy Apple’s “slavering techno-fetishist followers” McCandless came up with an iStore front page complete with the iTug firewire masturbation machine, a 6ft x 3ft iPod Maxi and the Apple Mysteron, amongst others.

“The Apple Mysteron. Inexplicable brushed titanium box with a single, tiny green flashing light. Does nothing but looks great. Perfect talking piece for the living room or to put in the corner of an architect’s reception area.” Funniest site this year so far.

Related Links

iTunes iSbogus [DownhillBattle.org]
Our Mac Parody [Happynowhere.net]
Switch Gates [MacBoy.com]
JustOneMoreThing-Mac’N'Stuff-Steve Jobs’ Weblog [JustOneMoreThing.com]

UK TV writers David Wellington and Adrian Peters production firm Mantlepies were asked to come up with some sketches for comedian Armando Iannucci’s end of year TV show for the BBC, 2004: The Stupid Version.

They came up with ‘iPod World’ a wry dig at the way the iPod is becoming ingrained into the fabric of society. 2004: The Stupid Version, was broadcast on BBC THREE, on New Year’s Eve. Its starting point is taking all the footage from the year and re-editing and re-voicing it to make it become something completely different.

Iannucci, talking on the BBC website said, “What’s been really heartening about making it was discovering lots of creative and funny people who do this sort of thing for a laugh, but in their homes or during the night in posh commercial editing suites. They then normally send these sorts of things out as virals on the internet.

What I wanted to do was bring some of them together and say to them, look, now you’ve got all the BBC’s resources at your disposal. If you need help, we’ll provide it. Don’t change what you do, just aim higher. And they did. I’ve always fiddled about with videotape anyway, so the programme was also an opportunity to get a few more of those jokes off my chest as well.”

View the clip here (in QuickTime .mov format) and grab it here (5.52MB) ( right click and save as-from Gizmodo).

As predicted for a while now just about everywhere, Apple CEO Steve Jobs yesterday announced Apple Computer’s Flash memory based MP3 player, dubbed the iPod Shuffle.

Unveiled for the first time at the Mac World Expo in San Francisco CEO Jobs said, “It is smaller than most packs of gum,” and, “It weighs about four quarters.”
The iPod Shuffle will sell for $99 and $149. Unlike other iPods, the Shuffle uses flash memory, rather than a miniature hard drive, to store songs and it is priced lower than many competing flash players with less memory than the 512 megabytes and 1 gigabyte Apple will include.

As predicted at MacMind over a month ago the unit comes without an LCD screen.
“Get this: NO SCREEN. Got a cellphone with one of those flat joysticks? This is apparently how you’ll get around on the screenless iPod.”
Like its big brother the hard disc drive iPod, the iPod Shuffle includes a navigation wheel. There’s also a slider on the back of the player that determines how tunes will be played. The first switch position tells the iPod shuffle to play songs from the beginning of the playlist to the end in orderm, one more notch and it will shuffle the songs on the device. The third position turns the device off.

Jobs told Conference goers, “With most flash-memory music players users must use tiny displays and complicated controls to find their music; with iPod shuffle you just relax and it serves up new combinations of your music every time you listen.”

Users can charge and transfer music from their Mac or PC by plugging iPod shuffle directly into a USB port. The Shuffle also doubles as a portable USB flash drive and comes with its own lanyard so you can wear the tiny player. Apple already have a number of accessories for the new iPod including an arm band, dock connector and sports case.

The players go on sale from today on the Apple website.

Related Reading

iPod Shuffle:First Impressions [PlaylistMag.com]
iPod Shuffle Sparks Stampede [Wired.com]
Apple Introduces iPod Shuffle [Yahoo Finance]
Apple Makes Tiny Steps for the Masses [Washington Post]
Apple: Jobs Unleashes Mini Mini Pod [Silicon.com]
Apple iPod Shuffle (512MB) [CNet Reviews]
Turn Any iPod into an iPod Shuffle in 3 Easy Steps! [Flickr.com]

Geeks and electronic gadget fans attention will be shifting from Las Vegas to San Francisco tomorrow as the much anticipated Mac World Expo opens just 48 hours after gadget-fest Las Vegas ends.

Much of the anticipation surrounds the expected official announcement of a smaller Flash based memory version of the iPod which has already been much whispered and speculated about web wide (including here). I cant think of a portable device that has sprung up so many speculative DiY designs and gossip ever.

The MacMind website was the first one to actually post leaked mock-ups early last month. A few days ago Think Secret had even more information (from reliable ‘sources’) with claims that the device will be in 1 and 2GB sizes with the Flash memory module sourced from Samsung. Prices are said to be $149 for the 1 Gig player and $199 for the 2 Gig (which is said to have two mini Flash modules) with manufacturing already underway in Taiwan courtesy of Asustek.

The other much talked about device expected to be elaborated on at the San Francisco Expo (there was a sneak preview at CES) is the Motorola iTunes capable phone which has been the source of frantic debate almost as much as the Flash iPod.

Related Reading

iPod Flash Will Have a Screen? [Engadget.com]
The Chinese MP3 Invasion [MusicbizNews24.com]
Applele [Applele.com]
iPod Flash Player Revealed? [MusicbizNews24.com]
the Cult of Mac Blog [Wired Blogs]

We’re not sure where the rumors of a smaller, Flash based memory iPod emerged, though it was quite probably here last month on the Apple Insider website:

Apple Computer in December will begin manufacturing a third variant of its flagship iPod music player, which will be based on solid-state flash memory, AppleInsider has confirmed through well placed and extremely reliable sources.

Unofficial sources predict that the player will be officially revealed at next months MacWorld Expo in San Francisco, come in at under $200 retail and feature a storage capacity in the range of 256 MB to 1 Gig. No official confirmation from Apple itself and although they dominate the market for hard drive based players with something around 90% share, that share drops to 65% when flash models are included in the tally.

Last night MacMind were showing off ‘exclusive’ mock ups from insider information they’d gleamed from a reliable “anonymous tipster” and their site went into meltdown after it got ‘SlashDotted’ this morning. Its said to have no display and set to retail at $99. Anyway, we’re not convinced by the 3D mockups, the player actually looks more like a mouse.

We much prefer the classy looking mock up from Japanese designer and Mac addict Isamu Sanada on his Applele site. Thanks to the Cult of Mac blog for that lead.

Related Links

Rumored iPod Flash Leaked [Slashdot.org]
the Cult of Mac Blog [WiredBlogs]
Apple iPod Flash Said to Ship January [the Register]
Flash Gordon [Daring Fireball]
Bronfman Likes Telcos in iPod Race [theStreet.com]
the iPod Year in Review 2004 [iPodLounge.com]

Since Apple introduced the iPod digital audio music player in December 2001 the demand for the device has been nothing short of astonishing, now coming into peak Christmas gift buying time company experts estimate that Apple will shift close to two and three quarter million copies of the highly coveted portable player next month alone.

Sales have climbed to 13.3million units up from the 9.5million mark a year ago and the Cupertino, California based company, despite being late to market currently boast close to a 80% share of the world market in hard disc drive based music players. Wall Street analyst Charles Wolf predicts that there will be 100 million iPod owners by the year 2008.

All kinds of companies are riding along on the crest of the wave too. Companies that provide the components, companies that sell after market accessories, add-ons and iPod clones. Major record labels, which at first failed to embrace the digital entertainment revolution are now aligning with legal digital music services with Apple’s iTunes currently sweeping ahead with a 70% market share of the paid download market.

Some of the major beneficiaries are makers of after market accessories like the iBoom ghettoblaster from Digital Lifestyle Outfitters. The enticing looking DLO iBoom is a 20-watt per channel, four-speaker boombox system with built-in digital FM radio. Users simply drop iPod or iPod mini into the iBoom dock, hit play and enjoy their music anytime and anywhere. The unit retails for $149.99.

Just as the black and beige look for the PC has become a running clique, anyone bored with the uniform white of the iPod can get a custom paint job on the unit at places like Minnesota based Colorware PC. And it seems the most interesting developments are happening away from Apple itself with a flourishing line of independent companies queing up to grab a share of the iPod boom. Online stores like Everything iPod will supply you with everything from a black jacket for the similar clad
U2 special edition iPod , a transmitter that’ll plug the iPod into your car stereo and an action jacket workout case that’ll attach the player to your arm.

If you have trouble keeping track of everything thats around, leading independent iPod resource website iPod Lounge introduced an 80 page “2004 iPod Buyers Guide” at the beginning of the month. Its available as a free PDF download on the iPodLounge site and is also being distributed via peer to peer file sharing networks.

Related Links

iPod Gains Ghettoblaster Accessory [the Register]
the Superstore For Your iPod [EverythingiPod.com]
iPod and Apple [MLAgazine.com]
iPod Killers for Christmas 2004 [MP3Newswire.net]
All Things iPod [iPodLounge.com]
iPod Custom Painting [ColorwarePC.com]
iPod Sales Hit 23.5million by 2006-Analyst [MacWorld.co.uk]
The iPod Economy [Forbes.com]
iPod Buyers Guide (44pg free PDF download) [OverMused.com]
Apple Release iPod [Slashdot.org 2001]

The Nihon Keizai newspaper in Tokyo reported yesterday that Apple plans to start a music download service in Japan by March 2005 and aims to offer more than 100,000 songs with an emphasis on Japanese music at its iTunes Music Store, which is expected to be the largest music download service in Japan.

With two of the three international Apple Retail Store locations in Tokyo and Osaka leveraging the iPod in tandem, a Japanese iTunes Music Store seems a natural move though for a Japanese version of iTunes Music Store to work, however, Apple will need to be sensitive to the unique dynamics of the Japanese marketplace.

” In order to have a successful iTunes Music Store launch in Japan, Apple needs to provide Japanese consumers with a strong library of Japanese music from top Japanese record labels and pop stars,” commented Yankee Group senior analyst Mike Goodman recently on News Factor. Apple “can’t just translate its North American catalog to Japan,” Goodman continued. “They have to be sensitive to that market to succeed.”

Earlier in the year ITMS Japan met with opposition from a number of local music labels who claim that FairPlay is “inadequate” and refused to license their songs to Apple.

While Japanese companies are world leaders in making the gadgets that are driving the expansion of the online music business abroad, that business has been surprisingly slow to take off in Japan. Market leader Label Gate Co., funded by 18 major domestic recording companies, including heavyweights Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc. and Avex Inc., launched a music download site called Mora this April and plans to expand its offerings to 150,000 songs from the current 70,000.

Apple will also face oppositon from several other Japanese download sites that have emerged in recent months and unlike Apple’s iTunes service, whose downloads can be burned onto CD-Rs, most downloads from the Japanese sites are copy-protected and cannot be copied onto CD-Rs. While a single download typically costs 99 cents (about 110 yen) from iTunes Japanese domestic download services typically charge at least 200 yen per song.

Another market ‘quirk’ typical in Japan is audio CD rental. Tsutaya is the largest chain of video stores in Japan. They operate ‘Culture Convenience Clubs’ where you can not only rent tapes and DVDs but also audio CDs. Last year the chains profits rose a massive 90% as the retail giant expanded to over 1100 stores and a signed up membership base of over 18 million.

According to reports, Apple executives recently visited Japan to discuss pricing and DRM parameters with major record companies in the country, including Avex Group Holdings Inc., Warner Music Japan Inc., and BMG Funhouse Inc. Apple is expected to price its a-la-carte downloads at a competitive 100 yen, beating other Japanese music services that charge between 150 to 350 yen per track. Apple has already sold 500,000 iPods in Japan, making the iTunes Music Store glaringly absent and prohibiting users from legally downloading digital songs for portable playback.

Related Reading

Canada to Get iTunes, Japan Next?
[NewsFactor.com]
Apple to Launch Download Service in Japan [CBS Marketwatch]
iTunes Japans Hits ‘Inadequate DRM’ Hurdle [the Register]
Music Industry Warms to Downloads [Asahi.com]
Innovations Push Japan Towards Online Music [International Herald Tribune]
A Portal into Japanese Pop Culture [JPop.com]
A Lesson From Japan’s CD Rental Industry [Copyfutures]
Japan and US: Two Cultures of Piracy [Smartmobs.com]
Dial M For Music [Time Asia]
Cultures of Music Piracy:An Ethnographic Comparison of the US and Japan [Ian Condry-Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 31pg pdf]

Newsweek magazine give an exclusive look at the new look iPod’s online on their MSNBC affiliated online presence today (which can also be seen in print in the July 26th ‘iPod Nation’ cover story).

The streamlined digital music player gets a slightly thinner (by 1 millimetre) case and 50% longer battery life this is accomplished, Apple says, not by a heavier battery but diligent conservation of power. More importantly the retail price takes a $100 price reduction for the 20gig (now $299) and the 40gig flagship model (now $399). The 15gig ‘midrange’ model is to be discontinued.

The Newsweek feature did not say when the new iPods would be available. The details were revealed as part of a cover story on the iPod and its impact. The cover shows Apple CEO Steve Jobs holding one of the new, still-white models.

Related Reading

Apple Hatches 4th Generation iPod [CNet News]
iPod Nation [Newsweek]
New iPod Arrives Tomorrow [P2PNet]
New iPod Expected Monday, is Thinner, Cheaper, 12 Hour Battery [MacWorld UK]

Apples popular iTunes download store reached the 100 million download target late Sunday in the US when Kevin Britten of Hays, Kansas downloaded the DJ Dangermouse remix of UK electronica act, Zero 7′s downbeat ‘Somersault’.

Apple launched its 100 million song promotion on July 1st and offered just over 5 million songs for download in in July, a rate of just over 2.5 million songs each week.

Back in October 2003 Apple CEO Steve Jobs had predicted the 100 million download landmark to be reached by the (then with only US availability) music service by its April year anniversary. By the second week in March this year Jobs admitted the figure was nearer half that figure.

There was an ironic twist to todays iTunes 100 million download headlines. DJ Dangermouse was in the news back in February for a different reason when his album ‘the Grey Album’ remixed the vocals from Jay-Z’s ‘The Black Album’ and music sampled from the Beatles’ ‘White Album’ caused widespread panic amongst the music industry, in particular copyright owners EMI who issued cease and desist notices to websites hosting the ‘banned music’. The resulting ‘Grey Tuesday’ protest saw an estimated 1 million tracks downloaded in a day.

Elsewhere in other iTunes news the Times newspaper reported that Apple is on the verge of agreeing a deal with independent record labels (or more precisely the Association of Independent Music the organisation that represents the labels interests) that will allow its iTunes music service to sell their tracks, citing sources close to the talks, the newspaper said a pact could be announced on Tuesday, ending a feud that has kept independent labels off iTunes since its launch in the UK, France and Germany last month.

The new deal is expected to ease the concerns of independent record labels that they would be locked into long-term contracts at fixed prices.

The percentage cut that they receive from songs sold over iTunes is also expected to be closer to the rates received by multinational record companies such as EMI and Sony Music. The royalty that Apple pays record companies from sales of songs over iTunes is a closely guarded secret, but is understood to range between 45 per cent and 60 per cent of the retail price.

Related Reading

Apple iTunes Music Store Hits 100 Million Song Mark [Mac News Network]
iTunes Tops 100M Downloads Mark [BBC News]

When Sony released details of the 20GB NW-HD1 Walkman they claimed to have trumped Apple with the number of songs that their device could hold — 13,000 compared to the iPod’s 10,000 — even thought the total capacity was half of the iPod’s. That message is misleading to consumers, according to Apple.

“We thought it was time to help set the record straight,” Greg Joswiak, vice president of Hardware Product Marketing at Apple, told MacCentral. “We’re disappointed that Sony has chosen to mislead folks with a marketing gimmick — we just want to make sure customer have the information so they can make an apples to apples comparison, if you will.”

Sony’s 13,000 song measurement is based on its ATRAC3 (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding for MiniDisc 3) compression system at the relatively low rate of 48Kbps (kilobits per second) while Apple’s measurement is based on the AAC compression system at 128Kbps. At the same bit rate, the Walkman can store around half as many songs as the iPod, which is consistent with it having half the storage capacity.

“ATRAC3 at 48Kbps is nowhere near CD quality,” said Joswiak. Funnily enough neither is Apple’s ‘near-CD quality’ 128Kbps. Normal CD’s are in general encoded at a bitrate of 1,411Kbps, AAC, MP3 and ATRAC are all ‘lossy compression’ methods and are most often used for compressing sound or images. In these cases, the retrieved file can be quite different to the original at the bit level while being indistinguishable to the human ear or eye for most practical purposes. Compression in the case of Apple’s sampling rate removes almost 90% of the original audio.

At the normal CD sampling rate each minute of audio takes up 10mb of space, audio compression shrinks that to roughly 1mb per minute (using Apple’s sampling rate example).

Apple also points out that Sony’s Connect online music store sells songs at 132kbps – proof, it says, that a higher bitrate is desirable.

Related Reading

Apple Attacks Sony’s Network Walkman Claims [NewsFactor Network]
Apple Sour With Sony [the Courier Mail]
The iTunes Phenomenon, P2P Networks and Music Lite [TechNewsWorld]
Sony’s First Walkman-Branded Hard Disk Player, NW-HD1 [Gizmodo]
First NW-HD1 Review (translation) [PC Watch-Japan]
iTunes Europe-A Preliminary Analysis (Buzzsonic.com)
Sony Introduce 20GB Music Player [Buzzsonic.com]
Sony vs. Apple, Sony Takes it up a Notch [EWeek]
EBU Technical Review-Internet Audio Codecs (PDF) [European Broadcasting Union,Switzerland]
Codec Review [Codecreview.com]
Results of Multiformat at 128kbps public Listening Test [Rjamorim.com]

Apple’s iPod mini music player will be released in the UK on 24 July. The 3.6oz, 4GB device, which holds up to 1,000 ‘CD-quality’ (in Apples proprietory AAC format) songs, will be available from Apple’s website, retail stores and authorised resellers for �179 later this month.

iPod mini for Mac and Windows has been only officially available in the U.S since its February debut there.

The mini iPod was originally penned for a UK launch in April though a harddrive shortage delayed the plans. Tight supplies of the tiny Hitachi hard drive at the core of the iPod mini forced Apple to delay increasing manufacturing (and worldwide availability) until July.

“The iPod mini has been a smash hit in the US, and we’re thrilled to finally be able to offer it to music lovers the world over,” said Apple chief executive Steve Jobs in a statement.

The iPod mini will be available in five colours: silver, gold, pink, blue and green. It has a click wheel similar to that found on the larger version and works with the iTunes music store, launched in the UK last month.

Related Reading

iPod Mini’s Set to Head Overseas [CNN Money]
World to Get iPod Mini [the Register]
Mini iPod to Debut Outside of US. [ZDNet News]
New Smaller, Flashier iPod Sells Out Fast [USA Today]
All Things iPod [iPodLounge.com]
iPod Mini Review [CNet Reviews]
MP3 Player:iPod Mini Review [PC Magazine]
Apple Unveils Smaller iPod, New Software [ATT.com]

It can’t be denied that Apple’s iTunes music download store (or iTMS to give it the official acronym) has become something of a media phenomenon, it has also become one of the most over hyped services in living memory. With unadulterated positive press flowing endlessly, iTunes, if you listened to the majority of the mainstream press, can do no wrong.

Thankfully some sense of balance seems to be returning as chinks in Apple’s seemingly impenetrable positive PR armour appear. Randall Stross in todays New York Times article, ‘From a High-Tech System, Low-Fi Music’ rightly points out that far from being the claimed ‘CD quality’ that all legal download stores claim (not just Apple) the paid downloads are are actually heavily compressed versions of the originals. Using a ‘lossy format’ codec and an audio file that is a fraction of the size of the original. Lossy, means lossy, converting the Apple AAC file to lossless Wav does not restore the lost audio.

The Times article goes on. Defending the company’s decision to encode its music at the low end of the bit rate range, an Apple spokesman, Derick Mains, says 128 provides good sound quality, “especially when used in iPods.” “The majority of people,” Mr. Mains said, “have absolutely no idea what a bit rate is.”

“The smaller files are handy for speedy downloads, space-saving for storage and perfectly serviceable for listening through ear buds when riding on the subway. Not what you will want, however, when your desktop computer becomes the home jukebox and wirelessly sends these simulacra to the entertainment center in the living room.” Explains Randall.

Customers are led to believe that they are getting a CD in all respects except the trouble of going to the mall. The iTunes store does not warn about the permanence of its method of compression; once freeze-dried, there is no way to reconstitute the music into CD quality for playing through a good stereo.

The bit rate for iTunes, 128kbps, is so low that when played side by side against the original (the sampling rate for normal CDs is 1,411kbps) the difference is audible not only to audio enthusiasts, but also to mortals with ordinary hearing.

Wes Phillips, contributing editor at Stereophile, says “128 is like an eight-track,” and he describes the combination of iPod and iTunes as “buying a 21st-century device to live in the 1970′s.”

Elsewhere, students at the Berkman Center’s Digitial Media Project (at Harvard Law School) have published a report that considers the legal foundation of iTunes Europe and the interplay of the service with European law. ‘iTunes Europe: A Preliminary Analysis’ examines the implications of the expansion of iTunes on the future of digital media, technology, business strategies, and international law.

The report points out that although Apple is the most popular Internet-based music service, its sales constitute at most 2% of total recording industry sales. At the same time, the record industrys apparent willingness to give up the staggered release dates and price discrimination practices in their sales through Apples iTMS is a striking reflection of the power that an end distributor like Apple has managed to garner in the music business. Apples iTunes Europe launch may very well have marked a change in how power and control are distributed in the music industry.

Read full report: ‘iTunes Europe: A Preliminary Analysis’ (PDF)

Related Reading

Low-Fi iTunes Downloads [P2PNet]
From High Tech Gadget, Small Files But Lower Quality Music [International Herald Tribune]
the Joys of the Celestial Jukebox [Guardian Unlimited]
Audio Data Compression
[Wikipedia]
Perceptual Coding: How Mp3 Compression Works [Sound on Sound]
Audio & Multimedia MPEG-2 AAC [Fraunhofer IIS]
Digital Audio Formats Codec Basics [Global Music Resource]