Buzzsonic.com

Here’s a clever idea. Marketing and design specialists Ralston 360 have come up with a great angle to market their services, a streaming video that explains all the basics of Podcasting all wrapped up in a ‘virtual ipod’.

There’s also a free 14 page whitepaper, ‘Podcasting-the Pod Has Landed’ (in PDF format) on the website (in exchange for your email, natch!) which explains a bit more. They also have another free download, ‘To Blog or Not to Blog’ which kind of speaks for itself but is worth a look for newbies if you’re thinking of starting your own.

Thanks to Steve Rubel at the Micro Persuasion blog for the lead.

Related Reading

The Buzzsonic Podcasting Round-up (Buzzsonic.com)

Its been a while since we featured any posts on musical mash-ups here. Since the last mention (the excellent Green Day mash) the word mash up has taken on a slightly different meaning. Now the term is more likely associated with the latest Google Maps Api mash up rather than the latest frankenstein pop remix flying out of some digital DJ’s laptop studio.

Latest renegade remixers to join the fray are the Brooklyn based DJ duo Sound Advice who have ironically (see DJ Dangermouse) chosen to weld the music from the ubiquitous Gnarls Barkley album ‘St Elsewhere’ to the vocals from deceased rapper Biggie Smalls biggest hits.
The result is Gnarls Biggie a hit and miss collection of eleven tracks (all available as MP3’s naturally). ‘Smilie Faces Hypnotize’, ‘Gimme The Online Loot’ and ‘The Last Nasty Boy’ are worth more than one spin but the simple A vs. B formula is not nearly as inspired as the more elaborate examples of the ‘art’ like DJ Dangermouse’s (half of Gnarls Barkley) groundbreaking Beatles vs Jay Z mash up the ‘Grey Album’ or the aformentioned Green Day (or Dean Gray) remix project.

The guys have already got themselves banned from MySpace (though another ‘fan page’ has already sprung up). The cease and desist is in the post.

Related Reading

Gnarls Barkley Mashed Up with B.I.G (Spin.com)
Green Day Mash Up Leads to Cease and Desist Order, Grey Tuesday Style Protest (MTV News)
Grey Album Poducer Danger Mouse Explains How He Did It (MTV News)
Gnarls Barkley (Wikipedia)
Sound Advice Blog (Blogspot)
Party Ben (PartyBen.com)
Mark Vidler (GoHomeProductions)
Grey Tuesday:A Quick Overview of the Legal Terrain (EFF.org)
Grey Tuesday-Free the Grey Album (GreyTuesday.org)

We started writing about Podcasting over six months ago when it was still a niche buzzword. Since our last post on the subject there has been an incredible explosion in the fledgeling web broadcast medium.

You cant look at the interweb nowadays without stumbling across the words, Podcast, Podcasters, Podcasting or iPodders and the like. Least of all, easily the biggest boost for Podcasting this year came in June when Apple added support for Podcasting with the release iTunes 4.9 (the software is now up to version 6.)

Even since we last wrote on the subject back in May, there’s been a great amount of new and improved and streamlined resources for you to get involved, broadcast yourself, listen or just learn what all the fuss is about. What we decided to do here was get up to date and trawl around for the best sources of information, links and resources, wether you simply want to put your own podcast together, or just subscribe to some shows and listen for yourself.

Some Podcasting Background

Podcasting (Wikipedia)
How Podcasting Works (HowStuffWorks.com)
iPodder:A Brief History (iPodder.org)

Creating Your Own Podcast

Podblaze.com (Podcasting Resources)
Wave Pad (Free Audio Editing Software)
Audacity (Free Audio Editor and Recorder)
Liberated Syndication (Libsyn.com)
RSS Radio (Podcasting client)
Juice (Podcasting receiver)

Podcasting Directories, Shows & Resources

Odeo
Podcasting News
iPodder
Podsafe Music Network (Podshow.com)
Christian Podcasting (Christian Podcasts)
Dailysonic (MP3 Zine)
Podcast Alley (Podcastalley.com)
Podomatic (Podcast software & directory)
The Podcast Network
Podfeeder
Vital Podcasts
Podspider (Podcast Search)
Podcast Pickle (Podcast community)
Podnova
Gigadial
Yahoo Podcasts

We’re big fans of well done mash-ups here at Buzzsonic and one of the better done bootleg DJ mash-ups (or, unofficial remix/bastard pop to give it two of its many names) in the last eighteen months has easily been San Francisco DJ Party Bens ‘remodel’ of Green Days ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ (as Boulevard of Broken Songs) which seemlessly mixes up Green Day and Oasis and throws in a bit of Travis for good measure. There’s even a companion video mashup of the audio mashup here.

Now Australian mashers Team 9 have taken on the whole of Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’ album with great effect.

‘American Edit’ grabs the album, shakes out all the crap bits and sprinkles the whole project liberally with cheeky samples from the likes of Johnny Cash, Queen, the KLF and Ashanti, amongst plenty more. Wholely applauded at the ‘bootleg barometer’ GYBO.
Stand out track for us is ‘Novacaine Rhapsody’ a brilliant mixup of ‘Give Me Novacaine’ and Queens ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, pure brilliance. Grab the album while you can here.

Get Your Mash On….

Get Your Bootleg On (GYBO)
NWA As Remixed Illegal Art (Buzzsonic)
Primal Scream Get The Mash-up Treatment (Buzzsonic)
Beatmixed (Beatmixed.com)

We mentioned the prototype iPod DJ mixer from Numark back in April after its unveiling at Frankfurts Musikmesse exhibition.

The iDJ is a two channel mixer that lets iPod DJs use their portable music libraries alongside other music and sound reinforcement systems. It’s equipped with two universal iPod docking stations. Users aren’t restricted to using iPods: the iDJ has phono/line inputs for adding additional devices on both channels. The product also offers a USB port, so users can dock with their computers to input and edit music to the device. The device is set to ship in the summer in the US and will retail at $399.

Related Links

iDJ Overview PDF (Numark.com)
Computer DJing Summit (ComputerDJSummit.com)
Prototype Numark DJ Mixer (CreateDigitalMusic.com)
Playlist (iPod-DJ.com)
The iPod DJ Revolution (Methodshop.com)
No Wax (NoWax.co.uk)

The expected new update of Apple’s all-in-one music jukebox software, iTunes 4.8 was released today and adds new video playback features, including the ability to drag and drop movie clips from your computer into the iTunes Library for easy cataloging and organization. The video clips appear with a new movie camera icon in your library.

There’s three options for video playback under the preferences tab which gives you the choice of full screen, separate window, or main window playback. You can drag the borders of the video to change the size of the screen. There’s also a new iTunes store preference with a choice of 1-click buying (though not sure Amazon will be too pleased with Apple’s use of that term) and ‘buy now’ shopping cart puchasing . Its all pretty seemless and using my Paypal account plugged into iTunes its made buying music the easiest its ever been for me in over thirty years of musical fanatasism, going back to the days of the 8 track cartridge.

Download iTunes 4.8

Related Reading
Apple Releases iTunes 4.8 [iPodLounge.com]

No great surprise to learn on Friday (via CNet’s News.com) that Yahoo are working on a music search engine for finding downloadable songs and music data from across the Internet. The specialty engine will let people search on an artist’s name, and retrieve all the available songs from other music services, as well as album reviews and band information from Yahoo Music. The Launch name was ousted in favour of a rebranding to Yahoo Music in February.

Concrete details are scarce at the moment with Jeff Karnes, Yahoo’s director of media search, declining to comment on the development of the audio search engine last week. Two of Yahoo’s search acquisitions, Alta Vista and All The Web are still destinations for MP3 file seekers with their specialist audio search options, though both have been made somewhat redundant by the more streamlined P2P search options from people like Kazaa, Limewire and Grokster.

Yahoo have been investing heavily in music for a while now with the $160M purchase of the MusicMatch jukebox software and download site late last year and in the buyout of pioneering UK music portal Dot Music from British Telecom eighteen months ago.

“It makes sense because Yahoo’s got access to all this music to begin with,” Gary Stein, an analyst at Jupiter Research told CNet. “Music needs better search, and by looking at the structured data of music–title, genre, etc., they could provide a better experience.”

An estimated 24.5 million people visited Yahoo Music in March, according to market researcher ComScore Networks. The new Yahoo search service will compete directly with other search services like AOL’s SingingFish, GoFish and the CNet owned MP3.com.

Related Links

Yahoo Developing Music Search Engine [SearchEngineWatch Blog]
Yahoo Developing An Audio Search Engine [CNet News.com]
Yahoo Search Blog [YSearchBlog.com]
Yahoo Readies iTunes Rival for Launch [CNet News.com]
Yahoo to Challenge iTunes With New Acquisition [NY Times]
AOL Revamps Audio Video Search [Buzzsonic News]
Legal Download Search Engine GoFish to Launch [Buzzsonic News]

Primal Scream are the latest in a long line of artists to be ‘honoured’ by getting some of their best known music hacked and rehashed by a group of Mash-up bootleg remixers.
The Beatles, the Beastie Boys, the Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers, Blur and the Clash have all recently been given the unofficial remix treatment by DJ ‘Mashers’.

Primal Screams classic 1991 UK indie-dance crossover album ‘Screamadelica’ was hailed by NME writers as one of the top albums of all time in 2003. The original album boasted production credits from UK club legend Andy Weatherall, the Orb and veteran Rolling Stones producer, Jimmy Miller.

The remade opus, ‘Screamadelica-Primal Scream Remixed’ was reworked by some of the main players in the UK bootleg / remix community including Mark Vidler (who produced the albums bonus track, ‘Screamadelica’), Soundhog, Tone 396, FakeID, Dunproofin and Cry On My Console, amongst others.

Like all the best made projects in this vein, the album is available for download as a BitTorrent file. The makers are eager to confess, “ We don’t pretend to think this comes close to the Scream’s masterpiece, but then nothing else does. So what primalscreamremixed.com offers is a different spin, moving from chill through dub via glitch to drum & bass. Not a million miles away from the eclecticism of the source.”

Thanks to Beatmixed.com

Related Links

Get Your Bootleg On [GYBO]
Culture Deluxe [CultureDeluxe.com]
Bootie San Francisco [BootieSF.com]
Twenty Questions [TwentyQ.Blogspot]
BitTorrent FAQ and Guide [Dessent.net]
Bastard Pop [Wikipedia.org]
Boom Selection [Boomselection.info]

That much over hyped headline, ‘iPod Killer’ made its now regular appearance in the news again last week (and has been appearing since 2003) when Nokia announced the N91 4GB hard-drive multi-media cell phone in Amsterdam last Wednesday. The N91 looks great and is impressive sounding enough, coming standard with MP3, M4A, AAC and WMA music compatibility.

There’s connectivity with your PC via USB 2.0 for simple drag and drop file transfer. Also included is an audio industry standard 3.5mm stereo headset jack, a two megapixel camera and multiple wireless connectivity options, including WCDMA, WLAN and Bluetooth technology.

Expected to be commercially available worldwide by the end of 2005, Nokia estimates the retail price of the N91 to fall between 650 and 750 EUR ($835-$963). For all its looks and killer features, without a substantial manufacturers subsiduary its hardly going to threaten or even tempt the average iPod demographic. In comparison the 30GB iPod Photo retails at $349, less than half the proposed price of the new Nokia.

Korea’s Samsung Electronics introduced the SGH-i300 last month with a 3-gigabyte hard drive, enough to store 1,000 songs. A 10-gig phone could hit the market within two years. Research firm Strategy Analytics estimates that in 2008 50% of the 860 million cell phones sold will be able to store and play songs, up from 8% today.

Related Reading

Nokia N91 Preview [InfoSyncWorld.com]
The iPod Killers? [BusinessWeek.com]
Of iPod Killers and Mobile Dreams [Billboard Postplay]
Attack of the Anti-iPods [Time.com]
Samsung Unveils SGH-i300 3Gb Hard Drive Mobile Phone [Pocket-Lint.co.uk]
The Father of the iPod [Cult of Mac Blog]
Inside the Apple iPod Design Triumph [DesignChain.com]
Microsoft’s iPod Killer? [CNet News]
iPod Killers Coming Soon [CNet MP3 Insider]

NWA’s 1989 album ‘Straight Outta Compton’ is hailed by many as one of the most seminal albums in the history of rap and greatly influenced countless gangsta rappers. Ice-T and Schooly D were the first gangsta rappers, NWA took it mainstream with this controversial and massive selling piece of profanity. The parental advisory sticker could have been invented just for this album and backlash from the ‘moral majority’ at the time lead to the album being issued with an alternative version, sans-profanity.

Over fifteen years later, Ice Cube is a film star and Dr.Dre is producing Eminem. Technology has also taken a great leap forward and in a humorous about turn Brooklyn design and technology student Evan Roth has cut up the NWA classic and spliced it back together in an edit of the entire ‘Straight Outta Compton’ album with all the adjacent non-curse words edited out. A nod to Steinski but with swearing. Like one of the college radio station WFMU’s blog poster’s comments say, “I haven’t laughed this hard at cursing since I was nine”.

According to the creator, “‘F**k tha Police’ edits down to 42.6 seconds after all the non-explicit material is edited out. This gives it a 12.3% explicit content index (much higher than ‘Straight Outta Compton’ at 7.4%)”.
Now you know. get it here, whilst its still up.

Thanks to WMFU’s Beware of the Blog

Related Links

Napster Dealt Copyright Rap by Dr. Dre [CNet News]
Chilling Effects [ChillingEffects.org]
Illegal Art Audio [Illegal-Art.org]
History of the Cut-Up [Beatmixed.com]
Bastard Pop [Wikipedia.org]

If you’re slow getting started on the MP3 portable player bandwagon, can’t afford an iPod and have a sizeable CD collection just waiting to get squashed into MP3 files and put into your pocket and on the move DAP Review put us on to a deal right now at J&R.com. Actually Amazon are doing the same too.

They are both shipping the 20GB Entempo Spirit for $99.98 and OK, the Spirit is never going to win prizes for the design, in fact they would if there was an award for ugliest hard-drive player ever, but besides that, even as a cheap hard drive back up its pretty impossible to beat at that price. All for less than the cost of the half gig Shuffle.

The blue and white unit comes with integrated FM radio and built in voice recorder, something even the mighty iPod doesn’t offer. There’s the usual USB 2.0 transfer, built in shock protection and WMA and MP3 compatability. The California based Entempo also have the much nicer looking 20GB Rubato which retails for double the price of the Spirit.

Thanks to DAP Review for the lead

MP3 Player Shopping

MP3 Player Love [MP3PlayerLove.com]
Digital Audio Player Review [DAPReview]
Top 10 Portable MP3 Players Guide [About.com]
MP3 Player Buyers Guide [CNet Reviews]

P2P software pioneer Ian Clarke, creator of the Open Source P2P platforms Freenet and more recently Dijjer has this week quietly unveiled his latest project, Indy.

Speaking to P2PNet Clarke promised that Indy, “does for freely available independent music what Google does for the world wide web.” Indy uses collaborative filtering, a system similar to that used by Amazon to recommend books, etc, to prospective buyers, to learn about your musical preferences in relation to other Indy users.

“Everything it plays is from online indie music freely available on the web and you can rate each piece at between one and five stars. Using that as feedback, Indy will find and download music that’s keyed to what you like as opposed to what you don’t like.”

“We were concerned that even with all of the advancements with online media in the past few years, it was still pretty difficult just to find new independent music that you liked.”

According to Clarke, Indy is inspired by iRate, another collaborative music filtering set-up. As users rate music in iRate it automatically finds more free music that you’ll like by finding people with similar music tastes. Indy is said to have a much cleaner and simpler user interface and it is freely available for Windows OS initially with other platforms in development.

Submit Music to Indy

Related Links

iRate Radio [iRateRadio.com]
Freenet Creator Unveils Dijjer P2P [Buzzsonic News]
Dijjer [Dijjer.org]
The Free Network Project [Sourceforge]
Mobster [Sourceforge]
Collaborative Filtering Research Papers [JamesThornton.com]
Collaborative Filtering Comes To Independent Music Makers [MasterNewMedia.org]
The Music Business and the Big Flip [Shirky.com]
InDiscover [InDiscover.net]

A free new Open Source music samples database has been launched by the Barcelona, Spain based Music Technology Group (MTG), part of the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF). The Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings and bleeps all released under the Creative Commons sampling plus license.

The project is also part of the forthcoming International Computer Music Conference hosted in Barcelona this coming September where sounds taken from the database will be part of live performances at the event.

There’s an increasing amount of audio projects adopting the Creative Commons licence idea including ‘Wired’ magazine who issued the ‘Rip.Sample.Mash.Share’ compilation CD with the November issue of the tech geek bible in association with Creative Commons. Readers were invited to remix and mash-up artists including David Byrne, the Beastie Boys, DJ Dangermouse and the Thievery Corporation.

Creative Commons also have a collaborative community music sharing /remixing site CC Mixter featuring songs licensed under Creative Commons, where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want. There is an ODB remix contest coming up soon and a Magnatune remix contest, with a recording contract for the winners.

Related Links

Creative Commons [CreativeCommons.org]
The Wired CD [Creative Commons]
CC Mixter-The Remix Family Tree [CCMixter.org]

As a dance music producer myself and someone who has humped around boxes of 12 inch vinyl records all in the name of DJing in the past I’ve seen the ‘death’, or more accurately, the steep decline of vinyl for years. Instead of backbreakingly heavy piles of vinyl, a handful of CDs can take their place. With MP3 music compression it hasn’t stopped there however, why bother with CDs when you can carry all your music on a device the size of a box of cigarettes. The end of vinyl getting lost in transit for the DJ jetsetter, everything fits in your pocket. The only minus point about DJing with an iPod in the past has been the lack of pitch control. Not anymore.

DJ gear specialists Numark unveiled a prototype iPod DJ mixing console a few days ago at Frankfurts Musikmesse exhibition. Though camera shots of the unit were apparently shielded at the show, German HipHop website WebBeatz managed to grab some shots, one of which we have here the other is being shown at Engadget.

Details are sketchy right now but Engadget are reporting that Numark aims to put out a consumer model in the next couple of months, retailing in the $250-350 range, to be followed with a pro DJ version with pitch control and other goodies required by the pro mobile DJ. Both versions will feature the dual iPod dock with crossfaders and transport controls.

Another turntablist website, Skratchworx were showing the same leaked pictures.

Thanks to Engadget

Related Links

Prototype Numark iPod DJ Mixer [CreateDigitalMusic.com]
iPod For DJs [DJZone.net]
Playlist iPod DJ [iPod-Dj.com]
With iPod, Who Needs a Turntable ? [Wired.com]
Downloaded and Ready To Rock [Washington Post]
iPod Lounge [iPodLounge.com]
Everything iPod [Everythingipod.com]
NoWax [NoWax.co.uk]
Playlist Mag [Playlistmag.com]
The iPod DJ Revolution [Methodshop.com]

Fairfield, Connecticut based TV Eyes, the real-time broadcast search provider which has been indexing television and radio broadcasts since 1999, will debut a Podcast search engine called Podscope later this month. Every word within an Internet podcast will be made searchable which is equally applicable to video blogs and personal videos. Podscope will crawl the web to look for podcasts, when it finds one, it will create an index against every word within the content. Podcasters are also able to submit url(s) for crawling.

“With a looming explosion in such user generated rich content as Podcasts and video blogs, there is a growing need to empower consumers to find and subscribe to programs that meet their diverse interests, commented Allen Weiner, Vice President and Research Director at Gartner. “Searching and indexing these varied audio and video programs will not only benefit content-hungry consumers, it also adds legitimacy and velocity to this burgeoning space.

Podscope isn’t the first speech recognition search technology. HP’s Speechbot has been online for years in demo form using speech-recognition technology to create a searchable transcript. BlinkxTV which we featured here last December also uses speech-recognition technology to create searchable text transcripts.

Related Links

Podscope: New Search Engine Will Allow You to Keyword Search Every Word Spoken in a Podcast [SearchEngineWatch Blog]
Pod Catch [PodCatch.com]
BBC To Massively Expand Podcast Trials [iLoveRadio.org]
Podcast Lab [PodcastLab.com]
Podcast Alley [PodcastAlley.com]
Busy Podcasters Guide [iPodder Sourceforge]
Podcasting (aka How To Get Podcasts and Also Make Your Own) [Engadget.com]
Podcasting Power [MercuryNews.com]
A Look At Other Video Search Tools [SearchEngineWatch.com]

We’ve already mentioned the Beastles and the ‘Revolved’ Beatles remix mash-ups on these pages in recent weeks and now there’s another one worthy (or not) of your attention. Beatallica.

Although they’re not in the truest sense of the meaning, mash-up or ‘bastard pop’ as celebrated vigorously on the bootleggers ‘bible’, ‘Get Your Bootleg On’ (or GYBO to those in the know), Beatallica have the spirit of the art down to a tee. A sense of humour and an unlikely clashing of musical genres. Online rockzine Blabbermouth probably summed them up the best by saying that musically they were, “arrangements of Fab Four standards with wonderfully unsubtle references
to Metallica’s songs and a spot-on imitation of James Hetfield’s distinctive vocals…”

So probably more in common with parody like the Rutles and Dread Zeppelin than the genius of Loo and Placido but worthy of a mention here also for their usage of BitTorrent to distribute both their albums, ‘A Garage Dayz Night’ and ‘Beatallica’, not only in the ubiquitous MP3 format but in the lossless audio format Flac. Props all round and great fun to boot (no pun etc….).

Related Reading

Another Beatles Mash Up [MusicbizNews24.com]
Meet the Beastles [MusicbizNews24.com]
Music For the Bootleg Generation [MusicbizNews24.com]
Culture Deluxe [CultureDeluxe.com]

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]

Its not exactly a groundbreaking new idea, grab an old Beatles album, mash up with random choice of other tracks etc. Still, mash-up DJ/ ‘Frankenstein Pop’ artist CCC has undertaken the not undaunting task of putting his own spin on the Beatles classic 1966 ‘Revolver’ album.

The full track listing and ubiquitous MP3 downloads for ‘Revolved’ will be up next month on its completion, meanwhile there’s five variations already up for grabs, the most promising of which is ‘Eleanor Ciccone’ a rather wonderful pairing of Madonna’s ‘Ray Of Light’ and the Fab Fours ‘Eleanor Rigby’ . Theres an unadventurous mash-up of the Jams ‘Start’ and the Beatles track that was the inspiration for Paul Weller, ‘Start’ and overall its great fun but not nearly as clever as DJ Dangermouse’s groundbreaking (at least in terms of column inches)‘Grey Album’.

Related Reading

Meet the Beastles [MusicbizNews24.com]
MTV Premier’s New ‘Download’ Show [MusicbizNews24.com]
Music for the Bootleg Generation [MusicbizNews24.com]

Philips were showing off one of the oddest entries amongst the army of new MP3 portables at CES last week with the dinky looking Personal Sound System (or the PSS 110 as its known officially).
The super compact digital stereo comes with built in speakers, doing away with the need for the after market accessories needed for iPods to escape the restrictive headphone only playback.

The unit comes with a relatively sparse 256MB (though this is still sufficient enough to cram over four hours of reasonably high bit rate MP3’s on there) with no expansion slot. In its favor there’s an FM radio tuner, WMA and MP3 playback and a built in clock/alarm. Its due in the US in April for around $159.99.

Still a huge list of MP3 players, PMP’s, PVP’s and other similar acronymed portable music and video players that we havn’t had time to mention from the CES gadget fest last week. Koreans iAudio/Cowon ( JetAudio in the USA) had a bunch of funky looking new models–new to the USA that is, some of these have been floating around the Far East for a while– on show in Las Vegas. The iAudio5 (pictured below) has a choice of flash memory ranging from 256MB right up to 2GB. It has a color screen, USB 2.0, support for Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WMA and the newer secure Janus/WMA (see PlayForSure.com, better known as PayForMore amongst digital cynics). Other Flash memory players included the G3, and the U2. Cowon were also showing off the 20GB hard drive big brother M5 and the unexpected A2 portable media player.

Elsewhere there was the Korean Enox EMX 830 said to be the worlds smallest and lightest MP3 player and featuring capacity ranging from 256MB to 1GB.

LG had the 20GB MF-HE 700 with color screen and MP3, Ogg, WMA and video playback function, FM tuner/recorder and voice recording capabilities. And another name new to these shores was Koreans Ezav who were showing off the smooth looking EMP 500 flash player, with the usual 256MB-1GB range, color display and direct MP3 encoding feature.

Related Links

iAudio Cowon Forums [iAudiophile.net]
CES 2005 Portable Audio and Video [CNet]
DAP Review [DAPReview.net]

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]

If you want to see just why there are so many manufacturers fighting for the digital portable audio market right now, aside from all the iPod hype, sales of MP3 players more than doubled in 2004, to 6.9 million units, with dollar sales nearly tripling to $1.2 billion, according to data released by the Consumer Electronics Association. The CEA (organisers of the CES) projects that MP3 player sales in 2005 will reach 10 million units and $1.7 billion in dollar sales.

So another tidal wave of MP3 and multi media devices to mention from CES this week, some of them we’ve mentioned before but its the first US appearance for most of them here. Panasonic had four new flash players on show including the SV-SD100 (pictured above) with 256MB and an OLED screen MP3, WMA and AAC playback. Unremarkable judging by the spec but some unusual shapes in the 512MB units the SV-MP120V and the SV-SW120V.

The SAFA SR-M800 model we highlighted last month. There are four models, the 128mb M800F , 256mb M820F , 512mb M850F and the 1GB capacity M890F . The players are available in four colours, blue, red, black and silver. Besides having an integrated FM tuner, line-in recording, and built-in speakers, it also has a 1.5-inch 65,000 color LCD screen you can use to look at your digital photos.

Taiwanese ASmart Technology have some unusual flash models including the weird looking SU-745 and the U-538 (pictured above) both in 128 and 256 sizes and with SD/MMC slots for expansion. RCA/ Thomson introduced the 5 GB Lyra Mini Photo with a 1.5inch LCD screen (where everyone else is already moving to OLED) and a $270 price tag (more than the iPod Mini benchmark of $249).

Related CES News

DAP Review [DAPReview.com]
Report: 2004 U.S. MP3 Player Sales Double to 6.9 Million [CE.org]
I4U CES 2005 News Coverage [i4U.com]

As well as all the usual leading audio manufacturers displaying new MP3 players at this years CES that market is set to get decidedly busier in 2005 with a whole raft of new names (at least to the US) showing off an interesting (though not exactly ground breaking) group of new models. The Mobiblu brand from Korean firm Hyun Won Inc. have some sharp looking players on show.

Three flash models are making their US debut, the DAH 1000 and 1200 both come in choices of 128/256 and 512MB while the 1400 has a 256/512 and 1GB memory option. The DHH-100-5 has a 5GB HDD and is compatible with MP3 and WMA and also the newer DRM’ed WMA format. The feature rich unit has built in voice recorder, USB 2.0, an SD/MMC memory card slot and built in stereo speakers and direct MP3 plug and play encoding (rip without a PC) and retails for $229.

Related Reading

MobiBlu DHH 100-5GB Review [Cnet Reviews]
I4U CES 2005 News Coverage
[i4U.com]
CES 2005 Daily Updates [CrutchfieldAdvisor.com]
Portable Audio and Video CES 2005 [CNet News]
Engadget at CES [Engadget.com]

Dont know a whole lot about Korean gadget manufacturer IOPS but they have a handful of nice but quite generic looking flash players. At CES they are showing off the F4 model which plays WMA, MP3 and Ogg, has USB 1.1, comes in four colors and four memory sizes, the pretty standard 128/256/512 and 1GB flavors. There’s FM receiver and recording, voice recorder, direct encoding feature and OLED display. No details on price or availability. The model is marketed in Europe via Czech Republic based brand Emgeton.

Related Reading
Global Gadget Sales Seen Up 11 Percent in 2005 [Reuters.com]
2005 International CES:Audio [CESWeb.org]

There’s an overused buzz word, the PVP, or the Portable Video Player, or PMP, the Portable Media Player. Whatever. Chicago based Ovideon are better known for their LCD TV screens though they have jumped on the increasingly crowded PVP/PMP bandwagon with the promising looking Aviah portable media player/recorder.

The Aviah player/recorder comes with an integrated TV/Cable Tuner, 5GB 1 inch microdrive, 2.2 inch high res 521 x 218 pixel OLED display, voice recording, Windows Media, DivX, JPEG, MP3 and AVi compatibility and a weight of 5.1 ounces. The device will retail for $599.

Related Reading

Best PVPs [BestPVPs.com]
PVP For You [PVP4U.com]
Portable Video Players [CNet Reviews]