There’s a new update to iTunes this morning (evening in the UK) … iTunes 10.3 introduces in the Cloud beta. This was only introduced yesterday at the Apple WWDC.

The update is available for Windows and Apple computers now.

What’s new in iTunes 10.3

Introducing iTunes in the Cloud beta. The music you purchase in iTunes appears automatically on all your devices. You can also download your past iTunes purchases. Where you want, when you want. 

• Automatic Downloads. Purchase music from any device or computer and automatically download a copy to your Mac and iOS devices. 

• Download Previous Purchases. Download your past music purchases again at no additional cost. Your purchases are available in the iTunes Store on your Mac or in the iTunes app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Previous purchases may be unavailable if they are no longer on the iTunes Store.

Damien Saunders

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? It’s only a few hours til the start of the Apple WWDC which is ‘the biggest’ event in the year for Apple Fans.

Something borrowed or something blue? Apple, Lion & iOS5

Does Apple’s new software tickle your fancy? does the idea of conjoined operating systems for mobile and computers excite you?

Yeh I really want a touch-screen on my MacBook Pro – but that will never happen.

Something old or something new? Apple + Music Industry

Today is the day when Steve Jobs will try  to answer the Question ‘What to do with a problem like the music industry’  Can Apple save the record labels or will it a be a me-too streaming music agreement?

My bet is on a streaming music agreement for mobile and a personal ‘locker’ with a fixed number of free downloads a month.

We can wait to see …

Damien Saunders

Music artist and producer Dangermouse has done it again – or that’s to say Google has done it with HTML5. The new album called Rome is in the style of a (spaghetti western) film soundtrack and if you’ve not hear it — then you’re missing out.

HTML5 Music Video wow-ness

Google has again helped to create an interactive music video ‘Chrome Experiment’ – to show off some of the awesome-ness that is HTML5.

The track selected is Black feat vocals by Norah Jones. To watch the video you need to open Chrome and go to ro.me

Like the music? Then buy Rome (via Amazon).

Damien Saunders

Now that you’ve ripped and digitised all of your CD library – what do you do with your CD’s? One idea is to create a catalogue and then you can box or put away (or recycle) your CD’s and DVD’s giving you much more space to fill with books, CD’s or other stuff.

If you’re like me, I’ve been ripping all my CD’s for years and the CD and cases were just collecting dust in my room. Some audiophiles or purists will have you believe that you still will want to play the CD, but I don’t own an £800 CD player.

I wanted to recycle the packaging, keep the CD and the booklet for its album artwork. Recycling the CD or giving it away to Oxfam is also a nice spacesaving idea – but then technically, you wouldn’t own the music anymore so that digital copy would become illegal.

Where to start – searching Google for keywords like CD library, collection or managing CD’s led to lots of spurious results – like suggestions for iTunes, MediaMonkey and so on. All useless in this case. I knew that a program called Delicious would do the trick and had come across Anobit and Librarything for books. So there is some software for collectors.

I settled on testing

• CDpedia
• Music Collector
• Delicious Library 2

User friendliness

Delicious Library has the nicest interface and a number of options like coverflow, browse by bookshelf (like a library). First time users will like Delicious – it can import your iTunes automatically and its best feature is using your Mac’s iSight to scan and search for barcodes. During testing I was under joyed to find that Delicious Library free version only supports 25 entries. Then they wanted $40 to upgrade. Booo hisss.

CDpedia seems the most like iTunes. Layout is column based and clean. It matches Delicious Library in its ability to use your iSight camera as a barcode scanner. Its free version supports 25 entries. By the time I got to 25 entries, I thought paying $18 was going to be worth it.

Curiously the company behind CDpedia also makes a version of the software called Bookpedia and DVDpedia. I’m not sure why … when CDpedia does a good job of managing my CD’s and DVD’s. Delicious Library will also allow you to add books and DVD’s in the same version.

Music Collector also limits its free version to 100 entries. It lacks the Barcode Scanning ability of the other two apps. However, it can search all the same databases like Amazon, CDDB, etc if you first put the CD into the computer. Music Collectors visual style lacks any eye candy being more like a excel spreadsheet then a library database. Music Collector was the only software to have a windows version which is good news.

Features and Usage

Adding CD’s

Adding CD’s was probably the best fun … whamo … the builtin iSight camera had my adding CD’s all afternoon. I quickly found that a lot of errors come from the type of paper used for the jewel case inlay paper – shiny, coated stuff was not so good. Searching for barcodes should be easy – by default all the software want to search Amazon US or CA first. Annoyingly little things when you live somewhere else. Options to change this are under the Preferences.

One nice feature of Delicious and CDpedia is its ability to import your iTunes library as well … kinda over-rated as what you would want is the ‘sync-up’ or symbiotic link to be made between the CD entry and the iTunes entry. A good feature in Delicious is that you can click on an entry from your iTunes library and play it immediately.

All three pieces of software will support adding CD’s via a barcode scanner, importing a text file with barcodes.

Export and Publish your Collection

Delicious Library wins out on visual experience, creating bookshelves like libraries or exporting as fully functioning website were cool. CDpedia too can export as HTML or create Smart Collections like smart playlists.

Kind of cool, but not of much use is the ability to export your collection to your iPod or iPhone. If you wanted to check if you have that CD then it might be nice.

BackUp

All 3 pieces of software allow you to backup with options to backup to CSV or spreadsheets as well.

Loans & Library tools

What seemed very ‘strange’ to me was the ability to check in and out CD’s from your collection. CDpedia also allows you to setup email reminders and send Late Notes to your tardy friends. I kinda think that any friend of mine receiving such a reminder might tell me to £$%-off and never return my CD.

I thought in away that Delicious Library and CDpedia have forgotten what it is they are about … Creating a Catalogue and focus on ‘me’ first. It’s nice to have some bells and whistles but getting the core right is more important.

What convinced me of one app over the other was the addiction of adding and that the trial or ‘free’ version gives you a chance to add enough entries in the CDpedia database so that you wont want to start again. In the freemium world this is a good move.

Overall

CDpedia does have the look of a quality piece of software. Its developers Bruji should bundle the DVD and Bookpedia versions as part of the licencing. You can see quickly that Delicious and CDpedia are going head to head on features.

Limiting trial software to a few items doesn’t win converts combined with the price of Delicious Library 2, this was a turn off when I didn’t know what I wanted. Based on the internet reputation, then Delicious Library would probably be the winner with the most ‘memes’.

I’ve now added my 700+ CD’s into CDpedia and am working through creating collections. Useful when you have any number of CD/DVD holders and want to know what folder the CD is. Delicious Library has won the awards and the plaudits, but CDpedia is probably the first choice for Collectors wanting alot of features for good value.

the people at Music Collector should tweak their apps visual style, de-clutter their website and make entries unlimited to grow the number of users.

Footnotes …

iTunes, Songbird, Winamp, etc  – are more media player and can't manage your CD library … your digital format is what to use for every day playback. However iTunes doesn’t keep track of what happened to the CD.

Check out recyle-more.co.uk to find out how to recycle plastic in your area

Damien Saunders

Comment: There are a number of digital music retailers working around Europe, here is Damien Saunders’ summary of a few of the bigger services (catalogue greater than 1 million tracks).

Damien Saunders

In a few years time, many of us will want to retire … what’s going to happen to us and our communities we live in if suddenly todays 20 and 30 somethings are 80? What music or digital entertainment will there be? Remembering also that as we start ‘age’ we will have to work later in life beyond today’s retirement age.

If, the aging population is bigger than the younger generation – does that mean nightclubs, discos and places like Ibiza will become the place for the 70+ age group? At what point will content like music, film and even mash-up user generated content have to retune to support either the stay at home ‘clubbers’ or OAP (old age pensioners) clubbers?

Today’s 30+ set are starting to appreciate that if old rockers like the Stones are still on the stage – what will it be like for us to be 60 and going to see Depeche Mode, U2 or artists like Bjork and Portishead. Will we all need to exist in a silent disco with the volume down low to not affect our ears?

What does that mean for the clubs, their management and the artists?

Damien Saunders

Comment: Datz music lounge has come out for Xmas in the UK with a £99.99 unlimited music DRM free offer. So whats the hooks … plenty even before you get going.

So Datz announced unlimited DRM Free music downloads (legally) this week … the service has an upfront fee of £99.99 – probably too steep for most people to consider – but maybe Sainsburys thinks it will be a last minute stocking stuffer.

The service currently has content from Warner, EMI, Beggars and the Orchard – around 2million tracks says the annoucement. The website makes it impossible to search and when we checked Madonna there were 16 versions of her single 4 Minutes. So no filtering of duplicate tracks. We found 6 versions of Katy Perrys first single of 12 tracks from that artist.

Finally the T&C’s would indicate the DRM free tracks are watermarked … if you are caught sharing content your account will be cancelled. Worse still, while the tracks might be DRM Free the download software isn’t. The software can only be used on 2 PC’s; which makes sense (Apple limits to a maximum of 5 PCs in its DRM domain management), but users have to have a USB ‘security dongle’ which seems to me to be more like a secure login RSA key — why the complexity for a consumer product?

I hope I get one for Christmas!

Source: Music Week and Datz.com

Damien Saunders

I’ve had a look at the Sony Ericsson new Walkman W902 with retro chunky buttons much like a those on a casette walkman.

The phone’s not retro though – Clear Crystal Audio for your listening pleasure and a 5.0 mega pixel camera is a great feature. I think its also got a really good speaker to annoy Grannies on the bus with.

I hope it comes out with more than a 1Gb of memory!

Damien Saunders

Damien says, one of the biggest problems with Linux has always been a lack of strength in its media players. Amarok v2 is now in the pipe and its looking great.

The Amarok 1 client which most Linux users had to use (it was the best option) really lacked in its options for managing artists, albums, compilations as it relied on a database driven columns view. I never found that easy to use.

Amarok 2 looks to be offering more for those jumping to Ubuntu or other friendly Linux flavours. As Lifehacker puts it … There’s a lot less button clutter than with 1.x, the left-hand column has some of the familiar left-hand tabs—Collection, Playlists, Files—plus there’s a new “Internet” tab, where you find friendly things like last.fm and wikipedia support.

and you can see that Amarok 2 will now work on OS X and Windows!

Source: lifehacker.com and Amarok.kde.org

Damien Saunders

Damien Saunders says -research shows continued growth in file-sharing and downloading of mp3s is now common place. This survey supports the view that prosecuting the mass population is not the right approach by the labels and rights associations.

British Music Rights research shows that file-sharing is done by a large number of people and even more are downloading music.

Music week reports these findings:

42% of those surveyed say they have uploaded files.

63% of people illegally download

48% of tracks on the average MP3 player are not paid for

just 15% of respondents are persuaded not to upload because of the risk of getting caught

95% engage in some form of copying

Source: http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1034563&c=1

Damien Saunders

comment: The reason that Apple charges different retail prices in each market is due to the differences in wholesale prices charged in each market by the major labels. Apple could use this as leverage against the labels to lower their prices in all major EU markets

Damien Saunders