Edited by author 04-19-2002 05:12 AM
The website says you can use the Archos as a 'high-quality voice recorder'. As this would be a vital part of my excuses for buying such a toy, I'd love to know how well that bit works - at least in comparison with a standard walkman-size tape recorder.

Have you tried that out yet?

Edited by author 04-21-2002 06:47 PM
Answers:
<P>
1. The Archos can do direct-to-mp3 recording from analog or digital sources. If digital, it applies SCMS-compliant copy prevention -- but you can disable this using a quick user-interface hack. You'll need an external microphone and an amplifier, though.

2. It works with Linux, showing up as a standard USB mass storage device with a VFAT filesystem. It also works with MacOS X exactly the same way. I don't have a USB 2.0 port yet, but it should work with that, too.

(I'm using a couple of gigs of spare space to back up my
writing work :)

Wireless MP3 is a logical idea.

I've ended up buying a set of wireless 934MHz speakers, sticking the transmitter on the sound card of the house MP3 server, and then taking them around the house. Just VNC to a wireless PDA as a remote control, and there you go...

Next, I should just hook it up to a Massinova feed for serious trance. Mmmmm....

Funny. I was having the same thought at approximately the same time, inspired by my new AirPort card and DSL line connected to my iBook.

I'd like an AirPort-type device capable of mounting shares (to get the MP3s on my PC), and also capable of receiving internet streams. (If the BBC can be persuaded to abandon Real for their streaming format, so much the better.)

For that matter, it'd be nice if Apple came up with a variant OS for Macs which ran them in sort of an iPod mode, for minimal battery usage on laptops, and allowed all laptops to run with the lid closed.

Yo Charlie, any recommendations on Internet radio stations?

(preferably listenable to by *ugh* Microsoft Media Player, as that's the only thing usuable at work...)

Sorry, Martin, I don't use Windows -- what formats can MMP cope with?

(I've spent too much time lately listening to Perkigoth -- www.perkigoth.com -- which has an alarming overlap with my own record collection ...)

The really annoying thing about the poor choice in iTunes store is that *only* thing I might pony up 74p a track for is some obscure tracks from my extreme youth which I would never want to buy the whole album for.

Me too.

I'm sorely tempted to sign up to the store and buy one (1) tune. But that would be naughty.

(Hint: how much do the overheads of administering an account cost?)

You might want to look at emusic.com. Except for the too rigid monthly payment scheme, it's music download done right. And all the bands you bemoan will be there. Tons of wonderful indie stuff.

Yes, I agree, the iTunes Music Store needs the Screaming Blue Messiahs & such. The advantage it has over physical stores is that its current limitations don't really reflect physical trade-offs, so as labels catch on to the fact that they can sell a few copies of "Four Engines Burning" every year with hardly any expense on their side, I expect back catalogs to be filled out gradually.

In principle, yes. In practice ... can we start by agreeing that imposing DRM is stupid control-freak policy that will fail in the long term and only serves to annoy the paying customers?

Having said that, I see the iTunes store and relatives as being a distribution channel. It's sure as hell not a conventional record shop, and there doesn't seem to be any way for a non-Apple competitor to build their own iTunes store, sell through iTunes, and so on. This means it's got a built-in tendency towards monopoly status. Which is not something I'd want to encourage ...

can we start by agreeing that imposing DRM is stupid control-freak policy that will fail in the long term and only serves to annoy the paying customers?

The trick is to make it minimally annoying for paying customers, while making it maximally annoying for pirates. Apple's DRM is arguably better at the former than at the latter.

Can I ask you a question? A few years down the road, when high quality e-bookreaders are ubiquitous, do you find it absolutely inconceivable that you would prefer to have Singularity Sky published with some minimally annnoying DRM (allowing copies to be downloaded to 3 e-bookreaders at a time, allowing 3 copies to be printed), rather than having an unprotected PDF sold?

Having said that, I see the iTunes store and relatives as being a distribution channel. It's sure as hell not a conventional record shop

To me, it's still a shop: It sells commodities that one could in principle buy elsewhere. In practice, this is complicated by incompatibilities with the various DRMs, but still, some songs are available from both iTMS and emusic
in nearly identical format.

The barriers to entry for competition are, of course, the contracts with the record labels, but it seems that in practice, things have worked to provide MORE competition: Once Apple had negotiated an uniform contract with the record labels, other online stores found it easy to negotiate with the labels by essentially implementing the same contracts.

Matthias: I disagree with your assertion that the trick is to make it minimally annoying for paying customers, while making it maximally annoying for pirates.

Speaking as someone who earns his living by producing copyrighted works of entertainment that people pay for, I have to say this: a fan who buys a CD and then rips it for their iPod or walkman or whatever -- or, in a more extreme case, a fan who buys a book and scans/OCRs it so they can read it on their PDA -- is not a threat. Indeed, I think a lot of the fuss over online copying and peer-to-peer is grotesquely overblown nonsense. Someone who will borrow a library book but won't buy a new one is not a pirate; they're not a threat to my income: because they're not a potential sale in the first place.

If you want my idea of a real threat, it would be a rogue printer churning out counterfeit DVD's/CD's/books and selling them without paying royalties. Or a rogue publisher paying a translator to translate my books, and publishing them, while conveniently forgetting to pay me (or get my permission). These entities are threats because they're diverting paying customers away from me.

Your question about DRM and books is well-taken. A few years down the road, when high-quality e-book readers are available -- I don't expect them to be ubiquitous for a very long time, they'd need to be no more expensive than a hardback novel for that -- I'd hope to be giving away novels under a creative commons licence some time after paper publication. Free downloads are free advertising, and 80% of the sales of a book take place in the first three months after publication: giving away the book as a freebie after a couple of years doesn't impact the bottom line severely.Moreover, if freeloaders (a better term than the emotionally loaded "pirates") want a free copy, the vast majority of them will prefer to wait rather than go to the expense of procuring a paper copy and slaving over a hot scanner for days on end. OCR tech seems to have plateaued, and "trainable" OCR is relatively easily defeated on paper if it becomes a significant headache.

In the end, what I really want is to maximize my audience, while still earning a comfortable living. If my audience expands but I make slightly less money per head, that's fine by me. I don't need to be as rich as Stephen King.

Cost: Don't forget their credit card processing overheads. OK, that's not much, but it'll probably cost $.1 or $.15 at that level of small payment. These little costs will add up.

Having said that, yeah, it still feels like a rip-off (if you'll pardon the pun).

Top-40: And the irony here, of course, is that anything that's in the top 40 is still ridiculously easy to pick up from Kazaa or similar, for $0.

Card transaction costs will be more like 30p-50p per transaction, even buying them in bulk. Of course, Apple are betting on most customers buyind a bundle of tracks with each transaction, not buying 'em one at a time.