Sep 9
Personal David
cd-rom, clonecd, DRM, micro, micro sd, miniaturisation, minimalism, mp3, piracy, rip, sdhc
I don’t tend to write too much about my actual life on this blog, although there’s a project I’m working on right now which has had a definite tech dimension.
My project is called Operation Clearance, it is me & my family clearing out our house of all our old unwanted possessions. My aspiration is to own as few items as is practical. I was partly inspired by the 100 item challenge, although I’m not holding myself to a firm number of items. Instead, I’m challenging myself to get all of my possessions into a single Ottoman (not including my clothes, but I’ve already given them an equivalent treatment). If you think I sound crazy, then think about the last time you moved house, now compare that memory to how it’ll be for me when I move, which I am planning to do in the near future. You see, not so crazy now, eh?!
What was the tech aspect of this? I discovered while excavating some of my cupboards a stack of CD-ROMs, mostly games, with a few applications. So here I had a stack of discs I’m unlikely to use, potentially taking up valuable space in my Ottoman, that wasn’t good. So did I simply throw them away, or did I keep them? Y‘know, just in case. Well “just in case” is the enemy of any clear out, so my answer was to cheat!
Squeezing all these discs into Micro SD makes me happy.
I decided I would take an ISO image of all the discs and save them to a Micro SDHC card, then throw the discs away! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it is possible to create a file, based on any physical drive, which is an exact bit for bit copy. Your computer can then “mount” the file as if it were that same real physical drive. Given that you can currently get Micro SDHC cards with capacities of up to 16GB, you can fit an awful lot of CD images on them. Best of all, the physical size of a Micro SD card compared to even one CD is practically non-existent!
If at this point you’re wanting to ask me why didn’t I try trading in or selling these games, then let me answer you in advance – Firstly, I couldn’t sell them as I’d already dumped the boxes for them last year. Secondly, since I was keeping “back up” copies for myself, I thought it would be of questionable legitimacy to sell them when I still had copies for myself.
The only gotcha with this idea was that all of my games had copy protection, which prevented me using the universal ISO format. Fortunately, help was at had in the form of Slysoft’s CloneCD. They generously offer a twenty one day trial, and I only needed one day to image my discs. So I confess, I didn’t buy it. Although in the future, if I want to re-burn these images (which are proprietary to Slysoft applications 
), I promise you Slysoft, I will buy a lifetime licence!
At this point in the story, I really must launch into a rant. To image these discs, I really shouldn’t have needed to use a specialist application, but I did because of DRM. My story is yet another text book example of how DRM makes life harder for legitimate uses of media, while the real illegitimate copies are being freely traded across the internet. So, thank you very much to all computer game companies, your copy protection measures hampered my legitimate project, while not preventing the “piracy” you impotently sought to defeat.
Deep breath, relax …
Now, if you want to try clearing your shelves, then I really recommend you do as I have. Further to this, many years ago, I MP3 ripped all of my music CD’s, so I’ve been able to throw away those CD’s too. Anything to reduce the number of individual items clogging up your shelves and cupboards. George Carlin wisely said that a house is just a place for our stuff, and every now and then we have to get a bigger house just to fit in even more stuff. So join me in getting rid of all your physical media. In the age of terrabyte hard drives, physical media should be dead if we all had any common sense.
Sep 7
Editorial David
android, copyright, DRM, iphone, mobile, mp3, music, online, piracy, rights, spotify, streaming, subscription, symbian
The Spotify application and its "home page"
You have no doubt heard about Spotify, in fact given the amount of e-mails I get asking for invites, I’d be amazed if you haven’t. In my opinion, Spotify plays a crucial roll in the world of on-line music distrobution. Before you commit your money to buying a whole album, I believe, you have a right to try before you buy. Much to the chagrin of music companies, illegal file sharing perfectly fits the roll. You get the try the album with no hassle and no money changing hands, and then, as long as you’re honest, when you’ve made your decision, you can choose to delete the album, or go and buy it from a DRM free online music store. To me, doing this, while of questionable legality, was the nearest on-line alternative we had to the headphone booth in your local music store.
However, Spotify came along and took away all the grey area of illegally sampling music. With Spotify you can stream music across the internet and listen to it as much as you like. With adverts if you pay nothing, and without if you pay £10 a month, we’ll return to the premium service below.
That is not to say that Spotify is perfect. When it first started it was more perfect that it is now. Since it’s been going, the record companies have been stamping their ignorant size 12 boots all over it, so that we now have region restriction on some albums, while others have been pulled completely, even though Spotify are constantly adding more and more tracks. To the record labels I say this; the more restrictions you put onto a service like Spotify, which you should be thanking your lucky stars for, the more you will push people back towards illegal file sharing. It’s a simple mathematical matter of convenience. Spotify is actually more convenient than getting music via file sharing. If you prevent people listening via Spotify, they will by simple human nature, opt for the next most convenient option. Sorry, but it’s a fact of life and you can either work with it, or be burned by it. I’m not saying it’s right, but it’s how things are.
Now, lets look at Spotify premium. For some people who would spend hundreds of pounds a year on music, and hate the adverts, then this £10 a month could represent good value. Speaking for myself, I just don’t get that much new music, so £10 a month is an expensive option for me, just to block adverts, which to be honest, aren’t that intrusive (and if I’m saying that, then that means something). So I will stick with Spotify making advertising revenue from my listening, and I think the majority of Spotify users are the same.
Spotify Mobile running on Android
The next generation of Spotify is a version for your mobile phone. As of today, we know that Spotify Mobile is available on the iPhone and Android phones. So hopefully, we will soon see it available on other platforms like Symbian.
I find the prospect of the mobile Spotify being a premium only feature somewhat self-defeating. However you look at it, paying to effectively rent your music, never has been, and never will be, a good deal for the consumer. I don’t see the added value of a mobile application is going to change this. Let’s prove this by contradiction. If you weren’t prepared to pay for Spotify premium on your desktop, but the addition of a mobile app would change your mind, then you are effectively saying you’d be willing to pay £10 a month to have an application on your phone. I find it hard to believe anyone would fall into this category.
Conversely, if Spotify made their mobile application available to everyone, they would be expanding their prospective advertising audience. Advertising revenue must be valuable to them, given that it’s unlikely many users pay for premium. Speculatively, they must only be surviving on advertising revenue, with the addition of some venture capitol.
To conclude, please Spotify, reconsider the mobile application. We all love you, and want to use your service, but £10 a month for no ads and a mobile app is too much. Just mirror your desktop business to the mobile world, and everyone wins.
P.S.
NO, I don’t have any Spotify invites to give you, but I will make a blog post, if and when I do 
Jan 28
Editorial David
audio, community, music, p2p, piracy, playlist, plugins, spotify, streaming
An example of searching for music on Spotify
Recently I’ve been trying out a music program called Spotify, I actually posted about handing out invites last week and this week. I would describe Spotify as an internet jukebox. It looks much like any other library based media player. I.e. you browse or search for artists or albums and you are presented with a list of results and you choose what to listen to. Except here, that the music isn’t stored on your computer, it’s out there on the internet. Spotify also has a novel feature of shared playlists, which is great for spreading the word about certain music.
While using Spotify for the short time I’ve had it, I’ve had a number of thoughts of changes that I think they need to make. Not that I’m a know it all, although for the moment it’s a one trick pony, it only searches the Spotify system for music that Spotify has, and stream it to you over the internet.
If you either don’t want to pay for your music, or want to try before you buy, in many ways it is still more convenient to visit your favourite file sharing site. Spotify gives you free music with adverts and you can only use it on your computer. Whereas shared/pirated music can be put on any portable device and has no adverts, what’s not to like?
Spotify does have a great community feature of collaborative playlists (E.g. CNET UK is currently running a playlist for its forum members), as well as last.fm inegration. I think this is where they need to build value in their product. I don’t just mean community features within the application, I mean inviting a community to build a whole ecosystem around their service.
So here are my thoughts of what needs to be added to Spotify
- Publish an API so that other media players can connect to the Spotify network. E.g. Songbird and WinAmp support plugins and it would extend Spotify’s potential audience.
- Support Shoutcast radio stations. Spotify already has something called “Radio”, but it isn’t really internet radio. It’s just another way of searching their server library.
- Write a mobile client for Spotify. Support several smartphone platforms, Symbian, Android, iPhone & even Windows Mobile if they’re in a good mood
- Have the Spotify client integrate your existing music library. This would be done by means of supporting iTunes for those users and watching hard drive folders for everyone else. As much music as Spotify has, its library isn’t that comprehensive. Although, if you already have the music you want to hear, you could then still listen within the Spotify application.
- Rate music so you can search for highly rated music.
- Have the option to submit creative commons music. This of course would be subject to moderation, which would cost money. Although Spotify could really help out amateur and upcoming artists by allowing them to upload from their desktop.
- The ability to request copy righted music that you could not legitimately submit yourself.
Related links
Jan 22
Personal David
audio, internet radio, mp3, music, p2p, piracy, spotify, streaming, utorrent
The Spotify application and it's "home page"
I’m currently trying out a peice of music related software called Spotify. It’s an online music service set up by the makers of uTorrent, to supposedly tackle music piracy.
The idea is that you search for what you want to listen to, and it will stream 160kbps audio to you. You can pay a monthly fee or have to endure an advert every few songs. It also has an internet radio feature and a limited ability to suggest music you may like.
I think this is an interesting way to try before you buy. I also think it could be of use to mobile devices with little storage for your library of MP3′s.
Spotify is currently only operating on an invite only basis. As an invited user, I have 10 invites I can hand out. So if you are interested in trying Spotify for yourself, please just leave a comment on this post and I’ll hook you up.
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