This week I got to play around with the ION TAPE 2 PC USB Cassette Archiver, which turns your tapes into mp3s.
I used to love making mix tapes, so I have a lot of cassettes that are collecting dust. I was very excited about testing out a product like this. But alas, there was one aspect that hit a sour note for me.
Watch the video below for my full review:
Best Buy will begin selling musical instruments and musical recording equipment at 75 to 85 Best Buy stores across the U.S., and starting today you can also buy instruments online at BestBuy.com.
South Florida will be getting two of these music centers later this year -- but exact dates have not been announced. There will be one at the Pembroke Pines Best Buy and one at the Dadeland Station store.
It will exist as a store within a store, and will include more than 1,000 guitars, bass, drums, keyboards and recording equipment, as well as other musical instruments and accessories. The stores will also offer group and individual guitar lessons. Band instruments will be available online -- not in stores.
Seven Best Buy stores in Southern California and Minneapolis participated in a pilot of the musical instruments store-within-a-store concept that launched earlier this year. The program recently expanded to Chicago and Washington D.C., bringing the current musical instrument store count to ten.
Sure, we all know pirates have been uber trendy, all thanks to Captain Jack Sparrow. But you don't have to resort to piracy to get free mp3s. Check out today's Tech Tuesday feature to learn about some free music sites you may not have known about before: Free Legal Music
Although there are some interesting sites, of course it isn't a total solution when you're on the hunt for a specific song. Why? Well pretty much everyone I know does pay for music by first looking at places like iTunes and Amazon. But if there's a song these paid services don't provide individually (like requiring a user to buy the whole album to get one song), patience runs out quickly and peer-to-peer file sharing becomes a quick and convenient answer. (But that's not to say I'm condoning stealing music.)
What's your take on music piracy? Have you changed your downloading habits over the past few years?
On July 11th the new iPhone goes on sale. With a two-year contract from AT&T, the 8GB model will cost $199, and the 16GB model will cost $299. It'll run on AT&T's 3G network, which means it will have a faster wireless connection than before.
Unlimited iPhone 3G data plans for consumers cost $30 a month, in addition to voice plans starting at $39.99 a month.
For those of you that waited, are you considering getting one now? The price is down, the speed is up, and you've had a year to think about getting one. But then again, money is tight these days, so maybe it's not worth it for you. So, is the new iPhone calling to you?
And you first adopters... I'm sure you were glad you stood in line last year to get your hands on one. But will you be envious over the new model?
The social networking music community of Cyloop.com (which is headquartered in Miami Beach) has announced it created an entire section of its site dedicated to SYNC, a Microsoft technology in Ford vehicles that lets the user play music and make phone calls using voice commands. This is no surprise to anyone who has visited the site, since almost every ad is about Ford and its SYNC.
Cyloop.com is a pretty young site, so I'm sure this partnership is a big help to the site. It's bilingual and focused on Latin artists, but the company plans to branch out into other music genres and markets. I wrote a story about Cyloop earlier this week which you can read here. The site lets you stream all the music you want for free. It partnered with big music labels to grow its music library -- the idea is that eventually there won't be any more need to pirate music if we can listen to as much as we want for free (just have to pay to download.) And the labels split the advertising profits. Will it work? Who can say for sure, but Ford seems to think it's worth the investment.
This morning I'll be visiting a Starbucks on Lincoln Road Mall to get a demonstration of how the new iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store will work with the iPhone, new iPod Touch and with laptops. Customers that hear a song in the store will be able to instantly purchase that song on these devices. It officially launches Tuesday, but I'm told anyone who stops by the store Monday morning will be able to see it in action.
And there will be giveaways all over the nation where some customers get free downloads of a "song of the day." They are reportedly giving away more than 50 million free downloads.
For now, the only participating Starbucks in all of Florida is the Starbucks Hear Music Coffeehouse on Lincoln Road Mall, at 605 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach.
I'll be writing more about the launch of the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store for Tuesday's paper.
UPDATE 11:30 A.M.: I just got back from the Starbucks Hear Music Coffeehouse. I was told on Friday by public relations representatives that customers would be able to try it out today, but alas, they password protected the Wi-Fi store and it won't be accessible to the public until Tuesday. I was able to see it run on the new iPod Touch, but if you don't own an new iPod or an iPhone, then you can also see it on a laptop. When customers log onto the Wi-Fi, the landing page will have information on the song playing and a link to download it through iTunes. It also shows the last nine songs played in the store.
Speaking of music downloads, there's a new site called SpiralFrog.com that lets you download all you want for free. It features more than 800,000 songs and videos and it is supported by advertisements. The only catch is that you have to log on to the site once a month or the music locks up (to discourage people from sharing the free songs).
I found out about it on Marketplace, which also has a really interesting report on people who are wrongfully accused of stealing and sharing music online. The RIAA says when you go fishing for tuna, sometimes a few dolphins get caught up in the net.... and those "dolphins" have to pay thousands in legal fees for something they never did! There's a second part to the story airing on this afternoon's show from the RIAA's point of view. I seriously recommend checking this story out -- it's scary stuff.
Grooveshark.com is a new company that pays users for sharing music. It was designed to motivate people not to pirate music for free. Click here to listen to the radio report by Miami Herald reporter Joshua Johnson. And if you can't listen, here's a brief summary of his report:
A group of University of Florida students and graduates has created an online music service that compensates members for sharing their files.
Grooveshark.com charges $0.99 or less per download, depending on a song’s popularity. The secure peer-to-peer system allows members to download from each other, with most of the revenue paid as royalties to the song’s license holder. Members can also sell their own compositions through Grooveshark. The company splits the rest with the user who supplied the song. Currently the payment comes as credit to buy more songs, although Grooveshark is working on ways to cash out the fees to users.
Grooveshark is run by a team of more than forty UF students and graduates, mostly in their early twenties. Co-founder and struggling musician Sam Tarantino got the idea while passing a used CD shop near the Gainesville campus. They’re competing not with iTunes, according to company spokesman James Davis, but with the mentality of downloading music without paying.
“The reality is, (people) don’t have to buy music,” says Davis. “You can go online right now and find any song you want for free. What we’re trying to do is give people a reason to buy music.”
UF’s Office of Technology Licensing helped Grooveshark get started when its founders were still in college. Officials helped with patent applications, business connections and researching the idea. The University didn’t invest in the company, but Grooveshark gave UF a 5% stake in return for continued support.
“I don’t think UF should take too much credit here,” said UF Office of Technology Licensing director David Day. “These guys at Grooveshark are just a cohesive, very smart, very hard-working, very determined group of people.”
Day says that each year UF assists about a dozen start-up companies, 75 business licenses and 300 inventions. Successful products are part of the University’s bottom line; it recently made about $37 million on product royalties ranging from glaucoma drugs to Gatorade. UF made $70 million by selling stock from another company they helped start up, Regeneration Technologies. That money paid for two new science buildings.
Grooveshark’s invitation-only beta version racked up nearly ten thousand registered members in its first two weeks, through word of mouth and mentions on popular blogs. It’s still working out royalty deals with the major record labels. Grooveshark also says it hasn’t heard from the Recording Industry Association of America, which fights illegal downloaders on behalf of music labels. RIAA had no comment on Grooveshark. --- JOSHUA JOHNSON
If you haven't read Patrick Danner's story already, a Broward County man is suing Apple over songs on iTunes. He says what isn't lawful is that when you buy a song from iTunes, that song can't be used anywhere besides the computer and in an iPod. And he hopes to have this certified as a class action.
It's an interesting point to think about. It's common knowledge for most digital music downloaders that iTunes is meant for use on Apple software and iPod devices. And there are ways of getting around the problem. For instance, you can burn a CD of songs from iTunes, and you can use that CD anywhere. Also, you can rip songs right off that same CD, which can change the formating to be used in other mp3 devices, depending on the software you use to rip the songs (but you can lose some of the audio quality). And judging by Steve Jobs' Thoughts on Music letter he published this past February, he rather not have these restrictions at all.
But is it forcing people to buy an iPod if they use iTunes? Maybe you will feel obligated to keep buying Apple products if you already bought a ton of music on iTunes and you don't want to go through the hassle of hacking the formating.
There's enough competition out there in downloading services that if people are not happy with the restrictions on iTunes, that they can buy from other digital music stores. Doesn't it go back to the concept of letting the market decide on what business model thrives? Or will people never change because they already invested too much money into songs on iTunes? What do you think?
Here's a Wikipedia entry that goes more into the FairPlay encryption on the songs from iTunes: Wikipedia FairPlay article.
Steve Jobs just revealed the newest versions of Apple's iPod media players. The newest iPod is called the iPod Touch: It has a touch-sensitive 3.5-inch screen (like the iPhone) and has built-in wireless Internet access with a Safari browser, so you can download music from anywhere with Wi-Fi access. An 8-gigabyte model will cost $299, and 16 gigabytes will cost you $399.
There's also the new Nano that will be in stores by the weekend. It's tiny but has a larger screen than previous models (2.5-inch monitor) and comes in 4- and 8-gigabyte versions.
Jobs also made an announcement about how Apple is working with Starbucks. The idea is that if you are walking into a Starbucks with an iPod, whatever song is playing in that Starbucks will pop up on your iPod. You can then choose to buy it right on the spot. Now that's nifty. But it won't begin rolling out until October.
And for you iPhone users, iTunes will soon be selling ringtones for 99 cents a song. Ringtones from more than 500,000 songs will go on sale next week. And for those of you that wish you were iPhone users, Apple dropped the price of the iPhone to $399, from $599.
And those old iPods you own? Well, now they will be on sale named the iPod Classic. 'Cause you know, regular iPods are just so retro. But the new versions of the iPod Classic will come with a whopping 80 and 160 gigabytes!
You can read more about it here. Then again, if you couldn't care less about all things Apple, Microsoft also made an announcement today about its portable music player, the Zune. The 30-gigabyte player is now $50 cheaper at $199.
For those of you who read my Barbie post last week, I got a new Barbie Girl's MP3 player in the mail this weekend to test out, and this time it worked. Although I wish I was able to try out the BarbieGirls.com virtual world. The site has been turned into a "Coming Soon" splash page while they work on it some more. It's in Beta, so I guess they they blocked access to work some kinks out.
I'll be posting more about my review tomorrow, and you can also read about it in tomorrow's 60 Second Review on our Tech Tuesday page in the Business section.
I'm having a few product review problems this week.
For one, it's the first time I can't get a product to start. I'm in the middle of reviewing the Barbie Girls MP3 Doll by Mattel. It's a cute gadget -- you get to dress your MP3 player like a doll and buy her accessories. But I haven't been able to get to the MP3 part yet. You see, when you first install the Barbie Girls software, it asks you to enter in the serial number code on the bottom of her stand to validate your purchase. But it keeps telling me my code is invalid.
I tried various things to get it to work. I uninstalled and reinstalled. I tried it on another computer. I asked the PR contact for Barbie to give me another code. Nothing has worked. They are now sending me another Barbie to try out.
It's disappointing because I was really looking forward to testing this. I love Barbie! But hopefully this problem won't happen on the next Barbie they send me.
And I can't help but wonder that if this happened to me, how many other people might face this same problem? The product I tested was the same package that is on store shelves. I didn't get a different version because I was in the media. However, my contact at Barbie tells me there are no reports of such a problem since the doll hit stores last week.
The problems they are having, however, have to do with the Barbie Girls website. Last weekend I went to BarbieGirls.com to sign up, but in the middle of registering it told me there was an error due to high traffic. ....High traffic? I was on the site at 10:30 p.m. Sunday night. A school night for us down here. How many pre-teens were on at 10:30 for it to be too crowded? I just checked back and now the site is completely shut down with the message: Hey Girl, we're busy improving the site. But we'll be back soon!
Sigh. And that's not the end of my product review troubles. I got an e-mail last night telling me a product I reviewed on March 6th is defective. I gave the Clarisonic electric-skin care brush a good review at the time. The makers are recalling the product, saying that it can overheat.
I'll take this opportunity to update my review. Before even learning of the recall, I actually have not enjoyed the Clarisonic after the review. Over time this thing begins to discolor and gets dirty fast. It has many tiny parts that begin to turn color... it's kind of gross. It needs a lot of maintenance to clean, and I don't think it's worth it.
Personally I don't care about the recall. I stopped using mine several months ago, and I'm not going to bother getting another one. But if you have one, be sure have them replace it. Call customer service at 1-888-CLARISONIC (1-888-525-2747) or e-mail info@clarisonic.com.
Here's the letter that was sent to me via e-mail yesterday about the recall:
You may recall a story back in September about Weina Scott, a 17-year old chief executive of her own podcast hosting site, Switchpod.com (and she made a cool $40,000 for working 20 hours a week).
It was recently announced that she won the 2007 Growing Up CEO award, which honors young inner-city entrepreneurs, all under 21 years old. It's founded by the not-for-profit organization Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC).
From the release:
Weina Scott, the 17-year-old daughter of Haitian entrepreneurs who had sold rice, flour, and sugar in Haiti before fleeing for their lives to the United States, launched Switchpod.com, a podcast hosting company, with another teenager in 2005. A year later the company was bought – and Weina and her partner each received $200,000 in stock as well as $40,000 annually to continue to run the company. “This is the American dream,” says Weina, who has been accepted at both Harvard and Yale.
I'm told she's going to Harvard. (I don't know about you, but learning her story made me wish I did more when I was 17!)
Growing Up CEO is taking nominations for 2008. If you know of another Weina Scott out there, tell me about it.
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