Creative Commons Music

Well like most college students I've been slowly accumulating a good size digital music collection, but I've recently gotten bored with pretty much all of my music library, so I've been searching for new music to listen to. There lies the few problems with most digital music you deal with things such as high cost, DRM, and other annoying copy protection schemes. So I've decided to find music under the Creative Commons (CC) license. Which basically a way for an artist to protect their content from commercial use, but allowing fans to share their music freely. As a broke college student this is win-win since I get to listen to some great music without having to worry about the record industry sending me a letter; not that they'd have to =). In either case even though most bands, release some or all of their songs under Creative Commons, they do have albums that they sell, some of which are worth buying and some not. In any case it definitely worth checking out, I'm hooked on this site, indieish.com which features a section that puts out a Creative Commons song for everyday of the year. The site also features a podcast that seems to focus on Creative Commons artists and music in general, I haven't actually heard it yet, but the site is great for seeing what you've been missing. Also a few bands such as Steadman and Harvey Danger have switched to releasing some or all of their material under Creative Commons to help promote themselves and really give back to their fan base. In general you aren't going to find the latest hot single under CC but in the very least you get what you paid for, sometimes a lot more. I certainly hope that this is little segment of artists continues to grow and mature in such a way that now the record industry will understand that consumers aren't criminals, they just don't want to deal with the crap that is DRM based copy right protection.

Shuffling down the iPod

it looks like Apple seems to be aiming at the rest of the MP3 market by moving more if its iPod line into the more budget oriented market. With the release of a new 1GB iPod Nano, Apple has dropped the price of its Shuffle line, down to $69 and $99 dollars for their 512MB and 1GB version respectively. The new 1GB Nano is priced at $149 dollars, which will make it that much harder for competing MP3 player manufactures to gain market share. This may not be a huge announcement but is something that should be watched since it seems that Apple is looking to improve its market share on the entire MP3 player market as opposed to the upper higher end portion. The new model shows Apple's willingness to adjust to one of the iPod's main criticism cost. You can check out the new model at the online Apple store here.

My two cent's on next gen consoles ... Playstation 3

Last time I talked about Microsoft's next generation console the XBOX 360 and how it stacks up in the "console wars." Now it's time to take a look at the company that currently controls the worlds most popular console, with 80 million Playstaion 2's sold worldwide, Sony has shown that its Playstation brand is just as strong as ever. With the up coming Playstation 3 (PS3), coming up probably before the end of this year, expect big things from the industry leader.

So what might we expect? Well to start an online service system to rival Microsoft's Live Service, both Sony and Nintendo will be behind in this front since, Microsoft's Live service has matured quite a bit since its inception. Sony's version will probably be good, just probably not right away. The Japan based company has the resources to create such as service and a commitment to the Playstation brand that leads me to believe that they'll throw as much money as it takes to make it work. However, luckly they'll have the advantage on know what can go wrong right away, due to initial problems with Microsoft's XBOX Live service, hence if they were paying attention they'll be able to catch up; proably sooner than later. In either case that isn't Sony's main advantage, their biggest advantage has to be the popularity of the Playstation name brand, this can be seen since the days of the original Playstation. That console pushed Sega out of the console market and forced Nintendo to seriously re-thinking  it's strategy. The Playstation brand is almost synonymous with console gaming and has a huge fan base. With the Playstation's dominance in the console market has brought the most important factor with it, the games, there are thousands of them and some are pretty damn good. This advantage is allegedly in danger due to the fact that Microsoft's platform is so easy to develop for and the PS3 isn't which pushes away game developers, note this is all internet rumor stuff so take it with a grain of salt. Also had Microsoft's XBOX 360 gained huge shares in the market place, its possible many game developers may reevaluate which platform(s) they develop for and concentrate on. Obviously the last argument doesn't stick and the other threat hasn't been confirmed so, Sony's Playstation 3 will have a lot of games in varying quality but it will have a lot of them. In short "Playstation = Games" in most people's minds hence odds are Sony will still come out on top in the console wars, but they will probably not have the same dominance that its current Playstation 2 enjoys, they're the king of the hill and will be so until some one knocks them off. Next up I'll put up a posting about Nintendo's next generation console and why they're the wild card that may surprise everyone with the Revolution.