General

From Yahoo News:

Consumers will soon see a new digital music format in their local stores. Called DataPlay digital media, these news discs are smaller than CDs and represent the music industry’s latest attempt to distribute music in a copy-protected format.

While this new media is physically small, it is supported by large industry forces. Three of the top five record companies — Universal Music, EMI Group and BMG — have already signed on. The list of artists expected to re-release successful albums in the DataPlay format includes Carlos Santana, ‘N Sync, Britney Spears, Sarah McLachlan and Pink.

The discs themselves are contained in a transparent plastic shell, and are small enough to fit in the palm of a hand. Consumers will be able to buy blank, recordable DataPlay discs as well as prerecorded, copy-protected discs.

Competing against CDs is a formidable challenge — recent reports estimate that there are 1.5 billion CD players. But DataPlay has features that might allow it to gain a toehold.

These include games and extensive photo galleries, music videos (for which the player must be connected to a PC) and artist interviews. Next generation DataPlay players might be equipped with video screens.

Additionally, both the media and its player are so small — though still offering CD-quality sound — that they can be easily transported. And users can download music from the Internet and burn it onto DataPlay discs.

The cost of DataPlay media is causing skepticism among music industry observers. Blank media costs US$5 per disc when purchased as part of a 10-pack. In contrast, traditional CD media costs less then 50 cents per disc and has 150 megabytes more storage capacity. An album released on DataPlay will retail in the $18 to $22 range.

The DataPlay player-burner units are also more expensive than traditional CD recorders. The only player-burner currently available, the iDP-100 by iRiver America, costs $350.

Yankee Group media and entertainment analyst Ryan Jones told NewsFactor that the DataPlay format “is going to meet considerable struggle in the marketplace.” He said the music industry thought that DataPlay’s major label support would give it a decisive edge, but support of this kind is not enough.

Equally important is support from major electronics manufacturers, which DataPlay does not yet have. “Every major media transition in the past 20 years — it’s been Sony and Philips that have done it every time,” Jones said, noting that start-ups like DataPlay cannot achieve the momentum of those two giants.

But, he pointed out, “consumer electronics manufacturers will be under increasing pressure to integrate some kind of copy protection into their devices.” And DataPlay might be the solution they adopt — unless Sony and Philips choose one of their own proprietary solutions.

*SIGH*

They would like to force us to switch to a new media format and buy new devices just so they can add copy protection. Consumers aren’t going to stand for it.

Also, look at the list of artists – N’sync & Britney Spears. I’ve never bought one of their CDs and I never will. They’re going to squeeze out independent artists who can’t afford new recording equipment, and who will probably continue recording on standard CDs.

The last CDs I bought – by Sigur Ros, Antibalas, Youssou N’dour,1Giant Leap – were all from independent artists & small labels.

I just got a fax machine, a Panasonic KX-FP151, because I got tired of dealing with non-working fax software. I couldn’t get either FaxSTF or Cocoa eFax working reliably for sending faxes, and this machine cost less than FaxSTF X.

I just opened Print Center on my iBook and I see that it now lists “Apple Internal Modem” (from FaxSTF) as well as my Canon S600 being shared by my G4. I wonder if I can actually print to it remotely as a fax server.

I went to the Las Olas Art Fair today. Downtown Ft. Lauderdale is a confusing maze of “do not enter” signs, so I had to drive around a few times until I found the entrance to the parking garage. It was very hot and there was a lot of thunder, but it didn’t rain. Everything was very expensive, but it was pretty interesting and I enjoyed it.

AllConsuming.Net “offers new insight into what the weblog community is reading at the moment.” [Scripting News]

Thanks to that site, I found that Orson Scott Card’s new book, Shadow Puppets has been published. I have to buy it.