Mobile Stew

In the UK nearly 7% of all chart music bought this year has been
downloaded through a mobile service, according to the Official UK
Charts Company (OCC)  .That represents nearly 70,000 chart singles bought every week by people on the move.

I find this astounding and I think it proves that Nokia's assertion that its handsets will soon prove a threat to the Apple iPod's dominance may prove true.  I wonder how Apple will counter the threat of mobiles, particularly as many people pay nothing or very little for their handsets - why would you buy an iPod when your 'free' phone works just as well?

Seven years ago at my brother's 30th birthday I borrowed my mate's CD mixing decks, where were fantastic as they were so portable.   I've always wanted my own set of decks, and I'm tempted to splash out on Numark's new iDJ2 iPod mixing decks, which unlike its predecessor only requires one iPod rather than two.  Not only will it play two songs
simultaneously (I wonder how it does this??) but it will also record your performance.

Other niceties include an LCD screen for track-profiling and
waveform display, scratch, pitch, loop, and cue controls, and USB and auxiliary inputs for hooking up nearly any audio
source.

Super cool.

More: Engadget

Crazy by Gnarls Barkley is expected to become the first music single in the UK to hit number 1 from just download sales.  According to HMV it's the fastest-selling music download ever.

I'd love to see some up-to-date stats on what percentage of sales are now accounted for by downloads.  I don't think I've purchased a physical CD  in the UK for around 2 years now, whereas I used to purchase at least 20+ a year from my local HMV.

I've never really understood how an Apple could be a trademark, but Apple Computer Inc and Apple Corps Ltd are due to face off in the
courtroom in a case involving Apple's iTunes music store, which
violates an agreement intended to keep the U.S.-based computer company
out of the music business.

Apple Corps is owned by the former Beatles and their heirs,
and still owns the licensing rights to Beatles’ products. It is claiming
that the introduction of iTunes broke a $26 million settlement under
which Apple Computer agreed to steer clear of the music business, for
which the Beatles’ company retains the famous trademark. It is the

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) in the UK are adding iPods to the basket of goods used to track inflation and price changes in the UK, replacing items such as slippers, personal CD players and chocolate biscuits.

As well as MP3 players, music downloads are also being added into the mix, to present a more meaningful reflection of current consumer spending patterns. The economic sampling tracks a number of more or less typical goods and as retail prices rise, or fall, the changes are recorded.

Other new inclusions in the annual review are flat-panel televisions and digital camcorders, in a move to improve the coverage of technological goods.

In total, 30 new items were added for monitoring.

When I copied my CD collection to my computer something weird happened with some of my tracks, and when they play back the audio cuts out and it sounds like a radio is playing for a few seconds.

This was really bugging me on one of my favourite tracks so I decided to replace it but I couldn't find it on iTunes.  After searching around the only site I could find with the track was mp3search.ru.  Imagine my amazement to find that tracks only cost $0.10 and albums around $1.17!!

I was a bit skeptical at first, particularly as the legal information is in Russian, but the tracks came through and were good quality at 192kbps.

It works on a pre-pay service so maybe that's how they make their ...

When I built my new PC, I made a pigs ear of copying my music across.  Luckily I didn't lose any tracks, but I lost all of the hard work I'd put into tidying up my collection that I explained in my  'Guide to Tidying up iTunes MP3 Collections'




I've just about finished rebuilding my collection and I've just used a fantastic new iTunes Album Art Importer.   You can select one album, many albums, or all of the albums in youriTunes music library, and the application will go out and get the albumart via the Amazon.com web service, or from the Windows Media Player Album Art which I think is unique. 

It is even smart enough to detect whether a track already has art ...

I used to have a shower radio that my best friend brought for me, and I'd love to get a new one but I don't think I'll be putting one of these new iPod shower radios in my bathroom.

The water-resistant (of course!) radio houses a compartment where you can put youriPod.  It even includes a fog-free mirror - all for just £29.95.  Bargain.

More: Comfort House

I managed to download Songbird ok this morning, I think because I got the file before the Americans work up.  I kept the file on my machine and I've uploaded it onto a server so that it's available if you can't find it anywhere else.

I have to admit that so far I'm not impressed with the service, but I guess it's not a final release.

Here's the working download link for Songbird.  Don't forget to share what you think of the service by leaving a comment below.

Well, it's finaly here.  Songbird have release a Proof-of-Concept release of their mp3 player which is based on Firefox.

I've only had a quick look so far, but apart from the integration of a web browser into the application I can't see anything to write home about that couldn't be achieved through a good Firefox extension.

Hopefully I'll find more when I have more time to play with the service, but at the moment I don't think iTunes has anything to worry about.
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