Interesting news/reviews/deals from the portable audio market
All signs are leading to this, at least. According to Stuff Magazine, they’ve sacked the European PR team and moved the European marketing headquarters from Germany to an in-house department to Korea. Sales in the European continent are slim (were they ever rosy?), and this seems to be another victim of the iPod storm.
Basically the [...]
Yahoo! Music Unlimited launches in Canada: $7/month (CAD = $6.1 USD) and you can try it out for free for a week.
Another entry in the category of cheap in-ear-monitors, a market dominated by Sony’s MDR EX-71SL (white: $30—silver: $40), this time from JVC. What stands out when reading the press release (in Japanese) [via] about the HP-FX77 is the frequency range they’re claiming for it; an amazing but let’s-get-real 5Hz-25kHz. (The EX-71SL falls into the same [...]
PMC v2 allows OEMs to add support for more codecs: from Jason Dunn’s notes at the recent Mobius 2005 conference:
New devices will have user interface extensions that allow OEMs to add new menu items. OEMs will also be able to distribute new CODEC support via Flash ROM updates. This is a great update, because it [...]
iTunes MiniStore now disabled by default: a wise from Apple’s part, and nice to see they responded so quickly to the users feedback. Remember that the MiniStore feature and its default “On” mode, introduced in iTunes 6.02, raised some privacy issues. (Also: my apologies for the barrage of Apple-related news today.)
For today’s question—“Who owns my mp3s when I die?” I’d have to go with the second reply posted there.
According to the Sunday Herald, Edinburgh-based Wolfson Microelectronics is set to release its latest audio chip, the WM8985, this week. What makes this chipset important is the fact that, according to the company’s statements, it increases power efficiency by 70%. It’s worth noting that Wolfson’s chipsets are used in the iPod (all generations so far, [...]
Jobs says Microsoft should come up with their own MP3 player: based on the sensible rationale that you can’t achieve perfect synergy unless you make both the hardware and software on your own.
What’s going to happen is that Microsoft is going to have to get into the hardware business of making MP3 players. This [...]
Slightly off-topic, but it’s good for your entertainment—Top 65 music videos of 2005: complete with screenshots and links to the actual videos; a top-notch job, and a good way to fill up your Zen Vision:M or iPod video. [via]
A number of Sony BMG artists have been added to the Australian iTMS: remember that when the Australian branch of the iTMS launched on October 25, it didn’t have any tracks from the Sony BMG catalog. Now “select artists include Oasis, Franz Ferdinand, Pearl Jam, Kelly Clarkson, Avril Lavigne, and more” —that’s a start.
Also read: [...]