Interesting news/reviews/deals from the portable audio market
iTunes 7: Fetching artwork for fun and profit: a script “that basically allows you fetch a URL containing a neat 600×600 JPEG”. Available in Perl and in PHP. Try the online demo. [via]
First, a short introduction and a necessary reference to Hymn—Hymn is an app that strips the DRM (Apple calls it FairPlay) of the tracks you bought from the iTMS—only drawback? You need iTunes 5 for it work.
iTunes 6 users can now have a look at Igor Skochinsky’s QTFairUse6 [via]—a tool that’s supposed to do the [...]
AppleInsider broke the news that iTunes Producer, the software labels use to submit music for inclusion to the iTMS, was updated to include support for tracks in the Apple Lossless format. Speculation that the iTMS may begin offering tracks in the lossless format have risen substantially ever since, but it’s probably safer to remain sceptical [...]
As expected, the author’s rights law was approved 296-193 by the National Assembly, France’s lower house. It now remains to be debated and voted by the Senate in May. BusinessWeek ran an interesting article regarding the France vs. Apple saga two days ago.
Apple wasn’t excited with the news, as evidenced by their statements:
Apple Computer Inc. [...]
While in the US people who download music illegally are prosecuted in droves, in France they’re taking a more sensible and serious look at things. The author’s rights law, which is to be voted by the National Assembly today, basically says two things:
if you’re caught downloading copyrighted music illegaly you’re paying a harmless 38€ fine—if [...]
How-to: rip your DVDs so they’re properly reproduced on the Zen Vision:M: “This guide uses DVD Decrypter and AutoGK which is free open source software so it will cost you nothing.” Read our presentation of the Zen Vision:M.
From the wicked cool department—How-to: turn your wireless mouse into an iTunes remote: this is great. Using a [...]
iTMS: Billion Songs Countdown: a black 4GB Nano and a $100 iTunes Music Card await those who download every 100,000th song, and as for the one who downloads the billionth song, well… he’s in for a treat, to say the least. The contest is open to all 21 countries where the iTunes Music Store operates, [...]
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.)
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: [...]
iTMS: soon to have podcasts for sale? What I Want Podcasting issued a press release in which it states it plans to sell podcasts through the iTMS in the very near future. I don’t know why this comes as a surprise to anyone; why not charge for podcasts too? (I’m not talking about turning all [...]