My niece enjoys Indian films and Indian film music. To her, as to most of the world, this rich, colorful, loving and just-plain-fun writing style is added up in one word: Bollywood.
I profess that I've get taken with Bollywood equally good, though not to the said extent every bit my niece, who holds a come of Indian moving pictures and on a regular basis tears others. The Bollywood good is so great that I give to hold myself to following those hardly a of its productions that bubble up to see the care of American movie reviewers. Otherwise I would be lost in Indian ocean of unfamiliar with movie titles, workers and actresses.
My niece likewise gathers CDs of Bollywood music. There's an Asian securities industry near her family that provides a cornucopia of them. Simply she has the very problem choosing CDs to buy that I do fatal which Bollywood movie Crataegus laevigata be worth my time. Unless she's seen the film from which a soundtrack derives, she's usually in the dark equally to whether a sure CD's songs and artists are ones she will enjoy.
At her request, I set up a way for her to preview a kind of Bollywood songs and even to live with them on her iPod for a while, all for Loose. This means she can net knowing decisions about which CDs she ultimately purchases.
First, I searched for Indian music Web sites, and specifically for those devoted to Bollywood, or at least modern popular medicine (equally opposed, say, to classical Indian ragas). I found several good ones, with names such equally Bollywood earth and India FM.
All the big music sellers may have moved to non-DRM MP3 files long ago, but the watermarking of files with your personal information continues. Most users who buy music don’t know about the marking of files, or don’t care. Unless those files are uploaded to BitTorrent or other P2P networks, there isn’t much to worry about.
A list of which music services are selling clean MP3 files without embedded personal information, and which aren’t, is here. Apple, LaLa (owned by Apple) and Walmart embed personal information. Amazon, Napster and the rest have resisted label pressure to do so.
A music industry insider who’s asked to remain anonymous writes to us:
Hidden in purchased music files from popular stores such as Apple and Walmart is information to identify the buyer and/or the transaction. You won’t find it disclosed in their published terms of use. It’s nowhere in their support documentation. There’s no mention in the digital receipt. Consumers are largely oblivious to this, but it could have future ramifications as the music industry takes another stab at locking down music files.
Here’s how it works. During the buying process a username and transaction ID are known by the online retailers. Before making the song available for download their software embeds into the file either an account name or a transaction number or both. Once downloaded, the file has squirreled away this personal information in a manner where you can’t easily see it, but if someone knows where to look they can. This information doesn’t affect the audio fidelity, but it does permanently attach to the file data which can be used to trace back to the original purchaser which could be used at a later date.
Retailers aren’t talking, but there’s ample proof of what’s transpiring. Using simple file comparison tools it’s possible to verify this behavior by purchasing identical songs using different accounts and see if they match. I emailed support departments for several retailers asking if they would acknowledge these actions and inquiring about what specific information they are embedding. Only 7digital responded saying they don’t use any watermarks. What retailers won’t say publicly is that the major record labels are requiring this behavior as a precondition to sell their music.
Certain record labels have aspirations to use this hidden data to control future access to music in a return to DRM (digital rights management). The labels yearn to control where you can listen to your music and this could be a backdoor for them to achieve it. When personal libraries are stored in the cloud, it becomes possible to retrieve this personal data and match it to a user identity. If the match is successful the song plays, but if not, access can be blocked through a network DRM system such as the one Lala patented (which is now owned by Apple).
For the scheme to work record labels need all retailers to support this and so far some notable names are resisting. Napster, Amazon and UK based 7digital are selling clean MP3 files. Files purchased from these stores do not have any user information whatsoever embedded into them. Other retailers such as Apple and Walmart have succumbed to label pressure to embed personal info.
Retailers and record labels should have the right to sell dirty files if they wish, however they should be obligated to disclose their practices in advance. Consumers should have this information so they can make an informed buying decision about whether to support dirty or clean MP3 vendors. If Barnes and Noble printed your name on pages of books you purchase that would be important information to know because it would affect the value of your book. Here the clandestine actions are even more worrisome because it could lead to a future lockdown of purchases. If the labels have plans to require cloud vendors to use this information in the future, they should disclose that as well.
Cloud Music And The New DRM
Apple, Google and Amazon are all reportedly in discussions with big labels to provide a cloud music service. These services will allow users to purchase rights to stream music, and they will also allow syncing of songs on your hard drive already so you can play those without repurchasing them (this was the original LaLa model).
The labels, say our source, are demanding that a user can only stream music that is watermarked to their username. Change the username, or try to stream music that you’ve ripped from a CD, and those songs won’t play.
In other words, it’s DRM déjà vu all over again.
There's a lot of desktop software that will allow you to cut an mp3 down to a single short clip, or trim the beginning and end of a recording, but there may be times when such software doesn't work for you. Maybe you're on someone else's computer. Maybe you don't need all of the features that a versatile app like Audacity has to offer. That's where CutMp3.net comes in. It's a simple, Web-based way to trim an mp3 without uploading or re-encoding it.
Okay, I admit, this site doesn't do much. In fact, it only does one thing: it lets you trim Mp3s by dragging the beginning and end points until you have the selection you want. Of course, you can also play the mp3s to make sure you've cut them in the right places. The only issue I had with the site was that you can't zoom in and out on the waveform, so it takes some sideways scrolling to see the end of your track. (Oh, and a volume control for the player would be nice!)
nearly of the Web sites I found offered song samples, meaning 30-second or 1-minute snippets. Some taken full audio streams that allowed the visitor to listen to continuous Bollywood medicine for as long equally she or he might want. It was these latter that provided the first half of our solution.
Normally, streaming audio, such every bit what you hear over an Internet radio send, cannot be saved or downloaded. New software, though, makes it possible to tape the stream to your hard drive for replaying equally often as you like.
Even better, some of the newest audio capture software incorporates something called an mp3 splitter. This software package is able to break the audio stream into class mp3 song files. By the room, this is dead legal, because you're simply reading a broadcast, the one equally when you phonograph record a TV show on your VHS. Voila -- we got the second half of our solution.
Between the audio streams and splitter/showing software program, we created our own living Bollywood mp3 download sites.
Now whenever my niece is in a mood to research the latest tuneful offerings from Bollywood, she snaps on her favorite Indian-music Internet radio place, then starts the recording software program. Pretty soon she has enough Bollywood mp3s to shuffle complete for the rest of the workweek, and she's almost guaranteed to find two or three that will spur her to have a trigger to the CD bin complete at the Asian storage.
No comments:
Post a Comment