NEW YORK, 5:48 PM, SAT JUL 5 | 4 POSTS IN THE LAST 24 HOURS | tips@consumerist.com | RSS
Posts Tagged “

Mp3

”
audio

The Best Personal Finance Podcasts

If you're a podcast sort of person, Get Rich Slowly has a list of 12 personal finance podcasts that they say are the best of the bunch—informative, entertaining, well-produced, and unique. "Money Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for a Richer Life" is their top choice:

The episodes are succinct but informative, and offer practical tips for dealing with money: how to improve your credit score, good debt versus bad debt, how to adjust your withholding, and wealth secret number one.

More »

11:51 AM on Fri May 16 2008
By Chris Walters
2,639 views, 3 comments

nice

Having Your Credit Card Stolen = Accidentally Free MP3 Downloads From Amazon?

Amazon.com apparently has a glitch whereby if you have 1-click ordering set up to buy MP3 downloads, and you forget that you canceled your credit card because it had been stolen by a random French person, you'll end up with a bunch of "free music." And, if you're an honest person like Jeff Somogyi, when you try to contact Amazon to pay for the music, they'll chuckle at you. More »

2:10 PM on Tue May 6 2008
By Meg Marco
8,816 views, 52 comments

bad company

EMI Says You Can't Store Your Music Files Online

Today, MP3tunes' CEO Michael Robertson sent out an email to all users of the online music backup and place-shifting service MP3tunes.com, asking them to help publicize EMI's ridiculous and ignorant lawsuit against the company. EMI believes that consumers aren't allowed to store their music files online, and that MP3tunes is violating copyright law by providing a backup service. (And we're not using a euphemism here—it really is a backup/place-shifting service and not a file sharing site in disguise.) More »

5:40 PM on Tue Apr 22 2008
By Chris Walters
34,226 views, 42 comments

Latest by gbmatty: Let's put some of the Music Industry's greatest blunders into perspective; Whether it was putting rootkits on CD's to hair-metal, from suing Neil Young to ditching Bob Dylan, from the Napster witch hunt to passing on the Beatles, Blender Magazine more »

reviews

In MP3 Showdown, Winners Are iPod Touch And Sansa View

Okay, so it's not like there aren't 15,000 MP3-player reviews already on the web, but SmartMoney decided to jump on the bandwagon and rate five 8-gigabyte MP3 players. Instead of hard stats and lab tests, they handed the devices to an NYU music instructor and audiophile and asked him to walk around the city playing with them. The Apple iPod Touch—at $300, the most expensive of the lot—came out on top, which probably doesn't surprise anyone, but the SanDisk Sansa View performed well too. More »

2:02 PM on Thu Jan 24 2008
By Chris Walters
3,721 views, 35 comments

Latest by Git Em SteveDave wants a Lego build buddy: @ekthesy: I went on Ebay and got the "Otterbox" for my shuffle for dirt cheap because they updated the series. True, it's only waterproof to one meter, but still, this thing lets me do my walks in the rain more »

Sony has agreed to sell its songs DRM-free on the Amazon MP3 store, completing the set—now all four big record companies are on board. It's amazing how a little iTunes competitiveness will bring a bunch of executives together. [New York Times]

8 comments

Inspired by Radiohead's recent digital experiment, British violinist Tasmin Little is releasing her next album online for free, sans DRM shackles. "I've done this with no intention of making money... I want to make [classical music] more accessible." We think Radiohead should borrow a page from Little in return and put hilarious Glamour Shots on their "In Rainbows" website. [Reuters]

7 comments

drm

Napster Drops DRM, Will (Finally) Sell MP3s

Napster, once a file-sharing service that famously drug the RIAA kicking and litigating into the digital music era, will finally drop DRM and start selling mp3s, says Ars Technica. More »

1:13 PM on Mon Jan 7 2008
By Meg Marco
1,266 views, 26 comments

whoops porn

Walmart: Santa Brings A MP3 Player Full Of Porn To A 10-Year-Old Girl

Daryl Hill of Cookeville, TN purchased an MP3 player from Walmart for his 10-year-old daughter. He handed the player over to his daughter thinking it was new, when in fact the previous owner had filled the player with pornography. More »

10:26 AM on Fri Dec 28 2007
By Meg Marco
73,868 views, 78 comments

music

Amazon Expands DRM-Free Music Store, Adds Warner Music

Starting today, Warner Music songs are now available on the Amazon MP3 music store, in DRM-free formats and at prices competitive to what iTunes charges. According to Reuters, Amazon has now reached "deals with music labels Universal Music Group, part of Vivendi, and EMI. The remaining major recording group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, has yet to offer its songs for the service." Sony BMG, you guys are very, very old dorks. More »

11:37 PM on Thu Dec 27 2007
By Chris Walters
1,028 views, 14 comments

customer service

Creative Sends Out Crazy Support Email/Sales Pitch

A reader sent in this funny and bizarre customer support email from Creative—it's a weird combination of broken English, pre-written paragraphs from macros (which, oddly, still have grammatical errors), Byzantine instructions for resetting and reformatting the broken device, and then five attempts to sell other products and services at the end. More »

10:05 AM on Thu Dec 27 2007
By Chris Walters
12,332 views, 26 comments

scams

Pump-And-Dump Stock Spam Now Comes With MP3s

We didn't know about this (possibly because we have enough interesting email to read without bothering with spam), but apparently the new cool thing is to send MP3 spam. More »

10:26 PM on Tue Oct 30 2007
By Meg Marco
1,296 views, 6 comments

music

"In Rainbows" Pirated A Lot, Despite Name-Your-Price Deal

Radiohead may have moved 1.2 million copies of its new album "In Rainbows" when it was released last week, but according to industry analysts, over 500,000 copies were downloaded through old-fashioned file sharing networks, eroding the perceived success of the distribution plan and possibly hindering similar release plans for other artists in the future. More »

11:22 AM on Thu Oct 18 2007
By Chris Walters
2,807 views, 58 comments

shopping

How About Not Buying An iPod?

Okay, we'll say it, and understand that we're writing this post on an old iBook: the iPod line is starting to look tired. Sure, that Touch is elegant in the same way as the iPhone—but its capacity is similar to the Nano, and what if don't want to carry around a Kubrick-style slab of minimalism? There are now some really nice alternatives out there if you're willing to walk away from the perks of being a member of the Apple camp. More »

2:08 PM on Tue Oct 9 2007
By Chris Walters
7,563 views, 112 comments

Latest by LastVigilante: @leemajors: Thanks, I'll give that a shot. It may streamline the process. I still think its rather unfortunate to have to rely on a 3rd party software in order to make my iPod usable the way I want it. @BrooklynMike: If more »

reviews

Just How Good Is The New Amazon MP3 Store?

A reviewer at TidBITS gives a non-technical review of the new Amazon music store, a direct competitor to iTunes Music Store that Amazon launched last week. Their verdict? The download software could use work, but overall it's "not too shabby." More »

10:42 AM on Mon Oct 1 2007
By Chris Walters
3,531 views, 40 comments

emi

EMI To Go DRM-Free

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that EMI, a Big Four music label and RIAA member, will release "significant amounts of its catalogue" unencumbered by DRM. The announcement from EMI is expected at an 8 a.m. EST press conference in London, featuring Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
Privately most labels rejected the idea out of hand, but EMI, the world's third-largest music company by sales, was already quietly exploring the idea of dropping DRM. EMI has struggled to overcome poor results and a laggard digital strategy, potentially contributing to its willingness to take a bold stance on DRM.
EMI will make the DRM-free portions of its catalogue available for download via iTunes. We wonder how the RIAA will react. — CAREY GREENBERG-BERGER More »

12:10 AM on Mon Apr 2 2007
By Carey
1,660 views, 32 comments

Latest by biledemon: This is by far an outlandish lie. It's past April's fools day. more »

drm

EMI May Unshackle Catalogue, Usher In Second Dawn Of DRM-Free Music

The New York Times reports that EMI, one of the Big Four labels, may soon release its music without DRM. The third largest label behind Universal and Sony, murmurs of EMI intentions come on the heels of Steve Jobs' appeal for DRM-free music. More »

12:18 PM on Sun Feb 11 2007
By consumerintern
142 views, 4 comments

drm

DRM-Free Music in "One to Two Years"?

The New York Times has an article today detailing the MIDEM music industry conference, and are reporting that at least 4 major record companies "could move toward the sale of unrestricted digital files in the MP3 format within months." More »

10:49 AM on Tue Jan 23 2007
By Meg Marco
72 views, 7 comments

zune

Zune "is a Complete, Humiliating Failure."

The Chicago Sun-Times does not like the Zune. At all. In much the same way as we delight in reading all the really nasty movie reviews excerpted on Metacritic, we really enjoyed this particular write up of the potentially ill-fated Zune. Here are some choice zingers: More »

2:37 PM on Sun Nov 26 2006
By Meg Marco
2,509 views, 19 comments

next »